The Blue And The Red (02:30 PM)

I found a really interesting article on how thermodynamics affects political persuasion. Conservatives and Liberals.

The Theory of Island Biogeography is a theory of species population distribution. There are major evolutionary implications in the ability of a species to distribute itself across space and time, not to mention the curious thermodynamics associated with this distribution. That is, species that can modulate their thermodynamic properties in response to environmental changes dramatically increase their probability of survival. In humans, there is no better example of thermodynamic modulation than conservatism and liberalism.

One of the more prominent biogeographic variations between conservatives and liberals is population density. The conservative-liberal asymmetries in population density are easily seen in the voting patterns of urban, suburban, and rural environments. As a general rule, the greater the population density, the more liberal the population. In the 2004 US Presidential Election, the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, won every city with a population over 500,000. This same pattern was repeated in 2008 with Barack Obama.

The mystical and long-standing relationship between liberalism and urbanism is common across all cultures, and raises several interesting questions: is this a self-selection process, whereby the conservatives flee to the suburbs leaving the big cities to the liberals; or, does urban life liberalize people? There is certainly much evidence for the self-selection effect, but we also believe that high-density living tends to liberalize people, although the evidence is less clear.

I had an interesting discussion with the author. I said that it was interesting that reproduction is lower in cities than in lower density areas. He said that was true of animal studies and seemed to be true for humans but it was not well researched in humans.

Here is an interesting bit:

In their groundbreaking study of island biogeography, M&W noted some interesting trends that apply directly to the study of political-religious disposition. First, a species that is able to establish populations on more than one island in an archipelago greatly reduces the risk of extinction. At first blush, this seems to be irrelevant to the study of conservatives and liberals. However, it is founded upon two behaviors that improve species viability: the ability to increase habitat range; and the ability to create genetic diversity. In other words, increase the habitat and genetic ranges, and increase the survival probability of a species, not to mention the acceleration in the rate of evolutionary change. From our information gathered so far, we believe that conservatives increase habitat range to a greater extent than liberals, and liberals increase genetic diversity to a greater extent than conservatives. Interestingly, conservatives and liberals, at opposite ends of the political spectrum, seem to be at the center of the survivability of the human species.

There is much more and it is one of the most interesting things I have read in a long time. Need I say that you ought to read it too?

What is my conclusion relative to politics? Both political parties are right about the proper way to live. In their ecological niches. If we wanted to help people prosper where ever they live we would have to change the geographical distribution of borders. But that might require a change to a City State model. Tough when things are already intermixed. How to square that circle? A libertarian model of politics would work. That is to say the government imposes the very minimum of social rules so that people can best live according to their particular geographical niche.

A book that covers the idea that political and technical change is geography specific from a somewhat different perspective is Geography and Revolution.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

:: Comments left behind ::

Fed up scientist becomes hero? (01:28 PM)

Regarding the the incredible story of the leaked Hadley CRU files (a story which M. Simon helped break in the blogosphere, and which prompted Dave to suggest that the leaker deserves Al Gore's Nobel Prize), I'm naturally curious about the whodunnit aspect.

It's beginning to look like it was no hacker but an insider. From "Who leaked the Hadley CRU files and why ":

The anonymous tipster, whom many people initially assumed had "hacked" into the computers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (repeatedly called the "Hadley CRU," by mistake), might in fact be a CRU insider who released the files for his own reasons.

The author speculates as to what the reasons might be.

Mr. Stephen McIntyre at Climate Audit has made no secret of his repeated attempts to demand, under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, that Phil Jones and his team yield up the data that are the basis of their claims for anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and its effects. Preliminary analysis of the archived e-mails also indicates that Jones knew of McIntyre's efforts and was taking steps to stall and thwart them, in violation of the law. Perhaps, then, someone at CRU decided to take the law into his own hands.

I like that.

There are some things you can't make some scientists do.

:: Comments left behind ::

That is so sweet of you. I have to admit that I really loved breaking that story. It made me feel for a while like a reporter from the cutthroat days of journalism.

As can be seen in this free movie "His Girl Friday"

http://www.archive.org/details/his_girl_friday

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 02:40 PM

I sincerely hope that's how it happened, I didn't like the idea of an outsider hacking in.
I was torn on hacking a multi-billion dollar con job.
Sometimes two wrongs make a right but I don't always like it.

:: Veeshir November 21, 2009 05:22 PM

But what if secession doesn't succeed? (12:16 PM)

As there's been some advocacy of secession in the comments, I thought I would examine how this might occur in practice, whether legally or not.

A lot of people seem to think the Civil War settled the issue of whether states have the right to secede, except it did not. The war -- not a war according to the federal government and officially never declared (but see below*) -- did not begin over secession; it began when Fort Sumter -- federal property within the state of South Carolina -- was fired upon. The war began not when the individual states seceded, but when the shooting started in April of 1861. Had the feds not been fired on, many have argued that the matter might conceivably have been resolved in the South's favor in the Supreme Court -- the rhetoric in Lincoln's first inaugural address notwithstanding.

But of course that did not happen, and unfortunately, there is nothing in the Constitution about secession, or the right to secede. It neither expressly forbids nor expressly permits a state to secede. So whether secession is constitutional is a very tricky one, and the emanations -- whether express or implied -- from the various express or implied penumbrae, could be argued forever.

I think the closest the Constitution comes to touching on it is this:

Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

Might "new state" be interpreted as allowing the formation of a new state that was NOT a part of the union? (Nice try, maybe, but I have a feeling that would lose in the Supreme Court, and in Congress.)

Of course, there are always the words in the Pledge of Allegiance. Here's the 1892 version:

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

And the current version (under God was added in 1954):

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So, whether it's "one nation under indivisible" or "one nation under God, indivisible," the word "indivisible" would seem to imply that regardless of any legal or theoretical right to secede, since 1892 there has been no right to secede in the moral and patriotic sense. Not for those who believe in the pledge, anyway. But again, the pledge is only binding in the moral sense.

There is also the Declaration of Independence, which, by declaring that "the people" have an inherent right to "alter or abolish" abusive governments, could be said to recognize implicitly the right of one state to secede from another:

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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The Declaration is not the supreme law of the land, however. You can't march into court and claim your declarational rights. It recited the natural, moral right of the colonists to form a new state -- which is of course also the moral right of any future people living under any abusive or oppressive government.

Exactly how would a state secede, though? Would it require majority consensus? Two thirds consensus? Would it require the consent of a majority of other states?

Maybe a constitutional amendment spelling out the right to secede is in order.

But even if we assume the existence of such a procedure, I'm not at all sure it would satisfy many of the people who are calling for secession, because they would still have to persuade their state legislature to declare secession and enact the proper ordinances.

Sounds like secession is a pain in the ass.

Of course, if citizens who want to secede can't manage to persuade a state legislature to go along with them, then the state wouldn't be seceding -- whether legally or illegally. The angry citizens would have to resort to civil war.

Civil war is also a pain in the ass.

* Or was war declared? I'd hate to think that historians can't even agree on a simple thing like that.

The following proclamation has been widely interpreted as a Declaration of War:

By the President of the United States:
A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, The laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law :

Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the Militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department.

I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the force hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union, and, in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country; and I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.

Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an extraordinary occasion, I do, hereby, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress. The Senators and Representatives are therefore summoned to assemble at their respective chambers at twelve o'clock, noon, on Thursday, the fourth day of July next, then and there to consider and determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this fifteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

BY THE PRESIDENT.

:: Comments left behind ::

While your point has a certain validity, I would have to argue that the Civil War did settle the question. Sure, in the most trivial sense the War was not fought over seccession explicitly. But that was only because one side claimed it had always and obviously had the right to (and was therefore defending themselves from unprovoked attack [rolleyes]) while the other claimed that no such seccession was possible. But the courts of law aren't the only place that legal principles are settled. Having won the war and unified the country again, the question was resolved by force, and the law *defined* through victory. Sure, people might eventually completely change the national character and reading of the law, but in such cases no legal opinion would matter anyhow.

:: Patrick November 21, 2009 01:22 PM

But did it really settle the question of legal, peaceful secession?

:: Eric Scheie November 21, 2009 01:39 PM

As Forrest Gump's mother might have said, "secession is as secession does." More likely, any real secession movement would be a consequence of a preexisting and widespread civil opposition to an abusive or repressive government. Ultimately, this would become a contest between grass-roots freedom-loving individualists and elitist command-and-control bureaucrats and collectivists. The former group would likely be numerous and well-armed, and the latter group may be fewer in number, but would attempt to wield the police/judicial/military powers of the state. At this point, talk of secession is more bluster than call-to-action. It is symptomatic of people feeling that no one in Washington DC is listening, and so they take evermore extreme positions in hope that politicians will wake up and notice that the house is on fire.

:: Tom November 21, 2009 01:47 PM

I believe the right to leave the union was implicit in the fact that the several states could voluntarily join. There was nothing in any state's acceptance of statehood that once a state joined it was like the mob and you could never leave. Even if there were limitations when territories became states, how could that apply to the original thirteen?

Does it really make sense that the legislatures of the original thirteen would have ratified the constitution if it meant they couldn't leave if it turned out to be a mistake?

:: JKB November 21, 2009 02:10 PM

this is sort of related question:
"As of July 2009, California's budget shortfall was 49.3% of its general funds. States have considered drastic options to fill such gaps.

"I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status."

here

:: newrouter November 21, 2009 02:15 PM

The settling of political differences really requires separating the cities from the countryside:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/11/the_blue_and_th_1.html

That is the real division between conservative and liberal culture.

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 04:06 PM

A right to secede was the great unanswered question in the Constitution. And that led to a great unnecessary war.

There are really two, some would say three, questions about secession.

First, the original 13 states existed before the United States. They clearly agreed to join and could honestly argue they also had a right to leave.

But other states - the majority by 1860 - had been formed from federal territory after the Constitution was adopted. They had never been independent. Their right to secede, if any existed, might be quite another matter.

Texas was unique since it had been an independent nation.

The legal situation at Sumter is not as clear as secessionists would like. In fact Sumter played no role in secession as a conceptual right.

The writer is correct about Ft.Sumter. The fort was on a small island and was not federal territory. Technically it was not in South Carolina at all.

The island was artificial and had been created by the federal government. As such the state had no claim to it whatever. Lincoln knew that and had the duty to respond to an attack on federal territory and/or our military.

In the end legalities meant little. The South was enraged whether it made sense to be so or not.

:: K November 21, 2009 04:55 PM

oops. make my previous read:

he fort was on a small island WHICH was not STATE territory.

:: K November 21, 2009 05:37 PM

My Body, My Money, My Country (05:23 PM)

We constantly hear that only moderate centrist Republicans can win in some places. And that is true. But what kind of moderate? What kind of centrist? I think that it has to be a moderate with strong principles. A strange beast to be sure. At least in this day and age.

The last time the Republican Party was truly centrist and wildly attractive was when it was a libertarian Party under Ronald Reagan. Socially moderate, fiscally conservative, strong on national defense. Does that mean that social conservatives were unwelcome? Of course not. It just means that moral socialism was not the political center of the party. It means that government stays out of your business and you are free to live your life as you chose.

What too many of our elite mean by centrist is socially moderate, not too fiscally conservative, and don't scare people with heavy weapons. i.e. RINO. I prefer a little absolutism.

My body, my money, my country.

Now moderation may be a good thing. But you have to have principles so at least you will know when you are deviating from them. So you don't go too far. RINOs have no discernible principles. And thus they can never tell when they have gone too far. The evidence of that was the drubbing the Republicans took in 2006 and 2008 when the Party stood only for a strong national defense. Everything else was negotiable.

Are the kind of Republicans I'm describing going to be popular every where? Not at this time. Social conservatives are going to dominate in some areas of the country. But what about other places like Wisconsin, California, and Illinois? In places like that social conservatives do not do well, at least State wide and in many districts. In those places it is good to have a more socially liberal candidate. But not a RINO. Because without principles you are just drifting with the wind.

I'd like to close with one of my favorite and often repeated Reagan quotes:

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." - Ronald Reagan

and how about another that describes the improper relation of government to the people:

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

Cross Posted at Power and Control

:: Comments left behind ::

What about other being's bodies? Do I own my dog, bought with my money? What - from a liberty standpoint - is wrong with dog fighting? Do women own fetuses? And what about slavery?

I give you William Wilberforce who did more for liberty than you or I ever will.

He was instrumental in abolishing first the slave trade (via large scale government action including acts of war via warships) and then slavery (via large scale government action as well) within the British Empire. He founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Yet, as an evangelical Christian who tried to legislate against adultery I'm pretty sure he would have supported the rights of the unborn to keep their bodies.

Liberty for the unborn is real liberty. It's strange to me that making dog fighting illegal works - and it does work, dog fighting was much more common before it was made illegal - yet you seem to think that making late-term abortions illegal wouldn't save the lives of some unborn beings.

In short, I think it's cheap to keep small-government (not no government) socons like me in the coalition. Face it, pro-life is pro-liberty. Without government we would have slavery, the slave trade and dog fighting.

Remember, Simon, a government with enough power to forbid you to own a slave is also a government with enough power to require you to buy one - or be one.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi

:: Tom DeGisi November 20, 2009 07:30 PM

Tom,

I would suggest that, while slavery was not the reason for the Civil War, it was a huge factor in riling up the North. Look at the recruiting posters of the day. Especially in New England, they're all about slaves in chains and families being torn apart and other horrors of slavery. For the South it might have been minor, but don't you think Lincoln's spinmeisters would have upplayed slavery and downplayed states' rights? Especially since New England states were heavily into autonomy but heavily against slavery.

As for overreaching gov't, that's why we have a Constitution.
Following that has worked better than any other form of government or non-government has ever worked.

No, we haven't followed it perfectly, and that's when things get their worst.

The problem is that people need government, we're not nice.

So far following our Constitution is by far the best system this sorry world has ever seen.
It's when we deviate from it that there have been problems.
Congress gets in on drugs because they might be sold interstate. So even if you grow your own and don't sell it, you're a criminal.
Now, if they want to make interstate sales of drugs illegal, that's a different story, but they didn't do that.
So we have the multi-generational debacle that is the drug war.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 11:05 PM

Remember, Tom, a government with enough power to forbid you to have an abortion is also a government with enough power to require you to have one.

But I have a proposition for you. IMO the only moral position on the subject is that of the Catholic Church. If the government is going to force women to raise children it should provide generous welfare benefits for the poor to reduce some of the financial burden and give the child a better chance in life.

As soon as I see a movement among the anti-abortion folks to increase welfare for the poor and for unwed mothers I'll change my position. Better get busy.

And the welfare need not be public money. Private money in sufficient quantities will do.

My general position is that smaller government with all the evils that engenders is better. But for this one case I'll change my position if I see sufficient movement in the direction I envision.

Forcing women to have children has its cost. Some one has to pay. Why not the people who believe in force to solve problems? Then if private welfare is insufficient we can get government to force extractions from all citizens to pay for the policy.

As is usual in these schemes force begets force. But hey. This is so important that it is worth it. The pro life community would gladly reduce the support for their children to help raise other people's children wouldn't they?

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 01:22 AM

What I don't understand is why the right to life community isn't already paying women to carry their babies to term.

If the pay was high enough I believe most abortions could be eliminated. I don't know why the right to life community isn't doing this and advertising it.

Of course there is the moral hazard of women having babies just to collect the money. Nothing is perfect. A small price to pay to eliminate one of the premier evils of our time don't you think?

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 01:30 AM

Tom,

Moral socialism inevitably leads to economic socialism.

One example: fathers who abandon their children due to a prohibition conviction. We now pay for not only the father but also the mother and her children.

Once there are enough children of poor people due to anti-abortion laws there will be agitation for the government to support them.

What folks who demand simple solutions (government enforcers) forget is that humans are not machines. As a mass they are more like balloons. Push in one place and you get a bulge in another.

My solution? Stop pushing. Will we get a perfect world? No. Far from it. We will only get a better world with fewer enforcers.

I know nothing I can say will turn you away from your chosen path. Fine. Experience will be your teacher.

And experience is a hard teacher. Some men will have no other.

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 03:48 AM

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. - Benjamin Franklin

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 03:54 AM

"Remember, Tom, a government with enough power to forbid you to have an abortion is also a government with enough power to require you to have one."

What a stupid tautological admonishment.

Remember, a government with enough power to forbid you from murdering random citizens is also a government with enough power to require you to murder random citizens.

Remember, a government with enough power to forbid you from breaking into your neighbor's home and stealing his property is also a government with enough power to require you to break into your neighbor's home and steal his property.

Remember, a government with enough power to forbid you from raping small children is also a government with enough power to require you to rape small children.

etc. etc.

:: star4 November 21, 2009 05:58 AM

"What I don't understand is why the right to life community isn't already paying women to carry their babies to term.

If the pay was high enough I believe most abortions could be eliminated. I don't know why the right to life community isn't doing this and advertising it.

Of course there is the moral hazard of women having babies just to collect the money. Nothing is perfect. A small price to pay to eliminate one of the premier evils of our time don't you think?
"

Why I don't understand is why the pro-drug community isn't just paying off politicians to overturn drug laws.

If the bribes were high enough I believe most drug laws could be overturned. I don't know why the pro-drug community isn't doing this and advertising it.

Of course there is the moral hazard of politicians scheduling votes just to collect the money. Nothing is perfect. A small price to pay to eliminate one of the premier evils of our time don't you think?

:: star4 November 21, 2009 06:03 AM

star5--

What politician has the character to stay bought?

:: Brett November 21, 2009 08:11 AM

star4,

The American government on any level has no power to prevent murder. The only power it has is to punish it after the fact if the miscreant can be caught.

There is a LOT of muddled thinking in your exposition.

People think laws prevent things. Well actually prohibition laws prevent nothing. One need only look at the drug war. For kids pot is easier to get than beer.

We assume the law has some deterrent effect. Maybe it does. But people really determined to evade laws generally can. The drug trade is flourishing in America.

But I'm going to assume you are smarter than you let on. A smart person like you surely can find ways to sharply reduce or curtail abortion without government guns. Government enforcers. Government Bureaucracy. i.e more socialism.

Which is why I call your position Moral Socialism.

====

On top of that it is Democrats aborting their babies (mostly). I like Napoleon on the subject:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

The choices seem rather stark to me. Abortion or an ever larger constituency for socialism.

Which evil do you prefer?

===

Why I don't understand is why the pro-drug community isn't just paying off politicians to overturn drug laws.

Being involved in that I can give you the answer. Not enough money. Big pharma, the alcohol and tobacco lobbies can out bid us.

The way around that: education and organizing. It is working.

:: M. Simon November 21, 2009 10:59 AM

The Global Warming Conspiracy (02:40 PM)

No, really.

If you haven't heard, someone has posted a whole bunch of correspondence between AGW "scientists." The mask has slipped, fallen, and shattered:

This is part of a letter send from Michael E. Mann to Phil Jones:

I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also
need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently
sit on the editorial board...
What do others think?
mike

Wow, it's almost like the AGW community has been conspiring to suppress skeptics, or something.

The best part: AGWers have long rolled their eyes and claimed loony skeptics were positing some sort of conspiracy to suppress the truth... claims that are now retroactively hilarious.

You couldn't write a fictional scenario like this. It would be tossed back as not believable.

UPDATE: I just wanted to add, whoever released this deserves a Nobel Prize.

Preferably Al Gore's.

:: Comments left behind ::

The ability of global warmmongers to ignore reality while simultaneously smugly laughing at my ignorance never ceases to amaze me.

This will be ignored.
It will prove that you can find a memo saying, "Let's lie about this stuff and then cover up the lie." and it won't matter.

Global warmmongers and their Minitru minions will ignore this or attack it in the proper manner, as the BBC did.

This has always been about power not science.
Why else does no global warmmonger know anything about that great, glowing orb of nukular fire that heats the Earth?

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 04:24 PM

Veeshir,

It is not about delivering a knock out blow. It is about having the ammunition to keep chipping away.

This one is going to take some pretty big chips.

:: M. Simon November 20, 2009 05:42 PM

Might I add that it is now up to you to study the material and use it around the 'net.

:: M. Simon November 20, 2009 05:45 PM

First, I've seen this everywhere.

Second,
I've been sparring with global warmmongers for many, many, many years now. Since I was only skeptical because they always seemed to ignore the Sun and clouds and stuff.
I was always using the science they ignored while I have had to listen to them call me ignorant and a tool of Big Heat as I refute, with science and actual facts, what they say. I've tried to get them to pay any attention whatsoever to the Sun, how the temp of the Earth seems to follow eerily along with how active it is as they laugh at me for being so anti-science.

Of course I'm spreading this far and wide. I'm rubbing some faces in this like Scut Fargas with some yellow snow and a fat kid.

I've made a list and I've checked it twice and a bunch of people are calling me all different kinds of asshole right now.

And that's making me laugh, laugh, laugh.
And they know I'm laughing my ass off at them (trust me, I made that perfectly clear) and that's probably making them even angrier.

One of my friends works for NOAA, he's learned to keep his mouth shut, but he can forward my emails with a "Do you see what this guy is saying now?" comment.

Comedy Gold.
Dude, my emails make it into NASA, the ones where I laugh my ass off at the latest stupidity from Hansen where I'm using sunspot pics and data from NASA's website and temperature for the Earth pages (after they were "fixed", which was another funny ass day in my life) and solar wind charts, all from the NASA and the NOAA websites.
And they still call me an idiot, but they won't respond.

Around 2003 or 04, I probably didn't flat out disbelieve it until around 06 or 07, maybe even 08, I was just skeptical and I would try to get them to explain why I was wrong and they would just call me names and stupid and say I couldn't understand so they wouldn't waste their time and.......

That's why I only make fun of them anymore.

This is the funniest day I've had in a long time.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 07:37 PM

I'm giggling my f'ing ass off.

:: Billy Oblivion November 21, 2009 06:37 AM

Is that lipstick on my rightwing talking points? (02:08 PM)

In an earlier email to M. Simon, I remarked,

If a woman has a right to an abortion, all people have a right to medicate pain.

That happens to be what I think. Yet as I learned recently, there are some people who interpret remarks I've made like that as an attempt to -- let me get this right --

Redefine liberty to exclusively represent rightwing talking points.

I am absolutely serious. That is exactly how noted Village Voice columnist Roy Edroso described my thoughts about legal abortion vis-a-vis illegal drugs. Writing in his blog, here's his attempt to show how I redefined liberty:

This Classical Values post attacks the government's environmental policy ("This time, it's a real war. I say it's time to get the government out of all of our emissions, for good. Emissions are a human right!"), and muses:

Sometimes I wonder whether "getting the government out of our bedrooms" (supposedly accomplished by Lawrence v. Texas) wasn't just a ruse so people could imagine they were more free.

Yeah, I know that women are free to destroy their fetuses too. Getting the government out of wombs is also marketed as another ultimate form of freedom (based on "privacy"), but what I've never been able to understand is this: if "privacy" gives the woman a right to have a scalpel inserted into her body to cut out her fetus, then why doesn't "privacy" also allow that same woman to put whatever drugs she wants into that same body?

To put it another way: why worry about control over one's own body, however constantly threatened, when the government is forcing cars to get 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016? Forbid it, almighty God!

As for the drug reference, don't worry if you find it confusing -- you haven't missed any recent change in Republican or mainstream conservative policy. The idea is to for conservatives to associate themselves with as many libertarian ideas as they can possibly get away with (reproductive rights, as we have seen, doesn't make it), and to associate liberals with their suppression.

What is so confusing about my drug reference? I pointed out a major inconsistency in the application of the right to privacy. How is it that "privacy" can include the right to cut out a fetus but not a right to take drugs? I have never been able to understand it, any more than I can understand how feminists can argue that a woman has the right to allow someone to remove her fetus, but no right to pose in pornographic pictures. She can consent to an abortionist's scalpel, but not to a pornographer's camera?

But even though he didn't like my analogy, I guess I should be flattered that Roy Edroso thinks that my musings reflect "Republican or mainstream conservative policy."

It's news to me, and it's a shame this fact isn't more widely known.

I should point out that Roy Edroso and I go back. Waaay back, to the summer of 2003 when I had only been blogging for a few months, and Edroso hadn't moved up in the world to writing a column for the Village Voice. While I probably shouldn't voice my inner feelings like this, I'm actually like sort of really jealous over the fact that only certified ideologues -- the sort whose politics can be considered "reliable" to party boss types -- get paid to write by official mainstream organs like the Voice. Like it or not, the ideological world is still divided into left and right, liberals and conservatives, but because the world of paid journalism is overwhelmingly liberal, if you want to be a paid writer, you pretty much have to be on the left. True, there is an occasional token conservative or moderate here and there, but with a few exceptions, libertarian writers tend to starve. Besides, they're a dime a dozen thousand.

Edroso is, I think, a more loyal servant of the left than I am of the right, and this may explain his desire to characterize my libertarian views as reflecting mainstream conservative policy. If only that were the case! But I think he knows that it isn't the case, and he does not want it to be. I don't think his goal is so much to conflate libertarians with conservatives, as it is to insult both conservatives and libertarians at every opportunity, while singling out the latter for special scorn and contempt. Guys like Edroso (and his admirer James Wolcott) tend to see conservatives for what they are even though they don't like them, but libertarians are seen as inherently dishonest -- as conservatives in leftish drag.

By painting libertarians as stealth conservatives, the net effect is to make even their libertarianism somehow suspect. Edroso bestowing on Megan McArdle the title of "lipstick libertarian" is a perfect example of this. And I say this as a libertarian who does not wear lipstick! (Er, except maybe on an occasional Halloween....)

Really, it's as if they think that "we" are basically a bunch of weaselly right-wing hedonists -- trying to snooker young people into the evil right wing tent by offering them the candy of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll before handing them over to James Dobson for religious brainwashing sessions. (As a form of projection, this is quite understandable, because to the left, personal freedom is a tactic in a grab bag of tricks, with conditions attached.)

As to how Edroso got his job with the Voice, I can only speculate. The well-connected and passionately left-wing James Wolcott used to praise his writing to the skies, so I don't think it's out of the question that the Wolcott connection is what ultimately paid off. And why not? They are both talented writers, and vituperative snark loves vituperative snark.

The problem with me is that I sometimes feel overdosed on opinions. There is too much out there to keep track of, and it tires me out. I even find myself feeling overdosed on my own opinions. I freely admit, this is probably a symptom of burnout, and maybe I should seek professional help, because it has been six and a half years, and I'm not getting any younger. So, when I say I'm "like sort of really jealous" of the talented Mr. Edroso, I sort of like really mean it, but only in the sarcastic senses of "like," and "sort of," and "really." (No, really!) While it might be flattering to be hired by a large established outfit, OTOH I'm not sure I would like being a paid snarkist, as I would have to insult people for a living. Sure, I can insult people, but the daily grind would get to me, and being paid to write would interfere with my ability to write. (As things stand now, sometimes I can barely crank out posts.)

For these reasons I try to minimize my reading of the more insulting blogs, whether on the left or the right. For example, when a blog war between the two bloggers I will not name erupted, I stopped reading both of them, because each one radiated such boundless contempt and hatred for the other that I had the feeling it extended to other bloggers and even readers who were insufficiently on one side of the fence or the other. That sort of monumental egotism annoys me, but it also goes to why I won't name them, and why I will not disclose what I think about the merits of their respective positions.

As Edroso falls into the insulting blogger category, I have not kept up with him as I perhaps should. I didn't even know he had moved up from the insulting blogger category to the insulting "journalist" category.

Had it not been for Glenn Reynolds, I wouldn't have known about Edroso's new Village Voice life at all.

Hmmm... I don't know whether to thank Glenn or file an official complaint.

Anyway, I would have totally missed out on Edroso's unfounded attack on Don Surber (for not writing about what he had in fact written about). And while I read Ann Althouse (and thus saw her refutation of Edroso's trollish attempt to link her to fundamentalist Christianity by resort her commenters), when I saw Glenn's link to that, I actually started to feel sorry for myself. I know it's irrational, because I don't like being insulted, but really! Put yourself in my position. A burnout I may be, but I still have pride, and I was one of Edroso's earliest targets!

And now that he's moved up in the world, giddy with success and basking in his new paradise, has he forgotten about all the little people he used as stepping stones along the way? To use the Christianist vernacular of which he's so fond, I felt that Edroso had been Raptured up, while I had been left behind.

But no! Imagine my joy when I learned that notwithstanding his new place in the heavens, he had not forgotten to look down on little me :

As sometimes happens with these things, the Galt-Goers have encountered some mockery. Classical Values found this a good sign: "I'd say that once comedians start working a topic into their routines, that's a sign that its time has come," he asserts, though if that were true, Joey Buttafuoco would have been elected President of the United States.

Well, maybe not president. But statutory rapists like Buttafuoco can usually at least find a place in Hollywood. Amy Fisher is doing OK too. At least two book contracts, a movie deal.

Even though neither of them landed a spot at the Village Voice, it all seems quite unfair.

But I hate to sound like such an ingrate. I mean, if I can redefine liberty as rightwing talking points, surely I ought to be able to turn my self pity into gratitude!

:: Comments left behind ::

I don't know if I'm as much libertarian as you or how to even measure it, but I always laugh when people attack me as a crazed right winger. They always, always, always accuse me of being a God-shouter.

Watching them attack you that way makes me laugh even harder.
I mean, I am pretty evil and write pretty bluntly but you seem much more intellectual and detached.
I was never a liberal or lefty like you, I've been trying to be Jubal Harshaw since I was like 9, so my writing shows that.

Maybe that's why you're worth attacking. There's no one more evil to the religious than the apostate. Not knowing what you're supposed to believe is one thing, but knowing it and rejecting it is an insult.

I have to admit I'm jealous. I've been insulted by a few decent sized bloggers, but never a Village Voice polemic... columnist.

If you're dangerous enough for the Voice to attack then you must be doing something right.
Now the next step is for the Chron to call you a racist.
Then you'll know you've reached the big time.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 03:56 PM

Oh dude, repeat after me- All Edrosos are equal, but some Edrosos are more equal than others.

See, it is really very easy.

:: dr kill November 20, 2009 04:05 PM

Eric,

Thanks!

Veeshir,

Here is how to tell:

My Body, My Money, My Country

:: M. Simon November 20, 2009 05:49 PM

How to tell what?

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 07:43 PM

The crackdown on illegal wood begins! (11:17 AM)

Rand Simberg linked a post I wrote last month about the federal criminalization of wood, and I thought I should thank him here rather than in the post itself -- which Glenn Reynolds linked yesterday, but which is so old that regular readers might miss updates on it. Simberg added a great point which I think should be noted, and renoted -- by the Powers That Shouldn't Be:

Throw all the bastards out. One of the elements in the Republicans' new contract with America has to address these outrageously long, unread bills.

When I wrote the post ("Where were you when wood became a felony?" -- a long diatribe against yet another grotesque unconstitutional overreaching by the feds), little did I know that there would soon be a federal raid on the Gibson Guitar company. The name "Gibson" is legendary in rock music -- so much so that this raid is more than just an attack on an important and cherished American industry. The attack (on what the Justice Department thugs would probably call "Big Guitar") is an attack on freedom itself -- little different from raiding rock bands and seizing their guitars.

The feds raided Gibson looking for undocumented wood.

Not aliens.

Wood.

Just think about it. Look around you. How many things in the spaces surrounding you are made of wood? How many objects? Think of what a malicious prosecutor like Mike Nifong in a federal roid rage could do with such a "law." I don't think it is any exaggeration to say that this may be the greatest law enforcement harassment tool ever devised.

"Is that a gun in your pocket or are you concealing illegal handles made from undocumented wood?"

What I can't figure out is whether the greater crime is the passage of this monstrosity or the fact that its existence was so cleverly concealed -- as a small part of yet another humongous "act" -- that it went unreported.

We are not represented, we are ruled.

:: Comments left behind ::

Things will be ever so much better when all wood products require a strict chain of custody, the lowly house framing stud as well as the Circassian walnut shotgun stock blank.

:: chuckR November 20, 2009 12:08 PM

Interesting delay between your original post and this new attention! Was the Gibson raid due to this new law or was it existing law?

:: SteveBrooklineMA November 20, 2009 01:45 PM

"Are all the books you own printed on paper made of properly documented wood"?

:: Marzo November 21, 2009 02:58 PM

Some Verification Of Hadley CRU Files Hacked (01:35 AM)

I have posted Climate Files Hacked about the release by anonymous ftp of the contents of hundreds of files and thousands of e-mails. Some have questioned their authenticity. I have partial verification from Real or Fake.

Steve McIntyre (Comment#23773) November 19th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

I'm having trouble getting into CA right now.

I made up a pdf of the emails to help browse through them and it's over 2000 pages. Every email that I've examined so far looks genuine. There are a few emails of mine that are 100% genuine.

It is really quite breathtaking.

Yes. It is breathtaking.

Update: 20 November 2009 1009z

TBR.cc reports that the Hadley Center admits that the files are real.

The director of Britain's leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

"Have you alerted police"

"Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken."

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

WOW It is real. This is going to do a LOT of damage to the AGW Community. Big damage.

TBR.cc recommends Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming

You might want to give it a look.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

:: Comments left behind ::

The collapse of an end-times prophecy is an end-of-round bell. It's time to pick a new apocalypse, set our no-return date just beyond the horizon of collective memory, and start again. And again. Like always.

This is going to do a LOT of damage to the AGW Community. Big damage.

No. A little, of a sort, to some of them, personally, maybe, but I doubt it. One might get made an example of, so he can stand in for them all in history, if it doesn't go their way. But I think they know it will, so none will be singled out.

Who's the defamed and shunned false prophet of The Coming Ice Age? Of the Overpopulation Famine? Nobody is.

Make a representative list of the "Community" and track what becomes of them. My bet: They're heeled, some, but remain at the side of their (our) masters.

:: guy on internet November 20, 2009 12:31 PM

The cynic in me wonders if this will change much. Non-believers already assumed this stuff was going on. Believers won't care, saying the "fundamental truth about global warming" hasn't changed as a result of this leak.

I also wonder if it was an inside job. Perhaps somebody with a conscience, disturbed by efforts to waste trillions of dollars fighting climate change, when that money that could be spent more wisely?

:: SteveBrooklineMA November 20, 2009 01:51 PM

guy,

The Coming of the Ice Age didn't have identifiable names attached. Thanks to Real Climate, Climate Audit, Watts Up With That, and similar blogs there is now a cast of characters.

And the memory of being hoodwinked is usually good for about 25 years. It might last longer because the internet is a better memory.

:: M. Simon November 20, 2009 04:35 PM

Paul Erlich was a big coming ice age type and he's pretty big in the global warmmongering crowd.

I can't find the link, but he actually agitated for us to try to melt the polar ice caps or WE WERE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!! from the coming ice age.

Now, of course, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!1!!! from the north pole melting because of global worming.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 05:19 PM

Climate Files Hacked (11:42 PM)

I just got a tip from Jccarlton at Talk Polywell that some one has hacked a lot of Hadley CRU files on Climate Science. You can get what details that are currently available at Watts Up With That. What has been released so far is full of bombshells. Like this e-mail.

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK

It looks like the scam may be coming to an end. Take that Al Gore. Because it looks like you may no longer be able to take it to the bank.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

:: Comments left behind ::

American Power tracked-back with (a BIG roundup), 'Global Warming Hoax Breaks Wide Open as Hackers Target East Anglia Climate Research Unit!'.

:: Americaneocon November 20, 2009 03:05 PM

ObamaCare Deep Underwater (10:55 PM)

Is this what it sounds like when magical gov't healthcare ponies die?

Quinnipiac 36-51.

PPP 42-50.

The claims that America spends more for worse health care are crumbling under closer examination; people aren't being fooled anymore by misleading comparisons of things that don't measure health care outcomes. The poll numbers are dropping like a rock as more people figure out the difference between propaganda and reality.

Let's hope these poll numbers kill this thing before it starts killing Americans.

UPDATE: Obama is sinking as well, and for the same reason: reality is setting in. He campaigned on competence, transparency, post-partisanship, pragmatism and accountability but has turned out to be a bumbling deceptive hyperpartisan ideologue who blames everything on Bush and/or Fox News

:: Comments left behind ::

Taste of war? (01:51 PM)

I'm getting more than a little tired over the fact that some people on the left -- aided, naturally, by some people on the right (with the help of agents provocateurs and trolls) -- seem hell-bent on fomenting an American Civil War.

I think people need to remember how much civil wars suck.

Take it from George Orwell, who fought alongside the Communists against Franco's Falangists.

To be marching up the street behind red flags inscribed with elevating slogans, and then to be bumped off from an upper window by some total stranger with a sub-machine-gun-- that is not my idea of a useful way to die.

Fortunately, it hasn't come to that here, although the idea of engaging in pitched street battles with radical Maoists in support a cause being insinuated into the Tea Party movement is not my idea of fun.

Later, after detailing what it was like to be shot through the neck and narrowly survive (all the while being suspected by one leftist faction of belonging to a competing leftist faction), Orwell said this:

however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster

Better to avoid appalling disasters before they happen.

Sigh.

Dalí's "Cannibalism in Autumn" is probably in order:

And so is one of my lifelong favorites -- "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War":

Not only do tastes differ, but they change over time. Orwell absolutely hated Dalí, and I can understand why. Artistic tastes aside, Orwell was a highly principled idealist, and Dali was a deranged and corrupt Monarchist. But such things are nothing to start a war over.

:: Comments left behind ::

Is there room in the tent for unprincipled anarcho-capitalists?

:: dr kill November 19, 2009 01:53 PM

"Better to avoid appalling disasters before they happen."

I'm all ears. How exactly do you stop one without abject surrender or just laying down and dying?

:: guy November 19, 2009 02:24 PM

How do you not start a civil war? I'm not enough of a megalomaniac to believe I have such power, but I can do small things when I can, by refusing to support or encourage those who seem the most eager to start one.

Many historians have said that had Hitler been laughed off the podium early when he was still at the beer hall stage, he might very well have gone back to doing something more useful, like painting postcards.

:: Eric Scheie November 19, 2009 02:55 PM

It's funny Eric, sometimes I think you're an incredible pessimist and others I think you're think you're an incurable optimist.

I work from the idea that people are scum and see where that leads.

I also look at history, we've spent the longest at any time I can think of in history without serious, all engulfing wars.
While there were serious wars going on in Europe between nations, there were others going on in Africa and all over Asia and in the the Americas. World wars except the different sides were allied. WWI was the war to end all wars. But a generation grew up without remembering what war was like. Imagine the shock of modern, cosmopolitan Jews living in Austria and Germany to suddenly find themselves in death camps.

People find an other and hate him. It's what we do.
The only thing that brings us together is an external enemy.

The problem now is that we've allowed leftism to get too strong, and leftists aren't happy until they rule everyone. 1984 isn't so much a work of fiction as a warning. We can see all the different bits playing out in lesser form.

They won't give up power easily, democracy is only good when they win, when they lose they game the system. See: Ashcroft losing to a dead man, NJ Dems switching candidates against the law, Mass Dems changing a law after the fact to get a Dem as temporary Senator, 2004 Washington Governor's election, Al Franken and of course, the biggie, Al Gore trying to steal an election all while leftists are still screeching about how Bush stole it.

I'm not advocating civil war, but the ball is in the left's court now.

The whole idea of America is that it's a deal between ourselves. If we can't trust elections, revolution becomes not just possible but likely.
Politicians of both major parties want us to shut and let them tell us what to do.
That's not the deal we had.

We had a deal. Americans don't like people who don't keep their deals.

:: Veeshir November 19, 2009 04:14 PM

If we can't trust elections, revolution becomes not just possible but likely.

But losers always claim the elections were untrustworthy. Does that mean losers have the right to start a revolution because they lost?

It seems to me that the people who are making the most noise on the right are those who wanted their own party to lose, because they were not getting their way within the party. What they ought to do is concentrate their efforts on winning elections. Yet some people seem to dismiss the possibility of winning elections and insist on revolution -- as if they don't think they are bound by the same rules as everyone else.

I guess my question is this. If the majority is willing to vote for what you think is tyrannical, and the demographics are solidly against you, does that mean you should start a war against that majority?

Call it a revolution if you will, but it would become a civil war and I don't think it's a good idea. History shows that civil wars are disastrous. Perhaps people think carefully about what they want.

:: Eric Scheie November 19, 2009 04:40 PM

"and the demographics are solidly against you, does that mean you should start a war against that majority"

No, it means you take your ball and go the fuck home and leave the majority to live in the hell they've created.

Hence succession, then civil war.

:: guy November 19, 2009 05:24 PM

The only thing that brings us together is an external enemy.

and trade

(though the left is against free trade, and both sides favor erecting barriers to competition to protect cronies.)

Sometimes I think we're going to hell in a handbasket, but i'm only 38, I suppose older people remember things being worse with even more socialists in government such as under Nixon, Carter, etc.

I guess only 10-15 years ago I was one of them, believing we needed more control. But i never took classic civ, or studied much history beyond school which was all about how western society is bad and the cause of the world's problems. that about sums up my schooling.

:: plutosdad November 19, 2009 05:29 PM

I'm not fer it, I just find it interesting. I like to watch my fellow man. It's endlessly interesting.
Unfortunately, both "interesting"s are in the Chinese curse sense of the word.

ACORN is getting ridiculous. I also cited a few specific examples. They were all blatantly stolen (or attemptedly blatantly stolen...uuuhhhh ly) and the NYTimesWashPostCNNABCCBSNBCetc. were wholly uninterested.
They've since morphed into Minitru and they're even more uninterested in Dem corruption.

However, that was imprecise and only one aspect of the anger. Indeed, it's a result of the anger.

Americans will take rigged elections if the leaders rule well. How else do you explain Boston?
But even in Boston they're screwing up and The Peepul are getting angry there too.

Politicians have forgotten their mandate is from us not over us.

Right now, they're pissing off the people who pay taxes and who work to make America work.
The ones they're making happy are the people who need the rest of us to support them.

Without all the people making widgets and paying taxes and sending their kids to college there can't be people who make money studying the effects of alcohol on college women and thinking up new ways to gain power over us.

Having 200,000 smelly hippies show up at a protest means absolutely nothing. Most of them were there using daddy's credit card anyway.

But 10- or 50- or however many thousands that go the tea parties means something.

Go to one. They're not like other protests. They're like going to Disney or Walmart or the county fair. They're the people who go to work every day and pay taxes.
And if 10,000 show up, how many more are there in spirit?

People are angry because their politicians are wholly unresponsive.

And that's even more important than the stolen elections (and why they have to steal elections in the first place).

They're not just ignoring the people, they want us to shut the hell up.

Self promotion watch
http://doubleplusundead.mee.nu/did_he_really_say_that

Like that. He's mad because people voted for their own interests instead of for what he knows is a greater good.

It never even crosses his mind that they disagree that it's a "greater good", they're just selfish bastids.

100% turnover in every politician everywhere.
From dogcatcher of Podunk, Indiana to President.

:: Veeshir November 19, 2009 06:50 PM

How do you feel about Heironymus Bosch? He always struck me as a big Dali influence.

:: Lynne November 19, 2009 07:07 PM

The Czech Republic and Slovakia split peacably after a referendum.

So peaceful civil dissolution is possible.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi

:: Tom DeGisi November 19, 2009 07:31 PM

Our previous Civil War, tragic in so many respects ultimately did not settle the question of what rights, if any, a state had.

I know that many (most northerners, especially) will say that war was fought over slavery, and I am certainly glad that slavery ended...

yet, that war truly left unsettled the powers and authorities (rights, if you want to call them that) that states have beyond or equal to the federal government.

While the Union rightfully won on the question of whether a person's skin color or previous servitude precluded citizenship, the idea that federal law trumps state law could not declare such a win.

It is a flavor of such that now threatens a new civil war... but it will not be one involving bullets. Yet.

:: Donna B. November 20, 2009 01:08 AM

Donna B.,

Slavery has NOT ended; it is exactly what the Second Civil War will be fought over; and it will be Democrats advocating slavery that make it necessary. The difference between the plantation and the collective is purely semantic.

If the Founding Fathers had listened to the 1770s version of Eric, we'd still be ruled from England.

"Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure.
Whining "He is weak and far"; crying "Time will cure."

(Time himself is witness, till the battle joins,
Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people's loins.)

Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace.
Suffer not the old King here or overseas.

They that beg us barter--wait his yielding mood--
Pledge the years we hold in trust-pawn our brother's blood--

Howso' great their clamour, whatsoe'er their claim,
Suffer not the old King under any name!

Here is naught unproven--here is naught to learn.
It is written what shall fall if the King return."

The Old Issue, by Rudyard Kipling

:: SDN November 20, 2009 07:42 AM

"It was not supposed to be this way." (06:02 PM)

Despite the fact that I hate repeating myself, I have complained about government health care and unconstitutional laws till I'm blue in the face. All to no avail, it often seems. Those government bastards will do what they want, no matter what I think or say.

Still, no matter how tired I get of complaining, I'm always glad when I see that there are other people who can see government tyranny for what it is -- especially when they have seen it from the inside -- as Judge Andrew Napolitano clearly has.

In "Kiss Your Freedoms Goodbye If Health Care Passes," he looks at the government and sees a monster.

Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be.

It gets better:

Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.

When I recently asked Congressman James Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House, to tell me "Where in the Constitution the federal government is authorized to regulate everyone's healthcare," he replied that most of what Congress does is not authorized by the Constitution, but they do it anyway. There you have it. Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.

America, this is not an academic issue. If this health care bill becomes law, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, privacy as you have enjoyed it, will cease to be.

And,

It was not supposed to be this way. We elect the government. It works for us. How did it get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives? Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke. It happens gradually, over the years and decades and even centuries. A little stretch here, a cave in there, powers are slowly taken from the states and the people and before you know it, we have one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses.

The Founders did not give us a government like the one we have today....

No, they certainly did not.

The one we have today was imposed on us piecemeal, one little chunk of freedom lost at a time, typically as a result of emotional reactions to events -- like the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the battle to end segregation, the "wars" to "end" poverty or drugs, and most recently the terrorist attack of 9/11. The idealistic and well-meaning American people have always been willing accepted a restriction on freedom here, a stretching of the Constitution there, if that is necessary to win whatever war or awful event we face. The loss of freedom that results is as permanent the proverbial bridge toll that was supposed to go away once the new bridge was paid for. And so without our having had a chance to think through the longterm consequences, each time this happens, we lose freedom permanently. Not because of any one thing, but because of a series of national emotional accidents.

At this point in time, I think that if the terrorists did manage to nuke New York, it would probably spell the end of American freedom. Already, those who think the government is out of control are routinely labeled "anti-government extremists" and targeted for surveillance by those who want the government to grow ever more malignant, and ever more monstrous. In the event of a nuke (or a major domestic terror event), the only thing left to do would be to round them up.

Sometimes I worry that freedom that is lost can never be regained. What if there is only so much freedom to take away before it's all gone?

Is it a zero sum game?

:: Comments left behind ::

More like an almost-zero-always game.

Freedom is a rare and intolerable thing. It's like a tiny occasional itch the world can't reach. If it doesn't disappear on its own, the world goes after it with a stick.

It wasn't a long time, on the big world clock, between the Declaration and whatever date you could point to as the end of Constitutional rule. Whiskey Rebellion? Civil War? Federal Reserve? New Deal? Obamacare? It all happened as soon as it could.

:: guy on internet November 18, 2009 07:52 PM

I think you've provided a concise and accurate description of what has been occurring in our government, at an ever-increasing rate, for the past few decades. This reminds me of the story about how if you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will jump out, but if you put him a pot of cold water and then slowly raise the temperature, he will remain calm right up until it's too late.

At some point, a critical mass of Americans will wake up to what is happening and revolt. It's seems impossible to predict what the outcome of that movement will be; because of the advance of technology, the high number of intelligent and freedom-loving individuals here, and that fact that there are more guns than people in the USA. We live in interesting times.

:: Tom November 18, 2009 09:37 PM

Try reading, or re-reading Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World".
There's nothing stopping anyone from Starting from Zero.
Do we really need health insurance at all? Did the pioneers in covered wagons have it?

For 30 years being responsible, we paid Blue Cross premiums. In the end it didn't matter.
Death takes you when your time is up. All insurance does is make you believe you can cheat it.

I believe it's now time to "Go Galt" and say a giant FUCK YOU to the bastards.

:: Frank November 19, 2009 12:18 AM

As columnist Thomas Frank, author of the widely-read WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU PEASANTS AND WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND SUBMIT TO BEING RULED BY YOUR BETTERS? would say (and does say, in some form or other and with some variation in language, in almost column: "What's the matter with you peasants and why can't you just shut up and submit to being ruled by your betters?"

:: Bilwick November 19, 2009 09:53 AM

There is one possibility: These idiots are bankrupting the nation so quickly that we may hit a point where there is no more money, to print or steal. Multiple bureaucracies would then have to be defunded. Waah.

:: DocinPA November 19, 2009 09:39 PM

I'm not trying to be rude, but...
In this post you write
Sometimes I worry that freedom that is lost can never be regained. What if there is only so much freedom to take away before it's all gone?

And yet in the next post you decry a civil war or revolution.

Freedom is one of things worth fighting for.

We're at a cusp right now. If we don't stop the encroachment, we're screwed.
The tea parties are non-violent (no matter what Nancy et al. say) and that's the way most people prefer it because that's how America is supposed to work, but people are involved so of course violence is possible. It's what we do.

Like these things happen, if it starts it'll start small. Nobody will even realize how big it wil become. Suddenly, all hell will break loose.
That's how most revolutions happen, stuff builds up and the pressure rises, then the last straw hits the powder keg and the dam breaks.

At least this time it's hilarious. I mean, Joe Biden is VP and people act as if it's not absurd.

:: Veeshir November 19, 2009 09:46 PM

Veeshir: You may think it's hilarious. Lincoln was hilarious - stove pipe hat, gaunt scarecrow of a man, educated by fireplace light.
Civil War: over 500,000 dead.
In today's numbers that would equal millions.
Yeah, right - stuff happens.

I've been reading this crap all over the right wing internet for some time.
I believe it arises from the intellectual bankruptcy of the right. All they have to fall back on is religion. Take Sarah Palin (PLEASE!) for example.
For every voice in the wilderness like Victor Davis Hanson there are the emotional favorites like Palin and Huckabee, or the dolts like Romney. What do they have in common? Religion.

When all you've got is reference to scripture to base your argument, you are lost. And that includes especially abortion.
Or gay marriage. Or sin laws like the drug war.

So it makes sense that the right would dream of imposing it's beliefs by force. They won't call it that, however. It will be just resistance to socialism. Never mind that we just had a "right wing" president who passed the largest expansion of Medicare since its founding. Barely a peep from the right on that. No tea parties. No protests.

I don't believe that the right has the arguments to convince the majority. They may have a lot of guns, but that is no argument.

:: Frank November 19, 2009 10:52 PM

Frank, you're an idiot.

I don't believe in a god. I'm pretty sure I'm far from alone on this page in that respect.
Lambasting people here for the drug war? You really should read the blog.

Barely a peep from the right on that

Ummm, perhaps you noticed the GOP lost their hold on both Houses of Congress and the White House? How's that for a peep you idiot?

And your greatest idiocy
So it makes sense that the right would dream of imposing it's beliefs by force

The whole point of what I wrote is that if it starts, it will be because people are taking back their rights.

Idiot.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 10:27 AM

Yes, Veeshir, I am an idiot. I lumped you in with a great many others on right wing blogs who hint at a resort to armed resistance.
That you claim to be an atheist is beside the point.

Like these things happen, if it starts it'll start small. Nobody will even realize how big it wil become. Suddenly, all hell will break loose.
That's how most revolutions happen, stuff builds up and the pressure rises, then the last straw hits the powder keg and the dam breaks.

At least this time it's hilarious. I mean, Joe Biden is VP and people act as if it's not absurd.

That you would find an "explosion" - powder keg and dam breaking - as an hilarious event makes my point. Yes, it's going to be a fun time, watching the country fall apart.

:: Frank November 20, 2009 10:59 AM

Okay idiot, I said thet run up was hilarious, or do you think that having Joe Biden as VP is not funny?
For some background that most here probably already know, I've been calling it The Funniest End of Civilization Ever for 2-3 years now. Because it's hilarious.

I also like the way you ignored the rest of my comment that showed you were being stupid.
Lumping this site in with "right wing" sites is funny, funny, funny.
And oh so stupid.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 11:21 AM

I never lumped this site in with right wing sites. This is a libertarian site.
I lumped you in with certain right wingers, at least to the extent of relishing a build up to force of arms.
I think it's time to leave this discussion. It, and you Veeshir, have all the earmarks of agent provocateur.

:: Frank November 20, 2009 11:29 AM

at least to the extent of relishing a build up to force of arms
Relishing it?
Didn't you notice where I lumped myself in with tea partiers and said that it was non-violent?
Merely noting that since people are involved the possibility for violence is not "relishing it", it's noting it.

I'm an agent provocateur? You come in here attacking people stupidly and I'm the problem?

Okay, that's funny.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 12:06 PM

Veeshir,

There is no real point in debating the Franks of the world. They are always going to be there. They were there in the 1770s too. Sam Adams had the only cure: "You are no longer our countrymen." And after the Revolution, Tories had three choices: leave for Canada, preach treason and die, or have a heaping helping of STFU, and be left alone. Just like Copperheads after the Civil War. When there is only a choice between freedom and slavery, it's pointless to worry about the names you get called by the slavemasters. I guarantee that George Washington wasn't called the Father of his Country by Tories.

:: SDN November 20, 2009 05:16 PM

SDN, I know I'm a jerk, but that's not how I debate.

I was making fun of Frank. Just pointing and laughing.

If I'm debating, I might call what you said stupid but I try not to do even that unless what you write is really stupid. If I think "stupid", I'll usually say 'silly' at most.

I try to never attack the person, I try to just respond to what they write. I also try to never go into motivation either. I don't care.

If I'm debating.

If debate is useless, as could be seen in Frank's comment where he blatantly, rudely and obnoxiously showed that he had absolutely no idea who he was attacking but he had to attack, then I'll just make fun of it if I'm in the mood.

I've had quite enough of debating people who only attack you, thank you very much.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 08:00 PM

I'll let you know why I reacted like that to Frank.
Quoth Frank talking about how me and my righty friends were all listening to God about:
And that includes especially abortion.
Or gay marriage. Or sin laws like the drug war.

I'm in favor of legalized abortion, I don't think it's the gov't's job to decide who can marry whom and I'm against the drug war.
Frank said my motivations were from scripture when I haven't believed in any god for a long time.

That was a personal attack well steeped in ignorance and idiocy.
My response was about as polite as I thought it deserved.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 08:07 PM

Veeshir:
You really don't know who you are talking to, but I believe I know full well who and what you are.
You come to a libertarian site and post what you think are subtle references to the possibility of armed resistance but try to hide behind the "I was only finding it amusing" facade.
Listen my little friend, I spent time in the trenches at Berkeley in the 60's & 70's with the left wing versions of your type. They wore Trotsky berets and fancied themselves the vanguard of the revolution. You are small potatoes compared to the intellectual firepower they had.
You and your defender, SDN, have already accustomed yourselves to the probability of arms against the state, otherwise why would you so cavalierly find it worth mentioning?
And further, why would you find those who oppose such futile and treasonable actions worthy of disdain and ridicule?

Is is just coincidence that the owner of this site posted Taste of War? right after your post here?

I can't speak for Eric, but like him I spent time with the left wing version of your type.
And believe me, you are a midget compared to them.

:: Frank November 20, 2009 09:39 PM

Okay, now I have to wonder if you're a satire troll, someone who knows and maybe even likes me but is trying to rile me up.

Somehow I think not even though you're totally predictable, even to staying around after you said you were leaving. None of the regulars here have that sort of sense of humor.

Yup, I'm always here agitating for insurrection. Why, my every comment ends with 'I am Spartacus!' or 'Give me Liberty or give me Death!'.
Idiot.

By the way, did you notice how my comment was noting the apparent paradox between that post and this post? Obviously not or you wouldn't have made your snide, ignorant, stupid comment about a "coincidence".
That was why I made the comment and I made that perfectly clear.
Idiot.

You might also want to look at my comment in that thread. I'm trying to analyze and/or explain the trend he was talking about.

Of course you'll probably say I'm hiding behind that pose to really try to stir it up.
You've decided and you will then fit everything into that decision.
I love when nitwits "analyze" me. That's always good for a laugh.

I have to admire you, where a lesser man might have just shut up and gone away, as you said you would, you stayed around and doubled down on stupid.
Bravo.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 10:04 PM

Frank said my motivations were from scripture when I haven't believed in any god for a long time.

I did NOT say anything about YOUR motivations in the original response. Go back and read it.
I talked about the right wing in general. When I said "you've" it was colloquial for "one" as in: when all one's got is religion, etc.
This is indeed useless. You are obviously Borat.

:: Frank November 20, 2009 10:20 PM

I've been reading this crap all over the right wing internet for some time.
I believe it arises from the intellectual bankruptcy of the right. All they have to fall back on is religion.
...snip...
When all you've got is reference to scripture to base your argument, you are lost. And that includes especially abortion.
Or gay marriage. Or sin laws like the drug war.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 11:09 PM

Surely looks like you're talking about me and my right wing buddies.

:: Veeshir November 20, 2009 11:11 PM

Veeshir:
The following is just a small taste of what is now on right wing blogs. It's a sample from the comment section of Victor Davis Hanson's "Works and Days":

12. Gylippus: Yes, a power grab by a narrow elite is afoot...Who will step up and seige the mantle of history?

24. Mark J: The citizenry now has the benefit of a Second Amendment.

30. Pilgrim: Doc, your diagnosis is correct. We need guidance as to what comes next...Which step first?...after the first step, maybe other steps will become more obvious to all of us.

31. Proreason: It's nothing less than a coup...But the fact that the boil hasn't burst yet only increases the odds that the procedure will be explosive when the lance is finally brought out.

33. toad: ...Obama and his minions sole goal is to reduce the US to third world status...Of course if this becomes widely perceived as Obama's goal then he might not make it past 2010 let alone to 2013.

62. Bilgeman: The solution is Clausewitzean in its difficult simplicity...Gun up and stockpile ammo now, make liason with your like-minded friends and neighbors...if they wish to have a war, then let them have it.

This is just a small sample of what is out there. Your That's how most revolutions happen, stuff builds up and the pressure rises, then the last straw hits the powder keg and the dam breaks. At least this time it's hilarious. fits right in.

You can try to weasel out all you want, but the evidence is obvious.

:: Frank November 21, 2009 01:19 AM

Frank appears to be a concern troll.

:: R7 November 21, 2009 03:28 AM

Okay, so even though I don't believe in a god, because some people on a website mention the Bible my only justification for my position is scripture, but you never said that about me and anyway,you really think I'm just trying to stir up revolution but I'm too dim to be any good at it.

Eh, you were funny for a while, now you're just tedious.

Next time, try not to be so predictable.
Ignorant and stupid can be funny but not when you get so predictable.

Thanks for the laughs. Now go off and tell your mom you won your "debate".

:: Veeshir November 21, 2009 09:58 AM