Immovable

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Recently I posted about the fact that at least the gatekeepers in science fiction are solidly left – and by left I mean they’d shock many people in our college campuses – which leads to the selection of works that enforce (a rather colorless, drab, and frankly unreal) “political correctness.”

I thought there was no disputing this. Look, guys, as the country debated things like government take over of health care, 99% of my colleagues said a resounding “yeah.” Redistribution of wealth? A resounding yeah. Restrictions on doing business – yeah. The science fiction field is full of works with evil military, dastardly corporations and saintly public servants. Woman after woman in the field imagines herself downtrodden and preaches endlessly about evil males and thinks she’s fighting the patriarchy that in her mind existed circa 1950. (And in fact not since the thirties or, for some aspects, never outside Islamic countries.)

In fact, the only place you can find as far left as science fiction is the college campus.
Imagine my surprise when someone – a person I like actually, personally, and outside politics – informed me on my facebook page that I was mistaken and if I thought science fiction was hard left it was because I didn’t know where the center was.

Right…

He assured me that science fiction was libertarian. After all, Wikipedia says so. I have by the way had this quoted at me by foreign fans. Which at least makes some sense. They haven’t sat at panels in sf cons and heard writers and editors declare themselves socialists or say that their duty is to “unsettle the bourgeois.” (This due to the fact that these luminaires lack mirrors, I think.) And they might not know that the dreck that wins most of the peer-awards (really, guys, really? The Cultural revolution was nicer than the American suburbia? And you bought that because it was all wrapped in sentimentality or because you secretly agree? I’m not even sure I know which answer I’d prefer from you.) is not in fact the best that’s produced here. It’s like my poor mother not knowing anything about the IRS scandals because the press there won’t report them.

But that a local thought the field was “mostly libertarian” is jaw-droppingly strange.

And then I realized what the heck he was talking about. I’d “misestimated where the center is” because the center, like Pratchett’s turtle, moves. That is, he figures that libertarian is now anyone who isn’t openly a Stalinist and advocating the internment of everyone to right of Lenin.

At least that is the only interpretation that can be put to “don’t know where the center is.”

So… let me explain something – the definitions of left and right are at best flawed. But let’s go with the idea that the left advocates for maximum government control. Despite the flapping about keeping the government out of people’s bodies and private decisions, they do after all advocate for controlling what people can drink, eat, smoke, what kind of health care people can get, and what procedures are approved of (abortion) and which denied (life extending surgery of dubious value.) They in fact think that either the government or a group of enlightened people needs to keep the masses from making “the wrong decisions.”

I’m not saying anything controversial. Person after person at the Democrat convention in 12 said that everyone has to belong to something and we belong to the government.

That’s the left. And frankly, as someone who grew up learning Marxism (in every course in tenth and eleventh grade) and studying (and experiencing) both socialism and communism, those are the foundations of socialism and communism. “The individual counts for nothing, the collective is all. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”

Let’s place that on the left pole, shall we?

By comparison to that, I AM the right. (I get called right but actually the current left/right continuum is on nationalist lines, not on the lines of individual freedom — which means libertarians don’t fit anywhere. Since I get called “right” I’ll take that. I’m certainly opposite both communism and fascism, both red and black totalitarianism.) I stand on the opposite side, holding my broomstick like a samurai sword and saying “I don’t care what you need, you don’t have the right to take from anyone against their will.” That is me. Or at least that’s me as I would like things to be. Morally – mentally – I stand solidly anchoring the side of the individual against the state.

Now, I am not stupid, and while in an ideal world, a system of all being extreme individualists would work, in an ideal world so would communism work. (It’s just that in an ideal world for communism, humans would all be termites or carpenter ants or something.)

So while my heart is pure I’m willing to compromise. I’m willing to understand that governments are needed in order to secure the individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I’ve read the constitution and I’ve seen that it’s good. Common defense? Yeah, we need that. After all the foreign nations aren’t all – or any of them – angels. Not letting the states go to war with each other? I’m all for that. Having the president negotiate with foreign powers. Yay. Most of the other stuff left to the states? Okay. It could be inconvenient having to move between states, but after all people do that all the time. So let the states be laboratories of governance. I’ll buy that.

I’ll go that far, but no further. There are evils already inherent in that compromise, like the critters who believe that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness gives them the right to confiscate the results of other people’s labor or that “at some point you’ve made enough money” – because it arrogates to them to decide how much people should make. Like the people who think they should have the right to every email you send, to store somewhere and look over for signs of sedition. Like those who think that the people the country should be defended against are those who believe in the constitution.

But a government is needed. And if we can keep the intrusions to a minimum, we can take a little poison with our tea, like the nineteenth century people who took a little arsenic every day.

So, is my position center? Good heavens NO. There can be no center between the Stalinists who would enslave, silence and murder all who disagree with them and those who wish to keep a maximum of freedom, responsibility and power in the individual.

The center does not move just because one side gets more and more extreme. And the center holds no special virtue anyway.

Look, if half the people think that you should cut your head off, and half think the head should stay on, do you compromise by cutting off your ears?

Of course you don’t. Cutting your head of is wrong even if half the people believe you should do it. It is wrong even if all the people believe you should do it.

I don’t particularly care how many “experts” tell me a command economy is better – I grew up watching command economies up close and personal. I can also read seven languages and I KNOW the unholy mess Europe is in. I’ve also studied economics, which by the way is a science and not a sort conjuring wand that you can wave around to get the results you want. I know that you can raise the minimum wage till you’re blue in the face but it will not create prosperity. What it will create is the type of market distortion that makes illegal immigration unstoppable and makes the less-educated Americans already here unemployable (and dependent, and suffering from all sorts of pathologies.)

Because the people who believe in the magic wand of minimum wage are more than half the country, does that make the solution sensible? No. Not anymore than creating and raising a minimum wage makes it “real”. It just creates distortions and evokes the law of unintended consequences. It’s sort of like making cancer illegal so no one will die of it. All you’re doing is making the MENTION of cancer illegal and ensuring MORE people die of it.

Every time an all-powerful state gets power over individuals, it ends in tears. Sometimes – most of the time – it’s the mass murders, from Hitler (yes, he was left bucko. Kissing cousins to Stalin. They merely disagreed on whether state power should be national or worldwide) Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot. Sometimes it’s the soft glove of lack of innovation and settling for less that has taken over most of Europe (and how many young people who couldn’t find jobs have died of drug abuse or despair. Can you count them? No? Why not? Because you’ve been told it’s unbridled markets who cause the trouble? We haven’t had unbridled markets anywhere for a century.)

And sometimes, when it ALMOST works, when the country is more a tribe than a country, as in most of Scandinavia, it just leaves you open for plundering by foreigners who come in and are unassimilated and inassimilable and hate you because you pay and pay and pay but you can’t MAKE them like you.
Every time the individual is left at least a bit of freedom (we are at best social democrats) unparalleled prosperity and innovation – UNEXPECTEDLY – flows out onto the world. Must be luck!

Is there a center between these two points? A place where only some people are killed? A place where only half of your earnings are plundered? (About where we are, at least if you’re self-employed.) Is that just? Is that fair?

If three wolves and sheep vote on what’s for dinner, is it the center to make the sheep only half-dead?
And if all of science fiction writes about the glorious future when the wolves eat the capitalist sheep does that make the wolves right? Does that mean that’s the center now?

Let’s not kid ourselves – the fans who remain hardcore fans and still attend cons are those who believe the center moves. They have gone along with the stories of all men as villains, humanity as a plague upon the earth, redistribution and glorious statism forever. There are exceptions: some cons in the South East. Baen books. But by and large the field tilts further left every year.

Is this where the center is? No.

Is this where the rest of the country is?

Snort. If it were the printruns wouldn’t fall every year.

Yes, I know. It’s because those… those… those… rednecks refuse to be enlightened. Weirdly, Baen doesn’t have that issue. Baen continues to sell. Yeah I know “they sell to those rednecks” because they publish “right wing tripe.” Actually Baen publishes all political opinions and finds readers of every political color. Maybe the other houses should try it? Maybe they should look at how sf from different perspective sells indie to people who in fact haven’t gone along with the ride to the far left? Maybe they should consider that in fact people who disagree with them are not some sort of evil fanatics but simply people who believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

People who, in fact, know the more you feed the beast the more it will – eventually – eat you. Turns out unbridled unaccountable power is not held by altruistic scientists somewhere, always looking to serve others but by self serving bureucrats who will torture those who oppose their power – for now psychologically. And that’s wrong. It’s always wrong.

Because the consensus might move and the center means nothing, but a government that allows for individual freedom and human dignity?

THAT is the ideal and it doesn’t move.

Go on – tell me that because I don’t believe in controlling others, nor do I grant you the right to take from me my freedom, my labor, or my property without my consent, I am a “fascist” and “extreme right.”
I’m only extreme right when opposed to the fanatical devotion to faceless bureaucratic government the left now seems to believe in. And if that’s the left, I’m so far right that by definition everything else is to the left. (Fascist? Good Lord! You mean Hitler didn’t believe in power to the government? Who would have thunk it.)

I am what I’ve always been: a believer not in the masses but in the individual.

The RIGHTS of the individual outweigh the WISHES of the many.

Pero NO si muove.

And for a glimpse into our “not at all left” SF professionals field, go and read Amanda’s column at MGC today. She says she had a devil of a time taking out all the swear words.

351 thoughts on “Immovable”

  1. I visited a church last Sunday and the woman who preached covered the entire book of James in a nutshell. What struck me was how she defined “worldliness.” It was… a state of scarcity which leads us into competition with each other.

    Wait, what…?!

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    3. I had a similar reaction to being told that owning two coats is theft.

      And another time, when the pastor, in his Scripture reading read Genesis 22:1 (the start of the sacrifice of Isaac story) as “One night Abraham had a nightmare where he thought God told him that . . .”

      Changes the whole meaning of the story.

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      1. Good heavens. That guy or whoever “translated” that Bible should be drummed out of Christianity (AND Judaism) with his colors reversed and his insignia stripped. He failed to GET one of the most essential stories — the one that ensures we don’t perform human sacrifice (okay, except for Christians in the symbolic/remembering sense and at any rate, given the inherent divinity of Jesus — the belief of every Christian — the “human” part of that sacrifice gets… complicated. However, to void the story of Isaac voids the crucifixion and makes a mockery of Christian faith. As for the Jewish faith, it makes the patriarch subjected to “illusions” — one step short of the idiots who say that they talked to G-d because they smoked pot. GRRRRR.)

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        1. Well, he made a big deal about how in the previous chapter Abraham planted a tamerisk tree, which was obviously a sign that he was at least considering following the local gods. (Somehow, the fact that the tree was one item of a ceremony sealing a treaty never came up.)

          What the whole thing amounted to, though was that obviously 21st century Americans would have a far better idea of what God would or wouldn’t do in a certain situation than those people who actually lived it. (Or at least lived several thousand years closer to that event.)

          I will also note that the Christ candle was out by the end of the sermon. Unfortunately, I never noted whether it was lit at the beginning of it.

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        2. “When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that person is worse than the first.”

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      2. Jasini, was that from the Snake Translation? (I understand that version has all the good lines.) ;)

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        2. LOL.

          Actually, it was a “Harmonization of various translations.” IOW, their own paraphrase. They’d been doing that for months, but that was the first time they got so far from what the text actually said.

          Since then, they’ve been using actual translations, and stating which one they are using for the reading.

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          1. Right up there with Katherine Jefferts Schori declaring that Paul exorcised the unclean spirit from the possessed slavegirl because he was jealous of a girl having spiritual power. And yeah, it’s good to be owned and exploited as a slave. Yeah.

            There seem to be an awful lot of people out there who want to call good evil and evil good.

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            2. And have been for a long time.

              “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness to light, and light into darkness, who change bitter to sweet, and sweet into bitter!”

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            3. “Good” is me getting my way; “Evil” is me not getting my way.

              Why must you people always be making things so complicated? Why do you always have to make such a big production out of everything?

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          2. I think it needs saying that we are fairly certain comments from the congregation about the translations brought them to greater honesty in the usage, and in admitting when it was “this is what I think” versus, “Thus sayeth the Lord.”

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          3. “Harmonization of various translations.”

            IOW, they ate a bunch of Bibles and preached the end product….

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      3. “Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men”… Isaiah always has such a way with language.

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        1. I have noticed that those church members have a tendency to unknowingly quote Satan in the garden, “God wouldn’t really say that, would he?” (Paraphrased.)

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          1. That’s an interesting idea. “God didn’t really mean that,” implying that either the listener didn’t understand what God said (the listener is an idiot), or that God is the liar in this exchange.

            Nope. Nope. Don’t see a parallel here at all to anything going on today. Nope. Nothin’ to see here, folks.

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    4. Oh dear, what imaginative exegesis. Never saw that coming in any of my Koine dictionaries and word studies.

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    5. I pray every night and read my Bible regularly, but I haven’t been inside a “church” in forever. There are too many “pastors” who really DON’T believe in God OR the Bible. Now, with my tinnitus problems and my back problems, I couldn’t sit all the way through a church service anyway. I find that God is pleased with those who worship Him, that search for His truth, and who openly profess Christ as their Savior. “That wherever two or three shall gather in My Name, there I will be, also” is a promise that will never be broken. I used to enjoy the fellowship found in group worship, but when half the time I can’t stand to listen to the local minister, the rest of what his “church” has to offer isn’t worth it. The idea that Jesus would be on the left is totally incompatible with His message. Our founding fathers knew this: today’s moral incompetents have no clue.

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      1. Mike Weatherford | June 4, 2013 at 3:53 pm
        > I pray every night and read my Bible regularly, but I haven’t been inside a “church” in forever.

        And therein lies the beauty of the US system — if I may paraphrase Sergeant Apone from _Aliens_: “Every house, a church; every parishioner, a preacher!” If you know how to read, and think, you can make up your own mind — yes, it’s also part of the *problem*; but if humans knew what Perfection was, they wouldn’t need religion….

        In short, religion in the US works Wholesale. “American Religion — we eliminate the middleman, and pass the Saving on to *you*!” >;)

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      2. More generally, left, right and center apply to political agendas in this world. By definition, they are worldly things, first and foremost.

        Jesus was not primarily concerned about this world. His interests are more along the line of souls, and politics are fairly useless for that.

        Yes, maybe there are things that can be done in this world. However those things available to governments can only duplicate things God could do, if he desired to. What Christians can do in this world to further His will, that He does not do instead of them, and maybe cannot*, are individual things, choices, that are beyond the control of any government.

        *My theological education is weak, and I am probably rushing this, and neither thinking it out or researching it properly.

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        1. Can’t speak for others, but LDS theology posits that the great dispute between God and Satan has as one of its primary issues whether or not human beings should be allowed free will. God is on the side of “They choose their actions, and reap the consequences,” and Satan is more of a “we’ll engineer their choices in such a way that no one ever makes a mistake.”

          Not that this has any kind of weird parallel in today’s culture that sets my teeth on edge. Nope. Nu-uh.

          (Starts looking for a Big Gulp.) > >

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          1. From that description it appears that Satan view humans a merely animals who require proper breeding, training and environment … Oh my no, it has no parallel at all, nope, not a one. And don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain, either. ;-)

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    1. I was raised a Lutheran, but I get turned off by the effete nature of the Church. This applies even to conservative denominations. For instance, there’s the tendency to say that marriage is good because of “permanence.” No, marriage is good because it means a man has to be worth something to get action.

      And by “worth something” I mean willing to fight for his wife and children and win. No, you don’t get to play the noble martyr and let the bad guys kill you before they start on your wife.

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      1. This is exactly the attitude in a church that makes me happier being a Baptist in Texas than I was as a non-denom back in California. Although in both cases there is arguably a problem with the church looking like the surrounding culture far too much.

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  3. I can’t recall the site, but last year I read some writing advice from an established pro to a new author. The new author worried about whether he could possibly succeed as a conservative in science fiction, which was so left wing, and whether he should hide his political beliefs.

    The pro replied (paraphrased) that it was nothing to worry about… that a genre that worshipped Robert A. Heinlein could not possibly be left wing, and the new author should just write good stories. No one would care about his politics, just his stories.

    The pro was Mike Resnick. I wonder if he’s rethinking that position right about now…

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      1. Well, yeah. He lived in Ohio. We have our own delusional crup (convention organizers sure that everybody wants to go to Columbus on Easter/Passover weekend), but it’s apparently not as bad as things out your way.

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      2. I have less of a problem with the open Heinlein-haters than with those who try to lie about what he stood for. Yes, Heinlein was willing and able to have his characters make statements he didn’t personally believe; but he was hardly shy about stating his personal views in his NON-fiction. Read EXPANDED UNIVERSE or GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE and you’ll get his unedited views.

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  4. Well, she provided you with a nice illustration of worldliness: “The mental attitude of a person who is guided by secular ideas rather than by religious principles, and whose primary concern is for well-being in this life and not in the life to come.” Or like the man said in Ephesians 4:14 — “children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive.”

    Everybody is susceptible to letting politics override religion, but these days we see its effects more clearly on one side than another. Probably because conservatives usually try to resist this fallacy, whereas many liberals have been taught to believe that only conservatives are affected by bias.

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    1. The vile ones think that religion is just another handle, a vulnerability, and that its main value is that it can be used to manipulate “that class” of people to do what you want. The really vile ones feel that it is their right to do so since believers are so blind, and their churchmen are doing the very same thing to them

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      1. Hence the sneering commentary of those who say that people “bitterly cling to their God and their guns.”
        Well, hopefully not bitterly, but absolutely clinging to God and the right to defend ourselves.

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  5. Sidetrack: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one.” Star Trek quote by memory, which you reference. Greatest example of it in the Star Trek universe is a case of individual sacrifice, not government control. And then the next greatest plot is a whole story where the whole group gives up everything and goes after the one guy. They can’t even hold to their own “ideals.”

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    1. Well, yes. I realize that. Done voluntarily it’s great story telling, great religion, great morals. Done by society enforcing (and yes, I’ve had this quoted at me as “this is what we should aspire to) it’s pure evil.

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    2. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one” is Spock’s philosophy, and being Vulcan utterly logical. It is not the crew’s, or Kirk’s, ideal, as the next movie makes crystal clear. At the end of Search for Spock, Kirk even tells Spock “Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.” The inversion was intentional, to show the difference between Vulcan logic and Human friendship. The new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, does the same thing.

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        1. Sorry Sarah. I was responding to the “can’t even hold to their own ‘ideals'” statement. I know people that take one liners from movies and adhere to them unthinkingly as well. That’s one of the reasons I have a soft spot for Search for Spock, even if it is a dreaded odd-number Trek movie, because it didn’t take that one liner as Truth, which lazier writers would have.

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      2. Really? Does “The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many” commit the fallacy of four terms? Does it fail to distribute the middle term? Does it commit argumentum ad baculum?

        Just because Spock and everyone else on the show call him the logical one doesn’t mean we shouldn’t notice that of the two, McCoy is the more logical one. They are just working from different premises — and McCoy is the one who always sticks to the logical deduction from his.

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        1. Is that a bit like Gladys Kravitz being the only person in the whole neighborhood smart enough to see that something weird was occurring at the Stevens household?

          On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 9:24 AM, According To Hoyt wrote:

          > ** > Mary commented: “Really? Does “The needs of the one outweigh the needs > of the many” commit the fallacy of four terms? Does it fail to distribute > the middle term? Does it commit argumentum ad baculum? Just because Spock > and everyone else on the show call him the logi” >

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          1. I feel like Gladys Kravitz … my kitchen sink looks out on the front of our house, so I see everyone’s coming and going … :)

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          2. “Does it commit argumentum ad baculum?”

            Does that mean argument by citing “Quantum Leap”?

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                1. I’ll see your Scott Bakula and raise you Zachary Levi.

                  The Bartowski Family Singers, as one commenter put it.

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    3. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one.” Sounds like a great summation of the heroic sacrifice at the end of a campy sci-fi movie. As a proscription for societal behavior, it sounds awfully Soviet to me. Inverting the idea, making it “The needs of the few, or of the one, outweigh the needs of the many” sounds somewhat selfish, much like how some people tend to characterize Randian Objectivism.

      The odd thing is, I’ve found in my personal dealings that the latter approach tends to achieve greater results than the former. That if I consider what someone’s individual need is, and work to fulfill it, I will accomplish more than if I had tried to convert them to the cult of Manyism by “raising their awareness” (“If you have needs, come and join the Many today! The weightier your need the sooner we can rope someone into fulfilling it for you!”)

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      1. Relates to an old argument. Washington attempted to warn the country that our interests were our own, and likewise every other country should be expected to be looking after their own interests. We should not expect an eternal obligation because of a temporary overlapping of intent.

        A tribe will not survive if the guard takes the attitude of, ‘Hey whatever happens, I’m going to survive.’ ;-)

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      2. I think your experience applies to humanity at large. The mind of the individual is the apotheosis of humanity. And, yes, I’m paraphrasing Shakespeare:

        What a piece of work is a man,
        how noble in reason,
        how infinite in faculties, in form and moving,
        how express and admirable in action,
        how like an angel in apprehension,
        how like a god!

        Without that, we’re the mud God made us from. Systems of societal organization which seek to subsume the individual cannot hope to succeed, not only for their denial of the individual Man, but of God — whatever you conceive him to be.

        Any society which trammels the mind of Man is doomed to fail.

        And any system which demands that individuals surrender willy nilly their sovereignty to the whole — for the so-called Greater Good — is inherently evil because of that.

        There can be no Greater Good because, in order for it to hold sway, it must subsume a greater evil.

        Only in voluntary sacrifice — freely given (in love, if you will) — can the principle achieve its nobility. As Sarah said.

        Let that be a macro, on the level of “thus it is written”. Let it be said, “As Sarah said.” So meet be it.

        M

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  6. Slightly OT, but I have come to believe that, in a republic (where, as you say, the rights of the individual citizen trump the whim of the majority), a democrat STARTS OUT acting with bad faith intent.

    So, as you say, where is the center in that? The Left is — as THEY say — objectively wrong on the merits, the majority knows it, yet leftists one after another, stand boldy posed like Captain Morgan on the stern castles of foundering ships of state, thundering their cant as the hulls — holed by the very cant the leftists spew — slip beneath the waves of poverty, misery, despair.

    The CENTER in American politics IS where the libertarian — the believer in ordered liberty, in “that in order to secure these rights”, in the sovereignty of the individual — stands. The so-called (scorn quotes) “mainstream” of American politics is so far to the Left as to make the whole thing tilt over and fall down. It’s amazing it hasn’t already, though it’s clear that’s amazingly close. But that doesn’t make it the center.

    As Tolkien wrote, “To crooked eyes, the truth may wear a wry face.”

    M

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    1. The center of political philosophy may be where Libertarians stand, but the majority of people are presently standing to one side of the Libertarians. Why do I say this? Because whether they call themselves the left or the right, they are involved in arguments over exactly where and how much they think government ought to be controlling the society. It is just that it is easier to see the wrongs of the leftists because they are in the front of the pack at the moment — and seeing yourself at the front of the pack means you don’t have much self doubt.

      Good quote.

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      1. I don’t disagree. But the point the yammerhead was making was that Sarah had misidentified the center, whereas this guy couldn’t spot the center if it bit his ass through both hands, if you follow the twisted metaphor, there.

        I’m simply pointing out (in agreement with Sarah, I think) where the center actually IS. That most people don’t get it is, I think, the fault of liberty-loving folk in A) assuming that, just because most people agree with the principles of liberty (duh) when they are listed descriptively, but have no clue when labels are used instead. (Do you agree everyone should have the right to defend themselves? YES! Do you agree that everyone has the right to go armed? UM… WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?) and B) not being as persuasive as we can in educating the benighted victims of a hundred years of (scorn quotes) “progressive” mal-educationist policy.

        I think that the Internet has empowered wise-voiced, liberty-loving folk and that that is one of the reasons you see liberty advancing on so many fronts while statists fight such desperate rear-guard actions. Per Gandalf, it will be a near-run thing, with disaster waiting around every turn, but we CAN win. And that’s why I’m optimistic about the future of humanity and am a Human Wav-er, perhaps for the first time in my 59 years. (Birthday next Tuesday, thank you.)

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        1. The assumption embedded there is that most people agree. I really need to get me some shorter sentences.

          M

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          1. M

            You and I grew up when a compound sentence was still considered an acceptable means of expression and not simply lumped in with the run-on sentence.

            C

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            1. shudder

              When advising people on critting stories, I observe that there are indeed things they can get right and wrong: grammar. (Whether the author was right to break, or for that matter to adhere to, laws of grammar is arguable. The laws are not.)

              The two commonest failures are calling a sentence “passive voice” because it doesn’t have much action, and calling it run-on because it is long.

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              1. I have long, one-sided discussions with MS Word, who feels that a number of my sentences are too long. While I have to agree with Mark Twain when he stated his rule, “Eschew Surplusage”, I also have to argue that a sentence has to be as long as the ideas therein.

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                  2. Then I get to fight with the Fleischman-Kincaide.
                    I swear, “see Spot run” is what that program likes.

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                    2. Cyn, you may use the spelling checker, but I bet you learned to spell and build a sentence without one.

                      Too many writers and editors, especially those for whom English is a second language, think that the spell checker is necessary AND sufficient.

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                    3. Well, yes, since I am English speaking (Canadian-American hybrid). I still have problems with to be verbs though. ;-) Whoever built the grammar checker did a poor job. It looks for passive sentences more than poor sentences. *sigh Plus just knowing the rules does not mean you can write well, even then.

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                2. Grammar check is something you use only at the end of revisions, and then only if you know your grammar cold and can reject its nonsensical prescriptions easily.

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                  1. “Grammar is a dish best served cold.”

                    Oh, wait. That’s not quite right, is it? :-)

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            2. You’re right. The self-deprecation was supposed to be funny and deflecting. Shorter sentences are not the answer; careful checking for sense IS. I just got so wrapped around the parentheticals that I lost sight of the point of the sentence.

              I’m of the opinion that, if one tends to wandering thoughts, one is wise to learn how to manage long, discursive sentences and umspringen trains of thought. And I do try. Really I do. :)

              M

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        2. “The Center” is irrelevant and an untrustworthy guide. It is the moon, looming large and obscuring the Pole Star, the unvarying guide.

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          1. What is it about the concept of The Center, that so many can be manipulated when those words are used, because they hold that it must, of course, be a most desirable thing? One does not invoke The Center when they want to challenge the status quo. Then we get other phrases that are intended to by-pass our thinking.

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        3. What I got out of this is the idea that there is no center. That the idea of the center is a bit of rhetorical handwavium meant to indicate that the person making the statement is a reasoned, rational pragmatist while everyone who disagrees with him is definitively an irrational ideologue.
          There is no center here. There is right (which I would argue entails increasing freedom coupled with its corollary, personal responsibility) and wrong (increased state control and the infantilization of the citizenry). There’s not a lot of middle ground between those two ideas.

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            1. The Leftist dictum of “No enemies to the Left” pretty much precludes the concept of a center, wouldn’t you say? Their spectrum kinda goes: Enemies, Left, Lefter, Leftest, Leftiester. The further left they get the more enemies to their Right, but still no center.

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  7. I don’t particularly care how many “experts” tell me a command economy is better – I grew up watching command economies up close and personal. I can also read seven languages and I KNOW the unholy mess Europe is in. I’ve also studied economics, which by the way is a science and not a sort conjuring wand that you can wave around to get the results you want. I know that you can raise the minimum wage till you’re blue in the face but it will not create prosperity. What it will create is the type of market distortion that makes illegal immigration unstoppable and makes the less-educated Americans already here unemployable (and dependent, and suffering from all sorts of pathologies.)

    Amen.

    I don’t speak 7 langauges – or at least not beyond the vital “2 beers please my friend will pay” – but I made it to the Soviet Union and Romania (and other less blighted parts of Eastern Europe) and the command economy is probably worse than 3rd world crony capitalism.

    I’ll also note that the youth in Europe are busily learning the problem of the minimum wage good and hard with youth unemployment at levels of around 50% in much of southern Europe. Its actualy worse in that those who are employed are typically employed in temporary internships where they get neither minimum wage pay (at least not for the number of hours they actually work) and guaranteed get fired in 6 months because their employers aren’t allowed to keep them on at that wage level for longer. So guess what? they fire them and hire some more.

    I’m not absolutely sure that the majority of SF editors/authors are left wing – many of them certainly are I don’t deny that – but it seems to me that while I’m sure the majority are statists I’m not sure they are necessariy socialist statists, in fact I think a bunch of them are actually more fascist than anything else. I’m certain they would deny this completely but if you look at their books and blogs, the things they propose look very Mussolini-ish

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    1. I’m considering fascist left wing for the purposes of this blog, partly because it’s all blurring together. If it was ever believed fascists were “right” this is becoming harder to believe when China is technically fascist and what our clowns want here is too. What I mean is — I established left to right from left “We belong to the government” to right “The government belongs to us” with extreme right somewhere in the “we don’t need no stinking government” which is where I like to be, but to quote the far side cartoon of cows reading poetry “Curse the electric fence” — or in this case “curse sanity.”
      I established it that way because the other way makes no sense. As far as I can tell the left/right as they use it runs from totalitarian internationalism to totalitarian nationalism. The problem is totalitarianism ONLY works if you’re plundering and/or bilking other nations. (For a given measure of “works” — I’ll quote Dave Freer “China is a beautiful vase where the lacquer hides the cracks underneath. Touch it hard and it will all fall apart.” So communism tends to move inexorably towards fascism. I also did that because they keep saying I’m right wing. Well, if I’m right wing, then libertarianism has to fit somewhere in there. And since it’s on the other side of communism…
      BTW I’ve SEEN that 50% unemployment and it’s the ONLY thing that has managed to make me wobbly on “legalize drugs.” I still think they should be legalized, but I have a strong feeling in Europe they were legalized INSTEAD of fixing the economy. The only thing keeping the youth quiet is the free-flowing drugs. At least in Portugal.

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      1. “China is technically fascist”?

        Anymore “fascist” is whatever the speaker doesn’t like (not you Sarah).

        (Note, I may have gotten off topic).

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        1. Oh, it’s been that way for years in Europe, but fascism has a specific meaning. Communism, the state confiscates the means of production and makes them “collective” meaning controlled by the government. (If you squint, that’s feudalism too.) Fascism is where the private individuals can keep their “means of production” but the government controls them and how the individual gets to use them.

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          1. The only meaningful difference between statists is whether or not they have the courage of their convictions: If you don’t do what they want, are they willing to murder you themselves, or do they just want to sit back and wash their hands and let someone else murder you?

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          2. Two more critical differences:

            1) Fascists organize mankind by tribe/race/ethnicity. Socialist lump people together by class.

            2) Socialists generally rule out the notion of a god. Fascists have a tendency (descending from #1) of using folk religions as myth stimulus for the state.

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              1. Keep in mind that “nation” in such usage did not refer to nation as we commonly employ the term today. In Hitler’s mind the “Deutsche Nation” referred to the “Deutsche Volk”, which included the various German states — Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse — Germanic countries such as Austria, “natural” German-speaking regions, such as Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia, and any place with a significant population descended from German settlers, such as the United States.

                So, yes: Tribal.

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                  1. It is a source of unending amusement for me that many a “poster boy” for the ideal Aryan soldier was in fact a Jew.
                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0mR1bIcclU

                    Look into Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers. The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military. Bryan Mark Rigg. There is a 78″ presentation by the author from CSPAN available on Youtube.

                    Many a Jew served in the German military hoping to protect his family. Many were disappointed.

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                2. Yes, but all of Europe is like that. As laughable as it is for a nation of scraps and leavings, people talk about “the Portuguese people.” If they start talking about The Lusitan People RUN. I’m not even joking, just run.

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              2. Hard socialism and communism take the position that a Russian peasant, an Italian peasant and an American share cropper have more in common than that American share cropper has with a banker or a lawyer in his home town, and that the main organizing principle in society is class.

                Mussolini was the founder of Fascism.

                Prior to WWI he was an avowed socialist. During WWI he witnessed lawyers and bankers working side by side with bricklayers, farmers and waiters. It was his epiphany that it wasn’t class that was the issue, but ethnicity. Not race per se, but culture and belief. That an Italian had more in common with other Italians than they did with people on the other side of Europe.

                Both are right, and both are wrong.

                American progressives ignore ethnicity and sort people by both race and economic class, which isn’t quite the same to us as class is to a European.

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            3. Socialists have also used folk religion as myth stimulus for the state, such as during World War II for the Soviet Union. Given that the Germans’ grand plan for the eastern territories included no churches, with the explicitly stated intention of seizing any churches they happened to build, I don’t see much difference.

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            4. I think I would argue your nomenclature. “Socialist” is a large collection of differing ideologies of which Fascism is but one.

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              1. You could argue it, but Socialism and Fascism are different in two things. One is that Fascism *inherently* cannot be international. The Class Warfare of Socialism becomes inter-ethnic or tribal warfare.

                The other is that under socialism to varying degrees the state *owns* the means of production. The more socialist the state the more it owns.

                Under fascism the state only tells the owners what to do and in general terms how to do it.

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                1. “One is that Fascism *inherently* cannot be international.”

                  Bunk. As an example of that, I give you the United Nations.

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                  1. You confuse terms. As with: all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares; all Fascist states are totalitarian systems, but not all totalitarian systems are Fascist states.

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                2. William, I’m afraid I don’t accept your definitions. I prefer the taxonomy in “Socialism” by Von Mises. He categorized socialist ideologies and includes several where the state does not “own” the means of production beyond National Socialism and Fascism (which are actually slightly different in his taxonomy in theory) there was Fabian socialism and others.

                  Your error is to accept the redefinition that the Bolsheviks engaged in, wherein everything that was outside of their dogma was “right wing” and “Fascist”.

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        2. Nationalist. Nominally private property under the control of the government. Regimented private lives, even if the desires in childbirth are opposite. . .

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      2. Pornelle has a two axis grd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart ) with statism on one axis and rationality on the other. You seem to be ignoring the rationality axis in your definitions of left/right which I don’t think is right.

        i think we’re arguing on terminology but agreeing on the basics though.

        I totally agree about the fragility of top down systems. We know they’re fragile from seeing how they collapsed in Eastern Europe. All totalitarian systems are fragile because they have to remove initiative from the people close to the problem in order to justify the existence of the governing elite. So, when the GE collectively gets its head up its ass about something, there’s no feedback loop to tell them they’ve got it wrong and in fact what you see is lower level functionaries deliberately faking reports to their superiors since they know that telling the truth is dangerous to their life as a functionary and prospects for promotion.

        The internet of course kills the need for hierarchies of middlemen and lots of statist control. At some point this is going to bite the US statists on the ass too, though it’ll probably kill other governments first. I fully expect someone in Europe to come up with a totaly digital currency that people will use for System D and other bit of the black economy that will gradually mean that the productive part of the economy does business in a different currency to the parasitic bit. This is going to be fun to watch (from a few thousand miles away).

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        1. ” I fully expect someone in Europe to come up with a totaly digital currency that people will use for System D and other bit of the black economy that will gradually mean that the productive part of the economy does business in a different currency to the parasitic bit.”

          You mean, like Bitcoin?

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          1. Well sort of, but not exactly. BitCoin is trying to be too cute. What is needed is a low inflationary currency of account that’s stable and can’t be hacked to produce more. In africa they use cell phone minutes – apparently it works quite well

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        2. Eh, the Communists threw about a lot of irrationalism, too, as part of their anti-elitism.

          Anyway, “rational” nowadays is used in a frankly irrational manner. Its logical fallacy is equivocation, where the meaning of “rational” are not carefully distinguished.

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      3. Re: legalized substances or processes intended to make for a contented and compliant society? I think science fiction has examined this theme. In the past the predominant conclusion was it didn’t work, and often back-fired. Clockwork Orange and droog anyone? Larry Niven, Gil Hamilton and drouds?

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          1. Ah, but some people do not simply turn themselves stupid. Some react violently. Some find out that it is a form of self medication and start to function better than they ever have before. Now you have a story.

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            1. Just butting in– ;-) I have had the misfortune of being on certain prescription drugs– (high dosage of prednisone) I get paranoid and schizophrenic on them. It is a good thing that I refuse to be a habitual drug user. I think I might be one of the violent ones.
              In my case I was also taking cytoxan at the same time, so I was too too tired to do anything about the emotional imbalance.

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    2. Au contraire mon frere — a command economy works very very well … for those commanding it. And as they are not, as a general rule, particularly much concerned over the opinions of those being commanded, that works well enough for them.

      In the Soviet Union the commanders of the economy lived quite well. In Libya the commander of the economy apparently managed to command $100 billion worth of that economy be stashed in banks world-wide. The commands of Arafat (and now Abbas) over the Palestinian economy had Arafat bathing in champagne while the Palestinians were bathed in real pain.

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  8. Politically, I’m a Crank. This is, in large part, because the “Right” and “Left” identified by the vast majority of opinion writers are two bunches of dolts who each want to control The State so that they can impose their ideals on everybody else. True Conservatism – keeping government action to a minimum – always seems to take back seat to buttinskiism.

    I can’t even call myself a Libertarian, because too much Libertarianism strikes me as mindlessly optimistic about The Holy Free Market. I’ve lived through half a century. I’ve seen too many idiotic consumer fads.

    So, I’m a Crank. And my politics is often defined, not by ideology but by the statement “That sounds swell in theory, but that kind of Government intervention has been tried, extensively. It didn’t, and doesn’t, work. It costs the flipping Earth, and twisted little egos have hijacked it to serve their own agendas. So, instead of adding another layer of abject failure, can we just zero out the whole mess and then check on the consequences in about five years?”

    Apply that to “Campaign Finance Reform” or “Drug Policy”. I’m not against The War On Drugs because I believe deeply that fools should be allowed to shoot up Heroin, but because the parts of the War that have come to my attention have convinced me that the Drug Warriors are a more significant threat to me than the drug addicts and the dealers combined. I’m not a Conservative or a Libertarian; I’m just a grouch who is aware that the Government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to squash you like a bug while stampeding from one stupid Cause to another, without even noticing.

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    1. I’d use the slightly more salable term “skeptic”, but I’m pretty close to where you are. I’d like to see “less, done better”. As an example of that I mean this: it seems reasonable to have a federal agency regulate clean water standards (especially given that rivers *are* the border between lots of states), but that agency’s scope should be narrow, defined, impartial, and transparent.

      I’d like to see the “leave me the heck alone” party…

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        1. I think (and believe it’s embedded in the philosphy of the Founding) that THE dispositive political assumption is that the right to Liberty includes the right to be left the hell alone and that defense of that right should include the right to use lethal force against importunate agents of the state. I’ve even got one of those political thought experiments.

          Given that it is considered permissible and justified — and, indeed, in certain cases, praiseworthy or even mandatory — to use lethal force to prevent the commission of a felony in progress…

          What level of force may be considered justifiable… permissible — even praiseworthy or mandatory — to be used in the prevention of a constitutional crime in progress?

          When is “He needed killing, Judge.” an affirmative defense on a charge of homicide?

          As someone schooled me here not long ago, H. Beam Piper posited one possible outcome of such a policy in his Lone Star Planet. There are flaws, but on the whole, I suspect it would be an improvement over our current system, where the supposedly sovereign people are supine and defenseless against the predatory agents of the leviathan state.

          M

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          1. I don’t think the sovereign people are supine or defenseless. I see friends who’ve been politically engaged over the years deliberately avoiding topics. Whether that’s from a desire not to stir waters or because they’re in some type of denial about how politics seem to have gotten so awful so quickly, I’m not sure. I’ll note that a few places I read online, folks have gotten circumspect in their written commentaries, while other people (count me here) are actually posting actively when they hadn’t until fairly recently. I’ve written my US Rep twice in the last 6 months after 40-odd years of not writing (except for that one letter in grade school that everyone had to write, and I’ve voted in every primary and general election since I turned 18).

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            1. How many fatal, wrong-house, no-knock raids have you heard of recently? How many cops have gone to the chair for murder behind them?

              Who burned for — as opposed to AT — Waco?

              What’s the lesson of Lon Horiuchi and Ruby Ridge?

              M

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              1. One lesson is that there is a difference between “cover” and “concealment” …
                The other lesson is that one better not believe the FBI’s reputation as shown on Quinn Martin TV shows …

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              2. One lesson: the Republicans are the beta party. Look at how Sen. Danforth made no secret of the fact that his entire investigation of the Waco Massacre–planned and carried out by the radical leftist Clinton dictatorship–was intended, from the start, to whitewash the mass murder of a Seventh Day Adventist offshoot. But Republicans clear their own weeds and shoot coyotes, so I guess they’re macho men, right?

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                1. Merely better than the available alternatives. For now. A barge like the ship of state doesn’t turn no a dime.

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                2. BTW, remember the recent study that showed that Democrat Congressmen looked more masculine than their GOP counterparts? I was the only one not surprised. I’ve seen these wimps roll over time after time. People severely underestimate the importance of manly aggression in history. The French Revolutionaries, for instance, may have been mass murderers; but part of the reason they were successful was that they were mostly blue collar tough guys, and the aristocracy were highly effeminate.

                  And I might add: most of the actual leftist brain(less) trust are even wimpier than Congressional Republicans. If conservatives would stop debating philosophy and start bouncing heads, we might actually be able to make progress toward a free nation.

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                    1. I dunno. Before Barney Frank retired he always struck me as a man and a half. Remember, the Democrats were also the party of Dennis Kucinich. As for the present elected ones, like Harry Reid, I gather most people consider them dreamy. Dreaming, smoking weed or maybe opium — something like that.

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                    2. My friend Eric Scheie over at Classical Values once speculated on what good Ol’ Barney would have to use as sex toys (because, ew, who would want to do that.) I think he and another friend finally settled on jackhammer because, you know, age and… er… wear diminish what you can feel. Now every time someone mentions Frank that’s what I see in my mind’s eye. Pass the brain bleach, please.

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                    3. That… that’s just hateful, spreading hideous visuals like that.

                      Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.

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                  2. More masculine, Ken? Or more like giggolos? Please, don’t get sucked into the sillier psychobabble.

                    And the French Revolution mainstays were hardly “blue collar” in any sense of the word – anachronistic as it must be – while largely not aristocrats they were nonetheless upper class economically and by profession.

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    2. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made”

      While libertarians and I might agree on some policies, it is mostly on practical grounds; the theoretical disharmony is too great. Many libertarians want freedom on the grounds that people would use it just great, but my observation is that freely acting humans have brought about the Leviathan.

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      1. But crooked timbers were needed to build warships — which just goes to show: “Bent” is not the same as “broken”. >;)

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  9. Most people don’t know where they really fit on the spectrum…
    I keep seeing this simple quiz open eyes when people take it.
    http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

    There IS a bible verse that supports the Libertarian position on firearms too Luke 11:21 “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe.

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        1. The Polish Radom-made service pistol, actually called the Vis, model 35, (pistolet wz. 35 Vis) did actually fire the parabellum 9mm.

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  11. I think it can fairly be said that sf as a literary genre originated precisely on the left as you describe it. Remember Hugo Gernsback’s ties to technocracy. I’ve seen Charles Stross comment that the continued existence of sf is as if Communism had vanished from the Soviet Union in 1935 but left behind an artistic movement devoted to heroic paintings of tractor operators!

    Gernsback had a vision of a bright, shiny, highly urban future, run by engineers and scientists, with a board of scientific experts planning everything—much like the Progressive vision, but with the corporate interests left out. That vision had some of H. G. Wells’s ideas as a precursor (though not his better selling novels, which showed darker futures) and it turns up in the Foundation stories, where the Foundations are exactly that kind of scientific elites. And it’s still with us to a degree today.

    The libertarian future in sf comes from other authors: mainly from Heinlein, with E. E. Smith’s meteor miners as a precursor, and with Poul Anderson as a major successor. Its model of the future is less Progressivism and more the American frontier moved into outer space. It’s a big meme in American sf, but not a dominant one, and you need to go to Baen for it these days.

    One of the interesting things about Firefly as a series was that the ‘Verse had both classic sf futures in the same setting—the bright, shiny, high-tech centralists and the hardscrabble rebels—and it had them in conflict with each other, both institutional and personal (it’s the big tension between Mal and Inara). Ironically, I know people who identify with the browncoats who are, in the real world, staunch advocates of leftist ideas—but love the imagery of the rebels because it’s cool. That sort of coolness is an asset.

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    1. > I know people who identify with the browncoats who are, in the real world, staunch advocates of leftist ideas

      Sadly, the majority of Firefly fans I’ve met are socialist big government types. I want to shake them and say “you realize that it’s the browncoats that have freedom of speech and contract and commerce, and it’s the Core Worlds that have 90% income taxes, socialized medicine, and a long list of regulations and licensing requirements that would stop Mal from ever buying a ship in the first place, right?”

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      1. After watching a couple of episodes of Firefly– I am mindboggled that many of the fans are into big government. It is showing (at least in the first of the season) the devastation a totalitarian government can cause and what people will do who want to escape it.

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        1. Cyn,
          You owe it to yourself to watch “Serenity” the follow on movie that answers most of the questions raised in the single season of Firefly.
          Certainly a shining example of how to create a true paradise through government mandate.

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          1. I’m not sure I could handle it Unc at this time… There is a kerfuffle on my end (personal stuff) and I am not thinking straight right now.

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            1. No rush, the movie is readily available on DVD and shown periodically on cable. It just ties up a whole bunch of loose ends that developed during the course of the series. It’s also rather intense and a good bit violent, so fair warning.

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        2. An essential trait of “Living Leftward” is the ability to hold in one’s mind two contradictory and mutually exclusive concepts. Bill Clinton, during the dregs of his presidency, even boasted of his ability to “compartmentalize” issues. As if leading a fully integrated life was insanity.

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    2. Sometime ago I heard about a college class being showed old news-reels and one of which contained the line/scene “The Rebels have entered the city”. The students cheered but the “Rebels” were Franco’s troops because the news-reel was about the Spanish Civil War. [Evil Grin]

      The problem is that many followers of leftist ideas think that the world is controlled by the “evil forces of the right” and they are rebels against those evil forces.

      Which is why you have lefties talk about “speaking truth to power” when the real power on their side and those they are speaking against are the Rebels.

      In other words, the Left thinks of themselves as the Rebels even when they are in Power. [Sad Smile]

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      1. One notes that the military revolt was taken, in Spain, almost as a cue for the Revolution including massacre, destruction of churches, and general forcible leveling. Orwell’s obvious favoritism for the Republic side did not keep this out of his writing.

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        1. Franco won because the Republic was worse. Same thing in Portugal. Those who scream about Salazar don’t know those who preceded him. This is how “progressives” bring about their own worse nightmares.

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          2. But, the Republic was the CAUSE. Picasso painted pictures and Hemingway wrote stories. It was so romantic. Just like Cuba still is. At least in Cuba the good guys won(as far as progs are concerned.)

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            1. The NKVD murdered one of Hemingway’s buddies during the Spanish Civil War (just because he Knew Too Much), and he decided that it was okay because it was for the cause. (John Dos Passos didn’t think it was okay for the NKVD to murder his buddy and translator, so he stopped being friends with Hemingway and being romantic about the cause.)

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      2. “…the Left thinks of themselves as the Rebels even when they are in Power.”

        Ah yes, the Rebels without a Clue. They fought the Man, and they won. Now they are the Man, and don’t know what to do about it, so they carry on as they always have. Much like the dog who chases cars, once they got what they wanted, how were they supposed to have any idea what to do with it?

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  12. > I’m willing to understand that governments are needed in order to secure the individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    As a former libertarian who has now drifted all the way to voluntaryism / anarcho-capitalism, I think you’re taking a sane and reasonable stand, but I disagree with it. I’d argue that while a small night watchman state CAN secure the individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that there are other social setups that can do so as well or better.

    The Icelandic Republic (really more like an Icelandic Anarchy), the Somali experiment, American farmers living beyond the Appalachians where there was no government, and more are all examples.

    So, yes, in 99% of the conversations with “regular people”, it makes sense to argue a position that they can at least comprehend (libertarianism) as good tactics.

    …but if we’re among friends and debating pure theory, I think the night watchman state is a good start, but we can do better (i.e. less)!

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      1. Make sure to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

        Was the Icelandic Republic more or less violent than other European countries circa 1200 AD?

        Is Somalia more or less violent than other African countries c. 2013?

        We also need to look at total violence, including that done by the government.

        E.g.: Even if you tell me that a strong central government cuts pick pocketing by 50%, if the COST of that is tens of thousands of non violent pot users brutally raped in government-run prisons, then we need to note that pick-pocketing is down by 50% and brutal rapes are up by 200%.

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        1. Given that other European countries also did not have our modern government — well, I’m not comparing apples to grapes while rejecting the notion of comparing them to oranges.

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          1. I’m not sure what you’re saying here.

            What I’m saying is that you have to compare similar eras, demographics, and cultures to each other, letting the type of government be the independent variable.

            e.g. if I hold up the statelessness of trans-Appalachian settlement as working well, we should compare it to Scots Irish settled on the other side of the Appalachians, or Scots Irish in the UK at the same time to see if statelessness increases or decreases violence…but comparing stateless trans-Appalachian settlement in 1790 to Harvard undergrads in 2013 would be misleading (OMG! Big Blue gov in Cambridge MA does such a great job at preventing knife fights and eye-gougings, which high-SAT undergrads would otherwise be so likely to engage in!)

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              1. I should have said “one”, not “you”, but what I was getting at is that I think your objection is based on a confusion. Specifically, you were conflating multiple different variables when Sarah’s initial point was just about one (big government vs small government vs no government).

                But, you’re right – you DON’T have to compare similar eras, demographics, and cultures to each other; you’re utterly free to compare modern Nigeria to Revolutionary era US and attribute any and all differences between the two to whichever single variable you want. My point is merely that while you’re free to do that, the result is going to be a logical mess.

                But you’re right – I can’t make

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                  1. The Scots-Irish trans-appalachian settlers were considered to be worse than the indians in some areas. However, they were dispossesed borderers who had a long tradition of inter (and intra) clan warefare. The Borderers clans were used by the Scots and the English thrones as a cheap way to hold the border, similar to the way the Elizabethan fleet to defend against the Armada was mostly armed merchants. It was cheaper. However, since there was a long tradition of local law backed up by clans, raiding, retribution, blackmail, cattle theiving and extortion was the order of the day.
                    The Scots borderers were disposessed to Ireland, and later wet to the Americas after James I became king of England and Scotland and basically said, knock it off guys, I own both sides of the border now, and they didn’t.
                    They just brought their traditional values with them.

                    Personally I would have used the Provisional Government of the Oregon Territory as a better example of spontaneous development of a government in a vacuum. More shouting, no shooting.

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                    2. I would say that KBVR used to be a fantastic college radio station, but I would never consider them to be “right”

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    2. I’ve read about Iceland—not only David Friedman’s chapter on it, but William Ian Miller’s Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, and various more general histories—and I don’t think that it can be described as a true anarchy. It had no state monopoly of enforcement, because enforcement was largely self-help (not rich enough to support professional enforcers), and it had the option of private arbitration, including “self-judgment”; but the Thing, and only the Thing, had the legal right to perform judicial functions, including compulsory process and declaration of outlawry. That’s a monopoly. It’s a very narrow monopoly, but it’s not the competitive system that anarchocapitalists envision.

      Like

  13. When discussing Left and Right, it’s important to know where these terms emerged, and why they do not apply to American politics.

    “Left” and “Right” referred to, essentially, two parties in the French parliament during the Revolution. On the left sat supporters of the Revolution. On the right sat supporters of the king. And unlike the American Revolution (which really wasn’t, it was a war of national liberation), the topic of the French Revolution wasn’t the proper role of government. Even though the Revolutionaries printed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, it had built in exceptions big enough to guillotine a truck. No, the question of the French Revolution was who would be in control: the crown, or the people. Many of our Founding Fathers were appalled by what they saw, because they realized total control in the hands of the people would devolve into mob rule.

    When we say the only difference between Fascism and Communism is that one was national and the other was global, we miss the “major” contention, which to us limited government types is neither here nor there. Communism overthrew the old order, and jailed, exiled, or executed anyone associated with it. Fascism worked with the old order for the same socialist ends. Thus, Mussolini was happy to keep King Emmanuel III around, while Lenin had Nicholas II’s entire family killed. That’s their beef with one another: The Communists won’t be in control in a Fascist state, and the Fascists won’t be in control in a Communist state. Policy differences don’t enter into it.

    So that’s how, when Americans try to use the Left-Right axis to label libertarians, we are both simultaneously Communists and Fascists, because we disagree with the social conservatives about using government to shape social order, and we disagree with the lefties about letting them take control of the private sector. We tell both sides that they cannot rule, and that makes them hate us.

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    1. “Work with” being used in the loosest possible sense. It was not an accident that the attempt to kill Hitler during World War II was driven by the aristocrats; about half of the officers, and half of the soldiers, were of aristocratic families. (They had long deplored Nazism as a popular movement.)

      Like

      1. Yep. People who say the Red Baron would be a nazi if he survived ignore the fact his twit cousin who became a Nazi was not as invested in aristocracy as Manfred. He’d deplore it as “populism”

        Like

      2. Oh, and he was what Dave Freer would call a “real” aristocrat. He viewed his position as a DUTY. I don’t have use for nobility of birth. I’ve said that before. BUT the ones who take it as duty and sacred vocation tend to be MUCH better than any other autocrat and certainly better than the populist ones.

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        1. The SMART ones who take their position as a duty are better. The dumb ones belong in the classic Active/Stupid pigeon-hole, and would do far less harm if someone could persuade them to adopt Wine, Women, and Song as a vocation.

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      3. Hardly the loosest possible sense. The Nazis had no qualms about taking in a captain of industry or decorated general. They counted on it, in fact. They were not out for revenge against class enemies. That was Communism. Instead, the Nazis, and all Fascist movements, took advantage of the fact that Communism scared the hell out of the elite, and offered them a means to survive the coming socialist storm. As Musolini said, “I’m the only one standing between you and the pitchforks.” Oh, wait, that was some other guy.

        That not all aristocrats signed on to the Nazi regime says nothing about how the Nazis regarded aristocrats.

        Like

        1. Not actively rejecting someone because he’s an aristocrat is indeed in the loosest possible sense. How could it be looser?

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              1. As it happens: My current book is on the German General Staff of WW2 — most of whom were people with the word “von” somewhere in their names. Why were they there? Simply put: Because Dear Old Uncle Adi, for all his homicidal impulses, couldn’t get rid of all of them at once without touching off a revolt by “the guys with the guns” — the military may have been politically out of it, but they would have noticed if most of the generals had disappeared down the Gestapo or SS rabbit-holes, the way the SA leadership did.

                What Adolf *could* do was create competing structures to neutralize the power of the old guard, placing effective control of the military in his hands instead of theirs — and that’s what he did.

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    2. We were founded as a Democratic Republic. Through both Joseph Ellis and David McCullough I have learned that the Founders were wary of the term democracy — considering it as mob rule. They wanted neither a monarch nor a mob.

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      1. CACS said:
        “We were founded as a Democratic Republic.”

        No we were founded as a Constitutional Republic

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              1. You find yourself going into the voting booth and finding you have a choice of the party candidate, or, well, you could always choose the party candidate.

                I don’t see a democracy of any kind there; it is in name only. Coopting perfectly good words and trashing their meaning, that is an old tradition of leftists of all stripes. It is a crying shame to let them get away with it.

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                1. Slapping a label on hamburger proclaiming it 100% Beef doesn’t mean there isn’t more than a little horse in there. Democratic Republics are primarily comment worthy as being neither, which places them one linguistic step below jumbo shrimp and virtuous whore.

                  I don’t think it wise to allow them to steal our words, any more than they can claim any other of my property, without a fight. When they play “change the meaning” the proper response is “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

                  For the first offense.

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                  1. I woke up this morning with this post in screaming my mind. (Obviously I need to do something about my life, but that is another story.)

                    Pravda called itself a newspaper. Do we reject the term newspaper as Pravda (in spite of its name – which The Spouse would point out means truth) neither printed the news or the truth. But on second thought many of our own newspapers have now ‘risen’ to that standard…

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                    1. Q: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
                      A: Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it so.
                      – attributed to Lincoln.

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                    2. To which the modern Vile Prog enlightened intellectual replies: It is a leg if we say it is a leg.

                      A foetus is not a baby. A blastocyst is not an embryo. A clone is not a clone if we destroy it and harvest the stem cells. “Quality of life” is cause for death.

                      Since the serpent in the Garden have such stories been spun.

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      2. It depends on what you think a government is effin for, don’ it? The Founders thought the job of gummint was protecting certain inalienable rights. Monarchs and mobs both tend to think gummint is there for their benefit, saving ’em the inconvenience of stoppin’ folk in the street with commands to ‘stand and deliver’ — you have no rights for them to respect.

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    3. The left is quite happy to restrict personal freedoms if it suits them. It is presently the left who suggests that it was ‘free speech for responsible speech’ and that therefore there is not contradiction of the First Amendment to have hate speech legislation, but fore fend you suggest a limitation on the scatological. The left is quite willing to limit personal controls in the kitchen or restaurant, but not in the bedroom. As I previously stated the right and left are arguing where and to what extent the government should be controlling you and I.

      I become distinctly uncomfortable when I see anything so complicated as an entire governmental system reduced to an overall simple line or axis graph. Aspects, yes, the whole, no.

      Like

  15. Individual liberty says Big Government shouldn’t be controlling us – and that Big Business and Big Religion should not be controlling us.

    The Right is no more for individual liberty than the Left is.

    Like

    1. Again, go read where I redefined the terms in the post because it doesn’t fit liberty at any level. HOWEVER big business can’t control you unless it commands government. Big religion can’t control you, unless it commands government. Only one of those three powers has armies and enforcement powers. To enter into a voluntary association through buying or converting to something is NOT being controlled. It’s to enter into a voluntary association. This is why “state capitalism” is bad and “State religion” is bad. But you know the funny thing? I disagree with the Republicans in A LOT of things, but I have yet to hear them advocate either of those. All that is on the left right now.

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    2. Really, Howard … your comment is fact-free. “Big Business” can’t control us without “Big Government”.

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      1. Monopolies are unstable unless propped by direct government support or the equivalent thereof with regulations. This is why Big Business loves Big Government.

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    1. I’m enjoying the hell out of Vox Day hammering away at them. If folks here aren’t also reading Vox, you’re missing out. Less community, but more snark – a very nice compliment to Sarah’s blog.

      Like

        1. ” go over to Vox” – phrased that way, it sounds a bit like “go over to the Dark side”.

          …which, come to think of it, isn’t entirely inappropriate. ;-)

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          1. I sent him an email yesterday asking if he was involved in this, because I haven’t been reading blogs much beyond scanning insty… There were other discussions involved. He hasn’t answered yet.

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                1. It is possible, but I also worried that she was so overworked right now that I shouldn’t nudge. I used an email addr that you used when you left a comment at http://morlockpublishing.com a while back: a hotmail one. Is that the best addr to use? Feel free to ping me at tjic AT tjic PERIOD com and I’ll resend to whatever addr you use. Thanks!

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                  1. Try the hotmail one again. it either ate the message, or I deleted it because it was in the middle of one of the “morning roundups.” — stuff people send me on politics and books and stuff, which gets to be a lot.

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      1. I’m looking forward to the SFWA Approved List of books to keep my reading on the Progressive straight and narrow!

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        1. No, they are cowards. They hire their beatings.

          Look at how many of them dodged the draft: Lawrence O’Donnell, William Clinton, Howard Dean, Chris Matthews, for just a start.

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  17. To give people a little more specifics on the issue of how the center moves in this guy’s worldview: Once you mentioned this in a comment on a previous post, I went and looked, and responded to him a couple of times, and he finally showed that he was actually using a definition of “center” that was based on the sample, not the larger world. In other words, by his definition, half of the people MUST be Left and half Right, because that’s what the center meant, so it wasn’t possible for most of the people to be Left.

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    1. Arrrgh. *Thump, thump, thump* By any chance does this gent work for the University of East Anglia Climate Modeling Unit?

      Like

    2. That reminds me of what I was told about Britain’s fight against child poverty – someone pointed out that since poverty had been defined as the lowest earning 20% of the population, by definition the problem would never end.

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      2. AND the activist definitions of poverty typically refer to pre-tax/entitlement incomes. In other words they cite the level before government rebalancing and then say “isn’t this unfair we need more government rebalancing”

        timworstall.com has many many examples

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  18. I kept waiting for someone to bring up Jerry Pournelle and his Political Axis. JSchuler alluded to it, but did not refer to it specifically,
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
    and
    http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm.

    Everyone has a position. And the politicians/causes we are most comfortable with are those closest to our own.
    But to repeat the cry of the Southern States, “We just want to be left alone!”
    Not gonna happen; there are too many busybodies and petty tyrants in the world to allow it, unless you are willing and able to exert your independence.
    And none of us, I think, are independently wealthy.

    Like

  19. “Pero NO si muove.”
    Darn. You realize Google Translate doesn’t do anything with this?
    I’m assuming, contextually, it means “I shall not move” or I will not be moved”.

    Like

    1. After Galileo recanted to resolve his heresy trial about the Earth moving around the Sun he was supposed to have said under his breath “yet it still moves”

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  20. A common trait of Vile Prog argument is this habit of debating the meaning of terminology, as if the label defines its object. The primary benefit of this tactic is that it distracts the object into debating whether you are a “fricasseeing wabbit” or a “frying wabbit” while overlooking the fact you are in the pot.

    The proper responses to such arguments as definition of “The Center” include:

    I don’t care what you call it, I say it’s spinach and I say To Hell with it!

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    Finally, in perhaps the finest illustration of efforts to engage a Liberal in rational discussion, we find –

    ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

    ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

    ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
    http://sabian.org/looking_glass6.php

    In a short passage Mr. Dumpty manages to argue not only for the malleability of language but also the Welfare state (unbirthdays) and reliance on government to redress anticipatable consequences: “‘If I did fall,’ he went on, ‘the King has promised me …”

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    1. “A common trait of Vile Prog argument is this habit of debating the meaning of terminology, as if the label defines its object. ”

      In my experience, they believe precisely that.

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        1. Isn’t it a basic principle of most magic systems that the map is the territory?

          Like

      2. I would say so, using this as an example:
        http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/us-global-economy-debt-herndon-idUSBRE93H0CV20130418
        Now, I don’t care what the kid proves or what the eminent ecomomists did that was a mistake. The reality is that massive debt is like a monetary sponge that will kill investment by massively increasing taxes. This no brainer stuff but the Progs talk about the horrors of “austerity” and how no government program can ever be shrunk or terrible consequences will happen. Now I’m not a binge drinker, but I know what happens the day after, even though I’ve only experience small hangovers.

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    2. Fallacy of equivocation.

      Run into it a lot with the totalitarian libertarians. (They identify is libertarian, but hold claim that their views are the One True Possible Option and that nobody else should be able to make a deal they disapprove of. Not to be confused with liberal-tarians.)

      Like

          1. I think she is to the left, but but I can be silly about that criteria sometimes.

            Like

        2. Seriously, I am a liberal, using the correct meaning. I suppose I’m a libertarian, although I tend to avoid the term. From what I gather, it means a conservative trying to be cool.

          Having said that…I think the “liberal-tarians” come in two groups. One is the, well, conservatives trying to be cool, and completely giving in to ther other side.

          The other is those like David Brin, who are just lying through their teeth.

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          2. I’ve given up on being cool SO LONG ago that I might as well not try. I tend to use “libertarian” simply to point out I also don’t particularly care about making everyone behave morally according to my lights (considering in trying to solve a plot I just realized I’m a) intensely moral. b) profoundly WEIRD — everyone should be very glad of that.)

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            1. I, on the other hand, am so cool that when I walk the street, hipsters passing me say to their dates: “I knew SPQR before you heard of him”.

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            3. I just realized I’m a) intensely moral

              Most philosophical libertarians I know ARE intensely moral; part of why I tend to piss them off eventually by telling them I think they’re idealists…..

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              1. I’ve always been aware of being an idealist. It’s also why I know what applies and what doesn’t. That no-frontiers, the world lives in harmony thing? PFUI. I always had doubts about it, but 9/11 finished THAT dream for good, whatever shreds of it remained.
                For good or ill, and lucky you, there aren’t enough of me in the world to make the “ideal” work. One must make do as best one can. Doesn’t mean one shouldn’t fight — as much as possible — for individual freedom.

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              2. Ah, yes, idealists, exactly. Not everyone is wired the same, even among well behaved people. When one has an intense (positive) moral compass they are ‘good’ simply because that is their nature. Societal rules, outside dictates, irritate them, in part, because they would do just as well, or likely better, than the imposed rules require and find them odd, il-fitting and restrictive. Unfortunately not everyone shares the worthy trait of a such a strong inner compass.

                Those who have worked with small children know that from the beginning they start with their own innate character. They all need consistent limits and consequences, but some respond better to guidelines and principles, others need to have clear and precise rules. Recent experience working with a group of adults tells me that, to some extent, these differences in character remain, even among fully functional and generally responsible people. While many can do their job well with a ‘don’t be stupid, don’t put others at risk’, others need the expectations spelled out more clearly.

                I don’t believe that anybody of people can make perfect rules, and I do think that too many rules is worse than too many cooks. So, to me, the question becomes: what is the minimum structure and body of rules necessary to produce the maximum level of function in society?

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                1. So, to me, the question becomes: what is the minimum structure and body of rules necessary to produce the maximum level of function in society?

                  This also prevents the rules-gaming that is the opposite problem– too many rules and they’ll be used as weapons.

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          3. From what I gather, it means a conservative trying to be cool.

            Libertarians, generally speaking are:

            1) For the legalization of all or almost all drugs.
            2) Opposed to laws regulating sex commerce among “Adults”.
            3) Are philosophically opposed to borders (although practically they may be in favor of them)
            4) Are opposed to overseas use of our military *at all*, to include for most of them humanitarian uses.
            5) Opposed to most tax schemes in favor of pay-as-you-use schemes.
            6) Opposed to national currencies *generally*, or at least in favor of private currencies.
            7) Libertarians not only support Gay Marriage, but any sort of combination group marriage you can think of.

            Conservatives take the opposite, or almost opposite position on almost all of those.

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            1. That’s the capital L libertarians, the party I left in 2002. Some of those I still think are best, but most of it boils down to “who the heck am I to tell adults they can’t do things that don’t hurt me?” BUT mostly, you want to know what I think? Look in the constitution. The proper place to experiment with legalizing drugs or prostitution is the states. And then we’ll have a track record to examine.
              As for group marriage — don’t be silly. No law against it is needed.
              Anyone who has lived with one person, neither of them a saint, and is even mildly sane knows group marriage is its own punishment.

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            2. “1) For the legalization of all or almost all drugs.”

              Does that include removing prescriptions?

              ’cause if so — antibiotic-resistant bacteria, here we come.

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        1. Because he did not willingly pay the taxes to create the road, and did not vote for jaywalking laws, so he was under no moral obligation to follow them.

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              1. I can see you doing that (waving the middle finger) with a walking skirt, nice blouse, a huge hat perched on your head and walking briskly away swinging that deadly umbrella.

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  21. Extending the three-wolves-and-the-sheep analogy:

    A Centrist is somebody who thinks that the sheep will be just fine with only three of its legs—and also that the three wolves will be satisfied with only the one leg of mutton between them.

    Well, actually, the sheep will still be able to get along with just two of his legs, won’t he? I mean, the wolves have cubs to feed . . . and It’s For The Children.

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    1. And then, obviously you need to even-out the sheep’s legs, so you take the other two… and then he’s a useless eater, so you may as well just euthanize the sheep and recycle his parts as nourishment.

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  22. Woman after woman in the field imagines herself downtrodden and preaches endlessly about evil males and thinks she’s fighting the patriarchy that in her mind existed circa 1950. (And in fact not since the thirties or, for some aspects, never outside Islamic countries.)

    Most of the issues I have with modern writing is that they are, at best, stuck in the 60s.

    Like

  23. They merely disagreed on whether state power should be national or worldwide

    … I just realized that Stalin was a freaking blueprint for “I will take over the world, muwahahaha” supervillains. Think about it; you’re right about the amount of area Hitler and Stalin wanted to control.

    Now think about the politics of most of the comic book writers… no wonder sympathetic villains are in.

    Like

    1. I still remember an interesting discussion of the differences in personality that would make those two such different models for the Evil Overlord.

      Like

    2. Comic book writers were terribly exploited by the publishers under “work-for-hire” agreements that deprived the writers from sharing the spoils generated by their creations. Making evil conglomerates the villains was a form of easy revenge.

      When “work-for-hire” agreements were first established NOBODY expected there would be any spoils generated; comics were disposable, ephemeral and not readily commercialized beyond the immediate sale. Publishers’ greed in exploiting the change in the markets represents common short-sightedness.

      Like

    4. ‘Tis a pity there’s not a YouTube version of it, but: The _MacGyver_ episode “The Ten Percent Solution” should have been a Big Red Flag to everyone, even if it involved Nazis rather than Commies — the principle remains the same….

      The end scene is of a map of the western USA, with little flags dotting it representing places where the Nazis have sympathizers in place. Below it is a poster stating “one must control the following groups: Teachers; Police; Judges” and other groups in Positions Of Power.

      GEE, DOES THIS SOUND *VAGUELY* FAMILIAR!?

      Like

  24. “The Cultural revolution was nicer than the American suburbia?”
    A slightly tangent: I recommend When Huai Flowers Bloom: Stories of the Cultural Revolution by Shu Jiang Lu for another view.

    Like

    1. I’ve read a lot about the cultural revolution, plus my dad visited Macao at the time — I don’t think it was nicer than our worst projects or downtown Detroit, frankly. But the story that won every award was about how a poor Chinese woman who had survived the cultural revolution found the suburbia intolerable because racism. And folding origami animals. Or something.

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      1. I read that story, I know I did, but aside from what you recall, Sarah, nothing from the story stuck. Aside from a general sense of “ye gads, I hope the rest of the stories in this anthology aren’t that bad.”

        Like

        1. No. It was well done, but once you know how to evoke pathos you can see it’s color by numbers and as an immigrant, with a strong accent, raising American kids, PFUI. Does everyone uniformly love me? Oh, heck no. Do I get the “you don’t understand me”? Actually not often. I find it has more to do with what you and your kids like doing together. Robert and I can spend entire days in museums and Marsh and I take the world apart and put it back together again. Are there things about them I don’t get? Some. But there are for every parent. I think my life is better than it would be anywhere else in the world. Most importantly, it is what I make it. Do I fail? Oh, often, but ti’s my fault and no one else’s. The “It’s America’s fault, the world isn’t perfect slant” really hit me in the face like mace, and provoked the reactionbears get when insufficiently maced. That’s why I harped on it.

          Like

  25. Oh, I almost forgot: Congratulations on Chris Muir deciding to offer DSR as one of his gifts for his fundraiser this year.

    Like

        1. It makes a wonderful gift for a birthday, wedding, house-warming, bar mitzvoh, christening, going-away …

          Like

          1. Make sure you don’t get “going away” parties mixed up with “go away” parties like I did once. Fortunately I was talking about myself when I mentioned the “go away” party my friends were throwing for me. Gave all of us a good laugh.

            Like

          2. Divorce, heart break, loneliness and hair loss. But for the full treatment you must also buy A Few Good Men (I have to say this because Nat and Luce would like that series to continue even if they’re only secondary and incidental characters in the next few books.)

            Like

    1. THAT woman is all sorts of awesome. I’ve never met her or seen her in my life, but from that speech alone in front of the senatecritters, she’s my sister. She is a Usaian.

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          1. How DARE you comment on how she would look, you male chauvinist pig!

            Martin L. Shoemaker

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              1. I believe that in such usage the “male” is employed as the object of the chauvinism, not as a descriptor of the type of pig. If so, “male chauvinist” should be viewed as a single term comprised of two words, and “female chauvinist” would describe feminists, not females who are inordinately prejudiced in favour of males.

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                  1. Golly, no. Merely engaging in appreciation of the fine nuances of various types of mud. Some clings better than others, after all, and it is useful to know which and why.

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                    1. Appreciation? We all know that’s a code word for ogling!

                      And mud! That’s a blatant dog whistle for mud wrestling, the ultimate in degradation!

                      Sexist!

                      Martin L. Shoemaker

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                    2. Sexist???? Moi?

                      When I can be, yes. Guilty as charged. I long ago noticed that men and women are different, considered the implications and concluded vive la différence.

                      Like

                    3. Wait, wait, wait! I called you a bad name! You’re supposed to wilt and submit! Maybe grovel for a while until I conditionally let you make amends, then remind you of your sins for the next four decades!

                      You’re not playing this game right!

                      Like

                    4. I don’t know — I thought before the election if Paul Ryan offered to wrestle … just about anyone in mud, for donations, they’d have had more donations that anyone else in history, all from women. So, I throw no stones.

                      Like

                    6. A SF author ought do a better job of thinking such things through.

                      The GOP puts up Paul Ryan, the Dems put up Joe Biden — he’s accustomed to getting down in the mud, after all.

                      Nobody watches.

                      Now, if you let folks pay to have Joe pixelled out …

                      Like

                    10. Not in mud – that would provide too much footage for Vile Prog attack ads. Let them wrestle in Lime Jello (or other sponsoring gelatin product.)

                      Like

              2. Thank you. He had me worried. I mean, I looked and everything (I do every morning, in case The Author got funny in the night, particularly since lately I’ve been having a feeling He might be RAH’s clone in that universe) and still no penis. Which is good. I rather like being a woman. Lady chauvinist pig. I like the ring of that.

                Like

                1. I suspect that sudden surprises in the plumbing department could be disruptive of family life. All of a sudden the urge to leave dirty socks lying about would become *irresistible*

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                  1. I am an unnatural woman married to a mathematician. Honestly, while in college I took… an unreasonable number of hours, way above allowed, half of it at private/credited institutes for language. I don’t know how to calculate the hours exactly but approaching forty hours a week classroom time wasn’t unusual. I also taught/tutored sixteen to twenty hours a week most semesters. I used to kick dirty clothes under the bed until I had time to do laundry. When I married my husband was appalled at my dropping clothes wherever.
                    What cured me of this? Our cat Petronius. He liked to EAT nylons and ladies undergarments. After a few trips to the vet, I put the clothes in the hamper. Don’t think it has much to do with my undercarriage.

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                    1. We’re extremely lucky that our dog, Kacy, only eats things that could reasonably be described as “food”, so our socks are safe.

                      Like

                2. …I mean, I looked and everything (I do every morning, in case The Author got funny in the night, particularly since lately I’ve been having a feeling He might be RAH’s clone in that universe)…

                  From Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter II, The Pool of Tears:

                  Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: “Dear, dear!! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”

                  Like

              3. According to the Mavens of Aggrievement, only evil, unenlightened men comment upon women’s looks. Ergo Sarah has outed herself as a man. And you’re acting suspiciously unSisterly yourself…

                Martin L. Shoemaker

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                1. Pfui. Ugly girls don’t get to make the rules. And I’ll note, as someone who was once beautiful and is not technically too overweight to be anything but ugly, that if your personality is not ugly most people WILL NOT notice the carcass.

                  Like

                2. So instead of trying to stop people looking and talking about cuter women, maybe they should study how to be interesting enough no one notices they’re ugly. (One of my brother’s group when I was growing up taught me this lesson early — my brother is ten years older. The vamp in their group was this young lady whom all of them were mad in love with and who kept them all dangling. I was 12 and not affected by THEIR hormones, so I had eyes to see with. She was short, a bit on the dumpy side, and had a face like a clever monkey’s. BUT she was the life of every party, her conversation riveting and her mental prowess spellbinding. I don’t think she ever complained about anyone admiring another woman (didn’t happen when she was around, anyway) and she certainly never turned down compliments, no matter how unjustified they seemed to an outsider.)

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                  1. I had a friend (sadly deceased now) who, quite frankly, looked like Fiona in Shrek. The green version of Fiona (my wife and I literally looked at each other the first time watching the movie, when she first turned into the ogre, and said, “Oh. My. God.”). Yet she was extremely likeable, and I even dated her for a while, though it didn’t work out. She never got outraged at guys acting like guys, but she didn’t take crap from anyone, either.

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                  2. But then they would lose their power as Aggrieved Victims! No, they’re much happier this way; and they’ll be happier still when we’re all wearing our identical Maoist uniforms and everyone is equal (except for them, because they’re better).

                    Martin L. Shoemaker

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  27. Pingback: Links for 6-4-2013 | Karl Heubaum

  28. “It is a hard lesson, young Masbeth, but it were best you learn it now: Villainy wears many masks — none so dangerous as the mask of Virtue.”
    [Ichabod Crane, _Sleepy Hollow_]

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  29. I think one of the problems with sociopolitical taxonomy is that too many people are trying to reduce an n-dimensional problem space to a one or two-dimensional solution. Most of the online political purity tests I’ve taken have generally classified me as “centrist”, leaning either conservative or libertarian depending on the formulation of the questions. The thing is, I agree with the sentiment upthread that there is no “center” when you are viewed as livestock to be slaughtered. Either you sink or you swim, no one chooses to be half-drowned. But as I may not be an unabashed centrist, neither am I an unabashed conservative or libertarian.

    Perhaps it would be better to describe political viewpoints not as points on a gradient, but rather vectors in a space. That way they both have direction (towards either a predefined ideology, or as a composite along whatever axes are defined (social, moral, ethical, fiscal, whatever)) and magnitude (the lengths the holder of the viewpoint would go to to realize their ideology). Thus we can better model political realities, such as the fact that while the two major parties in US politics bill themselves as opposed, there are areas that both sides can agree on (usually to the detriment of the public). Adding both of these vectors together results in a composite that points mainly in the direction of increased size and power of the bureaucracy (with a minor cant in the direction of the Democratic Party, due to their greater magnitude (ex. nakedly using the powers of public office to silence political opponents)).

    My own vector is towards whatever solution has humanity proliferating throughout space as soon as possible. Single issue? Not if you consider the implications packed inside the concept. The question is, “what axes are defined by those implications?”

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    1. I believe there is a greater chance with more freedom to the individual. Certainly there will be more wealth, and that ALWAYS helps such endeavors. And while it’s not my ONLY vector — my primary one is “hey, teacher, leave the kids alone” — getting all our eggs out of Earth’s basket is a strong one for me too.

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  30. Best line ever written on ‘centrism’, by G. K. C. of course:

    ‘Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.’

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  32. As usual, I am coming to the party late. As usual, as well, I’m probably one of the few actually to respond to Ms. Hoyt’s comments in the original entry. And (most probably) as usual, I will be ‘under moderation’ until Ms. Hoyt actually reads this entry. At least, that’s the way it’s been the last few times I’ve tried making a comment here.

    Has anyone thought of actually reading the articles of Messrs. Malzburg and Resnick in issues 200 and 202? Or making them more readily available so that they can be read?

    I’ve been looking for both. So far, all I can find is the cover of that estimable mag, here:

    As for me, my only objection to the cover is that the lady in question is baring far too little skin. But then, I am only speaking in my chosen role of sexist swine.

    I have managed to find Messrs. Malzburg’s and Resnick’s defense of themselves, posted here, on this blog entry:

    http://www.slhuang.com/blog/2013/05/31/dear-mike-resnick-barry-malzberg-and-the-sfwa-for-giving-you-a-platform-fuck-you/

    Of course, you must beware: As the weblogista who posted it has said, ” It’s filth. It’s abusive, it’s dismissive, and it reeks of logical fallacy from every corner.”

    As you can probably tell, I’m living on a high irony diet.

    I am reminded of Heinlein’s maxim: “One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.”

    I propose that that maxim be extended to the current state religion of feminism.

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    1. Okay, the articles are not available on line — I got them from a buddy who is still a member.
      The reason you’re moderated (such a moderate man!) is that you put more than one link. If you want to go through, put a link per comment ;) This is my way of keeping down spam.

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    1. Personally, I don’t buy into the author’s premise that politically Left = State-ism and Right = individual liberty. As a philosophical orientation, perhaps, but not as a political one.

      In _politics_, the left/right dichotomy is strictly about who controls the mass population. Left = the state, Right = royalty/wealthy/religions/corporations. In politics, the *individual* is nothing more than a pawn, and anyone who forgets that is making a grave error.

      The left and right sides of the aisle are the left and right wings of the same dragon – those who hold POWER.

      The Left appeals to community mindedness/everyone pays a fair share/Marxist idealism (which in a perfect world is not necessarily a bad thing, but the world, and the people in it are not perfect). The right appeals to individualism/what I _earn_ is mine to do with as I please/the sky is the limit capitalism (which, in a perfect world, is not necessarily a bad thing, but the world, and the people in it, are not perfect). But the appeals used to sway the masses are not the reality of what those who wield the power are truly after. ALL they are concerned with is the power.

      And the political failure of libertarianism is the failure of all systems that rely on _individuals_ to the right thing because people, taken as a whole, suck. They are lazy, they petty, they are vengeful, they are jealous. they are greedy. Libertarian philosophy requires people to take responsibility for their own betterment and very few people are willing to accept responsibility for their own lives, they want someone else – the government or their employers, to do it.

      Individual freedom and liberty is a great thing. Now, what the hell are you going to actually do with it that improves your life and the lives of those around you, and just how in the world are you going to get those around you to cooperate with you in achieving those things? Once you get past the tribal size community, power plays and politics become the way of people. S/he who wields the most power/influence wins. Welcome to politics.

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      1. DO I have to do anything to improve the lives of others? I figured living my own life was justification enough. The founders agreed. See “Pursuit of happiness.”

        Also, no, I don’t buy into that premiss either, but I get called “right wing” so, people MUST buy into it.

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        1. Do you have to? No. You don’t owe anything to anyone.

          But the flip side of that is that you get to have no expectation, whatsoever, of anyone having any obligation to do a damned thing for you.

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          1. Sorry. My contracts are my own and I make them with people I can trust. Not with “others” or “the community.” I help where I can, but I don’t feel “obligated” except to those people to whom I AM obligated.

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          2. I gotta say this because in one way I see offense in your words.
            I have learned the hard way that if I give to certain people, these same folks don’t give a damn about my problems. Plus giving and never receiving– it is an extremely unbalanced relationship.

            The only ones who do give a damn about me are the ones close to me. I truly understand Sarah’s comment– and have learned to care for myself and for those who are in my circle of influence. Other than that– I can do no more, and I don’t want to do more.

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        2. Sorry, missed the “I don’t buy into that premise, either comment.”

          Community will always be a balancing act of individual freedom vs obligation to those around us. The founding fathers of the US recognized that dichotomy and wrote the Constitution to “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty…”

          Now if we could only figure out a way to get more people to step up to doing their part as individuals for the common defense, general welfare and securing liberty, instead of trying to line their own pockets.

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          2. What you’re talking about is an emphasis on the flip side of rights – responsibilities. Understand that enforcing a recognition of responsibility that is imposed from the top down sounds a lot like tyranny. So, without imposing things from the top down, you’re talking about a sea change in the culture. Not saying that it’s not possible, but it will take time and persistent effort.
            Along those lines, maybe think about starting by emphasizing the responsibility that people have to their own families – to their spouses, to their kids, to their parents, to their siblings. Maybe in that order.
            That has two benefits.
            1. It defines exactly who the responsibility is owed to. Part of the problem is that “society” or “the community” is so ephemeral, it’s too easy to be redefined. It’s kept deliberately diffuse so that whoever holds the reins can direct the flow of largesse in the direction that they choose. Screw that. Define this down, and make it concrete. Now make that argument.
            2. It has the benefit of human nature behind it. I think people (should) naturally want to do things for their spouses, for their kids, for their parents, for their siblings. Harness that existing urge and make it work for you. Emphasize that duty, and the joy (I want this word back. I really want this word back.) that comes from helping your own family. Save the family.
            Do that, and I think you’ll see dividends paid out into the culture as a whole. Re-emphasize the duty / responsibility of the family, and I think a lot of the problems of the culture, of the country, and of the world start to fix themselves.

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      2. So far, Marxism has led to the slaughter of 20 million by Stalin, 40 million by Mao plus those killed by Castro, Chavez, Khmer Rouge, NVA, etc. Centralizing power in the hands of the few tends to create two classes: the ruling class with all the power and wealth, and everybody else. Before capitalism, no one, other than royalty and cohorts, had any wealth. The Economist Magazine just lauded capitalism as having increased the well being of 1 billion people and noted that the most capitalistic country in the world had the highest living standards.

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      3. I don’t agree with your definition of “The Right” — and thus reject the entirety of your argument, other than the “people are imperfect” principle. There are ways to construct social organization to protect individual rights, reward individual effort fairly, and minimize the harmful effects of human imperfection — and they start with proper definition.

        I lack time or interest to elaborate.

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