Another Relevant Cartoon

"Alt Right"?

I hadn't heard the term either. The Daily Beast considers it a form of white supremacism, but while I also oppose white supremacism, I suspect their definition of it may be wider than mine.

What Roy left out of his interview is that the alt right is a neoreactionary effort comprised of right-wing agitators brought together by their opposition to immigration (in particular, Hispanic and Muslim immigration), animosity to Muslims, and general opposition to multiculturalism (they call it cultural Marxism). They hate political correctness, they like Donald Trump, and they love dubbing their enemies “cuckservatives.”

“Our enemies scream the usual ‘RACIST’, ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST’ and ‘NAZI,’” reads a post on alt right blog RamZPaul. “We just laugh and go forward.”

In fairness, the fact that people on the Left are screaming those things is no reason to think it's plausibly characteristic of the movement. These days it is said to be racist to deny the existence of races: "colorblind" is supposedly a code-word for practices that refuse to appropriately take color into account.

So, pro:

* 'Neoreactionary' sounds good, though I don't know what she means by it.

* Opposition to immigration is possibly good, depending on what exactly is meant by it -- the USA benefits from some level of immigration of the right kind of people, and whether they are 'Hispanic or Muslim' has nothing to do with whether they are the right kind of people. Give me all the Mexicans or Arabs you can find who are like this guy. We need people who are devoted to the American project.

* By the same token, I'd be happy to support emigration -- for those who aren't devoted to the American project. If there's somewhere you'd rather be, let's help you get there.

* I have no animosity toward Muslims. Most of them are like anyone else. Others are my enemies, by their own choice. I love my enemies.

* Opposition to "multiculturalism" is good. Multiculturalism somehow goes hand in hand with "cultural appropriation." Having people from lots of cultures is great, as long as we can all learn from each other and build something together. The cultural balkanization of American is bad.

* Opposition to political correctness is good. Discourtesy is not good, but anyone who wants to impose speech controls has gone against the spirit of America.

Con:

* "Cuckservative" is the kind of sexualized language that has damaged our politics every time it is deployed. We are supposed to reason together. We cannot do that while we try to reduce ourselves or each other to sexual appetites or the functions of material organs. Even when we're talking about sex in politics, as we must sometimes do, it is best to not to use language that activates sexuality in the mind. It certainly should not be used elsewhere. Explain your objections without it, and not only will your position be stronger, so will the political system out of which a strong argument might produce something.

* It may be obvious by now that I am not a huge supporter of Donald Trump for President.

* Everything in the "good" category could have a bad aspect: opposition to immigration out of racism, for example; xenophobia rather than mere disdain for being told how to live by the PC or multi-culti factions.

So, do any of you have anything to do with this 'alt-right' movement? How do you find it on balance? More like the good, or more like the bad?

No!

Headline: 'Costs, Spending Explode Under Obamacare.'

So spending is way up, but now most people have huge deductibles? I wonder why the economy is so sluggish?

A Moment of Clarity

It's worth celebrating a moment of refreshing honesty, in which pretenses of "common sense" are set aside, and a man speaks his real mind.

Realistically, a gun control plan that has any hope of getting us down to European levels of violence is going to mean taking a huge number of guns away from a huge number of gun owners.

...

The US doesn't just have a gun violence problem because of its lax gun regulation. It has a problem because it has a culture that encourages large-scale gun possession, and other countries do not. That, combined with Australia's experience, makes large-scale confiscation look like easily the most promising approach for bringing US gun homicides down to European rates.

Large-scale confiscation is not going to happen. That's no reason to stop advocating it. (I also want to repeal all immigration laws and give everyone a monthly check from the government with no strings attached, and will argue for those ideas even though they're doomed.) But it does mean that we should be realistic about what gun control with an actual shot of passage can achieve. It can make us safer. It cannot make us Europe.

The main form of "safety" he seems to think Australia and similar countries achieved was a reduction in suicides by gun. As far as I know, you're as safe from suicide right now as you decide to be. Access to guns may make suicide by gun more likely, but there's no reason to believe (as he asserts) that it would "save" thousands of lives a year. It's not that hard to tie a rope, and it's quite easy to take a few extra pain pills if you can get access to them.

Still, just because I disagree with everything about his proposal and a lot about his analysis, let's celebrate his honesty. This is the real goal: large scale confiscation of firearms, as well as completely eliminating immigration restrictions and instituting a universal basic income. Disarm the public to the greatest possible degree, completely eliminate official border security as well, and then tax anyone with property for enough to pay everyone who comes as much as they are said to 'need.'

Clearly he thinks this will lead to a US that looks like Europe. It will, in the sense that it would destroy both American and Europe. America would rapidly absorb multitudes more from the poorest parts of the world, and rapidly lose whatever wealth could fly. Europe would lose the protection the American military has provided it for seventy years, and with it the capacity to sustain public assistance budgets as large as has been common for decades. That isn't what he imagines will happen, but that is what would happen in fact.

Monster

Mike's most recent post began with the confession. I suppose we should pause for a moment to remember that it is universal. Chesterton approaches it at the end of Orthodoxy.

All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge's interesting new Catechism, the first two questions were: "What are you?" and "What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?" I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers. To the question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God knows." And to the question, "What is meant by the Fall?" I could answer with complete sincerity, "That whatever I am, I am not myself."

If you are not yourself, what are you? Yourself, plus something else: the orthodox answer being yourself plus original sin. Like a chimera -- or, as Chesterton himself more rightly noted, like a centaur or a mermaid -- you are a human being, and also an animal. You are in the world, but not of it.

The recognition that we are monsters is meant to be liberating. In recognizing that we are not perfect just as we are, we are free to try to cut loose of what is wrong with us. Even if we fail, at least we know in what direction to strive.

Another Dead End

The President ponders the mystery of yesterday's attack.

“At this stage we do not yet know why this terrible event occurred,” he said.

“It is possible that this was terrorist-related but we don’t know. it’s also possible that this was workplace related,” he continued.

It's too bad we can't identify a common theme between this and other organized cells that carry out bomb and gun attacks in major Western cities.

Consciousness vs. "Fissiparous Seething"

A reasonably good summary of the problem that consciousness poses for our physical understanding of reality. It will be familiar to most of you, but it's worth going over again because it remains one of the more interesting problems.

Happier news

The Cameroon army frees 900 Boko Haram hostages, incidentally reducing the carbon footprint of a lot of Boko Haram members while they're at it.

Monsters

Well, the title certainly applies to the San Bernadino shooters, but in this particular case, it doesn't.

You may or may not be surprised to find that it in fact applies to me.  Apparently, I am a "cold-hearted monster" "indifferent to loss of life".  What could I have done to earn these appellation?  I objected to the President's proposal to strip citizens of their Fifth Amendment rights to due process because they're on a "No Fly List".  After asserting what it is that I object to (the arbitrary removal of civil rights on the say so of an unelected bureaucrat), I was told that I must come up with an alternative solution then.  Otherwise I am... I am unsure... wrong?  Bad?  Irresponsible?  It was never made clear to me.  So I gave my response.  "Nothing" would be a better solution than this.  And to borrow from an old joke, "that's when the fight started".*

Pop Culture Metaphors Don't Work For Me

Oddly placed in an article on dark matter:

If dark matter were a pop star, WIMPs would be Beyoncé. “WIMPs are the canonical candidate,” says Manoj Kaplinghat, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

What on earth is that supposed to mean?

Foamy the Squirrel Says...

Solid advice, Foamy.

There. Will. Be. Polka!

To paraphrase Ace, or some moron over there, it's a spectacularly silly time to be alive.

Berdoo Is The Weirdest Thing I've Ever Seen

Initial reports are never right, but today was really strange. Who are these guys?

1) It seems clear that this was a semi-professional team of guys who knew how to work together, and who had either the capacity to make pipe bombs or connections who did. They carried out their plan and managed to exfil successfully before police could arrive. Yet hours later, they're still driving around in the same car, in the same kit, a mile and a half away?

2) The target doesn't make any obvious sense as a terrorist target, except that it was a soft target with lots of people.

It's like you had a team of guys who meticulously planned out how they'd carry out a major attack, but never got further in their planning than how they'd drive away from the scene within a given response time, leaving IEDs to cover their tracks. There was apparently no "then what?" considered. There were major freeways they could have taken, and if you've got three guys you surely have access to more than one car. They could have dumped the SUV and their kit, piled into a white sedan, and been in another state by the time the police caught up to the first vehicle.

Wannabe martyrs? One of whom lost his nerve and fled on foot when the final firefight arrived? But then why bother with the exfil? You could have stayed and killed a few more people, and become martyrs where you were. The police were coming.

It's like they had everything mapped out until a minute after they drove away, and then suddenly realized they had no idea what came next (and no imagination between them that would let them plan up something better than 'drive around the neighborhood in the getaway car').

The one thing that might make sense is if they had been trained by professionals who considered them disposable. They were taught how to do the part they did right, and then... what now?

Or maybe they're just yahoos who thought this out carefully on their own, and weren't bright enough to think beyond it.

Otherwise, conflicting details in all the reports make it hard to know what to think so far.

Final IAEA Report on Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program Released

Two weeks early, too. Iran definitely had one, it lasted formally until 2003, informally continued after, and the IAEA has gotten chiefly stonewalling and obfuscation from Iran about its program since then. Iran's written answers promised under the "road map" in July were so ambiguous that the IAEA provided a list of follow up questions and held a number of technical meetings to try to get answers, but the report rather suspiciously says absolutely nothing about whether any answers were forthcoming.

Too bad we'll all be having another round of talk about how important it is to strip Americans of their weapons today instead. This will probably slide into the ether almost unnoticed.

Quiz: Opening Lines of Medieval Literature

Without making any use to any reference materials whatsoever, including of course search engines, I managed 9 of 10. Oddly enough, I'd read the one I missed many times -- Erec en Enide -- but somehow failed to remember the opening.

Dissent Magazine: "Beyond the Wage System"

A call for a universal basic income to address the exploitative nature of work, "under-work," "over-work," and non-work.

The author "teaches in the Women’s Studies Program at Duke University. She studies feminist theory, political theory, the critical study of work, and utopian thought."

By coincidence, I also ran across this image from an anarchist cartoonist that seems to capture the argument surprisingly well:

The American People Are Uniquely Bad

Asked about the "mass shooting" where a nut job shot three people at a Colorado abortion clinic, President Obama once again became exasperated with the American people.

"I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn't happen in other countries."

He actually said this. In Paris.

The author thinks it might be part of a case for his removal from office -- not by impeachment, but for cause of mental impairment according to the 25th Amendment. That of course is merely a rhetorical flourish: the 25th Amendment requires members of his cabinet or the President himself to admit that he cannot perform the functions, and the action can be undone simply by the President sending a letter to the effect that "no such disability exists" unless the Vice President anda majority of executive branch heads insist that he is not able. It was very carefully balanced so as not to be an extra tool for Congress to use against a President it didn't like.

Still it is a strange thing to have said, in Paris.

UPDATE: The Washington Post fact-checks the statement.

Is his statement true?

In one sense, the answer would be “yes.” President Obama’s statement was in the form of: “Every time X happens, I say Y.”

For Your Friend, Tex

You can wait until next Thanksgiving if you want, but let us know how it goes.

The Fruits of Gun Control Talk

This is probably a great time to invest in gun manufacturing stocks, given that the President claims it'll be a major focus of his final year in office. Congratulations to those who already do own such stocks: you'll probably be getting a nice dividend.

Please Refrain From Shooting Your Cab Driver

The fact that your cab driver is a Muslim does not justify the practice. If he took you where you wanted to go without heavily padding the fee by ferrying you along the "scenic route," you should tip him instead.

Unless your cab driver should try to kill you, kidnap you at gunpoint, or something similar, shooting them is always inappropriate.