In the latest EconTalk, Russ Roberts interviews Chris Coyne about his book After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy. Along with the few relative successes like post-WW2 Germany and Japan, it goes over numerous failures and explains why best laid plans went awry (a paper of his taking a public-choice perspective on the bureaucracies of reconstruction can be found here). Chris is a contributor to the Austrian Economists blog and Russ manages Cafe Hayek with Don Boudreaux. A list of foreign interventions by the United States starting with Wounded Knee and ending in 2001 from ZMag is here.
Steve Sailer points out Stanley Kurtz’s “I and My Brother against My Cousin” in NRO on the importance of tribalism in the Middle East, as opposed to Islam. It has plenty of bashing of post-modernist/post-colonialist and Marxist academics as well. Steve previously highlighted Stanley’s anthropological perspective on the Middle East here and here. I’m sure this will lead to another complaint from Lawrence Auster on “non-Islamic theories of islamic extremism”, a complaint I don’t think much of for reasons explained here. The classic article on the distinction between old tribal codes and the orthodox tenets of Islam is Pushtunwali: Honor Among Them.
I just learned from this post at The Daily Burkeman1 that the cause of the recent trouble at TakiMag was Prozium (UPDATE: Prozium states that he had already left Taki’s before the trouble started and Alex Linder from VNN was responsible). I’ve come to have a low opinion of the average commenter on the internet (at least for relatively large/popular sites like TakiMag) and so registration seems like a reasonable solution to the problem. I haven’t had any problems here with my few readers and for the moment intend to let people post whatever they want as long as it isn’t spam. Savrola at TDB1 has plenty of mockery for the Zmiraks of the world (and Kevin Carson) that seems to blend into a cynical take on the paleo movement more generally (although displaying anything but pessimism about the prospects of conservatism might be grounds for expulsion from paleoland). Prozium is strangely optimistic, as he believes that paleos will ultimately achieve their goals despite their utter failure to accomplish anything themselves. Plenty of other reactions elsewhere. On a somewhat related note, James Poulos claims that deconstructionism is more a threat to postmodern bourgeois liberalism than postmodern conservatism in a post that reminds why I generally don’t bother reading postmodernism of any sort.
April 7, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I quit posting at TakiMag in mid-March to focus on other issues. It was only later that I found out that I had been banned by Zmirak. Linder is the “Virtual Hitler” who has been stirring up trouble over there lately. He has taken credit for it over at VNN. I found out about this when Zmirak linking to the post.
April 10, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I believe in making the world safe for demogogueracy.
April 10, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I believe in making the world safe for demogogueracy.
Sure thing. Is that rule of the demagogues?
April 10, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Looks as though I may have been blocked from “The Bear Diaries,” unless it’s a technical glitch or something. I suppose that’s possible, and I really don’t mean to flatter myself.
I never enabled comments on my blog for a few lame reasons, the first being that when I started out, I really didn’t think the stuff I was writing was amenable the kind of dialogue that takes place in blogland. It never felt as though I was quite in tune with the form. To me, The Hoover Hog site was just this small corner where I could tie these little mental fits together for my own private and selfish reasons. I saw it as a continuation of the silly little magazine I was plugging at years ago, and it came as something of a shock to discover that anyone was reading it at all. Still does.
Then there is the fact that I can be terribly lazy. I’m prone to go for days or weeks without posting anything. Thus, I can’t see myself being a good steward or host or whatever. Somehow, it feels like too much responsibility. The spam would stay up, along with every hateful hurtful thing.
What’s more, I’ve found that these threads can be distractingly seductive, which is good and bad. But for me, the initial selfish idea was to indulge in certain loose serial monogamies, certain self-indulgently protracted dalliances with such topics as might preoccupy me. And then to simply move on. In chasing the digressive currents that spawn from a spontaneous community, I vaguely feared that I would simply lose sleep, or lose focus, or stop reading books at the local bar after work. And that would be a shame.
Not that you asked, of course.
April 11, 2008 at 12:10 am
“The Bear Diaries,”
What are you referring to?
Your earlier entries at The Hog were as you describe, but they’ve gotten more bloggy as of late. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
April 11, 2008 at 7:37 am
Funny, I think the increasing blogginess — and you’re quite correct about this — was driven by the fact that I noticed that people were reading, which sort of goes to my aforestated rationale. Anyway, I’ll probably just fire up the comments the next time I get the urge to feed the beast. Maybe no one will come, and I can go back to the barstool. Sniff, sniff.
“The Bear Diaries” is the forum where I was discussing antinatalism with some good Christian people, who seemed at first amused but hostile, then hostile and annoyed. The thread is here:
http://sleepyoldbear.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/warning-insanity-present-at-dangerous-levels-you-have-been-warned/
Not to tie up your space here, but if your remotely interested, my nuked response to Spillman’s (and Deborah’s) final word is copied below the line.
_____________________________
Deborah,
Perhaps “procreative urges” was a poor choice of words, but you seem to recognize that your desire to reproduce is at least partly informed by your genetic constitution, or your nature. If it’s merely a selfless desire to have a child, you could opt for adoption. Not only would you be channeling your maternal, er, sensibilities, toward someone who already exists and whose needs are not currently being met, you would categorically avoid even the small possibility of creating a human being whose life may turn out very badly. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that the idea of adoption doesn’t feel the same somehow. If we are essentially gene-machines (which is really what I was getting at with my reference to “procreative urges”), then this difference in sentiment, which, again, I may be wrong to presume, would make perfect sense.
Regarding other arguments against procreation, my initial comment in this thread sought merely to distinguish Benatar’s normative antinatalism from the more commonly encountered environmentalist strain, with which I disagree.
Stillman,
Obviously, I disagree completely with your assertion that atheism implies any kind of moral vertigo. To my mind, the fact that we are rational and social creatures caught up in the same existential predicament is itself a sufficient foundation from which to foster a productive value system, which may in turn be reified through law and custom. For a pithy exposition on morality without God, I would refer you to Penn Jillette’s essay, “There is No God,” with which I largely agree (except for the bits about family creation, of course). Here’s the link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557
Just the same, even if I did agree with you that an atheist worldview leads to moral turpitude, I don’t know what I could do about it since I seem to be constitutionally incapable of believing in anything supernatural, and since I would object to the tenets of the Nicene Creed even if I could somehow bring myself to believe that it reflected a higher Truth.
If you want to read arguments by a converted Christian who at times comes precipitously close to embracing antinatalism, I highly recommend the papers on file at: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/ — particularly those under the heading “Pascal’s Wager and Christianity.” It’s fascinating stuff.
With reference to your scripturally based rejoinder regarding the Christian response to antinatalism, are you saying that eternal damnation is the biblical sanction for one’s failure to obey God’s command to “be fruitful” — even for those who otherwise accept Christ as the truth the light and the way? I’ve never heard this suggested before, but if it is true, then I guess you’d better have as many children as possible, and hope they do as well. And so on, and so on.
The politics of “surrender” abounds with irony.
April 11, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I have plenty of space which I encourage people to tie up.
April 12, 2008 at 7:25 pm
In fairness, I should note that my parting shot at The Bear Diaries turns out to have been erroneously blocked as spam and is now up on the site. Thanks to TGGP for rattling the cage.
April 13, 2008 at 3:47 pm
It is rare that I remove a comment. Blame the spam filter.
April 13, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Same with me. If anyone’s comment is caught by the filter, I encourage them to notify me though. I wouldn’t want to delete some by accident if I skim through the spam too quickly.