On environmentalism. I probably should have shared this a while back, but I forgot about this gem until just recently. You can hear the "free thinking" cohort in the audience try to shout him down. [Warning - Strong Language]
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
A Peaceful Rebel
Rebels are often portrayed as loud, brash, and violent, but I submit that the most effective form of rebellion is peaceful, even Gandhian. That rebellion consists of two simple things: 1) speak the truth; and 2) refuse to submit.
Orwell observed that "in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." We inhabit a time of universal deceit, much of it perpetrated by government when claiming that we still live under the Constitution or in a free country, but much of it also perpetrated by the media and the entertainment industry when condemning every virtue and praising every vice. Trust me, all it takes is a polite, reasoned, and quiet statement rejecting such lies to throw people around you into a state of enraged panic. If you are well-educated and cannot be easily dismissed, so much the better, but what matters most of all is that you not allow yourself to be shamed into silence. Jesus told his followers to be the salt of the Earth so as to annoy people, and he was a peaceful rebel par excellence. Do the same, and enjoy watching the cockroaches scatter as the light of truth shines upon them. Who knows? You might actually persuade someone who was raised in the government asylums called "schools" to re-think the mountain of lies he has been force-fed almost since birth.
As for refusing to submit to governmental or cultural tyranny, there are multiple ways to do this, so you need to find your own comfort level here. Some people, such as in the Occupy movement, refuse to submit to police and thus risk serious injury or jail. Though my resistance is not nearly as theatrical, it is just as effective. For example:
Orwell observed that "in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." We inhabit a time of universal deceit, much of it perpetrated by government when claiming that we still live under the Constitution or in a free country, but much of it also perpetrated by the media and the entertainment industry when condemning every virtue and praising every vice. Trust me, all it takes is a polite, reasoned, and quiet statement rejecting such lies to throw people around you into a state of enraged panic. If you are well-educated and cannot be easily dismissed, so much the better, but what matters most of all is that you not allow yourself to be shamed into silence. Jesus told his followers to be the salt of the Earth so as to annoy people, and he was a peaceful rebel par excellence. Do the same, and enjoy watching the cockroaches scatter as the light of truth shines upon them. Who knows? You might actually persuade someone who was raised in the government asylums called "schools" to re-think the mountain of lies he has been force-fed almost since birth.
As for refusing to submit to governmental or cultural tyranny, there are multiple ways to do this, so you need to find your own comfort level here. Some people, such as in the Occupy movement, refuse to submit to police and thus risk serious injury or jail. Though my resistance is not nearly as theatrical, it is just as effective. For example:
- I will not bend to the Federal Reserve's insane and punitive monetary policy, no matter if the interest rate is frozen at low levels from here to eternity. Ben Bernanke and all the other Keynesian fanatics think prosperity is built on borrowing and spending rather than on saving and investing. They hate savers like me and want to bludgeon us all into consumption and debt, but I will remain frugal and debt-free for a very long time.
- I don't vote in federal elections. The federal government now functions almost entirely beyond the Constitution and thus has devolved into a criminal enterprise. Should I participate in deciding who runs the mafia? Absolutely not. Participating in crime would demean me and legitimize the wrongdoing.
- Unless someday I work for (state or local) government and am discharging a public function, I will not accept government money or benefits, whether it's Social Security, Medicare, or any other program that forcibly re-distributes wealth among private citizens.
- I will not marry again. I swore that if I married it would be only once, and the one time I married it blew up in my face. My sin was not being perpetually exciting or kinky, a sin so grievous that no amount of fidelity, hard work, kindness, patience, or love could absolve it. And I got off easy because there were no children who could be stolen from me or made to suffer; no alimony to be paid; and no property division to decimate what I had built up. There are countless others who have had it worse and whose lives have been destroyed by modern "marriage," an institution less binding than a cell-phone contract and which excuses and even rewards frivolous divorce. More people than ever are avoiding this vicious and unjust system, and the state now is running low on pockets to pick and young souls to abduct.
- I do not buy any products or shop at any store whose advertising is crude, obnoxious, or misandrist. That narrows my options down quite a bit, but it can be done.
- I do not associate with crude or obnoxious people. There were far more of them in Florida, but I studiously avoid the few I've run into in Montana.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
War -- Part VI
Panama
Few today remember that President Theodore Roosevelt played a key role in establishing Panama as a nation at the dawn of the twentieth century, yet many do remember that the United States invaded Panama towards the end of the twentieth century to detain its head of state, Manuel Noriega. Panama’s story parallels the larger story of Latin America, a region where Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the right to intervene at any time to maintain both order as well as insulation from European influence. This Roosevelt “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine has set the tone for United States policy towards Latin America ever since, proving impervious to any legal prohibitions against the initiation of military force.
During the Spanish-American war of 1898 – where Roosevelt earned a great deal of fame by helping Cuba and Puerto Rico win their independence from Spain – the U.S. battleship Oregon had to round the tip of South America in order to make the long journey from the Pacific Ocean. This painstaking experience drove home the lesson that a waterway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific would greatly enhance American naval power. Once Roosevelt had ascended from the vice-presidency to the presidency upon the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, he settled on the isthmus of Panama as the best location for a canal. Colombia, which owned the isthmus, seemed willing to negotiate for a canal zone and offered a 6-mile wide strip of land across the isthmus in exchange for a handsome price. Colombia’s senate, acting as a republic’s legislature often does, cantankerously rejected the treaty. Roosevelt, displaying a disregard for Colombia’s institutions that would make any modern president proud, flew into a rage: “Damn the law, I want the canal built!” he reportedly yelled. He did not attempt to negotiate further with Colombia or to look for an alternative site, such as the oft-considered Nicaragua. Instead, Roosevelt decided to support an insurgency against the Colombian government, despite the fact that the U.S. had a longstanding treaty with Colombia to maintain the neutrality of the isthmus.
Philippe Bunau-Varilla – the Frenchman charged with constructing a canal in Panama, and who stood much to lose if that location ceased to be available – raised a Panamanian army consisting mostly of firemen and mercenaries. This ragtag group started a “revolution” on November 3, 1903. When Colombian troops moved to respond with force (as was Colombia’s sovereign right), United States gun-ships thwarted their advance. Shortly thereafter Roosevelt recognized Panama as an independent nation, and Panama (via its temporary international representative Bunau-Varilla) was all too happy to carve out a canal zone for the United States’ perpetual use. Two years after Roosevelt died, the U.S. Senate paid $25 million to Colombia as recompense for the decimation of Colombia’s sovereignty and territory.
Granted, all of this took place long before Nuremberg. The episode does offer valuable insight into more recent events proving that Panama, though independent of Colombia, was most certainly not independent of the United States. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush ordered a military invasion of the isthmus because its head of state, Manuel Noriega, had seized power from the democratically elected government in a coup d’état and had allegedly violated the domestic drug laws of the United States. These justifications, however, did nothing to make the invasion anything other than an illegal use of force.
First, to reiterate, international force is justified when necessary to defend against actual or imminent armed attack, or when the U.N. Security Council authorizes it, neither of which applied to Panama. The Bush administration did make a token argument that the invasion qualified as self-defense because Noriega’s troops had killed a U.S. serviceman stationed in Panama. Though this murder was a criminal act and may have triggered Panama’s legal liability to the United States, such incidents happen all the time and certainly do not qualify as international “armed attacks” on a nation’s sovereignty justifying an overwhelming military response. Customary law has long recognized that an act of self-defense, even if presumed necessary, must also be proportionate to the “attack” in question.
Second, it makes no difference that Noriega seized power from an elected government. International law does not prescribe how nations must order their internal affairs, but regards a de facto national leader is the de jure (legal) leader as well. Panamanians alone may sort out who their leaders are, by ballots, bullets, or machetes. For those who trumpet the supposedly universal obligations of human rights, "democracy" and the like, even an internal violation of such norms does not amount to a casus belli.
Third, as we shall see with regard to Chile, Guatemala and Iran, the United States itself has overthrown elected governments when convenient, so the “pro-democracy” mantra rings hollow. Moreover, it is curious for the United States to argue that someone like Noriega has no right to topple his own country’s elected government, while the United States topples foreign countries’ elected governments quite frequently.
Fourth, as the active head of state, Manuel Noriega possessed full immunity (rationae personae) from the prosecution that the United States brought against him. The circuitous explanation that the reviewing court gave for ignoring this problem was that the federal government did not recognize Noriega as the head of state, so no immunity applied. In other words, immunity does not apply if the prosecutor vetoes it. To illustrate the absurdity of this argument, imagine for a moment that a foreign nation, perhaps China, had abducted President George W. Bush during his first term in office and put him on trial for violating Chinese law. Imagine further that the Chinese government rejected Bush’s personal immunity because, in its opinion, the 2000 election was fraudulent. I doubt that the federal government would endorse such a finding, although it is indeed the necessary outcome of federal policy.
Fifth, the United States has no right to enforce its domestic laws within the territory of another nation. Even if Noriega had been a United States citizen rather than a foreign head of state, the most the federal government could legitimately do would be to negotiate his extradition from Panama to try him for his crimes.
Noriega’s sin was not eschewing democracy, but eschewing United States’ control. In light of the historical precedent discussed below, Noriega should have known that he could have persisted as a dictator for a long time but for committing that sin.
Few today remember that President Theodore Roosevelt played a key role in establishing Panama as a nation at the dawn of the twentieth century, yet many do remember that the United States invaded Panama towards the end of the twentieth century to detain its head of state, Manuel Noriega. Panama’s story parallels the larger story of Latin America, a region where Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the right to intervene at any time to maintain both order as well as insulation from European influence. This Roosevelt “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine has set the tone for United States policy towards Latin America ever since, proving impervious to any legal prohibitions against the initiation of military force.
During the Spanish-American war of 1898 – where Roosevelt earned a great deal of fame by helping Cuba and Puerto Rico win their independence from Spain – the U.S. battleship Oregon had to round the tip of South America in order to make the long journey from the Pacific Ocean. This painstaking experience drove home the lesson that a waterway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific would greatly enhance American naval power. Once Roosevelt had ascended from the vice-presidency to the presidency upon the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, he settled on the isthmus of Panama as the best location for a canal. Colombia, which owned the isthmus, seemed willing to negotiate for a canal zone and offered a 6-mile wide strip of land across the isthmus in exchange for a handsome price. Colombia’s senate, acting as a republic’s legislature often does, cantankerously rejected the treaty. Roosevelt, displaying a disregard for Colombia’s institutions that would make any modern president proud, flew into a rage: “Damn the law, I want the canal built!” he reportedly yelled. He did not attempt to negotiate further with Colombia or to look for an alternative site, such as the oft-considered Nicaragua. Instead, Roosevelt decided to support an insurgency against the Colombian government, despite the fact that the U.S. had a longstanding treaty with Colombia to maintain the neutrality of the isthmus.
Philippe Bunau-Varilla – the Frenchman charged with constructing a canal in Panama, and who stood much to lose if that location ceased to be available – raised a Panamanian army consisting mostly of firemen and mercenaries. This ragtag group started a “revolution” on November 3, 1903. When Colombian troops moved to respond with force (as was Colombia’s sovereign right), United States gun-ships thwarted their advance. Shortly thereafter Roosevelt recognized Panama as an independent nation, and Panama (via its temporary international representative Bunau-Varilla) was all too happy to carve out a canal zone for the United States’ perpetual use. Two years after Roosevelt died, the U.S. Senate paid $25 million to Colombia as recompense for the decimation of Colombia’s sovereignty and territory.
Granted, all of this took place long before Nuremberg. The episode does offer valuable insight into more recent events proving that Panama, though independent of Colombia, was most certainly not independent of the United States. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush ordered a military invasion of the isthmus because its head of state, Manuel Noriega, had seized power from the democratically elected government in a coup d’état and had allegedly violated the domestic drug laws of the United States. These justifications, however, did nothing to make the invasion anything other than an illegal use of force.
First, to reiterate, international force is justified when necessary to defend against actual or imminent armed attack, or when the U.N. Security Council authorizes it, neither of which applied to Panama. The Bush administration did make a token argument that the invasion qualified as self-defense because Noriega’s troops had killed a U.S. serviceman stationed in Panama. Though this murder was a criminal act and may have triggered Panama’s legal liability to the United States, such incidents happen all the time and certainly do not qualify as international “armed attacks” on a nation’s sovereignty justifying an overwhelming military response. Customary law has long recognized that an act of self-defense, even if presumed necessary, must also be proportionate to the “attack” in question.
Second, it makes no difference that Noriega seized power from an elected government. International law does not prescribe how nations must order their internal affairs, but regards a de facto national leader is the de jure (legal) leader as well. Panamanians alone may sort out who their leaders are, by ballots, bullets, or machetes. For those who trumpet the supposedly universal obligations of human rights, "democracy" and the like, even an internal violation of such norms does not amount to a casus belli.
Third, as we shall see with regard to Chile, Guatemala and Iran, the United States itself has overthrown elected governments when convenient, so the “pro-democracy” mantra rings hollow. Moreover, it is curious for the United States to argue that someone like Noriega has no right to topple his own country’s elected government, while the United States topples foreign countries’ elected governments quite frequently.
Fourth, as the active head of state, Manuel Noriega possessed full immunity (rationae personae) from the prosecution that the United States brought against him. The circuitous explanation that the reviewing court gave for ignoring this problem was that the federal government did not recognize Noriega as the head of state, so no immunity applied. In other words, immunity does not apply if the prosecutor vetoes it. To illustrate the absurdity of this argument, imagine for a moment that a foreign nation, perhaps China, had abducted President George W. Bush during his first term in office and put him on trial for violating Chinese law. Imagine further that the Chinese government rejected Bush’s personal immunity because, in its opinion, the 2000 election was fraudulent. I doubt that the federal government would endorse such a finding, although it is indeed the necessary outcome of federal policy.
Fifth, the United States has no right to enforce its domestic laws within the territory of another nation. Even if Noriega had been a United States citizen rather than a foreign head of state, the most the federal government could legitimately do would be to negotiate his extradition from Panama to try him for his crimes.
Noriega’s sin was not eschewing democracy, but eschewing United States’ control. In light of the historical precedent discussed below, Noriega should have known that he could have persisted as a dictator for a long time but for committing that sin.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The Trayvon Martin Tragedy
Unless you live under a rock, you've probably read in the news that a young man, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed while walking home in a gated community in Sanford, Florida. His death is a tragedy, but now an even bigger tragedy is brewing that involves race and the rule of law.
The man who shot Trayvon followed him because he looked "suspicious," which many take as code language for black. Against the advice of a 911 dispatcher, the man continued following Trayvon and confronted him. According to the only eyewitness testimony we have so far, a fight ensued and the man fatally shot Trayvon, claiming self-defense. Sanford's police chief conducted an investigation and determined that he could not pursue charges because the claim of self-defense looked solid.
Now all hell has broken loose. The police chief has stepped down temporarily and is confronting a chorus of voices chanting for him to be fired. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have crawled out of the woodwork. Barack Obama has called for national "soul searching" and wants the feds to intervene and investigate. Senator Charles Schumer thinks that Florida's law of self-defense needs to be changed. The New Black Panthers have put a bounty on the shooter's head. And the shooter has drawn attention to the fact that he is Hispanic in order to help exonerate himself in the public's eyes.
Everyone should shut up and think about this for a moment, although I'm sure that's not going to happen.
First, Florida's law of self-defense was altered a few years back to allow people to "stand their ground" rather than retreat when facing an attack. This law has been portrayed as violent and uncivilized, but in fact it mirrors the old common law and makes good sense because the right of self-defense is fundamental. To require retreat is truly uncivilized because it compels innocent people to accommodate aggressors. And the issue here is not whether Trayvon posed a real threat of death or serious bodily harm to the man who shot him. The issue is whether the shooter had a reasonable belief of imminent death or serious bodily harm -- i.e., the test is both subjective (a belief) and objective (that is reasonable). This doctrine of self-defense has worked well for centuries. Is it perfect? No, but it's better than the alternatives of 1) being forced to cower and hide, or 2) being forced to know with 100% accuracy that the person coming at you really is able to kill you. Here, the evidence thus far shows that the man had a reasonable fear for his life because Trayvon attacked him upon being questioned. The law did not require retreat nor 100% accuracy about Trayvon's lethality, so the killing was tragic, but not criminal (unless some new evidence comes to light). Whatever pure or impure motives the man had for following Trayvon and questioning him have no bearing on the legal analysis -- following and questioning are not crimes.
Second, there is no constitutional basis for the federal government to stick its nose into this. Homicide, self-defense, and criminal law are all within the domain of Florida's police power, whereas the federal government has a paltry few enumerated powers to work with. The shooter was not acting as a police officer or other agent of the state, so he cannot be said to have violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The only federal crimes recognized by the Constitution are counterfeiting, piracy, offenses committed on the high seas, violations of international law, and treason; the thousands of other federal crimes now on the books are unlawful, and a federal prosecution against the shooter would be equally unlawful. Arrogance oozes from Charles Schumer as he recommends revamping state laws, for the federal government cannot tell states what kind of self-defense doctrine is best. America is a federation, not a singular nation, and each jurisdiction can learn from this experience and change its laws as it wishes -- not as Schumer wishes.
If anyone's civil rights are being threatened now, it is the shooter's. He acted by all accounts within the scope of the law, yet the President is effectively defaming and endangering him rather than acting as the dignified and prudent steward of the Constitution he swore to protect.
And it is sad that the shooter feels that the most effective way to cleanse his image is to proclaim that he is not white. In so doing, he boosts the perverse political narrative that only whites can be guilty of racism. The narrative itself is racist, but unfortunately it still has legs.
In conclusion, the shooter strikes me as a suburban commando of a type I remember all too well from having lived in Florida. Ideally, he would have left Trayvon alone unless and until Trayvon did something wrong. The decision to confront Trayvon was unnecessary and unwise, but it did not rob the shooter of his right to self-defense, which he appears to have exercised when Trayvon grew belligerent and attacked him. If Florida's law of self-defense is unpopular, then let the people of Florida change it. Until then, it must be upheld.
The man who shot Trayvon followed him because he looked "suspicious," which many take as code language for black. Against the advice of a 911 dispatcher, the man continued following Trayvon and confronted him. According to the only eyewitness testimony we have so far, a fight ensued and the man fatally shot Trayvon, claiming self-defense. Sanford's police chief conducted an investigation and determined that he could not pursue charges because the claim of self-defense looked solid.
Now all hell has broken loose. The police chief has stepped down temporarily and is confronting a chorus of voices chanting for him to be fired. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have crawled out of the woodwork. Barack Obama has called for national "soul searching" and wants the feds to intervene and investigate. Senator Charles Schumer thinks that Florida's law of self-defense needs to be changed. The New Black Panthers have put a bounty on the shooter's head. And the shooter has drawn attention to the fact that he is Hispanic in order to help exonerate himself in the public's eyes.
Everyone should shut up and think about this for a moment, although I'm sure that's not going to happen.
First, Florida's law of self-defense was altered a few years back to allow people to "stand their ground" rather than retreat when facing an attack. This law has been portrayed as violent and uncivilized, but in fact it mirrors the old common law and makes good sense because the right of self-defense is fundamental. To require retreat is truly uncivilized because it compels innocent people to accommodate aggressors. And the issue here is not whether Trayvon posed a real threat of death or serious bodily harm to the man who shot him. The issue is whether the shooter had a reasonable belief of imminent death or serious bodily harm -- i.e., the test is both subjective (a belief) and objective (that is reasonable). This doctrine of self-defense has worked well for centuries. Is it perfect? No, but it's better than the alternatives of 1) being forced to cower and hide, or 2) being forced to know with 100% accuracy that the person coming at you really is able to kill you. Here, the evidence thus far shows that the man had a reasonable fear for his life because Trayvon attacked him upon being questioned. The law did not require retreat nor 100% accuracy about Trayvon's lethality, so the killing was tragic, but not criminal (unless some new evidence comes to light). Whatever pure or impure motives the man had for following Trayvon and questioning him have no bearing on the legal analysis -- following and questioning are not crimes.
Second, there is no constitutional basis for the federal government to stick its nose into this. Homicide, self-defense, and criminal law are all within the domain of Florida's police power, whereas the federal government has a paltry few enumerated powers to work with. The shooter was not acting as a police officer or other agent of the state, so he cannot be said to have violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The only federal crimes recognized by the Constitution are counterfeiting, piracy, offenses committed on the high seas, violations of international law, and treason; the thousands of other federal crimes now on the books are unlawful, and a federal prosecution against the shooter would be equally unlawful. Arrogance oozes from Charles Schumer as he recommends revamping state laws, for the federal government cannot tell states what kind of self-defense doctrine is best. America is a federation, not a singular nation, and each jurisdiction can learn from this experience and change its laws as it wishes -- not as Schumer wishes.
If anyone's civil rights are being threatened now, it is the shooter's. He acted by all accounts within the scope of the law, yet the President is effectively defaming and endangering him rather than acting as the dignified and prudent steward of the Constitution he swore to protect.
And it is sad that the shooter feels that the most effective way to cleanse his image is to proclaim that he is not white. In so doing, he boosts the perverse political narrative that only whites can be guilty of racism. The narrative itself is racist, but unfortunately it still has legs.
In conclusion, the shooter strikes me as a suburban commando of a type I remember all too well from having lived in Florida. Ideally, he would have left Trayvon alone unless and until Trayvon did something wrong. The decision to confront Trayvon was unnecessary and unwise, but it did not rob the shooter of his right to self-defense, which he appears to have exercised when Trayvon grew belligerent and attacked him. If Florida's law of self-defense is unpopular, then let the people of Florida change it. Until then, it must be upheld.
UPDATE:
As new details continue to transpire (note the correct usage of that word), it appears more and more certain that the shooter was a wannabe cop, but also that Trayvon was a wannabe gangster who assaulted the shooter for simply daring to question him. You could almost write a tragic poem about the winding path these two took that brought them together on that fateful night. I'm reminded of Convergence Of The Twain, where Thomas Hardy eerily described how the Titanic met with the iceberg.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Right Again On Environmentalism
Not long ago I devoted several posts to explaining why environmentalism is simply the latest mechanism to lull the lowest common denominator into accepting -- even demanding -- greater governmental control over their lives and the centralization of political power on the world stage. The posts are arranged numerically into Parts I, II, III, and IV.
It appears the powers-that-be have dropped all pretense and now openly admit their totalitarian designs. So you see, there's no reason to take my word for it or to disagree with me any longer. I was right. The question is whether you care. If so, you must come to grips with the fact that this is a war; this is no longer a matter of genteel political debate. There is no compromise with lies, tyranny, or injustice. We must strap on our boots and fight.
Christian warriors holed up in the mountains of Asturias when Islam had conquered almost all of Spain, and those warriors spent the next eight centuries fighting back and ultimately reconquering what was theirs. Likewise, the remnant of all that is good and holy in the West must come together and prepare for battle, even if takes centuries to prevail. When you consider the bloody and impoverished mess that typifies the story of human history, and which is poised to re-assume control, you know it's worth it.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
War -- Part V
Vietnam
Far too much blood and ink have been spilled over the Vietnam War for me to do anything but briefly summarize why the United States had no legal basis for waging it.
After the Vietnamese defeated their French occupiers at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, they agreed to partition the country temporarily into northern and southern halves pending a nationwide election scheduled for 1956. It soon became obvious, though, that this partition would be anything but temporary: many Vietnamese fled from the communists in the North to find sanctuary with the government sponsored by the United States in the South. According to the United States, it could not allow a nationwide election that might deliver power to the communists, since this would cause the “dominoes” to start falling all around Southeast Asia and beyond. Better to nip the problem in the bud than let it grow out of control. Therefore, over the next several years the United States offered a steady supply of money and military assistance to the government in the South, going so far as to select a head of state and help him rig elections. But events continued to spiral out of control, as a strengthening communist insurgency and a coup d’état against the unpopular and brutal Southern government provoked President Kennedy to send even more military advisors and equipment. The final straw was a pair of confrontations in the Gulf of Tonkin between U.S. military vessels and torpedo boats from the North, which the new President Johnson portrayed as an “armed attack” on the United States. Privately, though, Johnson remarked that the sailors had been shooting at “flying fish” (a National Security Agency report, which was de-classified only in 2005, shows that the United States vessel initiated fire in the first incident and that there was no enemy presence whatsoever in the second). The U.S. Congress swiftly inked a resolution delegating unconstitutional power to President Johnson to declare and wage war on his own. After ten years and over two million deaths (some 58,000 of them American), the United States finally withdrew and allowed the South to fall to the communists.
It cannot be denied that the Vietnamese communists were bloodthirsty thugs. That fact did not, however, justify an American military intervention into the internal affairs of a small and impoverished nation located on the other side of the planet, let alone justify a ten-year war based on an inevitable confrontation sparked by such intervention. The only threat to national security that the United States worried of was a potential one, not an actual or imminent one, meaning that the use of military force in Vietnam was unlawful and violated the Nuremberg Principles. If the United States wished to help Vietnamese people escape communist oppression, it could have offered asylum or provided aid in many ways short of the drastic measures it took, and which ultimately produced a far greater tragedy for all involved.
Far too much blood and ink have been spilled over the Vietnam War for me to do anything but briefly summarize why the United States had no legal basis for waging it.
After the Vietnamese defeated their French occupiers at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, they agreed to partition the country temporarily into northern and southern halves pending a nationwide election scheduled for 1956. It soon became obvious, though, that this partition would be anything but temporary: many Vietnamese fled from the communists in the North to find sanctuary with the government sponsored by the United States in the South. According to the United States, it could not allow a nationwide election that might deliver power to the communists, since this would cause the “dominoes” to start falling all around Southeast Asia and beyond. Better to nip the problem in the bud than let it grow out of control. Therefore, over the next several years the United States offered a steady supply of money and military assistance to the government in the South, going so far as to select a head of state and help him rig elections. But events continued to spiral out of control, as a strengthening communist insurgency and a coup d’état against the unpopular and brutal Southern government provoked President Kennedy to send even more military advisors and equipment. The final straw was a pair of confrontations in the Gulf of Tonkin between U.S. military vessels and torpedo boats from the North, which the new President Johnson portrayed as an “armed attack” on the United States. Privately, though, Johnson remarked that the sailors had been shooting at “flying fish” (a National Security Agency report, which was de-classified only in 2005, shows that the United States vessel initiated fire in the first incident and that there was no enemy presence whatsoever in the second). The U.S. Congress swiftly inked a resolution delegating unconstitutional power to President Johnson to declare and wage war on his own. After ten years and over two million deaths (some 58,000 of them American), the United States finally withdrew and allowed the South to fall to the communists.
It cannot be denied that the Vietnamese communists were bloodthirsty thugs. That fact did not, however, justify an American military intervention into the internal affairs of a small and impoverished nation located on the other side of the planet, let alone justify a ten-year war based on an inevitable confrontation sparked by such intervention. The only threat to national security that the United States worried of was a potential one, not an actual or imminent one, meaning that the use of military force in Vietnam was unlawful and violated the Nuremberg Principles. If the United States wished to help Vietnamese people escape communist oppression, it could have offered asylum or provided aid in many ways short of the drastic measures it took, and which ultimately produced a far greater tragedy for all involved.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Feminism On Parade
I love women, but I hate feminists. Imagine the immense scorn a man would face if he openly described himself as a "masculist." The day an equal amount of scorn is heaped on feminists is the day they will have achieved their stated goal of equality, but that's hardly what they want. Feminism is a toxic byproduct of a society grown accustomed to prosperity and ease, similar to the diabetes that afflicts people who consume too much sugar. Like leftism in general, feminism believes that the harsh realities of life are evil conspiracies, thus conceiving of prosperity and ease as the rules rather than the exceptions they truly are. Ironically, if feminists keep getting their way and knocking the pillars out from under the society that supports them, they will get re-acquainted with harsh reality much faster than they might like.
Let us consider feminist attorney Gloria Allred, who wants Rush Limbaugh to be criminally prosecuted for chastising a young woman who demanded that Congress facilitate her sex life. According to Allred, the young woman was innocently engaging in her right of free speech, but Rush went beyond the pale of allowable discourse in shaming her. The truth, as usual, is the exact opposite. The young woman was asking Congress to do something beyond its constitutional authority and reminiscent of slavery, i.e., to force others to facilitate her lifestyle. Her speech called for an attack on society. That kind of conduct can and should be shamed if there's any hope of preserving what's left of Western civilization, which isn't much. Rush was the one truly engaging in free speech, for he was not demanding that force or violence be directed against anyone -- he was merely stating his mind to anyone who would listen.
Thus government considers attacking society, and when a member of society complains about it, government considers attacking him for daring to resist. If this is what feminism perceives as justice, it has accomplished more than I ever could to illustrate its hysterical and totalitarian nature. Feminists are bullies, and like all bullies, they are cowards -- they love to hit, but they run for help as soon as someone hits back.
There is even more irony to be found here because Allred seeks to use a patriarchal legal doctrine to pursue her feminist ends. Under the old (and presumably hated) patriarchy, it was slanderous to publicly accuse a woman of being unchaste. This was back when unchastity was considered shameful, which it no longer is (if anything, it is the chaste who are now singled out for ridicule). Now that a man has hit back, feminism flees to the patriarchy for protection. Even if the archaic legal doctrine Allred cites could steamroll the modern interpretation of the First Amendment, the doctrine doesn't apply to what Rush said. All he did was hang a label on the known facts that the woman admitted to Congress; he made no hint or suggestion of what she does in her private life beyond what she herself stated. This is not defamation.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Honoring Women
It being International Women's Day, I wanted to list some of the women I truly admire.
EDIT:
Shame on me for not mentioning Phyllis Schlafly, who almost singlehandedly defeated the "Equal Rights Amendment" that would have empowered the federal government to attack any perceived inequalities between men and women. It was Kurt Vonnegut who envisioned such a horrific future in his short story Harrison Bergeron, a world where "Handicapper General" Diana Moon Glampers forced the beautiful to wear ugly masks; the intelligent to wear earpieces blasting loud noise; and the strong to wear bags of birdshot. When the protagonist rebelled, Diana used some of the shot on him to snuff him out. Thank you, Phyllis, for proving that sometimes a woman is the only sane person around.
- Every woman in my family. They have stayed with me through thick and thin, many times when I didn't deserve it.
- Every woman ever cheated on, abused, or abandoned but did not use any of those as an excuse to give up.
- Every woman who honors her wedding vows.
- Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who so accurately captured the essence of evil as "banality," i.e., ignoring moral questions rather than even bothering to decide them incorrectly. The stereotypical example was the Nazi functionary who looked the other way and kept the trains running on time for fear of losing his livelihood.
- Ayn Rand, the philosopher whose worship of pure reason I believe is ultimately flawed, but who shook the world with the courage of her convictions.
- Jeannette Rankin, native Montanan and first woman in Congress. The real reason I admire her, though, is that she voted against both World Wars I and II. In the latter instance she was the only one in the entire Congress to do so, and that takes guts. If we had stayed out of World War I, World War II wouldn't have happened and millions of lives most likely would have been saved from fascism, Nazism, and socialism over the course of the twentieth century. And while World War II is trumpeted as the good war, it handed Eastern Europe to the USSR on a silver platter, and our involvement ultimately produced more death than would have occurred if we had minded our own business as George Washington counseled in his farewell address.
- Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, and any other woman who wades through blood and guts trying to save lives.
- Antigone. She spoke truth to power and was willing to die for it.
EDIT:
Shame on me for not mentioning Phyllis Schlafly, who almost singlehandedly defeated the "Equal Rights Amendment" that would have empowered the federal government to attack any perceived inequalities between men and women. It was Kurt Vonnegut who envisioned such a horrific future in his short story Harrison Bergeron, a world where "Handicapper General" Diana Moon Glampers forced the beautiful to wear ugly masks; the intelligent to wear earpieces blasting loud noise; and the strong to wear bags of birdshot. When the protagonist rebelled, Diana used some of the shot on him to snuff him out. Thank you, Phyllis, for proving that sometimes a woman is the only sane person around.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Movies: Star Trek (2009)
I love movies. Not only are they fun, but they give me plenty of opportunity to engage in my favorite pastime of making the simple complex. Many people strongly disdain subjecting movies to such treatment, usually with the refrain "it's only a movie." But movies speak volumes about the audiences who flock to see them, for what is popular or unpopular shows what resonates with the public mind.
The 2009 reboot of the Star Trek film series was enjoyable but full of plot holes and two-dimensional characters that left me disappointed. I am not a "Trekkie," and I don't care whether Hollywood adheres to Star Trek canon. However, the film struck me as pure kinetic energy lacking any of the depth or feeling in the older Trek universe. In this sense, the film is quite standard of modern cinema and did nothing to impede the film's wild popularity, which today centers on the hind brain rather than the frontal lobe.
A serious problem with the film is its lack of scientific plausibility, an essential trait of good science fiction. For example, we learn that a star near Romulus goes supernova, prompting the Vulcans to send Spock to siphon away the supernova's energy with an artificial black hole. Only supergiant stars have enough mass to go supernova. These supergiants are often too large, hot, and short-lived to sustain orbiting planets with life. It's unclear whether the star in question was at the center of the Romulan solar system (highly unlikely); regardless, if this was just a nearby star, even modern science could detect the serious danger it posed. It boggles the mind that the futuristic science of Star Trek was caught flat-footed by a supernova, especially one so close to Romulus that it posed a threat of annihilation rather than just radiation. Any sentient beings with the technology on display here would have fled Romulus long ago.
Spock's mission to contain the supernova after the fact poses another problem. The shockwave, gas, and energy of the supernova would have expanded in all directions very fast, placing them far beyond the event horizon of a new black hole. In point of fact, many supernovae leave natural black holes behind, a side effect of the star's collapse. Perhaps Spock planned to locate the black hole between Romulus and the oncoming shock wave, but it would hardly do Romulus much good to have a black hole nearby. Even if the black hole didn't suck Romulus in, it would seriously disrupt the equilibrium of the Romulan solar system. Once again, it would make much more sense for the Romulans to have evacuated instead of just sitting and waiting for Spock to deliver a black hole. Even as a precaution, one would expect a mass evacuation until after the mission had been attempted.
We also learn that a vengeful Romulan (Nero, cleverly named after the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned) witnessed his planet's destruction and had his massive ship sucked through the black hole, placing him over 100 years in the past. Spock's ship followed shortly later but emerged 25 years after Nero's did. No way. Even before reaching the event horizon, the ships would have been stretched and incinerated by the black hole's incredible tidal forces (i.e., the differential pull along the ships' length). Once inside the event horizon, the ships would have been crushed into nothing.
Overlooking all that, we still confront a time-travel plot that Hollywood just loves but which makes no sense. We are told that a "new timeline" now exists because Nero and Spock have emerged from the future and are altering events. Doesn't work that way. In the original timeline of the old Star Trek universe, Nero and Spock went into the black hole and did what they did -- there is only one series of events. If the timeline truly is new and splices away from the old one, then Nero and Spock will not go through the black hole, and none of what we just watched could have happened. (It's a foregone conclusion that in this new timeline, people will take preventive measures against the supernova that they now know will occur, though I still wonder why they didn't figure it out through normal scientific observation the first time.) And this new timeline poses all kinds of problems with Nero and the elderly Spock, who have a lifetime of memories of events that now did not happen and never will. They have become walking paradoxes.
And this new timeline is rather selective. Even though Kirk's father is now killed at birth, Kirk still grows up in Iowa; he still joins Starfleet; he still cheats on the Kobayashi Maru test; he still befriends the exact same crew; and he still becomes captain of the Enterprise. How convenient. The most familiar aspects of Star Trek are preserved, but all ensuing storylines are jettisoned. While I appreciate the filmmakers' desire to wipe the slate clean, this is incredibly inconsistent.
Then there is Nero, a Romulan so angry over the destruction of his planet that he spends 25 years plotting death and revenge -- even though his planet is now perfectly fine and has over a century to prepare for the supernova that he can warn everyone about. I can understand his being out of sorts right at the beginning, but behavior of this sort after having 25 years to figure things out makes no sense.
Then there is James T. Kirk and the youngish crew of the newly christened Enterprise. It's obvious that Hollywood has gone out of its way to make its youngish audience identify with these characters and conclude that yes, being a loudmouth punk is the key to excellence and leadership. Showing teenagers and twenty-somethings shove aside their elders and save the galaxy is gratifying, but self-serving and ridiculous.
And then, of course, there is Spock. He is offered not as a sophisticated Vulcan foil for the brash Earthlings, but rather as a piñata to be bludgeoned and re-configured to act more like his Earthling mother and crew members. For a series that prides itself on celebrating diversity, Star Trek shows incredible ethnocentrism toward Spock and tells him that yielding to his passions makes him more enlightened. Yet this is exactly what the Romulans thought when splitting away from the Vulcans, and the entire movie shows the devastation that a passionate Romulan (Nero) can wreak. It's a little-known fact that "passion" stems from the term "passive," since a passionate man is one who allows himself to be dominated by his id. Spock as Vulcan is active because he refuses to allow blind impulse to control him, and it's unfortunate that Star Trek is telling hordes of passive moviegoers exactly what their ids want to hear.
In the final analysis, the new Star Trek is fun but annoying to those of us who like to think. The old Star Trek was meant for thinking persons, but most cinema today surely is not, and Star Trek has been sucked into the black hole of mindless entertainment. We can only hope that the series, like the Enterprise itself, manages to escape.
The 2009 reboot of the Star Trek film series was enjoyable but full of plot holes and two-dimensional characters that left me disappointed. I am not a "Trekkie," and I don't care whether Hollywood adheres to Star Trek canon. However, the film struck me as pure kinetic energy lacking any of the depth or feeling in the older Trek universe. In this sense, the film is quite standard of modern cinema and did nothing to impede the film's wild popularity, which today centers on the hind brain rather than the frontal lobe.
A serious problem with the film is its lack of scientific plausibility, an essential trait of good science fiction. For example, we learn that a star near Romulus goes supernova, prompting the Vulcans to send Spock to siphon away the supernova's energy with an artificial black hole. Only supergiant stars have enough mass to go supernova. These supergiants are often too large, hot, and short-lived to sustain orbiting planets with life. It's unclear whether the star in question was at the center of the Romulan solar system (highly unlikely); regardless, if this was just a nearby star, even modern science could detect the serious danger it posed. It boggles the mind that the futuristic science of Star Trek was caught flat-footed by a supernova, especially one so close to Romulus that it posed a threat of annihilation rather than just radiation. Any sentient beings with the technology on display here would have fled Romulus long ago.
Spock's mission to contain the supernova after the fact poses another problem. The shockwave, gas, and energy of the supernova would have expanded in all directions very fast, placing them far beyond the event horizon of a new black hole. In point of fact, many supernovae leave natural black holes behind, a side effect of the star's collapse. Perhaps Spock planned to locate the black hole between Romulus and the oncoming shock wave, but it would hardly do Romulus much good to have a black hole nearby. Even if the black hole didn't suck Romulus in, it would seriously disrupt the equilibrium of the Romulan solar system. Once again, it would make much more sense for the Romulans to have evacuated instead of just sitting and waiting for Spock to deliver a black hole. Even as a precaution, one would expect a mass evacuation until after the mission had been attempted.
We also learn that a vengeful Romulan (Nero, cleverly named after the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned) witnessed his planet's destruction and had his massive ship sucked through the black hole, placing him over 100 years in the past. Spock's ship followed shortly later but emerged 25 years after Nero's did. No way. Even before reaching the event horizon, the ships would have been stretched and incinerated by the black hole's incredible tidal forces (i.e., the differential pull along the ships' length). Once inside the event horizon, the ships would have been crushed into nothing.
Overlooking all that, we still confront a time-travel plot that Hollywood just loves but which makes no sense. We are told that a "new timeline" now exists because Nero and Spock have emerged from the future and are altering events. Doesn't work that way. In the original timeline of the old Star Trek universe, Nero and Spock went into the black hole and did what they did -- there is only one series of events. If the timeline truly is new and splices away from the old one, then Nero and Spock will not go through the black hole, and none of what we just watched could have happened. (It's a foregone conclusion that in this new timeline, people will take preventive measures against the supernova that they now know will occur, though I still wonder why they didn't figure it out through normal scientific observation the first time.) And this new timeline poses all kinds of problems with Nero and the elderly Spock, who have a lifetime of memories of events that now did not happen and never will. They have become walking paradoxes.
And this new timeline is rather selective. Even though Kirk's father is now killed at birth, Kirk still grows up in Iowa; he still joins Starfleet; he still cheats on the Kobayashi Maru test; he still befriends the exact same crew; and he still becomes captain of the Enterprise. How convenient. The most familiar aspects of Star Trek are preserved, but all ensuing storylines are jettisoned. While I appreciate the filmmakers' desire to wipe the slate clean, this is incredibly inconsistent.
Then there is Nero, a Romulan so angry over the destruction of his planet that he spends 25 years plotting death and revenge -- even though his planet is now perfectly fine and has over a century to prepare for the supernova that he can warn everyone about. I can understand his being out of sorts right at the beginning, but behavior of this sort after having 25 years to figure things out makes no sense.
Then there is James T. Kirk and the youngish crew of the newly christened Enterprise. It's obvious that Hollywood has gone out of its way to make its youngish audience identify with these characters and conclude that yes, being a loudmouth punk is the key to excellence and leadership. Showing teenagers and twenty-somethings shove aside their elders and save the galaxy is gratifying, but self-serving and ridiculous.
And then, of course, there is Spock. He is offered not as a sophisticated Vulcan foil for the brash Earthlings, but rather as a piñata to be bludgeoned and re-configured to act more like his Earthling mother and crew members. For a series that prides itself on celebrating diversity, Star Trek shows incredible ethnocentrism toward Spock and tells him that yielding to his passions makes him more enlightened. Yet this is exactly what the Romulans thought when splitting away from the Vulcans, and the entire movie shows the devastation that a passionate Romulan (Nero) can wreak. It's a little-known fact that "passion" stems from the term "passive," since a passionate man is one who allows himself to be dominated by his id. Spock as Vulcan is active because he refuses to allow blind impulse to control him, and it's unfortunate that Star Trek is telling hordes of passive moviegoers exactly what their ids want to hear.
In the final analysis, the new Star Trek is fun but annoying to those of us who like to think. The old Star Trek was meant for thinking persons, but most cinema today surely is not, and Star Trek has been sucked into the black hole of mindless entertainment. We can only hope that the series, like the Enterprise itself, manages to escape.
War -- Part IV
Kosovo
Before Republican George W. Bush and his saber-rattling retinue assumed the Presidency, Democratic President Bill Clinton demonstrated that neither major political party shies from initiating warfare in violation of international law. That is precisely what the Clinton administration did when intervening in Serbia’s civil war against the secessionist province of Kosovo, the very type of intervention that Abraham Lincoln warned other nations against while waging his war to prevent the South from seceding from the Union. Rounding out this hypocrisy is the federal government’s recent recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, implying that foreign citizens have a greater right to seek secession against their governments than American citizens do from our own.*
Nation-states may do anything that international law does not specifically prohibit, and nothing in international law prohibits governments from quelling secessions or insurgencies. What international law does condemn is foreign interference in civil wars, since such interference undermines a nation’s political independence and sovereignty. For example, during the 1980s the United States argued that Nicaragua’s aid to insurgents in neighboring El Salvador violated El Salvador’s sovereignty, and therefore the United States claimed the right to defend El Salvador by conducting military operations against Nicaragua. Taking this argument at face value, President Clinton’s open aid to the Kosovo insurgents clearly violated Serbia’s sovereignty, and other governments could have followed the United States’ earlier Nicaragua example and come to Serbia’s defense during the American bombing campaign of 1998 and 1999.
When Kosovo announced its intention to secede from Serbia and began conducting guerrilla operations toward that end, Serbia had a right to respond with military force, which it was doing with much success when the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened. Such intervention was illegal not only because the civil war was none of NATO’s business, but also because none of the enumerated criteria for an attack against Serbia had arisen: Serbia had not launched or threatened to launch any aggression against another nation-state, and no Security Council resolution had authorized the use of force against Serbia either.
Notwithstanding the absence of a legal foundation for military force, the United States and NATO threatened to bomb Serbia unless it submitted to the terms dictated at the Rambouillet talks of 1998. Serbia was ordered to “agree” to the evisceration of its sovereign rights by granting NATO access to all Yugoslav territory (not just to Kosovo); by withdrawing the Serbian military from Kosovo; and by holding a referendum in three years on Kosovo’s future. NATO fully expected Serbia to reject such ridiculous terms, thereby allowing the bombing of Serbia to commence. As one Clinton administration official crowed:
The temporary fig leaf for this otherwise naked aggression was “humanitarian intervention,” an amorphous doctrine resembling the “just war” theory that proposes military force against governments that brutalize their own citizens. No clear-cut standards for this doctrine have gained wide international acceptance, either in treaties or in customary law, a deficiency that opens the door for any powerful nation to undermine the law of the use of force and to interfere in another nation’s internal affairs.
Even the most vocal advocates of humanitarian intervention acknowledge its open-ended nature and have therefore attempted to limit it to rare circumstances, such as to prevent genocide or widespread violations of human rights. Yet Serbia’s actions against Kosovo hardly cleared this hurdle. Only 2,000 persons were killed during the Kosovo civil war in 1998 and the first two months of 1999, a remarkably small number when considering the far more horrific bloodshed of civil wars festering around the world at any given time. During America’s own Civil War, over 600,000 people lost their lives as a result of the North’s “total war” against Southern soldiers and civilians – a gruesome tactic that few in the federal government deny or regret. If foreign governments of the day had adhered to the United States’ modern interpretation of humanitarian intervention, then they would have demanded that the North cease its war against the South and recognize Southern independence. In short, if humanitarian intervention was justified in Kosovo, then it is justified almost anywhere, an outcome that demolishes national sovereignty and blesses unrestrained international intervention (which is likely the whole point).
In hindsight, most commentators agree that what the United States did in Kosovo was illegal, but nobody condemns it.
____________________________________
*This is, of course, exactly backwards. While international law does not prevent either the federal government or the Serbian government from combating a secessionist movement, the federal government is a creature of a voluntary union of enumerated powers under the Constitution, and therefore has far less of a right (if any) to resist secession.
Before Republican George W. Bush and his saber-rattling retinue assumed the Presidency, Democratic President Bill Clinton demonstrated that neither major political party shies from initiating warfare in violation of international law. That is precisely what the Clinton administration did when intervening in Serbia’s civil war against the secessionist province of Kosovo, the very type of intervention that Abraham Lincoln warned other nations against while waging his war to prevent the South from seceding from the Union. Rounding out this hypocrisy is the federal government’s recent recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, implying that foreign citizens have a greater right to seek secession against their governments than American citizens do from our own.*
Nation-states may do anything that international law does not specifically prohibit, and nothing in international law prohibits governments from quelling secessions or insurgencies. What international law does condemn is foreign interference in civil wars, since such interference undermines a nation’s political independence and sovereignty. For example, during the 1980s the United States argued that Nicaragua’s aid to insurgents in neighboring El Salvador violated El Salvador’s sovereignty, and therefore the United States claimed the right to defend El Salvador by conducting military operations against Nicaragua. Taking this argument at face value, President Clinton’s open aid to the Kosovo insurgents clearly violated Serbia’s sovereignty, and other governments could have followed the United States’ earlier Nicaragua example and come to Serbia’s defense during the American bombing campaign of 1998 and 1999.
When Kosovo announced its intention to secede from Serbia and began conducting guerrilla operations toward that end, Serbia had a right to respond with military force, which it was doing with much success when the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened. Such intervention was illegal not only because the civil war was none of NATO’s business, but also because none of the enumerated criteria for an attack against Serbia had arisen: Serbia had not launched or threatened to launch any aggression against another nation-state, and no Security Council resolution had authorized the use of force against Serbia either.
Notwithstanding the absence of a legal foundation for military force, the United States and NATO threatened to bomb Serbia unless it submitted to the terms dictated at the Rambouillet talks of 1998. Serbia was ordered to “agree” to the evisceration of its sovereign rights by granting NATO access to all Yugoslav territory (not just to Kosovo); by withdrawing the Serbian military from Kosovo; and by holding a referendum in three years on Kosovo’s future. NATO fully expected Serbia to reject such ridiculous terms, thereby allowing the bombing of Serbia to commence. As one Clinton administration official crowed:
We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.Serbia predictably balked, and the bombing campaign was soon underway.
The temporary fig leaf for this otherwise naked aggression was “humanitarian intervention,” an amorphous doctrine resembling the “just war” theory that proposes military force against governments that brutalize their own citizens. No clear-cut standards for this doctrine have gained wide international acceptance, either in treaties or in customary law, a deficiency that opens the door for any powerful nation to undermine the law of the use of force and to interfere in another nation’s internal affairs.
Even the most vocal advocates of humanitarian intervention acknowledge its open-ended nature and have therefore attempted to limit it to rare circumstances, such as to prevent genocide or widespread violations of human rights. Yet Serbia’s actions against Kosovo hardly cleared this hurdle. Only 2,000 persons were killed during the Kosovo civil war in 1998 and the first two months of 1999, a remarkably small number when considering the far more horrific bloodshed of civil wars festering around the world at any given time. During America’s own Civil War, over 600,000 people lost their lives as a result of the North’s “total war” against Southern soldiers and civilians – a gruesome tactic that few in the federal government deny or regret. If foreign governments of the day had adhered to the United States’ modern interpretation of humanitarian intervention, then they would have demanded that the North cease its war against the South and recognize Southern independence. In short, if humanitarian intervention was justified in Kosovo, then it is justified almost anywhere, an outcome that demolishes national sovereignty and blesses unrestrained international intervention (which is likely the whole point).
In hindsight, most commentators agree that what the United States did in Kosovo was illegal, but nobody condemns it.
____________________________________
*This is, of course, exactly backwards. While international law does not prevent either the federal government or the Serbian government from combating a secessionist movement, the federal government is a creature of a voluntary union of enumerated powers under the Constitution, and therefore has far less of a right (if any) to resist secession.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
The Dictatorship Of Pure Reason
"The insane person is not one who has lost his reason; the insane person is one who has lost everything but his reason." ~G.K. Chesterton
Various "experts" have announced that there is no difference between killing the born versus the unborn. Note they do not discourage such killing. Oh, no. They conclude both forms of killing are rational and justified.
The French revolutionaries sought to destroy all fundamental beliefs rooted in faith or tradition so as to replace those beliefs with the dictatorship of pure reason. Among smaller endeavors such as inventing the metric system, that dictatorship oversaw the murder of a large number of people and eventually fizzled out after Napoleon's transcontinental carnage came to an end.
But that end was illusory. As with our pyrrhic battlefield victories over slavery, fascism, and European consolidation -- all phenomena that continue to flourish -- the dictatorship of pure reason marches forward and will serve to justify whatever people want to hear. Because people have lost the faith that forced them to question their motives and desires, things will continue becoming more and more barbaric. Abortion has gone from abomination, to unpleasant necessity, to fundamental right, and now to mere point of reference for post-natal termination. We are certifiably insane.
Various "experts" have announced that there is no difference between killing the born versus the unborn. Note they do not discourage such killing. Oh, no. They conclude both forms of killing are rational and justified.
The French revolutionaries sought to destroy all fundamental beliefs rooted in faith or tradition so as to replace those beliefs with the dictatorship of pure reason. Among smaller endeavors such as inventing the metric system, that dictatorship oversaw the murder of a large number of people and eventually fizzled out after Napoleon's transcontinental carnage came to an end.
But that end was illusory. As with our pyrrhic battlefield victories over slavery, fascism, and European consolidation -- all phenomena that continue to flourish -- the dictatorship of pure reason marches forward and will serve to justify whatever people want to hear. Because people have lost the faith that forced them to question their motives and desires, things will continue becoming more and more barbaric. Abortion has gone from abomination, to unpleasant necessity, to fundamental right, and now to mere point of reference for post-natal termination. We are certifiably insane.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)