Month: September 2006

by David Weigel

Steve Sailer has two long, good exegeses (one, two) on war and the national need for territory. The first post collects some general thoughts:

There just aren’t that many empty spots on the map anymore, the way the San Francisco Bay Area, perhaps the finest spot for human habitation on earth, was practically empty in 1845.

Moreover, the spread of the idea of nationalism from Europe to the rest of the world, replacing dynasticism as the reigning assumption, means that the kind of easy occupations that, say, the British enjoyed in India for so long just aren’t feasible. If the masses assume that who rules them is none of their business, then it’s pretty easy for an outsider to take over. But, nowadays, everybody believes that their rulers should be, more or less, from among them.

In his follow-up Sailer unveils another one of his Theories – the mostly seamless historical or demographic trends that no one else ever seems to pick up. (They’re too busy comparing everything to 1938, if they’re talking war, and 1994, if they’re talking politics.)

Sailer’s Dirt Theory of War: In the past, when thinking about whom to conquer, the    key fact was that most of the value of the potential conquest was in the dirt acquired. You could use the ground to raise crops or mine for valuable minerals, which made up two large parts of the economy back in the good old days. War couldn’t hurt dirt. Conquering California in the 1840s, for example, did almost zero damage to the place, which turned out, immediately afterwards, to have lots of gold in the ground.

… most fighting around the world these days is conducted less like Grant vs. Lee and more like the Corleones rubbing out the rival families at the end of the The Godfather. It’s less honorable, and less destructive, but more profitable.

This clarifies what’s been nagging at me when I hear the members of our executive branch compare the current crisis to an old, good war, like World War II. These people know, as much as Sailer knows, that preventing Muslim terrorists from blowing up airplanes or buildings or cities is a matter of police work and dirty work – like the Corleones rubbing out rivals, but also like a pre-White House Jack Ryan taking out his villain of the week. They know this and, for political reasons, obfuscate it. They pretend this is an old-fashioned army-vs-army war. But that leads to cognitive dissonance on a mass scale when the population, which is willing to support the war, and willing to send family members to fight it, doesn’t see clear-cut victories; isn’t asked to sacrifice anything; doesn’t know when the war will end.

by David Weigel

I don’t know what prompted this sudden burst of negativity, but Teddy Roosevelt gets no respect – not from libertarians, not from paleolibertarians. Three years back, Michael McMenamin made the case that TR proved the folly of military adventures.

by David Weigel

The Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, Mark "not that one" Green, has been ordered to give back half a million dollars in donations he had reeled in while running for Congress. State law allows Green to use the money, but the partisan Wisconsin election board passed a rule… well, just read it.

Wednesday’s actions were in response to a complaint brought by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which alleged Green should be subject to an "emergency rule" the board passed prohibiting candidates for state office from converting funds from prior federal campaigns if the donors are not registered in Wisconsin or the gifts exceed state limits.

The Elections Board, which is dominated by Democrats, first adopted the rule in 2005, one day after Green transferred his federal money to his state account.

The rule was quickly suspended by a committee of the Republican-controlled Legislature. But the full Legislature never adopted the required follow-up legislation to permanently kill the rule before lawmakers went home July 12.

Anyone care to explain why the election board’s Libertarian member voted to screw Green?

by David Weigel

This column in the American Spectator by Jeffrey Lord is pretty interesting, revisiting a race that no one much discusses anymore – the 1942 midterm elections. Lord is right that the GOP flourished – as it had stayed afloat in FDR’s third win of 1940 – by sticking with FDR on the war and differentiating itself on domestic policy. And then Lord banks left and takes the Rumsfeld Expressway into False Equivalence City.

So in circumstances like this, how does a political opposition approach the upcoming election? Savage FDR? Run on a campaign of "Roosevelt lied and people died"? Should they go out and tell the American people just how dangerously incompetent the man was, that the best thing to do was make peace with Hitler and Japan’s Hirohito, then elect Republicans who would simply force FDR to bring home the boys and let the rest of the world cope with chaos? After all, a few years earlier FDR himself had turned back an ocean liner filled with 937 Jews escaping the looming Holocaust. The idea of not making Hitler, Hirohito or Mussolini any angrier than they were was certainly one approach.

This is cute, and it would be relevent if the 2006 Democratic Party was running on a platform of making peace with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, appeasing Iran, and ending the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. It’s not, obviously. They don’t really have plans for dealing with al Qaeda and Iran, which is part of their problem, but the general Democratic stance on those issues is expressed here by Ohio U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown:

Despite the sacrifice and bravery of our troops, the foreign policy of Republicans in Congress and the White House has failed to secure our interests at home and abroad:
– Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and Afghanistan has reemerged as a haven for terrorists and opium producers.
– While we have been distracted by the insurgency in Iraq, Iran and North Korea have gained ground in their effort to posses weapons of mass destruction.

Will voters appreciate that Democrats have decoupled the war in Iraq and the war on terror – that they want to pull out of the former and more aggressively (they say) pursue victory in the latter? I think so. And so do some Republicans.