Month: October 2007

An Ex-Libertarian

Glenn Reynolds comes out of the closet and says he’s no longer a libertarian. After four years of his defending or ignoring every abuse of government power under the Bushies, this is hardly a surprise. But the caricature of many freedom-lovers offered by Stephen Green is silly. Yes, the more doctrinaire libertarians are too wedded to ideology and unable or unwilling to look at the empirical world and make adjustments. No sane freedom-lover would, in my view, believe that 9/11 changed nothing. Of course, it required sacrifices of liberty. What it did not require was the permanent suspension of habeas corpus, the transformation of the executive branch into a de facto extra-legal protectorate, the breaking of laws by the president, the authorization of torture, warrantless wiretapping, a war based on intelligence that simply wasn’t there, and a ramping up of the drug war. Those are the policies that Glenn Reynolds, by silence or active support, has enabled. I’m relieved that he no longer even identifies as a libertarian. It helps clear the air.

“Effective Liberty”

Two of the most chilling words you’ll ever hear. Crooked Timber wants the government policing speech to protect minorities. At last they’re honest about the true agenda of the left. Notice this isn’t about "hate-crimes". It’s about "hate-speech." But the motivation behind hate-crime laws – a loathing of liberty and group-think victimology – is still out there. To make my own position clear: The elimination of bigotry is not a legitimate role of government. In fact, bigotry is a right, a basic freedom, as intrinsic to freedom as freedom of religion and speech. Once you start deciding what speech is or is not acceptable, we no longer live in a free society. We live in a tyranny – where Crooked Timber and the benign left will call the shots and enforce their orthodoxy.

If you’re interested in my 1999 New York Times Magazine essay, "What’s So Bad About Hate," it’s available in full here. Those newish readers who now think I’m some sort of lefty because of my opposition to Bush’s incompetence, fiscal recklessness, and authoritarianism might realize upon reading it that I’m still a proud conservative, fighting a for a tradition today’s Republicans, more than anyone else, have attacked and defiled.

Coulter and Christianity

Have you noticed that the long-legged bigot has been touting her Christianity lately? She knows where the market is, I guess. Michael Livingston argues:

She has dismissed most of the Bible and the words of Jesus defending the poor, the widow, the prisoner—the least among us—and spewed her venom that has little or nothing to do with orthodox Christianity. But Ms. Coulter and her ilk are the ones to whom the media gives most of its attention.

He suggests that the media should shut her out. I don’t think they can, although my respect for anyone on television actually inviting her on to spew more hatred is, shall we say, limited. In the end, I have faith that what she represents, apart from her own callow self-enrichment, will be seen for what it is. I’m with this guy:

So you keep on spewing, Ann Coulter. You keep right on saying all the detestable things you perhaps even believe, so that the average American can see the buffoonish and ugly face of the religio-political underside. And you, dear media, keep right on allowing her and her kind plenty of airtime and space with which to hang themselves.

As Mr. Livingston himself concedes, while seemingly missing the why, "There are some signs that the toxic message of the extreme right of American Christians may be faltering."

That’s the beauty of media exposure. In time, it tends to devour the offensively unhinged.

Face of the Day

Turkburakkaragetty

(Photo: Land-mine victim and former pro-goverment village guard Murat Benek sits in his house with his friend on October 24 2007 in Hilal village in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak at the Turkey-Iraq border. The Turkish army has moved more throops to the Iraqi border after Kurdish rebels ambushed a military unit killing 12 soldiers and increasing pressure on the Turkish government to stage attacks against Kurdish rebel camps in Iraq. By Burak Kara/Getty Images.)

A Clinton-Pelosi Faultline?

That’s what Jim Vandehei and John Harris see beneath the surface:

The temptation for many commentators has been to dismiss Pelosi’s ventures into foreign policy as blunderbuss moves by a new speaker unseasoned on the world stage. She was hammered for her visit to Syria earlier this year to talk peace. She was recently forced by her own members to surrender on the “Armenian Genocide” resolution after Turkey, a U.S. ally with a critical supply line to Iraq, re-called its ambassador in protest.

But Democratic foreign policy experts in the think tanks along Massachusetts Avenue will also have to get over it: Pelosi is authentically representing the mainstream of her party when it comes to America’s role in the world.

Pelosi has managed to make Hastert look like a leader, hasn’t she?

The Music For “Gaytanamo”

The most tasteless gay porn movie ever made has an extra piece of obscenity, as a reader notices:

Did you notice that the soundtrack for the trailer on Dark Alley’s website is the Finale to Shostakovitch’s Symphony No. 5? These queens thought it made their groomed porn studs seem more dramatic and heroic, I suppose. I wonder if they realized that the background of the piece was the composer’s personal spiritual triumph over the threat of being sent to the Gulag, along with his family, for writing music that was not condoned in Stalin’s USSR.

I am reminded of a friend of mine’s quip: "I’m not a self-hating homosexual. I like myself. It’s all the other homosexuals I can’t stand."