Michael Moore must surely rank as one of the hottest properties in showbusiness. The guy only has to show up to get an award:
Michael Moore’s controversial polemic Farenheit 9/11 became the first documentary for nearly 50 years to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival last night.
The film, which contains scathing attacks on the business dealings of President George Bush as well as the first footage of American soldiers torturing prisoners in Iraq, beat off competition from more famous directors, including Wong Kar-Wai, Emir Kusturica and the Coen brothers to scoop top prize.
Moore, who was given a standing ovation by the Cannes crowd, told them: ‘I’m completely overwhelmed by this. Merci.’
So they chose a wanker over a Wong Kar but it is pointless to pretend that there was ever going to be any other outcome. And giving him yet another gold-plated bit of object d’art to place on his buckling mantlepiece is one thing but a standing ovation??!!
In truth this was not merely a nod of recognition but an act of worship by a gathering of the faithful. Nor is this starry-eyed circus any longer about the merits (or otherwise) of any particular manifestation of Moorish propoganda for the detail is irrelevant. It is the ‘vibe’ that counts.
No, this is not about the films or books of Michael Moore, it is about Michael Moore himself and what the luvvies believe he represents. He is the icon and the muse of anti-everything who tells them what they want to hear and dresses it up as revealed truth. His flock gathers at ceremonies to offer up their tributes and commune with him while he bestows his benedictions upon them.
He is St. Michael of Moore. Peace be upon him and may flowers bloom where he treads.
Michael Moore’s new movie is a documentary? Like ‘Bowling for Columbine’ was a “documentary”?
Indeed it is, Verity. And what’s more, it will push Moore back into the lead in the race amongst writers/filmmakers to make the most money out of post-9/11 idiotarianism. (I really must get around to working the figures out between Moore, Pilger, Chomsky et al; all that is obvious from any visit to Waterstones or Borders, not to mention the grapevine, is that they are coining it.)
There’s more than a small disconnect when someone who claims to distrust government attempts a poorly done smear job on a filmmaker who distrusts government even less.
Felix Rayman – I’m not at all sure Michael Moore distrusts the government. Or big corporations. But he can recognise a meal ticket when he sees one.
I used to see him on TV in the US going into corporate HQs and demanding to see the company president to explain something or other. And when the president was not available to see him, manipulating the well expected refusal of the CEO to come down to the lobby to meet an aggressive drop-in to give it a sinister air. (“What have they got to hide?”) It was the same every week.
Verity,
What in particular have you seen, heard, or read that would suggest that Michael Moore trusts the government in any way shape or form.
And compare and contrast that to the evidence of three documentary films ( and yes, I use the term documentary loosely ) that suggest he holds no such trust.
Michael Moore is,like many American leftists, distrustful (and rightly so) of the government when it comes to national security and civil liberties. However,when it comes to giving the government control over individual choice in health care, education or the economy, he is all for it.
Go check his website if you don’t believe me.
When the choice is between giving corporations control over health care vs. giving government control over health care the choice is between the devil and the deep blue sea now isn’t it?
felixrayman: Oh please, a competitive market in healthcare versus a state run monopoly in healthcare is a no brainer, of course any state run industry is going to be a screw up from start to finish… do you think giving government control over food production or clothing production or computer production would produce better results than having corporations to compete in those fields in capitalist markets? And if so, I guess you think those things were done better in the Soviet Union, eh? And what makes healthcare any different? Economics is clearly not your strong point. Sheesh.
Can you tell me why the life expectancy is higher in Canada ( socialized medicine ) than it is in the US? ( capitalism ).
Canada has better results than the US in the health care arena. As does France.
You are a capitalist dupe. Seriously. At this point you are ignoring the facts because they conflict with your ideology.
And guess what? People die because of stupidity like that.
Welcome to Stalinville.
it makes my head hurt to read such a schmuck so early in the morning. felix the socialist supports state rationed nationalised healthcare and he seems to think someone else who wants free choice for how their money is spent (on healthcare or holidays for example) is a stalinist. riiiigggghhhht. this guy is like something out of orwell’s 1984 with his inverted use of language. freedom is slavery, eh felix?
sure, you can make people live longer by forcibly moving wealth from other productive sectors of the economy and putting it into healthcare (as in cuba, for example), and for a while that will actually work, at least until the system does what is happening in britain, with its moronic fully funded socialist national health system. like all nationalised industries, the lack of competition simply makes the system more and more bloated and less and less effective. this is kindergarten level economics and anyone who think healthcare is somehow immune to economics is just a fool.
and sadly i *wish* healthcare in the usa was ‘capitalist’. in reality it is so regulated that all that can be said is that it is freeer that places like canada or cuba or the uk. and in any case, how does felix explain the flood of canadians who head south for medical treatments to avoid potentially life threatening delays in the canadian healthcare system? canada’s system ‘works’ only because it has the safety valve of better and faster healthcare in the usa that is easily accessible. canada’s system survives by having a parasitic relationship with the us system. i have made that trip twice myself rather that wait for the canadian system to ‘serve’ me.
felix,
if france has better result than the US in the healthcare arena, i can tell you it’s because the whole country pays a high price. the system doesn’t scale in the first place, i’ve heard of some heatwave in the US but never of a consequential death toll of 10000+.
Just because the soviets were the first to put a man in space doesn’t mean the country was more modern or ready to deal with the future.
sure, you can make people live longer by forcibly moving wealth from other productive sectors of the economy and putting it into healthcare
Except Canada (and France) spend a much smaller percentage of GDP on health care than does the US. And they live longer and are healthier while alive.
You are a Stalinist. You condemn people to death because reality does not match your ideology. You should have the intellectual courage to state as much.
Erwan – It was 14,000+. They didn’t have enough space to store all the bodies and were putting them in refrigerated trailers as adult offspring didn’t want to break into their vacation to come home and bury mum or dad.
This is the attitude that socialism breeds. You’re entitled to your month’s holiday in August and by god, you’re going to have it!
Verity,
Suppose huge numbers of people in Chicago died in a heatwave. That would be evidence that the political system in place at the time was a total failure, now wouldn’t it?
felixrayman: “Can you tell me why the life expectancy is higher in Canada ( socialized medicine ) than it is in the US? ( capitalism ).”
One reason you won’t hear mentioned much either by the socialists or by the critical rational individualists (or is it individual critical rationalists?) is that some people are innately stupider and more feckless than others.
As Prof. Linda Gottfredson, the leading race-realist sociologist, has pointed out, low-IQ people are less “health literate”. They misunderstand instructions on medicines, fail to keep to prescribed regimens and miss doctors’ appointments much more often than the higher-IQ people who run healthcare and tune it to their own standards.
Naturally a country such as the USA, with its substantial complement of Negroids (average IQ 85) and “Latinos” (90), is more susceptible to such lapses than predominantly Caucasoid countries such as Canada or France.
But as long as polite society goes on pretending that average general intelligence is the same across the racial spectrum, we won’t get much progress on this front.
http://www.rense.com/general53/why.htm
The healthcare system in the US is broken, full of corruption and profit making at the expense of the patient. It is used to control workers here. Many workers would leave bad jobs if they weren’t worried about getting sick and going bankrupt. Like so much in the U.S., if you have money or insurance our healthcare system is wonderful. God help you if you are poor. The US is becoming more and more Social Darwinistic. It is a bad trend. Better to have some stupid civil service employees than outright wicked and evil CEO’s running your country.
WJ Phillips: Race-realist? Ah, so you are another one of those racist collectivists attempting to rebrand yourself into something other than a ‘racist collectivist’. Your ‘science’ is about as scientific as phrenology(Link). I doubt anyone is fooled.
Oh dear. Who let Charles Copeland back on the blog?
And is there any chance Kodiak can come back? He may have been a troll, but at least he was fun.
Does anybody ever bother to check out the statistics?
http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/modules/basicdata/datancenbasic.html
US average life expectancy rates a big two years behind Canada’s — 77 to 79 — big freakin’ deal. Yeah, all those millions being condemned to an early death by private medicine! US also rates one year ahead of Cuba’s so I guess that blows the “socialized medicine health care” argument right out of the water, eh felix? And I wonder — if Comrade Fidelito didn’t open up his jails and send Florida thousands of his prostitutes, drug addicts and AIDs patients every ten years or so, what on earth would those magic “Cuban health care figures” look like then?
Life expectancy also factors in things like homicide rates and drug use rates. The US has a much higher homicide rate than Canada (and probably a greater drug use rate as well.) Now, you can argue from that that Canadians are much better than Americans at getting along with their neighbors, but that’s not exactly the same argument we are having, is it?
General comment: What IS IT with this extremely retarded European obsession with American health care systems anyways? I assure you that Americans are not in anyway obsessed with your healthcare systems; they hardly register on our radar. Yet, if you are an American, wherever one goes on European-visited talkboards, one is accosted with people shrieking “40 million Americans without healthcare insurance!” or “No universal healthcare!” at you — as if it were some kind of Gulag Archipelago equivalent. Look, I’ve had friends and relatives who became ill in Southern Europe and were appalled at the medical treatment they received. On woman I know broke her ankle in Italy and had her bone set without anesthesia. Once she came home all she could do was rant about “Third World Healthcare Standards” in Europe. One would think that Europe’s obsession with American health care masks some sort of deep-seated insecurity on the topic, or something, wouldn’t one?
Lastly, on another tack altogether, I thought our gracious proprietors had banned the so-called “Race Realists” from commenting?
this felix guy is a moron and frankly a troll. he obviously has no idea what a stalinist actually is. you cannot be a stalinist without wanting the state to control the means of production. he is an ignoramus so just ignore his ravings.
I give the likes of Michael Moore credit where it is due. If he is anti-government and I agree, great. But he certainly is not even a left libertarian, in whom I can see some comradeship, at least on some topics. But I’m not fooled. He loves the State when it serves his transfer and interdependency ideals. He wishes to only tear down the parts of the State he dislikes to only make more room for that parts he adores. If he has put forth anything else, he is a hypocrite, which wouldn’t be too surprising with his effete lifestyle of penthouses and private schools. Just another example of the well heeled left, full of ideas how the rest of us should live but exempting themselves.
And to compare health care systems without examining the cultural underpinning is to compare apples and oranges. The US has a culture of fast food, comfortable couches, and homicide. We are slightly more individualistic than other countries and it shows. But I’d rather live in a culture where people are free to make their own choices and are limited when they harm another’s life or property. Unfortunately we are so far from that now, and ever following the wrong path. We have an unworkable hybrid of individual choice married with collective responsibility. Fortunately the State is doing its level best to eliminate personal choice (sarcasm intended).
I’m not swayed by the Guardianist argument that the only option for individuals is domination, either by “big business” or by state.
Another option is community self organization, with residents taking over local schools, clinics, housing estates etc and running them themselves. There was once a free market strand of socialism that aspired to this ideal, Heaven knows what’s become of it.
The Mutualist.org site has a lot of related info, some barmy and some sensible.
Back on the subject of MMoore, a friend sent me a link to slattsnews.ubersportingpundit.com
Susan has hit the nail on the head. The British left, for one, is fiendishly obsessed with American healthcare and she is right when she says this obessive interest is not a two-way street. Americans can’t keep their eyes open during a discussion of “the envy of the world” – mainly confining themselves to looking puzzled and stifling a yawn.
Yet the British bounce off the walls while they shriek out “statistics” about the 40m people without health insurance. I have asked several of them if they’ve ever visited the US. Well of course they have, say many who book cheap holidays in Florida or cheap flights for Xmas shopping in NY. “And how many people did you see flailing around helplessly on the streets (no fair counting Michael Moore as three)?” Surely if around a sixth of the population has no access to healthcare, the law of averages says you’d have seen people stepping over a few heart attack victims in the Christmas rush. Or at least seen some lowlifes writhing around unnoticed from gunshot or stab wounds?
Susan, try telling them that county hospitals are roughly on a level with British NHS hospitals and they hate you for it. They don’t want to hear that everyone in the US has access to, in the main, extremely good healthcare. If they have the means to pay for it, after treatment, the hospital’s collection department will come after them to make arrangements. If they are genuinely indigent, the treatment is free.
Americans don’t make a song and dance about this. Most of them prefer to pay for their own treatment, via their insurance, and have choices, but no one gets turned away. They can’t even ask about your ability to pay if you’re admitted on an emergency basis. Only after you’re stabilised will you, if you cannot pay, be transferred to a country hospital. These are considerably more hygienic than NHS hospitals by the way.
Susan is right when she suggests socialists are much more interested in scoring “humanitarian” points than arguing the facts. They have to believe their way is the best. There is no room for other in their universe.
That said, the French have a pretty clever system and their health care is routinely tied with the US for best in the world. The government pays for two-thirds of your medical bills – but the choice of hospital to go to is yours. The doctor gives you a prescription for a test, and the choice of diagnostic clinics like Xrays, blood tests, mammograms, etc is entirely yours. When you’ve had the test, their person on the spot hands you the results and explains them to you. You then take your xrays or whatever back to your doctor or, if you feel like it, a different doctor. It’s up to you.
The other one-third healthcare cost is shouldered by the patient or a mutuelle – which is insurance against the one-third. If you belong to a mutuelle, whose subscriptions are very reasonable, that other one-third is 100% covered (including disposable contact lenses, orthodontics, etc). Because they have factored in so much choice for the patient as consumer, the service offered by everyone – doctors, labs, hospitals, you name it, is very good indeed. You choose the hospital, too. Most people don’t choose a specific surgeon, but it is your entitlement to do so if you wish.
There are no waiting lists that I’ve ever heard of.
So the French get a lot for their healthcare deductions. In fact they get what is, essentially, American style private treatment. And they don’t seem to have that viperous malice about “42m Americans without healthcare insurance” as do the Brits and Canadians.
Losers.
“Canada has better results than the US in the health care arena…”
Yes Felix, if “better results” means killing your patients through carelessness. Here’s the first two paragraphs of newspaper story about a recent Ottawa Hospital Research Institute study:
“As many as 24,000 patients die in Canadian hospitals each year, while tens of thousands more are crippled, injured or poisoned in association with medical errors that could have been prevented.
“A new landmark study of 20 hospitals in five provinces found one in 13 patients suffers an adverse event, more than double the rate found in studies of U.S. hospitals.”
(Here’s the link if you want to read the rest of this story:
‘Explosive’ study: medical errors kill 24,000 a year
I guess you get what you pay for. Canada pays less and obviously gets crappier medical care. Who woulda thunk it.
Busy taking notes…
Hmmm… hmmm… interesting indeed…
Are there any guestimates as to the cost extent of the French medical system compared to the American system? As in, for an average patient for a ‘basket of dieases treatments’, the average cost in each country?
I do wonder how an article about Michael Moore became a flame war about the benefits (or otherwise) of state health provision but, c’est la vie, as they say in Quebec.
And while we are on the subject, it is worth bearing in mind that while many Brits and Europeans tend to think of health-care in the USA a ‘free-market’ system it is, in fact, no such thing.
Private sector health provision is (in some regards) even more regulated than it is in the UK or Europe and I believe that quite a generous chunk of Federal spending is pumped into Medicaid/Medicare.
On the actual subject of Michael Moore, I was certainly not surprised he won this award. The Cannes film establishment comes from the leftist, capitalist-hating part of the intelligentsia. Moore is their idea of a wet dream. Frankly, it would have been news if Moore had not in the award.
WJ Phillips, you may be correct that different people have different levels of intelligence, but one cannot deduce political philosophy from that, although judging by the tone of your comments, you favour some heirarchical model of society run by clever folk like you.
I have smelled a rat about this individual since making offensive remarks about non-religious people as “infidels”. A liberal order which puts all persons equally before the law does not require equality of intelligence.
“Moorish propoganda”. (sic)
My skin crawled when I read that. That’s rich.
“Moorish propaganda”. I love it.
Perry: Do you accept that there are physiological differences between races, requiring different medical treatment? As in, for example, this:
http://www.racesci.org/in_media/race_disease_nyt_july2002.htm
If these findings are valid, and given that the brain is an organ like others, it is hardly axiomatic that everybody’s brain functions in the same way at the same power. Unless, that is, you take a Cartesian, immaterialist view of mind v. body.
Incidentally, phrenology is not quite as out of date as you think. In its modern form, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, it has thrown up some very interesting racial differences in brain/body ratio, brain weight, size and structure. These correlate well with measures of mental processing such as reaction time, and also with average racial IQ scores.
Since these are averages, widely distributed, there is no question of “collectivism”; but when you’re dealing with a group it helps to know the median and the distribution, just as when betting on a horse it helps to know his pedigree and his form.
The age of DNA requires a rather more robust confrontation with science than ancient marxoid canards about phrenology. And you’re not helping the dim poor get better meds either.
We’ve over-meddled in our health care system in recent years, to its detriment. What the US has now is almost a quasi-governmental system, which has (of course) made it harder and prohibitively expensive to self-insure. That didn’t used to be the case, and it makes me itch with suspicion. But Verity’s got the right of it — our health care is expensive because, in effect, we quietly pick up the tab for those who can’t pay.
Near as I can figure it, Felix defines “stalinist” as “a bad thing I don’t like.” I’m too tired to rough you up, Felix. How’s about I hold out my fist and you just run into it a few times?
As for Michael Moore, I read a review of his latest from a guy who had liked “Bowling for Columbine.” He said this one was neither a particularly good film, nor particularly startling or new in its revelations. Moore apparently got his Palme d’Or for the same reason Jimmy Carter got his Nobel. Oh, well. Using prestigious prizes to flip the bird rather cheapens them in the long run. I’m happy to say.
Shall we announce an investigation into the likelyhood that Moore paid for the instigation of the prison grabass, or shall we just announce it as fact the way MM does with his crap?
Lots of nice camera work there for amatures, isn’t it?
I say announce it.
I am under the impression Michael Moore detests ‘stupid, fat white men’? It is ironic to hear his followers gleefully applauding that which is a stupid, fat white man. Oh well, That’s Hollywood for you.
I had the displeasure of seeing MM in NYC Central Park the other day, he is so full of himself his legs buckle like boomerangs from his heavy weight of bullyragging bullshit.
I wanted to ask him if he would ever consider making a film based on truth but the rank smell leaking out from his putrid insides suffocated my ability to speak.
The festival might want to consider ‘Conned Film Festival’ to be a more appropriate name than Cannes
Wobbly – Haven’t a clue. I’m sure the figures are there.
France (wait till I have an emergency and have to take it all back) works very well with its medical system. The patient chooses a doctor; the patient chooses the diagnostic clinic (I don’t know who would pay if the patient didn’t like the results and wanted to go for a second opinion; I suspect this would be to their own account), and decides whether to take the results back to the doctor who wrote the prescription, or another doctor.
This is pretty bracing. BTW, in France, your doctor can also give you a prescription for a taxi to the hospital if he/she thinks you shouldn’t drive but on the other hand, don’t need an ambulance. So they save on fees for an expensively equipped ambulance company.
I seldom have anything good to say about France, but I have found their medical system very intelligently thought-out and applied and market-oriented. Any money one expends in the system comes with a computerised, barcoded receipt and is extremely easy to reclaim.
OTOH, it is being re-examined because it is too first class and costs too much.
2005 Federal Budget: Health and Human Services
Medicare/Medicaid expenses: nearly 500 billion buckaroos. More than military expenditures BTW.
Interesting to see a thread that was originally WOT related moving into healthcare so Perry and the boys can start distrusting the benevolence and competence of govt again.
What is the relative frequency of people being raped at govt healthcare clinics vs. those being raped at “Camp Redemption”?
Would Samizdata care to make any postings on the following:
Ahmad Chalabi.
The killing of the head of the Iraqi governing council.
The latest photos and testimony to emerge regarding the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib.
The Iraq wedding party bombing.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but these certainly merit posts at least as much as the MM news or as the
latest news that the “Government is resisting pressure from the European Union to introduce random breath tests”. Someone mentioned in the one of the comments sections that Samizdata is becoming somewhat Pravda-ish. I generally enjoy reading this blog, but sometimes I have to wonder. Now I do appreciate that you will post on what interests you and you don’t have the time to post on everything, but I don’t see how you could resist making some comments on the very interesting developments re. Ahmad Chalabi!
Ahmad Chalabi: Loser
The killing of the head of the Iraqi governing council: very unfortunate
The latest photos and testimony to emerge regarding the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib: previous Samizdata.net articles still apply
The Iraq wedding party bombing: tragic.
I do not see Samizdata.net’s job as being regurgitating whatever is the headline of the day but rather saying something when we have something to add. I cannot imagine what new I could add to those topics really as I doubt anyone really needs to hear I still regard the behaviour of US MPs at those prisons as an outrage or that I am still happy Saddam is not in power.
In fact I would have written about the assassination of the head of the Iraqi governing council had I actually had access to the Internet when I was in Geneva, but I didn’t and I thought that I missed the moment as several other blogs pretty much said what I would have. Sorry but as nothing has happened in Iraq to materially change my views, I feel no need to obsess about what goes on there. Spend more time at Daily Kos or LGF if you want to read what people who obsess about Iraq think. If I change my view, I assure you I will let everyone know.
How far up the food chain do the Samizdatists think authorization for torture went?
U.S. denies Sanchez witnessed prison abuse
Washington Post: Top U.S. commander knew about interrogation methods
Loser who may have tricked the War Party into invading Iraq to save Iran the trouble. That deserves more than a single word response.
Aral, Perry only obsesses when he may or may not get what he wants – the mere consequences of what he wants evidently doesn’t interest him.
Perry, at what point will you stop thinking in terms of “I’m glad Saddam is gone” (i.e. benefits only) and start thinking in terms of “it wasn’t worth the cost to have our govts do the deed” (i.e. benefits and costs). Any govt action can be supported if you only look at benefits and ignore costs.
As I have said ad nauseam, I could not care less why Iraq was invaded, just so long as it was invaded and Saddam booted out, so why would I care much if the idiots in Washington DC listened to Chalabi’s fairy tales? If it got Saddam ejected, good for Chalabi! That he did not subsequently end up with Iraq cheering for him, oh well, that’s life. And if Bush/Blair get into political problems, I am not hugely concerned about their careers either.
As for how high up the prison scandal goes, well I did say I thought it was time for changes high up, so all that link does is confirm that is indeed the best course of action.
You never answered my question. At what point will the price be too high for our govts to have done the removing? If the ‘soverignty’ transfer blows up? If Iraq becomes a satellite of Iran? If someone as bad as Saddam, but just not named Saddam, winds up the thug-du-jour? If it motivates people into becoming terrorists who would have been satisfied merely hating us from the comfort of their own homes? If it does enough damage to military readiness that they can’t respond to some future threat the way we’d need them to?
Do you assert that your little Iraqi adventure won’t cost us anything?
If the invasion eliminated torture at Abu Ghraib, then Perry was right. If the invasion doesn’t eliminate torture at Abu Ghraib, then Perry was right. If Bush orders every Iraqi killed, Perry never had a high opinion of Bush anyway, so that would merely prove Perry right. Everything that happens in Iraq, good or bad, in some way will prove Perry right somehow.
Cute.
There isn’t any big conspiracy going on here trying to quash discussion on Iraq. We were invaded by a socialist shill brandishing cliched and logically-challenged information about healthcare in the US, and people jumped on it.
Regarding the “wedding party massacre” — CNN reports the kids died miles away in another town, and there was substantial evidence that it was a confab of foreign jihadists, not a wedding: (Link)
Regarding Iran’s “suckering” the US into invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam: Iran itself is undergoing massive political unrest (completely under-reported by the Western media, particularly the British media.) IMHO The Iranian Mullahcracy is making a last ditch attempt to hold onto power by seeking new spheres of influence among the Iraqi Shiites. I’ve already read reports from Iranian dissident groups that the Mullahs have had to hire foreign mercenaries to keep the unrest down in Iran and there are probably Iraqi Shiites among those foreign mercenaries.
This could backfire on them tremendously and bring them down for good. How is it going to look to the peopel of Iran that its government is dragging it into a civil war in Iraq while its own people are suffering 25 percent unemployment rates and which also claims it doesn’t have the bucks to alleviate the horrors of the recent Bam earthquake that killed upwards of 70, 000 people?
Mullahs down in Iran and Saddam down in Iraq. Sounds good to me — if the US can hold its nerve.
All the more reason for the Iranian govt to try to distract its people w/ a foreign crisis, which you war supporters may have helped them do.
Scott’s question about costs is a deliberately unanswerable and he knows it. Its just a word game. Its not possible to predict costs in a war as war by its very nature is unpredictable. Moreover, the Iraqi action is not a war in itself, but one action in a larger ongoing war, a war that began shortly after WW2 when the Arab world tried to destroy Israel.
As to what we should be prepared to suffer in winning this war, I know for myself that when I watched live on television the second plane fly into the Twin Towers my first thought was, whatever it costs, whatever the sacrifice, the madness that the Arab/Islamic world has forced on the world for the past fifty some years must be stopped once and for all.
Perry – I do appreciate that you will comment when you think you have something interesting to add. But I’m sure that a man of your imagination could come up with something more interesting to say about Ahmad Chalabi than “loser”!
So the ends justifies the means?
So you push for govt action admitting you cannot estimate the cost. Forgive me for not wanting to give the govt a blank check like that.
Saddam’s regime was a secular one. A vicious regime, but a vicious, secular one. You sound as mad (“whatever it costs, whatever the sacrifice”) as you claim the Muslims to be. You want to destroy the village in order to save it.
blockquote>All the more reason for the Iranian govt to try to distract its people w/ a foreign crisis, which you war supporters may have helped them
Well, I wasn’t one of the “war supporters”; please watch where you are placing your presumptions. But now that we are there, the negative consuqences of us leaving are immense.
Regarding Iranians, I pretty much think the majority are “undistractible” at this point. The misery index there is just too high. Just my personal opinion, of course, but based on quite a few hours hanging out on Iranian dissident sites and corresponding with Iranian dissident-supporters.
“So the ends justifies the means?”
No but the means were perfectly reasonable.
Far far worse was done by the Allies during WW2, including the bombing of Dresden, the mass rape of German women by advancing Russians, the atomic bombs on Japan.
But does any of this mean that therefore the whole Allied effort was wrong? That we should have left Hitler in power? Of course not. Perhaps in Scotts world, where the genocide of every non-Aryan person in Europe was not his responsibility. But as someone who considers himself a member of the human race I do think it was mine and every other person’s who claims to believe in liberty and the universal rights of man.
The issue is not whether bad things happen in wars. Thats a given. The issue is whether our long term goals are right or not. And in this respect the defeat of Arab fascism and Islamic terrorism are morally justifiable goals. That we should strive to achieve these goals in ways consistent with our values is also a given. But when we fail, the answer is not that we were wrong to strive in the first place, but to do better.
So you didn’t support it then, but support it now. That still makes you a war supporter, and thus responsible for every post-invasion rape in Abu Ghraib (your war, your responsibility).
Okay Scott, I’ll bite — I’m responsible for post-war rapes at Abu Gharib. But only if you admit that you are responsible for the hundreds of Iraqis killed in suicide bombings, the assisinations of several GC members, the killings and mutilations of the American civilian contractors at Fallujah, and the beheading of Nick Berg by the “resistance.” Fair’s fair, after all.
. . .not to mention, Scott old buddy, the responsibility for the thousands of Iraqis and Kurds who will die if al-Qaeda and the Iranian mullahs have their way in Iraq in wake of the US’s pulling out. Will you be willing to accept THAT responsibility?
Without your war, there’d be no resistance to your war. Susan, you killed Nick Berg.
Again Susan, your war, your aftermath, your responsibility.
Shawn, every govt action is ‘justified’ by a claim to good intentions. I don’t agree with you that what goes inside your own head is more important than what goes on in the actual world. “I mean well” doesn’t cut it – remember what the road to Hell is paved with.
Shawn:
Well said. And, of course, we do have moral responsibility for our failures. So Scott’s criticism of Susan that we bear moral responsibility for rapes at Abu Ghraib is correct. But it ignores the larger moral issue – and that is whether the war was morally correct or not. If it was, then nothing that happened at Abu Ghraib can override this.
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Without Guardian-reading simplsmes like yourself, there would be no motivation to commit such acts in order to play to the Western leftist propaganda machine. Or to kill little Kids in Ramadi to provide “evidence” of US “wedding strikes.”
Once again: what would you hope to accomplish by the Coalition’s pulling out? Do you think there would be more killing in Iraq, or less? Seriously?
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Without Guardian-reading simplsmes like yourself, there would be no motivation to commit such acts in order to play to the Western leftist propaganda machine. Or to kill little Kids in Ramadi to provide “evidence” of US “wedding strikes” for the BBC.
Once again: what would you hope to accomplish by the Coalition’s pulling out? Do you think there would be more killing in Iraq, or less? Seriously?
“So you push for govt action admitting you cannot estimate the cost. Forgive me for not wanting to give the govt a blank check like that.”
Of course you dont want to, because you dont want to do anything do you Scott? As far as your concerned the attack on us on Sept.11 was just fine wasnt it? No need for government action there. No, because, gee, we might not be sure how much it will cost. And knowing exactly how much it will cost is far far more important than protecting American lives isint it.
According to this argument, the American Revolutionaries should never have taken on Britain and formed the United States, because they had no idea how much it would cost.
This is putting dollars before principle.
“Saddam’s regime was a secular one. A vicious regime, but a vicious, secular one.”
So what? We are dealing with two different but related ideologies in this war, Arab fascism, which is secular, and Islamic fundamentalism. Both are part of the problem and both need to be defeated.
“You sound as mad (“whatever it costs, whatever the sacrifice”) as you claim the Muslims to be. You want to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Oh grow up. Is that really the best you can do? Twist what a persons says to make it sound like something different and then attack that? Thats poor debating by any standards.
Saying that I think we should be prepared to do pay whatever it costs to end Arab Fascism and Islamic terrorism is not anywhere near being the same thing as Muslim radicals, who are trying to turn the whole world into a medieval Islamic state. If you canot tell the difference between a strong preparedness to act in the defense of liberty and Islamic fascism your an idiot.
And it does not require destroying the village. It requires leveraging the ME by the specific application of power when and where needed, and by destroying specific threats.
So far your agument consists of:
We dont know what it will cost so we shouldnt proceed at all,
bad things have/will happen so we should do nothing (ignoring the fact that doing nothing may well be a bad thing itself),
We have no responsibility to any human being outside our boarders.
These are poor arguments easily refuted, and they have been ad nauseum. I have actually heard reasonable arguments based on strategic issues that Iraq should have been left for a later date or even ignored. I am prepared to respect these arguments and those that make them because they are based on a genuine rationality and because they are based on a moral argument that we have the right to defend ourselves and this requires sacrifice and sometimes intervening in other countries.
But your arguments are, to put it clearly, utter and complete bull.
Sorry, Scott, but that’s bullshit. You are the one screaming for the Coalition to pull out. I am in favor of them staying put. YOU take the responsibility for the consequences of them pulling out, because that’s what you are advocating right now.
So take responsibility for your own opinions. I know that’s foreign territory for a Guardian-reader, but do try at least.
I honestly believe we are at best delaying the inevitable, and very likely making it worse. If the ‘justification’ for the war was removing Saddam – he’s gone. We should be gone, too.
Shawn, you assume by ‘cost’ I only meant dollars and not, say, lives.
Raw assertion, nothing more.
OBL wasn’t a threat to our freedom. Our own govts, using 9/11 as an excuse and backed by people like you who will “pay any price” are.
Iraq wasn’t a threat to us. Don’t claim “self defense” then say anyone who doesn’t buy that is an imoral bastard who only cares about himself. If you justify a war on self-interest grounds, people who disagree are well within their rights to argue those grounds also.
“Without your war, there’d be no resistance to your war.”
But Saddam would still be funding terrorism, torturing children, oppressing the Kurds, pursuing WMD’s and so forth.
Take some responsibilty that had we followed your course YOU would be responsible for these realities. How many dead Kurds, Isralis, Kurds and Iraqi children would you be prepared to sacrifice?
Every action or inaction has consequences. A moral person takes full responsibility for this. You want everyone else to take responsibilty for their support, but you refuse to take responsibility for your opposition. Can you spell the word hypocrite?
We’re going to leave sooner or later, aren’t we? Your hidden assertion here is that staying will help, and you haven’t demonstrated that.
Should we invade North Korea tomorrow? If you say no, are you responsible for everyone the NK govt kills from now until it falls?
What an extraordinary load of tosh! No comment deserved on this.
blockquote>I honestly believe we are at best delaying the inevitable, and very likely making it worse. If the ‘justification’ for the war was removing Saddam – he’s gone. We should be gone,
Well, that’s simply your opinion (based on what foreknowledge, may I ask?).
I have a different one. Simple as that.
The violence in response to our occupation, the rape and torture in our response, the violence in response to that……
If the Iraqis honestly want us out, should we leave immediately?
Well, you haven’t demonstrated the opposite either, nor are you capable of it. So tit for tat on that.
Not an equivalent situation at all. I see no reason for NK’s situation to change for the worse without US intervention. Not true in Iraq.
You’re all over the map, comparing apples to oranges, throwing out wild accusations, using false moral equivalence — can’t you argue like a grown up?
“Raw assertion, nothing more.”
Rubbish. Both Arab fascism and especially Islamic fundamenatlism are real threats. It is not an assertion and to say so is simply laughable. Try reading books and articles some time on the subject.
“OBL wasn’t a threat to our freedom. Our own govts, using 9/11 as an excuse and backed by people like you who will “pay any price” are.”
The three thousand people who lost their lives had the freedom stolen. To claim after that that OBL is no threat to our freedom is just crap. Worse, it is enexcusably immoral. Clearly the defense of American lives is no concern to you. Clearly the people killed on Sept.11 deserve no justice in your world. Clearly anyone can attack America and you would do nothing. You dont believe in liberty.
Ive finished with you. You are living on another planet. To claim that a man who heads an organisation that publicly declared war on us, that killed hundreds of people before Sept.11 in Africa and the Missle East, and who wiped out three thousand lives by a direct attack on American soil is not threat to liberty is a claim of such utter stupidity that I suspect your either lying or mentally deficient, or just another anti-Americam hate-monger.
How can you say that all the people killed by Al-Qaeda over the last decade did not have their liberty stolen from them?
You spit on the memory of those who were murdered on Sept.11.
“Should we invade North Korea tomorrow? If you say no, are you responsible for everyone the NK govt kills from now until it falls?”
Given the means yes we should., And until we do have the means, yes, I take responsibilty for those who die by the hand if that vile regime.
Im all in favour of limted government, where it should be limited. But you are si full of hate for it that it has blinded you to any other reality. You have a kind of tunnel vision that distorts your moral sense and blinds you to real threats against us, that is so distorting that you can dismiss the death of htree thousand fellow citizens as having no consequence. it is pointless debating with you because you are not a moral or rational person.
And just how was Saddam going to get worse, given the scrutiny he was under at the time of the invasion? He did his big killing when we needed him against Iran and basically told him he could do any damn thing he wanted.
You still admitted that you can leave a tyrant in place on cost/benefits grounds and not be personally responsible for everyone that tyrant kills.
Iraq wasn’t involved in 9/11 and you spit on the memory of those killed by hijacking that attack in support of your war just like your Al Queda soulmates hijacked those planes in the first place.
Shawn, you never answered my earlier question of why American evangelicals consider Bush one of their own if he isn’t.
Neither of you have answered the question of should we leave Iraq if the Iraqis want us out immediately.
Aral, want to take bets on whether Perry shows up on this thread again?
“can’t you argue like a grown up?”
No he cant. Because he is not one to begin with. Scott is a good example of the problem with paleo-isolationists. They have become so obssesed by their own governments failings and excesses that they can no longer see any other evil or reality. Theres a strong element of Gnostic thinking here, everythings a lie, the goverment is always on every issue iredeemably evil, anything the government does is really for some other hidden reason, its all an illusion.
Of course sometimes these things are true. But when they form your only reality then you lose all perspective and cease seeing evil anywhere else.
Anyone who after Sept.11 could dismiss Al-Qaeda and OBL as “no threat” is not playing with a full deck.
Okay, thanks for that. At least an attempt to communicate rationally rather than throwing childish accusations around. Good for you.
The violence is the result of various factions jockeying for position, as well as foreign jihadis such as the Jordanian Zaraqawi. Al-Sadr is the leader of one of those factions. There are other leaders of other factions. This may surprise you but not all Shiites are in love with al-Sadr. Shiite Islam is very hierarchical, and from what I’ve read, Al-Sadr is the equivalent of a bishop trying to push his way up the ranks and over-take a couple of cardinals. He’s a junior trying to knuckle in on the seniors’ territory, and this will ruffle a lot of Shiite feathers, IMHO.
Now if things don’t get better in a few months, I might be in agreement with you then. But I don’t feel that way at all right now.
“Iraq wasn’t involved in 9/11 ”
Actually, what you said was OBL is no threat. And Sadamms involement either way is not the point. The Nazis were not responsible for Pearl Harbour either, but both they and the Japanese were threats with similar ideologies. Al-Qaeda alone is just one threat. it is not highjacking Sept.11 to understand that removin AQ alone will not solve the problem. AQ is just one weed an a whole garden of them and in order to prevent more Sept.11’s we need to take a wide view of the issues.
“Shawn, you never answered my earlier question of why American evangelicals consider Bush one of their own if he isn’t.”
Because they dont. I know because I’m very invloved with the Evangelical community through organisations like Promise Keepers. They consider that on SOME issues Bush supports similar stands as they do, so they suppor him as far as that goes. But there has in fact been a fair amount of criticism of Bush by some evangelicals for what they see as his soft stance on Islam and other issues.
“Neither of you have answered the question of should we leave Iraq if the Iraqis want us out immediately”
Firstly there is no evidence that a majority do. Second even if they did my answer would be no not yet. We have a duty to ensure that a functioning government is well on the way before we leave.
I specifically said no threat to our freedom. Any random street criminal is a threat to the lives of others, but cannot suspend the consititution w/ a ‘PATRIOT’ Act like ShrubCo did.
Funny name for an organization that you’d be involved with, given how little you seem to care that we were lied into this war (how many tons of anthrax and serin did Commander Codpiece say Saddam had?).
BTW, check out http://presidentialprayerteam.org
regarding Micheal Moore, I’d suggest that his essential dogma runs along the logical lines of:
1) The FIRST amendment in the US Constitutional Bill of Rights (those which CANNOT be taken away by ANY government) protects me and my friends when we viciously and disingeniously insist that….
2) The SECOND amendment in the US Constitutional Bill of Rights (those which CANNOT be taken away by ANY government) must be taken away from my enemies.
If you agree with this internally contradictory fundamental position, you are invariably a collectivism statist. If you do not, you are invariably an individualism capitalist.
Shawn, post your theory about Shurb not being an evilvangelical to FreeRepublic.com and send me the link. I gotta see this.
Kholood, a 2-year-old Iraqi girl, lies in a bed Sunday in the hospital in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, Iraq. Kholood was injured by shrapnel in her back when U.S. helicopters fired on a wedding party on May 19 in the desert near the border with Syria, killing more than 40 people. Kholood lost her parents, and four of her brothers and sisters during the attack.
Scott wrote:
You mean the sanctions? Considering the mounting evidence that the UN and French oil companies were on the take with the oil-for-anything-but-food régime, I’d say Saddam wasn’t under that much scrutiny.
But I’ll play your puerile little game. If I understand your posts correctly, you’re claiming that anybody who supported Gulf War II (NB: I’ve always been at most a tepid supporter of Gulf War II) is responsible for every civilian death that’s occurred in Iraq since the start of the war. From what I’ve read, that number is claimed to be in the 10-20 thousand range.
On the other hand, anti-war activists were claiming that the sanctions imposed in the oil-for-food regime killed 500,000 children. Since the sanctions were in effect for 12 years, that comes out to just over 40,000 children killed a year.
Can it not therefore be argued that the folks who supported the war are actually responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives that would have been extinguished due to the sanctions, and that the people who opposed the war need to come to account for proposing policies that would have killed tens of thousands of people?
I don’t see how this is any different than the tortuous logic you’ve been using, Scott. It’s just being used to a different end.
Nice attempt at a smear job. Too bad it 1) has no relation to the facts and 2) marks you as someone who would criticize Moore without ever seeing his movies.
Specifically, your little outburst of stupidity is rebutted by the fact that Moore is a gun owner and card carrying member of the NRA. Secondly, the Columbine film made the argument that the levels of violence in the US were not caused by the level of gun ownership there, which as he points out in the film, is not higher than the level of gun ownership in places with a much lower rate of violence. The argument of the film was most certainly not “let’s outlaw guns” or “let’s ignore the second amendment”. The question the movie sought to answer was “why does the US have such a high murder rate when other countries with equally high gun ownership rates don’t”.
If you had seen the movie, you would know that.
So Moore would certainly not agree with your statement 2, which means by your argument that he is an “individualism capitalist”. That would be news to him, and such an argument can be refuted by one of the other Moore movies you didn’t watch. Feel free to crticize it without seeing it either. I need another good laugh.
Yawn.
Aral. Start your own blog and don’t try to colonise other people’s. The people who come to here come because they like the writing of the Samizdata editors and principal contributors and they enjoy their choice of subjects.
Scott said: “You never answered my question.”
That is because my comment was not aimed at you and after having answered you so many times before, there is no need to endlessly continue to do so, given that you never ask anything new and no matter how completely I reply, you will always act as if I have not replied unless I agree with you. I feel no need to endlessly indulge you as it is rather like trying to converse with a broken record. It is not like you actually make compelling argument and they are not made any more compelling by endless repetition. For me, Shawn describes you perfectly when he wrote:
That the governments of the USA and UK do bad things is so obvious as to be beyond debate for me. That the governments of the USA and UK are vastly preferable to the likes of Saddam Hussain, Slobodan Milosovic, Kim Il Sung et al. is also so obvious as to be beyond debate for me. Thinking that is not the case is the product of the same warped logic that lead Rothbard during the cold war to decide that the Soviet Union was never really a threat and to have people like Buchannan say that Japan only attacked the USA because it was provoked by the US Government. As for me you views are so divorced from reality, I might as well be wasting my time debating physics with someone who believes in flat earth theory. There are many people who have made anti-war arguments for which I do not feel I have all the answers, but you, Scott, ain’t one of those people.
Verity: Well, I come here (and I suspect that goes for most) because of the cut and thrust of the threads. The original contributions are the price you have to pay for them. A little gang of “critical rational individualists” all agreeing with each other in between grovelling at the altar of the Special Relationship wouldn’t be worth visiting except for wry amusement.
If Mr de Havilland believes in the free market, like any other editor he must carefully consider the constructive suggestions of his readers. All he has said about the Iraq War recently is that it doesn’t matter if we were suckered into it, or what happened afterwards, as long as Saddam was chucked out. That is not particularly individualistic, critical or indeed rational.
BTW, if we all started our own blogs whenever we disagreed with someone else’s, the internet would become six billion sites of solipsism. This site could do with a bit more Gabb v The Rest spats within the clique too.
BTW, a commenter above mentioned the Canadian health care system as his prefered alternative to the US one. Check out what Dan Drezner says on his blog. In a nutshell, the Canadian system has considerable flaws.
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001313.html
felixrayman: “The question the movie [Bowling for Columbine] sought to answer was “why does the US have such a high murder rate when other countries with equally high gun ownership rates don’t”.
This is true, but Moore (whom I see as an American midwest populist in the La Follette/Teddy Roosevelt tradition rather than a doctrinaire socialist) is no better equipped to give a full answer than nost of his critics.
Gun violence, like other kinds, is disproportionately perpetrated by young men with high levels of testosterone. Some races have higher average levels than others because their ancestral life histories selected them for freelance aggressiveness on the savannah as hunter-gatherers. Testosterone corelates negatively with intelligence and empathy, and positively with impulsivity.
So long as these people are kept under close social constraints, their violent tendencies can be curbed. But when they are “emancipated” into a society where guns are freely available (because the majority is pheotypically equipped to deal with them) gun crime becomes more of a problem. Moore chose to focus on two white kids running amok in Colorado. It would have been more enlightening to compare gun crime rates between, say, North Dakota and Detroit, and consider what ethnic factors might help account for the large disparities. But as long as the denial of human biodiversity remains obligatory in polite PC society, even iconcoclasts such as Moore are left in the dark.
‘Bowling for Columbine’ as an attempt to ask why America has such a high Murder rate was risible, as a piece of of entertainment it is was terrible (apart from the funny, if probably false, South Park cartoon in the middle).
Mr Moore (food please!) never came to any sort of answer, he never examined the effects of prohibition (drugs) or looked properly at cultural effects.
I say looked properly because his entire argument against pioneer culture etc. being the cause was that Germany was far more violent, he cited the Holocaust, meaning that he completedly disregarded any sort of reactionary effect.
The US is a special drugs case because of its harsh rules, and harsh enforcement. If Moore had blamed this, and possibly lost his oafish aura, he would be a Samizdata hero (?).
However because Moore’s only two allusions to argument were US aggression abroad and lack of welfare, it takes little to hate the blimp.
WJ Phillips – Of course no one reads Samizdata because they want to read comments from other people who agree with them. We come to Samizdata because we’re interested in opposing arguments (even if, in some cases, only because we want to refute them), and we’re interested in different points of view from both sides of the Atlantic (and Oz).
Sometimes, to be sure, we drift off topic, but it’s a drift. Not a screeching halt and a demand that we now all discuss a different question. If we’re not interested in a thread, we don’t join in. We don’t try to dictate a change of topic. Aral is aware that there are other blogs where little else other than the Iraq war is discussed. He should go there, and not try to force the hosts of this blog to attend to his personal obsessions, and not try to force other posters to address his issues.
WJ Phillips: as we disagree on the level of axioms, it is hardly surprising to me you completely disagree with me on, well, everything. Let’s not beat about the bush, I think you as a primitivist fascist and as you are a racist collectivist, having you disagree with me is tantamount to validating my views. If we agreed on much more than the fact Monday comes after Sunday I would suspect I was getting something badly wrong.
The fact is I have not ‘recently’ said that I do not care why the politicos in Washington and Whitehall went to war with Saddam’s regime… I have actually said that all along. Granted I am rather surprised about the lack of WMDs being found (though that was only one of several reasons I wanted to see Ba’athism in Iraq overthrown), but I have always been skeptical(Link) of the other reasons given, but so what? I care nothing for the British or Americans states (though that does not blind me to the fact they are vastly preferable to many other states), so why should I act surprised if they lie about why they do the things they do? I expect nothing less. If I get my wishes because the state shares my objectives, that does not mean I have to share an agenda with the people in power who are spending my money.
Quentin Tarantino, the king of gory martial arts schlock and distinguished head of the Cannes jury, said Moore’s film won on “artistic” grounds because it was the best “feature” at the festival.
So I guess he doesn’t think of it as a documentary. Michael Moore says he is doing comedy, not documentaries. So the standing ovation was completely inappropriate if these two are to be believed. Other jurors referred to the film’s “beauty”. I have seen MMoore movies. Beauty does not come into it.
I think this shows that Cannes has become just an extension of Lala land.
But Perry, if you read your own site you would see that I don’t disagree with you on everything (e.g. pensions and the hypocrisy of Michael Moore). And if you weren’t so bent on labelling people with “isms” that seem to invoke some private set of definitions, or on declaring that many matters are too obvious to be worth discussion, you might come across as the criticial rational individualist you profess to be. For instance, whatever is a “primitivist fascist”? I don’t mind being called one but I’d love to know what I am.
Contrary to Verity’s defence above, you do seem to intervene in these threads nainly to dismiss the possibility of reasoned or principled disagreement with your dogmas. Lighten up, it’s only a bloody blog and you’re only the ringmaster. This way of refusing to debate with opponents is more characteristic of marxists or affiliates of revealed religions than libertarians I admire such as Lew Rockwell or Hans Hermann Hoppe or the anathematised Rothbard. They are gentle, urbane, wordly polymaths. Ex cathdra gathers no converts.
PS: I didn’t write that you had said only belatedly that Saddam should be evicted; I wrote that “all he has said recently” was that Saddam should be evicted, come what may. There is a difference.
Only if you assume an either/or choice between invasion and the sanctions regime as-is (or as-was).
Perry, please include a link to one of the many times you’ve answered the question of what result would make your war not worthwhile. Answering the question and merely typing something every now and then aren’t the same thing. What will it take (hypothetically, if you insist) to prove The Perry was wrong?
Perry you’re using the govt’s own dishonesty in support of govt action (“I expect them to lie, so who cares?”). How can support limiting govt when you’re content to let them lie w/ impunity because you agree with a few of their goals? You don’t get to justify your war on the one outcome you consider to be a benefit and ignore everything else. “The end justifies the means” is what the other socialists say, I suppose it makes sense for the military socialists to adopt it, too.
And Perry, if you could be a dear and include a link to where you answered the question of should we leave immediately if that’s what the Iraqis want, that’d be nice, too.
WJ Phillips asks why murder rates in the US are so much higher than in the UK. May I recommend Joyce Lee Malcolm’s book on the history of British criminal law relating to guns and crime, which ends with a fascinating section on the comparable U.S. experience. Strongly recommended and far more insightful than anything one might glean from Michael Moore.
Discussing race is useless unless one is asserting that a set of genetic material doesn’t qualify one as being regarded as a human with individual rights but rather classified as a resource subject to being property. Otherwise, if one asserts a manifest superiority or inferioirity it will show itself in the market (as long as we are diligent in reducing the State from our lives). For myself, even if one can prove that one race is superior, it is obvious that it is to such a small degree of difference to warrant declassification from ‘human with rights’ to ‘property subject to rights’. As an individualist I regard people by outward traits that have little to do with ‘racial’ paradigms.
Being swamped by ‘inferiors’ is the fear that we all have, and control by inferiors can only be accomplished by gaining control of the State and its Force. But I’d rather define ‘inferiors’ based on behavioral attributes much more than genetic imprints. Laws based on property rights, their preservation, and the threats by others against it will transcend any physical attributes. In the end, the desire of the inferior to control the superior is the root of Statism. That is what needs to denied regardless, and are not dependent on race. In fact we have examples where policies based on race achieved control by inferiors nonetheless, see Nazi Germany.
WG Phillips, I don’t understand what you hope to achieve with your tribalism ‘you missed one, Perry’. Even if your ideas had any imperical evidence supporting them, they would be useless.
Useless because they both do not apply in a profit driven system, where individual merit is the most important factor, and because your ideas certainly don’t apply across the board.
From personal experience I have learnt that this can not be always true. I, a semi-ashkenazi Jew, was taught very ably my Biology GCSE by my Nigerian (Ibo) friend.
I knew nothing and he taught me without the text book, in a morning.
This may only be one example, but just this negates any use for your ideas, because if we were to judge on race then we would be hopelessly inefficient.
Obviously, also, I have no trust in your evidence. Simply because I have never heard of any geneticist who understands intellect.
Simon: That “g” is a real entity, not a reification; that IQ tests measure it accurately without serious cultural bias; and that there are gaps between average IQs of different races… all this is consensual among psychometricians. As I said before, the era of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and DNA-based biogenetics is correlating the long-established findings of testers with insights into *why* IQ has been so robust and such a trusty predictor of life outcomes: the most universal measure of human capacity ever devised.
For some guidance see (a) Statement on “Mainstream Science on Intelligence”, published in The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994; (b) “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns” (1995) by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association. Both are on line.
As I also said, nothing in this obviates the certainty that some members of a population group with a lower average IQ will outscore some members of a higher-IQ group. The bell curve distributions for each race substantially overlap.
Acceptance of human biodiversity need be no bar to individualist beliefs. Frank Miele, co-author of the new book “Race: the Reality of Human Differences” is a libertarian. So is Prof. Michael Levin, author of “Why Race Matters” (1997).
Careful, WJ Phillips. Keep flying in the face of p.c. dogma on race and Perry will call you a “recidivist podiatrist Sunkist amethyst”!
Hello kc,
My guess is WJP’s the kind of guy who will speak his truth regardless. Perhaps just one such on this blog will be less offensive to libertarian decorum than the happy banned that went before. I hope so because debate is always more illuminating than censorship.
Thanks, btw, for your positive contribution to that “limits of tolerance” thread. But you were in a minority of twenty to two. It did not escape my notice how popular Perry’s action was.
Perry will call you a “recidivist podiatrist Sunkist amethyst”!
No, just an odious fascist. ‘Race realism’ is a fantasy, it is simply an excuse to dress up hatred as science. You see, I have no problem with someone being a racist if they want, just so long as they keep it in their space and property. In fact I have no problem with any sort of personal discrimination against people you loath. For example I loath WJ Phillips and I intend to discriminate against him, just as I have previously discriminated again the other ‘race realist’ fantasists who bob up here occasionally.
I regard him and his ilk as primitivists because their views are rooted in what Hayek called ‘the pre-extended order’, the era before modern civilisation lifted us beyond broad social bonds based on family… the tribal ‘blood and soil’ crap that small minds have use to justify countless evils since time immemorial. But Phillips makes it clear that he is more than just a simple bigot when he says that he does not want black people just let loose in ‘his’ society because of their biological nature, which makes him a simple fascist as well.
And the reason I tend to ban creeps such as him from Samizdata.net is that they clog up the comments endlessly, somehow bringing the topic back to their psychologically disordered obsession with race. Yet as people like WJ Phillips proves, you can be white and still a dangerous threat to others, which is why the correct response when people like him ever look like being able to implement their collectivist racism politically, is to met force with force rather than dialogue. This is why I regard WJ Phillips as worth banning rather than provide a platform for his crap, unlike equally obsessed but essentially harmless folks like Scott Cattanach, who often in fact find themselves in the same political corner for rather different psychological reasons. This is just a microcosm of people like ostensible ‘libertarians’ like Hans-Herman Hoppe and Rothbard ending up as de facto apologists for mass murdering ethnic and political collectivist regimes.
The racists always react to being given the boot with the smug notion that it is the power of their arguments, rather than the fact their ideas are so absurd and so far over the limits of rational tolerance as to not be worthy of being taken seriously. This just one of those things that help them get through the day. Yeah, yeah, Samizdata.net is just “too PC” to take the notion that WJ Phillips defends phrenology and collectivist racism seriously. Oh well, I guess we will just have to live with the shame.