We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Charles Dodgson takes aim and fires at Libertarians and our ideas which he clearly regards as ill-conceived and even harmful.
Mr.Dodgson uses an article from the Boston Phoenix exposing the slave trade in Pakistan.
“The bidding starts quickly. About 15 minutes into the bidding, one of the buyers asks for an inspection. The elderly woman removes the girls tunic, fingers the childs breasts, and then shines a flashlight into her open mouth to show that she has a good set of teeth. Bidding resumes with a certain intensity; some of the men can be seen rubbing themselves.”
The article paints a truly pitiful vista and I share Mr.Dodgson’s revulsion. What I do not share, though, is his rather strange conclusion that this is the kind of thing that Libertarians approve of:
“Libertarians argue for a society in which people solve their problems by making whatever commercial bargains they can, and the government takes an enforcement role, if that. The more radical among them suggest that society would be best off without any government at all, with nothing but private trade to regulate their interactions.”
Not quite right, of course, but it is an indication of where Mr.Dodgson is going wrong and he is definitely going wrong even according the article he has used as his source which, further down, advises us:
“Precious few Americans know anything about the history of Pakistan, much less that ul-Haq’s reforms consolidated conservative Islam’s stranglehold on the national imagination. Fewer still know that, in the process of imposing Islamic law on the land, he created a culture of servitude for the poor.”
Ah, that explains it then. Would all those Libertarians who are going around advocating the imposition of Conservative Islamic Law please stop doing it because you are distinctly off-message and giving people like Mr.Dodgson the wrong impression. Thank you.
Any genuine Libertarians could tell Mr.Dodgson that our ideas are based on the sovereign rights of individual human beings. A concept which, in both theory and practice, may lead to all manner of interesting and even exotic consequences, all of which are the very antithesis of slavery.
It is often said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. I don’t know about that and I don’t think that Mr.Dodgson is a man of little learning. The rest of his posting is devoted to taking our Johnny Student to task for his interpretations of the US Civil War in a lengthy rebuttal which appears to be both well-researched and informative.
No, I prefer to think that its a little misconception that is a dangerous thing and, of course, a big misconception is a really dangerous thing. Yes, I ‘m happier with that.
…very different things to different people. Let us consult the Oxford English Dictionary:
patriot /n.a person who is devoted to and ready to support or defend his or her country. ../patriotic adj. //patriotically adv. //patriotism n. [F patriote f. LL patriota f. Gk. patriotes f. patros of one’s father f. pater patros father]
Of course this also rather depends on what you mean by ‘country’
country n. (pl.-ies) 1 a the territory of a nation with its own government; a State. b a territory possessing its own language, people, culture, etc. […] 3 the land of a person’s birth or citizenship; a fatherland or motherland.
And therein lies one of the problems with Patriotism. When some one says ‘I am a patriot’, what the hell does that actually mean? Let’s take me, for example. My mother was American and I have lived about one quarter of my life in the USA. My father was British and I have lived a little under half my life here. For purely accidental reasons, I was actually born in the Netherlands. I feel both/neither British and/or American. So much for the complicated heredity and biology. Now for some ideology: I personally reject as illegitimate any function of the state which is not related to the defence of the individual liberty of people within their area of control, within a broad reasonable definition of those terms. I see the State as, at best, a provider of a service (security) in much the same way as I see the Pepsi-Cola Beverage Company as a provider of cans of fizzy brown liquid. I do not accept the very notion of ‘citizenship’ as I regard that as tantamount to denying me free association with non-citizens and implies the State somehow owns me in some way.
So can I be ‘patriotic’?
To the State? Absolutely not. Try to make me pledge allegiance to Old Glory or the Union Jack or the Tricolour with the intention of extracting an admission of loyalty to the state and I will set it on fire instead. And if it is on a tee shirt saying “Try to burn these colors asshole”, the wearer might just get their wish. Try to conscript me and the state will discover that I am not a pacifist and have no problem with using force against someone who tries to impose servitude upon me: starting with the guy who tries to serve call up papers on me.
And yet…
I live in London at the moment but I have ‘Old Glory’ displayed in my front window for all to see. Try walking down Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea and you will see which is my house. It has been there since September 12th 2001. I do indeed feel an affinity for what James Bennett aptly calls The Anglosphere. I regard myself as a member of a cosmopolitan, English speaking global community, a civil society far greater than any mere nation state. For all its flaws, that extended society is the best hope for freedom and liberty the world has ever known and that is something worth defending. Unlike British society, which has a myriad cultural and regional symbols redolent with meaning, only Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes, the Star Spangled Banner, truly represents not just the American state but also American society, warts and all. Truth is I much prefer the Gadsden flag (see side bar of this blog) but most people would not know what it means. And so that is why the Stars and Stripes is stuck in my window for all to see. It was not just the people of New York who were wounded, it was all of us and that is a point I think well worth making publicly.
So is that ‘patriotism’? Opinions vary.
Last night I was in lovely Prague but tonight I am in more exciting but less lovely Belgrade. So let me tear myself away from my new biMac «hehehe» and give you a Balkan perspective on the articles by Dale Amon and Perry de Havilland regarding hairy John Walker in Afghanistan.
As a person who is not from what Perry interestingly calls the ‘Anglosphere’, maybe I see this matter of John Walker slightly differently. In what used to be Yugoslavia, people split along largely ethnic lines when the civil war ripped us apart. Yet many people made decisions to not let an accident of birth choose who they stood by. There were Serbs who joined the Croatian HV Army, there were Croatians who supported the Krajina Serbs, there were Croatians who joined the Bosnian ‘Muslim’ Armia rather than the Croatian HVO. There were Serbs in Yugoslavia who supported Milosevic and the paramilitaries and others who opposed them. Still others everywhere decided to support ‘none of the above’ and either refused to take up arms against anyone or moved abroad.
It seems to me, a person who turns his back on their ethnic origin and joins with another culture during a conflict is either a person of principle or a traitor. Which you are judged to be is only decided when it is all over. So for example, Croatians who supported the Serbian regime in Krajina are ‘traitors’ and Serbs who supported Tudjman’s Croatia are ‘principled’.
Why? Because if anyone can be said to have emerged the ‘winner’ in the Balkan Wars, it is Croatia. It is that simple. As the US has won the war in Afghanistan, it will be decided that Walker is a traitor. The winners make the rules and they write the history books. The winner is always right. Perry takes a position of pure and very good libertarian principle in this matter, but what Dale says is what will actually happen: the US will throw him in jail regardless for exactly the reasons he says.
It may not be fair or just or moral or even reasonable. But it is the truth. That is how the world works.
Dale‘s points are well made, particularly the one that when Walker joined the Taliban, he could hardly have reasonably expected to find himself at war with the United States! I have a slightly different take on it, however.
I think many of the comments regarding the dismal Walker begs the question of why is he being regarded as having any particular affinity or duty of loyalty to the USA at all? Just because he originated from there, how does that somehow make him irretrievably beholden? People come from all over the world and emigrate to America and the US has no problem with them ‘becoming Americans’. So why is it so hard to see the process in reverse?
For goodness sake, if going to Afghanistan and joining the Taliban does not constitute the complete and utter repudiation of not just the United States but the entire western world, then I guess I don’t know what does. When he was captured, as far as I know he was certainly not yelling “I’m an American! I wanna see the nearest American consulate!” Far from it. There should be no expectation that he still owes the US anything or the US owes him anything.
If it turns out he is a member of Al Qaeda, then he is still very much our enemy and should be treated in the same manner as we treated captured members of the SS or Gestapo or Nazi Party after WWII. If he is just a member of the defeated Taliban’s army, as seems likely, then just question him and then dump his sorry arse back in the hell hole we found him in. Even if he was involved in the death of CIA man Mike Spann, so what? Walker was a soldier with the Taliban and we were the Taliban’s openly declared enemy. People get killed in war. That is what soldiers do. Big deal.
I do not think Walker is ‘just a misguided kid’. I think he is a misguided adult who made his choices freely and should reap the consequences of supporting a vile regime in Afghanistan. But his crimes are again the Afghan people who suffered under the Taliban, not the US. Unless he turns out to be a member of Al Qaeda, leave it to to the Afghans to deal with him.
It’s a hard call without really knowing what Mr. Walker was up to and why. There is little doubt in my mind that he should be tried for Treason; whether or not he is convicted, whether or not there were extenuating circumstances is a matter for the courts to decide. The fact that he was found where he was found is rather damning evidence but is not “beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt”.
What should be done with him if he is found guilty? That again is a matter for the courts. We don’t know what he actually did so how can we decide his fate from in front of our comfortable computer screens? For all we know he could have been dragged along by events and lain cowering in the basement wondering at his own idiocy. Or perhaps he went to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance never imagining he could end up fighting his own country. After all, on September 10th how many of us would have considered US forces in Afghanistan as even the remotest possibility? If that were the case he is a soldier of fortune who got caught up in the wrong war at the wrong time. A few years in prison and a slap on the wrist would suffice.
Of course as Glenn Reynolds has suggested a number of times, we could take it as given he has chosen to give up his US Citizenship. We could leave him to the tender mercies of his chosen enemies, the Northern Alliance. An article about his interrogation in Ananova seems to indicate the CIA men were thinking along these lines just before “the balloon went up”:
On the tape, Walker is seen being brought to the two CIA men for interrogation. Spann is then seen saying to his colleague: “I explained to him what the deal is” and then tells Walker: “It’s up to you.” Dave then says: “The problem is, he’s got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he’s going to die here. “Or he’s going to f****** spend the rest of his short f****** life in prison. It’s his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.
If he was there specifically to fight against America, there are no options. He should be put away for a very long time. And if he was actively assisting the al Qaeda… well that is another kettle of sharks entirely. He would, and should, face the death penalty.
Fortunately we have the right President for it.
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