Nanny's Burqa
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Still catching up with the news when able, I learned through HBL of some trenchant observations by Christopher Hitchens about airline "security" after the Christmas bombing attempt. His observations also go far to explain anarcho-tyranny, of which his subject matter is an example.
Hitchens notes that for every news story about a Moslem fanatic waltzing through security on his way to attempt murder, there is another one about additional "security" burdens borne by the rest of us. He comments:
Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't--or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to "feel safe." The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens' toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.Binswanger rightly notes that the solution to this problem remains to go on offense. He mentions a foreign policy proposal that I happen to agree with, but I have noted in the past that a freer economy could do wonders to enhance travel security, too.
The Islamic totalitarians are coopting the apparatus of the nanny state. All the more reason to disband it, then. The task is daunting because the real power lies with the people who are willing to accept a nanny state. Their overall opinion needs to change to an appreciable degree before the nanny state will be eliminated. But once that occurs, the Islamic totalitarians will drop like the flies they are.
In today's world, when one can feel beset on every side by enemies, that kind of economy of effort is heartening when one realizes it, but it is a direct result of the fact that rational principles are highly practical.
Protect individual rights consistently. The wolf of big government and the fleas of Islamic terrorism that hitchike in its fur will both be taken care of.
-- CAV
18 comments:
Instead of "targeting" (bombing) Islamic states such as Binswanger and Peikoff suggest, why not "profile" people from countries where terrorists are likely to come from?
What does Peikoff think a full scale invasion and occupation of an Islamic country like Iran will do to our supply of oil and our economy? Doesn't he realize that will inflame Moslems even more?
And I can't help but noting that Binswanger and Peikoff both support open borders which would allow terrorists free entry into our country.
Incidentally, the population of Iran is 72 million. That's around 10 million more than the combined population of Afghanistan and Iraq. The US military is already stretched thin. To occupy Iran would require a draft.
Neil -
Check your premises.
What makes you think that an Iraq-style invasion and occupation is what Binswanger and Peikoff have in mind?
Neil,
(1) Why not do both? Of course, targeting Islamic states would mean waging an actual war, rather than exporting the welfare state, which, as your comment incidentally brings up, ties up our military.
This reminds me, John Lewis has lots to say on the subject of a properly prosecuted war.
As far as "inflaming" irrational barbarians is concerned, a dead barbarian poses no military threat. Making these savages unable to harm us is the only legitimate objective in a war with them.
Also, privatizing the airports and fully deregulating the airlines would make them able to simply refuse to carry whomever the please. Profiling problem solved.
(2) You misrepresent the views of Drs. Binswanger and Peikoff, who -- as I have indicated to you on at least two previous occasions now -- support open immigration, not open borders. There is a huge difference between the two.
Gus
Gus,
If you prefer the term "open immigration" to describe their views, that's fine. But as a practical matter, do Peikoff and Binswanger think the US should prevent anyone from coming and staying in our country from anywhere (as long as they aren't criminals, suspected terrorists or carrying diseases)? Wouldn't this result in huge numbers of Moslems in our country and even more multiculturalism?
I think killing hundreds of thousands of innocents would turn lots of non-terrorists into terrorists.
Incidentally, I wonder if Peikoff has had a change of opinion since Ominous Parallels. There he opposed US involvement in WWI and WWII.
A different approach would be a non-interventionist foreign policy. No foreign aid to Israel or Egypt, no military or other support to corrupt Islamic nations, no more troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. I think there would be a lot less hostility to the US.
But do you really dispute that Peikoff's approach would result in higher taxes and a shock to our economy?
Gus,
Neil is arguing for a position that is very popular among the anti-Jihad conservatives. Its best laid out by Larry Auster. The argument is that bold, offensive warfare is not enough, that Muslims in Western lands is the problem and that the only answer is to 1) prohibit Muslim immigration 2) begin exporting Muslims from Western lands (either by bribing them to leave or outright deportations) 3) serious restrictions if not total prohibition of Islam itself.
These far-right conservatives will argue that in order to do these things that you have to reject egalitarianism and since Objectivism (which they see as a species of libertarianism) doesn't do this and still recommends open immigration of Muslims then Objectivism is just another suicidal "liberal" ideology.
I disagree with this of course, but I do wonder how a rational society in our situation would deal with Islam and Muslim immigration. Literally all of the Jihad attacks on American soil that we are seeing now (Sudden Jihad Syndrome as Michelle Maliken calls them) are from Middle Eastern immigrants. If they were not here then their attacks would not have happened. There is a logic to this but I don't know how to square it conceptually with open immigration which is a very difficult subject (and one which conservatives love to argue is a weak point of Objectivism - a fatal one).
Neil,
RE: Immigration. Again, again, the fact that someone can live here does not equal his gaining citizenship.
Regarding innocents in war, I completely agree with Don Watkins on that count. As with Japan in WW II, the "innocents" will have a choice: death due to continued resistance or seeing to it that remaining belligerent elements in their society stop waging war. If I recall correctly, the end result of WW II was NOT the entire Japanese people becoming kamikazes.
Regarding Peikoff's alleged opposition to involvement in the World Wars, could you please supply a quote so I can at least look it up in my copy of The Ominous Parallels? Something tells me that you're either making things up or dropping context.
Madmax,
Thanks for elaborating on where Neil is coming from.
Regarding your question, the answer is twofold. First, before we could even get to the political point of having open immigration, our culture would have to drastically improve, to the point that young Mohammed would grow up with little, if any, incitement against America from his teachers and peers growing up. Second, consider what would happen if lots of Moslems from one country started committing acts of terrorism here. If their mother country supported them, we'd declare war and could round up any non-citizens from that country, bar entry by others, etc. If not, we could perhaps treat it like organized crime or a rebellion, depending on the scale. In either case, our better culture would NOT suffer from multiculturalism, we'd act intransigently, and immigrants from other countries would get the message: "If I want Uncle Hassan to be able to come here, I'll be loyal to this country."
This is a complex and fertile issue, but it is hardly the fatal flaw that those who imagine that ideas are impotent think it is.
Gus
There have been terrorist attacks since 9/11 in the US. As I recall, shortly thereafter someone shot up an El Al terminal in LA. A few years ago a Moslems in NC tried to run people over. Recently we had the shooting at Fort Hood.
It certainly didn't take any connections with Iran or Al Quaeda to carry these off.
If President Peikoff were to go on the air and announce that he is taking out Iran without any concern for innocents because Moslems advocate an evil religion, what do you think many peaceful, semi-observant Moslems in the US would do?
Gus,
I make my share of mistakes, but I don't "make stuff up."
Here are the cites:
http://objectiblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/will-real-leonard-peikoff-please-stand.html
Gus,
Thanks for your response. In it you imply that open immigration is not feasible in our current cultural state. I agree. Is there any rational approach to immigration in the context of an egalitarian dominated welfare-state run by leftists who are hellbound to destroy it? Its the conservative's main issue. But I often wonder if its even worth arguing with them about it. There are so many more fundamental things that conservatism would have to address that I feel debating them on immigration is giving them a free pass on the rest of their nonsense (the most obvious of which is that a carpenter walked on water and resurrected himself from the dead).
Neil,
In both of your last responses (and your blog post), you are dropping context.
Peikoff's essay is titled, "End States That Sponsor Terrorism." How do you get from that to what you imagine his response to non-state-sponsored attacks would be?
That's a rhetorical question.
Regarding your blog post: The quotes are certainly there, but in each case, Peikoff is objecting to the *reasons* the Democrat administrations went into these wars, not US involvement (at least in WW II) as such.
To wit: (1) Peikoff continues after your first quote, "President Wilson, in his war message to Congress, observed that the United States had 'no selfish ends to serve' in entering the war." (2) And after your second quote on WW II: "Once again, a period of rising statism in the West was climaxed by a world war. Once again, the American public, which was strongly "isolationist," was manipulated by a pro-war administration into joining an "idealistic" crusade. (On November 27, 1941, ten days before Pearl Harbor, writes John T. Flynn, 'the President told Secretary Stimson, who wrote it in his diary, that our course was to maneuver the Japanese into attacking us. This would put us into the war and solve his problem.')"
Peikoff was arguing entering these wars for altruistic reasons, but not entering them period.
Madmax,
"Is there any rational approach to immigration in the context of an egalitarian dominated welfare-state run by leftists who are hellbound to destroy it? Its the conservative's main issue. But I often wonder if its even worth arguing with them about it."
No. One cannot argue for the good by making concessions to the irrational. And, if by arguing with statist conservatives about the merits of their xenophobic immigration policies, you mean, abstaining from arguing against the welfare state (which makes immigration into a problem that it would not otherwise be), then that's worse than doing nothing.
Gus
Gus,
1. Regardless of who bears the ultimate responsability, would you agree that children are innocent and that targeting them would be wrong?
2. In both the quotes Peikoff is supporting the public's desire to stay out of these wars. There is nothing in the quotes that indicates that Peikoff believes the US should have gotten involved in WWI or WWII just so long as they could be justified on a non-altruistic ground.
If Roosevelt did in fact maneuver the US into an avoidable war, would you sign up to fight it?
Gus,
Do you consider people in Holland who oppose an immigration policy that will result in the country becoming Islamic to be xenophobic or irrational?
Should Israel embrace Peikoff's "open immigration" policy?
Neil,
"1. Regardless of who bears the ultimate responsability, would you agree that children are innocent and that targeting them would be wrong?"
Nothing is intrinsically good or bad.
That said, adults who make it necessary for me to endanger their own children by supporting a war in my own self-defense are morally bankrupt.
"There is nothing in the quotes that indicates that Peikoff believes the US should have gotten involved in WWI or WWII just so long as they could be justified on a non-altruistic ground."
Now, you're dropping context TWICE! First, YOU were the one claiming that the quotes implied that Peikoff OPPOSED US involvement in these wars, which I easily showed they did not. I said nothing about Peikoff's thoughts on whether we should have entered them for other reasons.
Second, you are ignoring Peikoff's consistent stand that American foreign policy should be guided by self-interest. THAT is what you would have to look at to figure out whether he thought those wars merited US involvement.
"If Roosevelt did in fact maneuver the US into an avoidable war, would you sign up to fight it?"
That would depends on many things, including whether the war was, accidentally (like WWII) one we ought to have fought anyway and whether I believed he intended to win it (which he did).
Do you consider people in Holland who oppose an immigration policy that will result in the country becoming Islamic to be xenophobic or irrational?
Not necessarily, but that doesn't speak to whether I would agree or disagree with various policies they advocate.
"Should Israel embrace Peikoff's 'open immigration' policy?"
Immediately, no. After its culture became more rational (assuming it eventually does) to the point that it eliminated its welfare state and its self-sacrificial policies of feeding its enemies via foreign aid and not waging an actual war against them, yes. (And if there be war, then Israel doesn't have to let enemy people in.)
Also, see Andrew Dalton's comment above.
Andrew,
Sorry for the late post of your comment, which the blogger queue hid from GMail.
Gus
Gus,
1.Peikoff's quotes are most naturally read to indicate that he opposed US involvement in WWI and WWII.
2. You didn't answer my question: do you think children are innocent and that targeting them would be immoral?
Andrew,
Here is what Peikoff said:
____
It [Iran] requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation. But nothing less will "end the state" that most cries out to be ended.
____
Neil,
(1) "Are read?" By whom and in what context? WWI I can see. WWII would be a big surprise to me. Also, a properly conducted ground invasion or Iran -- we wouldn't have troops tied up rebuilding an enemy country -- would be possible in the context of a more rational foreign policy.
That said, such an occupation would STILL be different than what we're doing in Iran and Afghanistan today.
(2) Yes, I did answer your question, which is half-bait and half-bogus, the latter due to its implicit assumption of moral intrinsicism. (The interested reader will follow the link above.)
To rephrase my reply: Like any moral question: It depends.
Usually targeting children (which nobody has advocated, by the way), is immoral, but it depends. In Israel, Palesinians routinely shield themselves behind children (and probably use them to carry out some attacks). In either case, an Israeli soldier may have to target them. He is being perfectly moral if doing so achieves the military objective of defending Israel. The moral blame for the deaths of any such children lies with the Palestinians.
I will not tolerate any more impertinence from you. "You did not answer my question," is rude. I am fine with being asked for clarification, but this is my blog. I don't owe you an answer to anything, much less an answer to your satisfaction and I won't sit here and be insulted more than once.
Gus
Neil -
I was precise and asked why you thought Peikoff advocated "an Iraq-style invasion and occupation."
The following quote from the same essay advocates exactly the opposite of how the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan) was fought:
A proper war in self-defense is one fought without self-crippling restrictions placed on our commanders in the field. It must be fought with the most effective weapons we possess (a few weeks ago, Rumsfeld refused, correctly, to rule out nuclear weapons). And it must be fought in a manner that secures victory as quickly as possible and with the fewest U.S. casualties, regardless of the countless innocents caught in the line of fire.
What our government has in fact pursued is a protracted, open-ended, self-sacrificial commitment of American lives and money to bring democracy (not liberty) to savages.
Well said, Andrew.
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