The Shrine of an Idiot God

While I am sympathetic for many reasons, I am increasingly of the opinion that one of the greatest recommendations of the monarchic system is that it has as an effect the disenfranchisement of essentially the entirety of a societies many, many idiots.

This has no bearing on the actual quantity of idiots present, or their vociferousness, but so long as the particular idiot that you hear is not the monarch, you can take comfort in the absolute knowledge that this idiot is not, and never will be, dictating policy. In this day and age I think nobody can deny the appeal of that sort of assured impotence in ones ideological opposition.

Imagine what changes there would be in our approach to discourse, which in the internet age is more prolific than ever, if it were known by both parties that their discussions are nothing but the exploration of hypotheticals? Without the illusion that anything said by any pundit has the slightest influence on policy, what good could getting worked up possibly do? From whence would come vitriol? Perhaps it is out of the habit of a lifetimes under a crown that gave our forefathers their seemingly effortless ability to discuss passionately matters of state, then just as quickly turn from them to more mundane subjects: a deeply ingrained belief that nothing they wrote actually had import or impact.

So what if the monarch is not brilliant, a master statesman? So what if now and again the monarch is one of the idiots? That is actually another upside which is critical to the contentment of the populace: Someone concrete to blame.


The monarch, as the State incarnate, literally is responsible personally for the well-being or otherwise of their subjects. If there is one thing that can be proven by the rantings of the people - of their blame casting and religious fervor and conspiracy theorizing and appeals to the state to intervene somehow - it is that the people above all want to know that someone is ultimately in charge. Not some amorphous, intangible Congress or Parliament. One solitary individual. Human nature all but demands a king.

And why not? Better to have one person in charge than this Byzantine mess of shifting allegiances and untraceable accountabilities. One person under whom we all thrive together or not; one person who is trained in the art of statecraft and who may even excel in it, potentially to bring us to new heights.

Let's not forget that the vast majority of governments have been some form of autocracy. The bulk of human achievement - art, technology, civics, literature, philosophy - has been accomplished under these conditions. The greatest and widest and longest lived empires the world has seen were united under a crown. Let's stop pretending that this is an accident.

Let's stop pretending that populist doublethink has truly improved upon tried and true methods. Let's abandon the idea that democracy and republicanism are new developments and logical progressions of autocratic government, when in fact these institutions date back to the ancient world. Let's stop pretending that by forcing politicians to pander to the populace for votes that we have attained greater transparency or accountability in our government; or that the plebians are even entitled to a hand at statecraft. Let's abandon that notion that says that all of us are better than some of us. Let's stop pretending that it isn't stupid to believe that democracy isn't mediocrity enshrined: that the law of averages somehow works in our favor in the long run.

Let's give monarchy another go of it.

My Final Correspondence with the Libertarian Party

Dear "Chair"

I will not be renewing my membership at any level of the Libertarian Party. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed that my membership took so long to lapse.

There are a variety of reasons for this.

First and foremost, as you may or may not be aware, the LPC is incapable of culling felons from its membership. Any political organization such as yours, which intends to break into the "two-party" paradigm, must be able to present a spotless face. That incidents such as those surrounding Matthew Barnes, a convicted child molester, should even be an issue within the organization is unacceptable. Violent crime is unacceptable to libertarians. Felons are unacceptable to voters. That the issue of such persons being members of the Party was even a debated subject is deplorable and comments rather strongly against the intention of the LPC to conduct itself with principle and with an intent to succeed. My dollars are better spent elsewhere and my integrity demands I associate myself with better people than the LPC sees fit to include.

Second, the LP as a whole seems to suffer from an exclusionary, extremist, fundamentalist mentality that may not be representative of the Party but is its most vocal component. The conspiracy theorists, the anarchists, the potheads and the racists have only grown more vocal and more powerful within the party since the death of founder, guide, and voice of reason, David Nolan. To be associated with the likes of Starchild at the state level and Jim Davidson at the national level is an embarrassment and a risk to me professionally.

I do not require a reply to this. There is nothing that can be said or done to regain my membership. It is due to the several years spent attempting to improve the Party that I have even dignified your letter from "Chair" with a response. Please remove me from your lists and do not contact me further.

Regretfully,

[TheMadJack]

On Iraqi WMD and the Justification for War

It is becoming public knowledge that there were chemical weapons found in Iraq during the 2003-2011 Operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. On its face this contradicts the long-running script that "we were lied to" about the pretenses for the war.

As usual, the truth is not so pure and simple.

I heard about these a few years back from a couple different Iraq vets. I mentioned it in passing when ISIS overtook an old chemical weapons plant this spring. We had captured the same plant in 2003 when we first swept through.

There is a key point that needs to be made: The difference between "Saddam's WMD program poses a threat" and "Saddam has old, leaky, improperly stored and probably inert WMD from the 1980's" is not a small difference.

What many people fail to realize is that hindsight is 20/20. They think that the indicators are obvious, when in fact they aren't. We "should have known" the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. We "should have known" about the 9/11 attacks. We "should have known" that Saddam's WMD programs were in a sorry state.

Saddam was surrounded by enemies and fickle allies who would happily turn on him if they sensed weakness. His regime HAD to create the impression that they had WMD as a deterrent. It worked on Iran, it worked on Israel, it worked on Syria and Jordan and Egypt, and it nearly worked on us.

As Sun Tzu said, "All warfare is based on deception". It is the function of Intelligence to try and peel back the layers of deception, and sometimes Intelligence fails. Critics of the war conveniently forget the way that Saddam blocked and delayed inspectors and rattled his saber in the days leading up to the war.

These revelations do not fully vindicate the Iraq invasion, but it does lend credit to the posturing that Saddam did in 2002-2003. We did go to war in Iraq because we were fed falsehoods, but it looks more and more like those falsehoods were fed to us by Saddam, not by George W. Bush

Aborting Jesus

In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt makes one of the most controversial claims I've ever seen: that legal and accessible abortion makes a better world. The data makes a compelling argument and if you would like to examine it and his arguments I urge you to pick up a copy of his incredibly interesting book.
The pro-life contingent is fond of asking "What if the baby was the cure for cancer?" or other such inane questions. It is inane because any problem has a solution which may be derived by anyone with the proper intelligence. New problems, on the other hand ...well, let's just say that the drop in crime rates observed two decades after Roe v. Wade wasn't attributable to the "cure for crime" being allowed to come to term.

Jesus is a great example of just such a situation. Imagine how much better the world might be if Joseph had done what he was supposed to do? (Hint: Deuteronomy 22:20-21; Numbers 5:11-31) There would be only one basic cult of Jehovah on the planet. The Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, Sharia ...and likewise, the reactions to those forces: communism, the French Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, Pogroms. Lesser banes like Intelligent Design would also be absent from the world today.

In the void left by Jesus' absence there would be new atrocities, for sure. Humans are atrocious, and religions are made by humans. But what if three quarters of the world's population wasn't all devoting their bloodshed to the same God, whose cults have written into their texts the world's most reassuring excuses for horror yet devised? Mind that even the religious wars in Hindu and Buddhist areas in the modern day are fought against one sect of the cult of Jehova.

Perhaps this is the key to Christopher Hitchens' note of the correlation between Women's Rights (and reproductive freedom) and the quality of life and freedom of an area. Perhaps the causal relationship is not only direct; but it is as Hitchens suggest, that women's rights and reproductive freedom create conditions for a better world.