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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
L.W.M. --
@QS
The odd thing, the irony, is that in the final analysis I agree with bucky and some anarchists. I started out as an anarchist, and moved on, like most anarchists. Where we disagree is that he thinks it is the means to an end. I think it is an end, and the means have yet to be settled on. Mostly because we are just no at that place in the evolution of political consciousness. I think I'll defer to Chomsky, not Rothbard.
It is intended, as an end, not as a "means". Or, if intended as a "means," then anarchism has yet to figure out where it is to go by that "means".
The first known use of a term that has been translated as "libertarian" in a political sense was by anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque[21], who used the French term libertaire in a letter to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857.[22] The word stems from the French word libertaire (synonymous to "for liberty"), and was used in order to evade the French ban on liberty publications.
Reminds of the right-wing extremist gun-nuts/"militia movement" mavens listing among the materials which most influenced the Founders "Frederic Bastiat".
The last two Founders, Adams and Jeferson, died on July 4, 1826. Bastiat's first book was published circa 1850.
Remarkable how the Founders were able to read books published in the future even after they were dead. Well, who can explain genius, after all.
Geoffrey Perret is a British national who came to the US, went to Harvard, and enlisted in the US Army. Subsequently, he wrote a couple books including (I think) "A Country Made by War", and (definitely) "There's a War to be Won".
I recommend the second book, which is more of an organizational history + account of the rapid build-up around WWII. Aside from the usual campaign history in the European theater, there are separate chapters on (inter alia) the all-black combat regiments that were explicit 'social engineering' of a high minded kind by Gen. Marshall; women in the army; and Asian-American combat regiments, which are worth the price of entry alone.
I recommend the book because inside it is, I think, an answer to your question of whether there could be a mission-focused civilian institution that possessed all the character-building virtues. Perrett says a great deal about the Civilian Conservation Corps and how those who had served in the CCC formed the basis for the NCO corps, and brought all the values they had learned there directly into the army, and how the army embraced them more or less unchanged.
Though long disbanded, this year is the 75th anniversary of the CCC. It wasn't a perfect institution, but I'm a fan at least in part because I recognize in its story all the attributes that benefitted me, (mostly) without the potential for use and abuse, entirely without the lethal content, and oriented toward the production of real, tangible goods that then belonged to the country as a whole ... instead of just bombs, amputations, PTSD, and the shame of a shattered country halfway around the world.
Thanks for popping back in with your clarifications. I didn't really think that you and I were actually that far apart on our mutual concerns, but I was puzzled by some of the things that you wrote. Most likely just misunderstood.
I'm coming from a place that says that people who haven't been there- like myself- need to listen to those who have been there, before they speak.
But why do you assume that we are not already listening? I do listen because I want to learn. And if I speak before listening, but then listen to the response, then what I have done is begin a dialog.
My employment of the second person- "you"- was simply a rhetorical device, Pedinska. It was not directed at yourself
That is confusing when the header to your post is addressed to me. I think most people here would have been subject to the same confusion. I will take that into account though for future reference.
You're out of your depth on the illegal drug question, I can tell.
For one thing, your hypotheticals are trite, oversimplified just-so stories. And there are plenty of similar "burdens on society" that play out in similar ways, and they don't rise to the status of criminal behavior.
Incidentally, from my not-inconsiderable street experience, I'd posit that heroin addicts are less likely to mug people than a sample from the general population at large.
Yeah, many drug addicts do crimes to get money to feed their habits. Prostitution, identity theft, car theft, burglaries, shoplifting, forgery...but mugging, not so much. That's more of a "2-3 athletic teenage males looking to glory in antisocial power tripping" crime.
Drug users with criminal tendencies who do stickups usually prefer to go after cash registers- and many of the same people would do it for liquor money, or "money to party with."
Crimes are crimes. The ones with actual victims often don't get nearly enough attention paid to them, what with all of the energy and expense spent on the Drug War.
What I can't figure out is- whatever happened to simple civil confiscation? No need to spend time and energy arresting, booking, trying, convicting, and imprisoning illegal drug dealers- just take away their unlicensed inventory, toss it in a bucket of paint. No business can survive that for long.
Kind of depends on the word itself, doesn't it? I mean, the actual phoneme, the shaped sound, carries some of the 'payload' that's meant to be insulting.
Take the P word, as we were discussing last night. It's kind of a friendly word, right? Gentle ribbing, ends in a vowel sound, hardly aggressive. Sounds like something you would pet.
The C word on the other hand ... I have never liked that word. Ugh. Raises the hackles. Something about that pile-up of consonants, the foreshortened vowel crammed between them. I think it would be a fighting word even if you didn't speak a word of English and someone said it to you.
Don't believe me? Add an extra vowel, you'll see. Can you imagine somebody brawling over being called a canute? Me neither. :>
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
