| | John, Jon, a general observation:
I notice too much of a tendency in anarchist-type argumentation that plays right into the hands of anti-American sentiments. It was something that Rothbard was doing during the Cold War -- and that is making some abstract perfection the enemy of the good. It leads to an anti-conceptual approach to modern-day political conflicts, and -- whether intended or not, sometimes more explicit than others -- moral-equivalence-type comparisons between the U.S. and truly bad regimes. This approach blinds these highly-rationalistic arguers to some political realities, and throws them into arbitrary fits without concern for rational assessment of facts, like what we got in this very thread putting the U.S. right up there with Iran and China. Why do it? Why jump so easily to mix the U.S. right in there with these other countries? If the aim was some argument against the death penalty, there are other ways of doing it. I can't read Mr. Marotta's mind, but it was so goddammed irresponsible and far too typical of the mentality I see in anarchist-type arguments. Somehow, in their anti-state fervor, they latch onto the U.S. state as the one pushing the most weight around and able to commandeer the most resources, and fly fight into their fit of saying that the U.S. is thereby the biggest and baddest government around. Gee, no other countries go around spending hundreds of billions on a controversial war, so the U.S. must be the leading trouble-causer. Gee, the U.S. has more nuclear weapons stockpiled than everyone else, so it poses the biggest nuclear threat. Gee, the U.S. federal government has a 3 trillion dollar budget, so it plunders the most wealth from producers than anyone. Gee, this big bad government puts people to death, moreso than Iran does (or reports, anyway). Gee, this is the only government ot nuke large civilian populations. And on and on and on, and it pisses me off to see it.
There are ways of going about criticizing U.S. policies, criticizing the death penalty, and so on (if you hadn't noticed, Rand herself did plenty of that), without playing right into the hands of the propaganda of the anti-Americanists and moral equalizers. I think everyone already knows or has good ideas of where the U.S. needs its fixing-up, but it has next to nothing to do with how America stands in regard to the rest of the world and how it conducts itself in places like the Middle East. This is not bowling, with its rules. Pacifism is not something to hide behind. This has to do with conduct of foreign policy against outright enemies -- in this case, quite-savage enemies. The anarchist-types seem most frustrated that in the reality of this situation, the standards of their paradise aren't being met, and they lash out irresponsibly.
Some folks apparently haven't learned their lessons from the past. We were attacked by Japan, and by the time it was over, Japan lay in ruins. We didn't play nice with Japan, not at all. Some may have even feared that if we did them really badly, we'd stir up too much trouble for ourselves. And yet Japan got itself civilized and became an ally.
We know that states sponsor terrorism. We know which state is a chief culprit. We also know that this state is unequivocally on the side of evil, as this thread's leading article demonstrates. The only question remaining is not whether we have a moral right to end that regime, but whether it's optimal from a strategic vantage point to do so. In Japan, it was. Here, I don't know. There's this fear that if we got tough and ended this regime, it would only foment more hatred and jihad against U.S. interests. I can only wonder how much that could happen without the aid and harboring of certain state regimes. It's because this whole terror-war is being conducted by these states through covert back-channels that apparently some folks are confused as to what to do about it. Do we want to punish all the poor folks in these states by ending their regimes in an ultra-violent manner? We didn't seem to be hung-up by this hand-wringing in the case of Japan. (Then again, the anarchist-types probably thought we shouldn't have done anything about Japan, either. Just don't get involved in any wars, and preferably just dismantle state institutions, period, and the problems will go away. Islamists infiltrating the territory formerly known as the U.S. and instituting Sharia law? Nah, wouldn't happen. Anyway, what could be worse about it? The U.S. already puts more people to death as it is....)
Chris
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