Well, look at us…there’s still some decorating and cleanup to do, but the MT port seems to be working.
If you commented between about 2000 and 2200 Pacific time, please check to see if I got your comments moved over; apologies if we lost them!
Huge thanks to DJ and RR for all the help…

Bear with me…I’m having problems with archives and publishing. I’ve submitted a request, and am puttering around with it myself. I need to get the new site together…
BWAA-HA-HA!!!

One of the difficulties of dealing with matters in much of the Middle East and Third World in general is the ‘brittleness’ of the governments there.
This is raised in the questions raised by Chris Bertram a few days ago, in his commentary on the Thomas Pogge article (pdf file) on the legitimacy of authoritarian governments in resource-dependent countries. Bertram and Pogge start by pointing out that political power in a place like Nigeria is the path to wealth – by Western standards – for the individuals in power. They take this further, to suggest that the West is immiserating the populations of these countries by accepting the legitimacy of, and trading with, the kleptocrats.
And it is certainly the case that many of our problems in the Arab world are the result of our desire to have compliant trading partners – as we have in Saudi Arabia – whose interests may not intersect well with their population. The anger of the population, logically directed at their rulers, then is redirected by the rulers and cultural institutions that they explicitly support first at Israel and the United States, and then secondarily at modernity in general.
Having mounted this tiger, there is no safe way for these governments to dismount.
I don’t know how to respond to Bertram on the issue of ‘legitimate ownership’ and who should get to determine it; the sad reality is that for most of human history, the definition of property was ‘what I could keep others from taking’. They aren’t wrong about presenting the problem, but we’re short of the kind of enlightenment – as well as the kind of Enlightenment – that would enable justice to be done.
There are a whole slug of problems to be addressed here; I’ll start with the straightforward one.
We somehow continue to expect that cultures which have been in place for hundreds or thousands of years will suddenly, on contact with us, dissolve and allow their members to simply join ours.
Now the reality is that Western, market-based culture is corrosive of traditional cultures. But it itself has a cultural base; I’ll make the Weberian argument that can be seen in ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, and suggests that capitalism, and the self-restraint necessary for a culture to succeed in capitalism, is different than the unselfrestrained accumulativeness in more ‘backward’ societies. Weber said:

The universal reign of absolute unscrupulousness in the pursuit of selfish interests by the making of money has been a specific characteristic of precisely those countries whose bourgeois-capitalistic development, measured according to Occidental standards, has re-mained backward.

Now I’ll skip over the (very big) issue of whether or not we should attempt to make other countries and other cultures look like us. But I will suggest that we keep operating with the expectation that they will, and that maybe, just maybe, that is going to be much harder than we think.

Rob Lyman pulls me back into the gun issue with a damn interesting philosophical piece.

Partly, this disagreement arises because the parties are talking about different things. I have no doubt that reducing gun ownership among drug dealers whould reduce urban violence. I just don’t see how bugging hunters and target shooters will accomplish that. The anti-gunners, on the other hand, don’t make a very clear distinction between me and an urban gang-banger. We both have handguns; we are both “potential” murderers.

Wait a minute…wasn’t I supposed to blogroll him??
…on the way.

1. A meaningful tax on oil. As long as we are abjectly dependent on oil from the Middle East (or anywhere abroad), we will always face the accusation that we are acting to protect Ford Excursions and GM Hummers rather than any other national or international interest we may claim.
Some people say it will destroy our economy. No it won’t. Instead of shipping dollars abroad on something we use once(to be recycled as bank deposits, or invested in William Simon’s business ventures), we’ll spend them on products and services that we create within our economy.
It should be phased in, over a period of several years. It could be passed now, and not take effect for two years, and we would be able to begin the process of planning for higher energy costs.
I know this has been a political non-starter for twenty years, but since we’re about to go to war, maybe we could sack up and at least start discussing the issue?
There’s more detail, but I’ll lay it out in the next day or so, along with a detailed talk about 3rd party gun registries and how they actually might work.
2. Bill Simon’s withdrawal from the California Governor’s race. He’s going to get spanked (I even have a bet on this), and right now the best thing he could do would be to withdraw, let Riordan or someone else embarrass Davis in the election and destroy Davis’ plans to run for President. A last-minute campaign à la New Jersey might actually rescue this from becoming one of the worst electoral campaigns of the year.
Oh – world peace and domestic tranquility would be nice, too…

Ross, over at the Bloviator has a bunch of information on what the CDC is doing around the smallpox issue.
I love it when government actually kinda works…it sounds like smart people are looking at this in a constructive way.

Ann Salisbury reminds us all to get off our butts and register to vote Right God Damn Now. She is, as she almost always is, absolutely right.
As disgusted as I am by the Governor’s race between “SkyBox/ATM” Davis and “Daddy’s Money/Simple” Simon, I’ll be flogged if I’m going to miss my chance to cast a vote in this. Even if it is to write in Obi-Wan Kenobi, or just simply vote Green.

In polar opposition to the stupidity below, Barry over at Ampersand had the class to email me and ask me to clarify what he thought was my position on divestment and anti-semitism, an area where we have disagreed in the past. He stated that he wanted to have an argument around my real position, rather than a strawman, and went out of his way to privately contact me and try and confirm what he understood my position to be.
We may disagree on issues, but for this he’s the Blogger Of The Day as far as I’m concerned. My reply to him is below:

OK, here’s a first cut:
>As I understand it, the argument you’re making connecting divestment
>campaigns to anti-Semitism can be summed up this way:
>
>1. Anti-Semitism is bigotry against Jews.
OK
>2. “Divestment from Israel” campaigns single out Israel, among all the
>nations (many of which are worse than Israel), for activist opposition.
Unlike other ‘divestment’ candidates (South Africa the best example), the threat to Israel is external and real; South Africa faced no meaningful threat to it’s existence as a nation, nor did the white or colored South Africans face a real, organized threat to their lives. Divestment supporters don’t take this into account when criticising Israel’s actions, nor to they have a realistic response. Mandela wanted to see non-whites get their equitable share of political and economic power; the core positions of the Palestinian political powers remain a vague commitment to a two-state solution in English, and ‘from the river to the sea’ in Arabic. None of this is dealt with or remarked on in the pro-‘peace’ or pro-divestment comments I’ve read.
>3. There is no reason to single out Israel, except that Israel is a Jewish
>state.
I don’t believe that’s why the divestment campaign has focussed on Israel; I think it is for a variety of reasons: 1) I think that the philosophical bent is linked to the anti-colonial, anti-modern philosophical strains I’ve discussed at length in the blog, and Israel represents both colonialism – both in its foundation after WW2, and in it’s effectrive treatment of the Occupied Territories – and modernity, in its embrace of technology, markets, and pluralism. I wonder what the discussion would have been like if Israel’s identity was as self-consciously socialist as it was in the 50’s. 2) I think that it is the natural inclination to root for the underdog, and (as when I was in school) the visual rhetoric of powerful war machines bearing down on a peasant population tends to drive arguments.
>4. Therefore, the reason pro-divestment activists have singled out Israel
>is
>that Israel is a Jewish state.
Don’t think that.
>5. Therefore, pro-divestment activists are anti-Semites.
I do think they are anti-Semitic in a variety of ways; they accept the hateful rhetoric promulgated by many of the Palestinian organizations (how would the broad student community react to a poster suggesting that the secret ingredient in Afican-American ‘soul food’ was white babies? No one in this half-century would have even _thought_ of saying or doing such a thing), and I think the pro-PA student movement discredits itself by excusing that kind of behavior; and more, importantly I do connect the existence of Israel as a predominantly Jewish state (this has its own problems that I’ll probably write about soon) with the ‘state’ of the Jewish people thoughout the world (note: I’m not Jewish; but I did grow up in a predominantly Jewish community). And what I do not see on the part of the divestment activists or any of the pro-Palestinian ‘peace’ community is any thoughful response to the real threat to the existance of Israel and the people who live there. The best I can see is the possibly sincere hope that if they lay their arms down, the Palestinians will do the same; something sadly not borne out in recent history.
I think Israel has done some illegal, immoral, and stupid things, partly from a knee-jerk reactiveness, partly out of fear. I do think that the palestinians have been screwed over, by the israelis on one side, and by the other Arab states and their own insane leadership on the other.
As I’ve said many times in the blog, I think that the average Palestinian isn’t a monster, but someone who wants food, shelter, work, the love of their family and a better future for their children – none of which are in wide supply today.
Does this help stake out a position that’s clear??
And thanks for asking me to explain…in careful discussion, we have a chance to find a common ground in this mess.
A.L.

So open the mailbox this morning, and have a pair of emails from Ralph Albertson. I haven’t got any really stupid or abusive email so far. I’m genuinely impressed at the level of comments and email I’ve received to date, so I’m going to quote these screeds in full and comment:

Your pro-gun arguments are specious to the point of being farcical. Perhaps you are merely unaware of the large number of children that are injured, maimed, or slain by “accidents” involving guns in their homes or perhaps you actually love your guns more than your children. In any even, if you will list your home address, I will be more than happy to report to the your nearest child protection agency for child endangerment.
Now there is another NRA nutcase sniper shooting people at random. That is another excellent example of your argument in action. In Stockton, one of your people uses a similar weapon to shoot up a schoolyard and murder children. Rather than act to protect the lives of children as the English did in a similar case by banning weapons, NRA people like you fought regulation, which proves again that you love your guns more than your children. The blood of thousands of innocent American who are murdered by guns in this country every year is on your hands. You must be proud to be gun scum.
http://www.childhealthmonitor.org/DirectorySearch.php?topic=84
http://www.neahin.org/programs/schoolsafety/gunsafety/statistics.htm

and

Professor InstaCracker Seeks To Deflect Attention Away From NRA
Professor InstaCracker, gunloon and NRA water-carrier, is beating the drums complaining nobody is looking into the Maryland (Montgomery County) Shootings as a potential Al Qaeda terrorism attack. Professor InstaCracker vaguely cites Al Qaeda training manuals as ‘evidence’ this could be a terrorist attack.
While terrorism as a motive for these crimes cannot be discounted, it should be noted the Al Qaeda manuals advised would-be terrorists to take advantage of lax US gun laws (the very same laws Professor InstaCracker would do away with) to obtain firepower.
However, this shooting spree doesn’t really fit the mold of a terrorist attack; one would think a terrorist would select crowds and would attack in a more dispersed area in order to maximize terror. I suspect InstaCracker knows this as well but is engaging in a bit of misdirection to deflect attention from the far greater possibility these senseless murders are the result of yet another of the NRA’s apocryphal “law-abiding citizens” exercising the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Another NRA killer on the loose.

Ralph, you’re a moron.
You’re not a moron for opposing guns; that’s a legitimate position to take, albeit one that I think is wrong (albeit is a long word that means ‘although’). You’re a moron for believing that overheated rhetoric and namecalling will do anything except vent whatever personal frustrations you may have with your life, and make you look foolish in public, which in the long run will add to the personal frustrations you have with your life. It’s a sad negative feedback loop.
You want to challenge my beliefs or Glenn Reynolds’ beliefs, step up and challenge them. That’s what this is about. But you’ll have to actually do some thinking and work to do so.
I’d suggest that you start with the CDC databases, where you’ll learn that swimming pools are far more dangerous to American children than guns are, something sadly borne out in my personal experience (I have two friends who have lost children in swimming pool drownings). So your concern isn’t with the safety of children, but with banning guns, and you’re shilling behind dead children to make your argument. OK, that’s sleazy, but you need to make a case. And unless you’re prepared to actually attempt to construct an argument, do it someplace else.
You see, this is arguments…abuse and stupidity are down the hall.

Back from a great weekend in Monterey and a stupendous motorcycle ride back down most of the two-lane roads in Central California. Blogging will resume shortly.
I obviously (and sadly) forgot to tell people not to kill anyone or blow anything up while I was gone…