Howard Owens, who writes the terrific Global News Watch wrote:

I’ve got a question for you … I understand why you’re armed, but I don’t understand why you consider yourself a liberal?

Well, I’ve touched on it, but haven’t completely gone into that yet. I’ll suggest two broad areas:
1) To be vulnerably broad and fuzzy, that governments have the right and duty to make things better for those who are poor and powerless; and that the duty of government to defend freedom and property is balanced by a duty to defend justice and mercy. As noted in all my comments on equality and legitimacy, I think the role of the government here and in Europe in reifying the economic and social stratification is a terrible and dangerous thing;
2) The classical ‘liberal > conservative’ continuum in American (and to an extent European) politics has to do with the appropriate role of government versus the role of individuals and other nongovernmental organizations (businesses, unions, social and cultural organizations). The basic ‘conservative’ point tends to blend (with varying degrees of success) a kind of Von Mies-ian distaste for central planning and authority with a belief that the appropriate role of government is to defend the stability and interests of business and the ‘social order’. I believe that central planning and authority have been crucial to the success of the American model, and that the real history of American success is written not only in the energy and abilities of our individual citizens but in the great actions of the central and state governments that built schools, universities, railroads, created the financial mechanisms that made widespread homeownership possible, have defended the environment, and promoted and enforced an end to racial and sex discrimination.

You say you believe we should make the world a better place. But how does that differ from what conservatives believe? I consider myself a conservative and I want to make the world a better place. And I believe the path to a better world is found in freedom, not tyranny. I believe in democracy and free markets. The more democracy we have, the more we have of the rule of law and of property rights and free trade, the more we will have of peace, love and understanding.

Well, since we both want to make the world a better place, we’d both do well in a beauty contest…*grin*. The devil is, as always in the details. I am not a complete fan of democracy. I believe in the American constitutional system, and think the Founders did a hella job here, and I believe that when we blithely say “we want to make ________-istan a democracy” we are either making polite and meaningless noises or smoking crack. Look, we aren’t a democracy, and that’s a good thing.
A democratically elected Saudi government would, today, doubtless launch a suicidal attack on Israel.
I think freedom is a great thing, but that it has to grow from a cultural environment (ours isn’t the only culture that can support it, but it has worked here) that can sustain it. And, bluntly, I don’t think that freedom to, which I believe is the kind of freedom you are talking about, is the only kind of freedom; I think that freedom from – from hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance – is equally important.

I don’t know any conservatives that would disagree with that goal.

I know conservatives who would be appalled by what I’ve said above; if they aren’t, it’s my failure for not saying it clearly enough.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen much in your blog that would suggest you are really a liberal.

Well, again, that’s my fault as an author, and I’ll ask you to give me some time and we’ll see how you feel then.

One other point — The jokes are funny, but I don’t believe even the people who first thought of them really believe in ethnic cleansing or genocide. I don’t know any conservatives that seriously want to destroy Arab nations or Islam. What we do want is peace. What we do want is safety. And the best way to do that is through regime change. Democracy is the answer. That has no hint of any suggestion in it that cultures or races should be destroyed or even harmed.

I think you are 100% wrong here; the issue is the culture, not only the regime. Now I will agree that the regimes have helped create the cultural memes that are driving the crises we’re talking about. But, to be honest, I believe they are equally the captive of them. And you must not be talking to the same conservatives I talk to…seriously.
I’ll try and expand on this as time allows. As I’ve noted in our emails before, I am awed and amazed at the quality and quantity of information you put out. I’ve still got my training wheels on, but give me some time and I’ll keep up.

This came in today; again I’ve emailed the author, haven’t heard back, and want to get it out there so I have redacted his name.
Let me hereby state the offical Armed Liberal mail policy that I just made up: All emails that I get from non-bloggers are fair game for posting without attribution – I will withold your name and email. If you don’t want it published, tell me. If you want your name or email or url on it, tell me. If you are a fellow blogger, I’ll assume it is for attribution and give you recognition and a link. Seem fair?
Read this, it’s great:

You wrote:
I know several people who are either highly skilled martial artists or highly skilled firearms trainers, and in both groups there is an interesting correlation between competence (hence dangerousness) and a kind of calm civility – the opposite of the “armed brute” image that some would attempt to use to portray a dangerous man or woman.
This one grabbed me. I served in both the Army and the Navy. My father was a career Navy officer and was away from home much of my young life – serving in, among other places, Vietnam. Even after leaving the Navy I took work with the Department of the Navy as a civilian, one of those few who worked overseas (southeast Asia, Persian Gulf, and other interesting spots) and had to maintain weapons qualifications.
Finally I left that job because I wanted to live a “more normal” life, in a more fixed location, in my own house on my own property. I took another government job, this time with the US Courts in Seattle (maybe the most politically correct and leftist city in America). For the first time in my life I was among people who had never served, many of whom never even knew anyone who had served. Many of my new coworkers were distinctly uncomfortable around me. Reasonably so, from their perspective – I was a creature of violence, one of the hard men Orwell wrote about who do rough things to protect our freedom, and who were satirized by Jack Nicholson’s thuggish Colonel Jessop in A Few Good Men. “You want me on that wall, you NEED me on that wall!” and “The Truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
Most of the excessively “liberal” (it appears your definition of that word differs somewhat from theirs) people I worked with never said anything overt, but they were definitely concerned at having such a brutal goon working alongside them. Many of them, I think, doubted that I was fitted for such a delicate position amongst such genteel people. Finally, one coworker asked me what was the most important thing I learned in my military training.
“Self control” I replied.
He was astonished and thought I was kidding. His perplexed statement was a treat – obviously my answer was far outside anything he expected. He asked me to elaborate, and I said that when the military teaches you to use deadly force, they spend almost as much time on the ethics of using it. They teach that it’s just as important to know when to kill as how to do it, and that an out of control killing machine was as dangerous to your own side as to the enemy. The military does not want mindless automatons, but reasonable, thinking people who use judgement as well as skill.
I don’t think he believed me at first, but over the next few days he seemed to be absorbing what I had said. Eventually it seemed to me that he treated me with a bit more respect and a lot less uncertainty.
[name witheld]

I’m glad they asked, impressed (but not surprised) with what you answered, and incidentally, please know that I’m grateful to you for your service.

Here is my first pass at a reply to the letter below (I’d give the author credit, but while I’ve emailed him and asked, I haven’t received a reply. What’s the blogger etiquette on that, anyway?). I think the questions posed are close enough to the “basic questions” to start a good discussion.
First Question:
My question to you is whether your A position is strong enough that you will continue to fight for a peaceful Middle East, even if SOME Arabs continue to “follow the path they are on.” Or is B is cop-out that will allow you to say “I told you so, but it’s not my fault” after your fear in A is realized? Are you opposing genocide or making excuses for it?
Well, I hope I was clear – I’m opposed to it. But being opposed to it doesn’t imply that I am in all circumstances opposed. I’ll quote another of my posts:

Bluntly, at the moment I am under threat, I don’t care why they do it. My response is not very different from my response to my friends who said that “America had it coming” on 9/11. “Maybe. So what?” People who attack me or mine need to be stopped. If the only way I have to effectively stop them is to kill them, so be it. Once I am out of danger, I am happy to consider what it will take to improve education and job opportunities in the central cities, or to talk thoughtfully about helping the Palestinians figure out how to become a nation and a state.

I want to reach peaceful, mutually respectful terms with the Arab world (and I single them out because I do believe that the core Islamists – I’ve been using the word Islamicists, and been corrected – are culturally Arab). But, simply, they have to stop threatening to kill Americans for me to have that discussion. They don’t all have to stop…we have a nutball fringe here in the U.S.A….but the core organs of government and culture have to back away from their frenzied rhetoric of hate, violence, and threat.
I do believe that there are a set of actions that the Islamist world could take that would lead me to decide that simply killing them all, or enough of them so they stopped existing as an effective culture, would be an acceptable response. I think that for me to come to that position, the actions they would have to take would be so horrific as to be unimaginable – I don’t believe they have the physical capability to do the things that would make “nuke ‘em all” even my reluctant position – but I’m probably pretty far along the continuum. Take a thousand people, a thousand average Americans, and I’ll bet that ten of them are pretty close to that position already. I’d probably be the 850th or so to take that position.
And I’ll reply with a question to you: Can you imagine any circumstances, any form of threat or attack by the Islamists on the US or the West that would lead you to support nuking them all? If they developed aerosolized Ebola? If they had twenty suitcase nukes and started using them?
What would you do?

Got this email this morning, and I think it very clearly sets up a dialog on some of the issues I worry about. Today is chore day, plus I’ve promised to take Tenacious G (the SO) shooting, and this asks good enough questions that I want to think about answers. So here’s the letter, and later today I’ll intersperse some responses. I hope the writer answers, and we’ll play out a couple of rounds here in public.
Thanks to him for reading, for responding by setting out his positions, and for doing so in way that encourages mutual respect.

Armedliberal –
New to your blog. Certainly interesting material.
Re: “FEAR” I’m afraid you haven’t made your point as crystally clear as you might have wanted to. I still have a question.
Actually I hadn’t seen the “Arab genocide” jokes before I read them on your site, although I’m not surprised that they exist. Thanks, I guess, for having the guts to make them known. They are not as widespread as you may have thought.
A. You say, “And here’s my fear. I don’t want to be a part of a society that eradicated another culture; I don’t want to commit genocide.”
Fair enough.
B. You then go on:
“I don’t want to be put in a position where genocide is either a reasonable option, or where my fellow citizens are so enraged that they are willing to commit it, and my opposition will be washed away in a tide of rage.
I want a calm, prosperous Middle East, and believe that the Palestinian Arabs who have been royally screwed by everyone…by the Europeans and Americans who established Israel without planning or compensation; by their leaders who have led them into several suicidal wars; by the leaders of the other Arab states who use them as cheap labor, exploit them economically, and exploit them politically…deserve decent lives.
They won’t get them following the path they are on.”
My question to you is whether your A position is strong enough that you will continue to fight for a peaceful Middle East, even if SOME Arabs continue to “follow the path they are on.” Or is B is cop-out that will allow you to say “I told you so, but it’s not my fault” after your fear in A is realized? Are you opposing genocide or making excuses for it?
For it’s no secret that the hawkish position must almost inevitably lead, if not to genocide, to a situation where no Arab nation is allowed to exist as a sovereign entity. Expelling the Palestinians from Israel cannot be accomplished without destroying any force determined to resist it. Iraq and Iran will both have to go, along with Syria and probably Jordan too, as independent entities, followed by the Saudis too. The wealth that comes from oil will not be permitted to stay in Arab hands.
Yes, yes, if only all Palestinians would adopt Gandhian non-violence strategies. It would be a wise move. I hope they do it. Maybe Jesse Jackson can convince them of that. Until that happens, however, we must continue to live in the real world.
I think the right position is still that America must use its power to force peace. The Israelis bear a significant piece of responsibility for the current situation and they couldn’t do what they do without the uncritical aid check from the United States.
Do you believe that the 2000 peace plan was generous? (The tactical question of whether the Palestinians should have accepted it is a different question). What can Arafat actually do to stop the violence now that the Palestian Authority has had all of its authority taken away? If he stopped talking out of both sides of his mouth would anyone notice? Or care? Isn’t the demand for all terrorist acts to cease before talks begin a call for unconditional surrender? Aren’t the Israelis acting as allies of the extremists by giving them what they want at the expense of whatever moderates are out there?
In short I am not willing to say that the behavior of the Palestinians must change without making a similar demand on the Israelis.
Do we disagree?
[name witheld pending author’s OK]

So today, it’s officially a month. A couple thousand people (sorry about deleting the graphic for the counter a week ago…), some great email acquaintances who may become friends and a chance to work on expressing what I see, feel, and sometimes know.
This is cool.
There is a scene in Spiderman where Tobey Macguire first climbs a wall, then turns to the camera with a look that perfectly combines excitement, fear, and pure glee. I know just how he felt.

This from Politics in the Zeros:

Perot Systems caught with hands in two cookie jars
As with many political scandals, the Enron trail leads to some unusual places. This time to Perot Systems, who simultaneously designed the California power system then sold software to trading companies teaching them how to game the system. That “giant sucking sound”? Why boy howdy, that was just Texas energy companies vacuuming money from California by whatever barely legal or outright illegal ways they could devise. And lest we forget, Perot Systems is headed by the very same Ross Perot who, when he ran for President, lectured us all about the virtues of being upright and moral. What a bunch of sleazy hypocritical weasels.

Why doesn’t anyone ban these guys from California contracts for a couple of years??
Oh…sorry…they are probably contributors to Governor SkyBox.

Check this out:
jeffbridges.com’s clock
He’s also one of the best actors of this generation. Hmmm…movie casts you would like to see together…there is a fun dinner party game!!
I’ll open:
Jeff Bridges
Laura Dern
Lawrence Fishburne
Gene Hackman
Phillip Baker Hall
Ethan Hawke
Isabelle Huppert
Julianne Moore
Uma Thurman
Almost wouldn’t matter what they were doing, they’d just be a lot of fun to watch…

Chris Bertram worries that there is a lack of balance in the Blogoverse’s coverage of the Middle East:

The blogosphere is very US-based and almost uncritically pro-Israeli and even bloggers who I link to and respect like Armed Liberal and Dave Trowbridge have a perspective that I see as unbalanced. (“Balance!, this guy wants balance! How can you talk of balance when anti-semitism is on the march and suicide bombers target civilians!” I hear you say. Quite right too, those acts are disgusting and morally repellent.)

This represents a pretty good opportunity for me to give a basic explanation about my stance on the Middle East, and the basis for a lot of what I believe about the appropriate US role there.

Let me start by explaining what I’m afraid of. Because, in a sense, Mike Golby is right – one of the roots of my political stance is fear. Here’s what I’m afraid of – you know you all got these jokes in your email last year:

The Saudi Ambassador to the U.N. has just finished giving a speech and walks out into the lobby where he meets his American counterpart. They shake hands and as they walk the Saudi asks, “You know, I have just one question about what I have seen in America.”

The American replies, “Well your Excellency, anything I can do to help you I will do.”

The Saudi whispers, “My son watches this show ‘Star Trek’ and in it there are Russians and Blacks and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn’t understand why there are never any Arabs in Star Trek.”

The American laughs, leans over and says, “That’s because it takes place in the future.”

*******
A father is walking with his son around the year 2032 in lower Manhattan. As they explore the area the father explains to his son about the grandeur of the buildings and take on the sites. Suddenly they come to a beautiful park and plaza.

The son is so excited at the beautiful park and monuments and asks his Dad: “What are these monuments for?”

The father replies: “This park is dedicated to honour the Twin Towers and the memory of the people of New York.”

“What are the Twin Towers?” asks the son.

Dad replies: “They were two very large 110 story buildings which stood here nearly 30 years until Arab Terrorists destroyed them.”

The son look puzzled, and says: “Dad, what is an arab?”

*******

Admit it, you all got them, and most of you laughed.

And here’s my fear. I don’t want to be a part of a society that eradicated another culture; I don’t want to commit genocide.

I don’t want to be put in a position where genocide is either a reasonable option, or where my fellow citizens are so enraged that they are willing to commit it, and my opposition will be washed away in a tide of rage.

I want a calm, prosperous Middle East, and believe that the Palestinian Arabs who have been royally screwed by everyone – by the Europeans and Americans who established Israel without planning or compensation; by their leaders who have led them into several suicidal wars; by the leaders of the other Arab states who use them as cheap labor, exploit them economically, and exploit them politically – deserve decent lives.

They won’t get them following the path they are on.

They won’t get it by practicing terrorism, as opposed to guerrilla warfare. There is a difference between warfare, even guerrilla warfare, and terrorism. Guerrilla warfare targets the military and strategic targets of the opponent, using deceptive techniques. The Viet Cong were very effective at this, as my countrymen learned to their dismay. Terrorism simply acts out blind rage by striking your opponent at their most vulnerable points – schools, restaurants, houses of worship.

They won’t get it by duplicitously saying one reasonable thing in English and another inflammatory one in Arabic. I spend too much time reading Arab News and MEMRI to have comfort that the Arab world gets it, and that the path they say they are headed down leads anywhere but annihilation.

Part of this is a clash of cultural models, a clash of languages, as Deborah Tannen explains in other contexts.

But words and images are one thing. Semtex, car bombs, and WMD warfare are another.

And to the extent that the Arab extremists are successful both in exporting their political rhetoric couched in blood to the U.S. and Europe, and to the extent they are able to silence or murder the moderate voices – the voices that counsel negotiation, economic warfare, peaceful confrontation – then they are speaking a language that my fellow citizens will demand a reply to, and the reply will be so horrific that I want to cry.

Is indirectly commented upon in this post in the Bellona Times.
Social mobility. It is the magic glue that holds us together; it is the sense of possibility that each of us holds in our hearts, if not for ourselves, than for our children.
And one of the consequences of SkyBox Liberalism is not only the ossification of class…you in your courtside chair, Mr. Nicholson, and then the neat hierarchy of wealth and fame leading upward to the corporate SkyBoxes that make this all possible, and above them, the proles in the nosebleed seats, kept in their place by the minimum-wage guards who keep everyone in their appropriate section…but the obvious “flaunt it, baby” statement of your gracious wave to the fans sitting in the rafters.

Mike Golby attempts a takedown of the SFSU Blogburst.
His quotes, with my comments interspersed.

As far as I know, you either call it a Google bomb or a bunch of good ol’ boys acting like ‘eedjits’. I believe these people are seeking publicity and an outlet for their frustration, impotence, and anger. They are doing so inappropriately and are fostering discord rather than harmony.

Well, there are some people with whom I do not want to be harmonious. They do things that I dislike, such as crash airplanes into the WTC. I do not want to play with them, and I want them to stop what they are doing. If I can help get publicity to generate consensus about stopping them, that’s called politics. The nice thing about it in the U.S., like in the AYSO, is that everyone gets to play.

This is not the stuff of dancing in the park or singing folk and freedom songs. Having looked at the material Blog Burst has collated, I think we’d do well to remember that disillusioned, ill-informed, and misguided people have been ‘organizing’ for millennia. Today, this applies as much to fear-filled Israeli ‘supporters’ as it does to Palestinian extremists. When frightened out of our wits, it’s what we do best. We project, act out, drive ourselves into a frenzy and, sometimes, sow chaos and destruction – no matter how smart we think we are.

Darn those “fear-filled” Israeli activists…they are such wimps…

And that’s why we put governments into place. Our forefathers saw the need to control our base impulses and our drive to surrender to mob rule. Government and its law enforcement agencies are there to protect us from ourselves more than from any external attack.

No, Mike, the government of the U.S. was put into place equally to guard against mob rule and to guard against the tyranny with which the forefathers were so familiar. I know you’re South African, take a U.S. history class, maybe?

Generally, it’s not necessary to take action against loudmouths, bullies, and cowards. They are their own worst enemies. I don’t think recent Israeli / Palestinian protests across the United States have resulted in a single major incident. Nor would I categorize the writings of our war bloggers as ‘hate speech’. Hatred and fear certainly seem to be there, but there is no sustained attempt to verbally coerce those of like mind into killing or injuring others because of race or creed. These people are rank amateurs. Usually, such groups overstate their causes and their rhetoric is self-defeating. They will drift further and further from reality and they will attract only those they deserve. Sooner, rather than later, they will die out.

It’s not clear here whether he is talking about the warblogger bullies or about the Palestinian bullies. I don’t make it a habit of hanging around Palestinian pro-peace rallies (haven’t found any!!), throwing rotten eggs, and yelling that President Asaad needed to “finish the job”. And from his prose, it appears that when he talks about the warbloggers, he believes that we are full of hatred and fear. I can only speak for myself, but it feels a lot more like sad determination. I’m sorry that I don’t meet his standard of professionalism in inciting hatred and violent action. May I suggest something from Palestinian Authority TV?

Should they cause material or bodily damage, they would face both the wrath of their state security apparatus and their equals on ‘the other side’. Should the state support them, they then become but an adjunct to a greater battle between two or more movements or countries. In such situations, controlling interests use or exploit them to add to or exacerbate the problem, or to further political agendas. In other words, these vociferous minorities are forever minor players, used by forces greater than their blinkered views allow them to comprehend.

As opposed to those who sit on Olympian heights, objective, foresightful, oblivious.

Most Americans therefore feel that the danger posed by loose groupings of malcontents turning into organized bodies intent on disrupting social stability is real and deserves attention. The police, FBI, CIA, NSA, and other institutions are able to monitor such organizations before they cause real and lasting damage. The question is, do they have the will to do so or not? My guess is that they do. Had the U.S. security apparatus done its job last year (listened to its operatives and taken action when and where necessary) instead of engaging in political brinkmanship, Blog Burst might have no reason to exist. How much has the Federal Government learnt? The future, unfortunately, will tell. Until then, 9-11 will represent a tactical, defensive, political, and operational failure for those supposedly protecting the United States. And it will make Americans jump every time a bunch of crackpots with mush for brains threatens to bring on the Apocalypse.

Here is the political meat of his argument: The State exists to take care of this, just go on about your business, citizen. I’m amused, in part because he just doesn’t get what America is all about. Listen Mike, what the American political experience is about is that we are the government, and they are us.

For myself, I heap scorn on our war bloggers and their ‘Palestinian’ equivalents. They are baby ‘disillusionaries’. Their ‘static’ renders them useless to anybody, especially the causes or governments they supposedly serve. They are worthy only of derision; nothing else. The going will get tough but they will not stay the pace. Trust me on this. I know these things.

Well, you may know some things; right now you know how to sound like John Cleese. And Mike, I’d love to find my Palestinian equivalent. He would talk about the need for the Palestinian people to learn to become a nation, a nation defined by something other than an irrational an zealous hatred of their Jewish and secular neighbors. Once they do that, they can then work to become a state. Where is the Palestinian Nelson Mandela? Their Martin Luther King? What would the history of race and conflict in America been had it been created and written by Idi Amin or Yassir Arafat?
I know something about the American people, and I can tell you that a Palestinian leader like that would be buried in support from a broad spectrum of us. Sadly, it is more likely that in Palestine, as it is constituted now, they would just simply be buried after being murdered by the current Palestinian leadership you so seem to love and legitimize.
Lots of luck, fella. I hear it’s challenging in South Africa right now, and I’m sorry for that, and remain hopeful that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for you and yours.