A Fanboy's Political Notes - I've never liked collectible card games. They always seemed like a marketing scam. First they get you to pick up the basic deck, then you feel like you need one booster pack after another to keep up. Out come the foil-embossed one-offs. Then the marketing department stretches for ever less plausible expansion sets.

It wastes money and time, among other things. Find another hobby.

I Don't Feel Like Satan But I am to Them - It just occurred to me that Natalie Maines has the voice to carry off Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World."

Empire Statements - Arthur Silber says the E-word is apposite.

Preempt This - Here's an atrocity that "preemptive war" has signally failed to stop. (Thanks, if that's the word, to reader Jeremy Osner for the heads up. Jeremy writes "It is worthy of gales of laughter and bemused disbelief when you wake up at night and remember reading about it." He also makes sure to inform me that "I got the link from Sisyphus Shrugged," presumably to make clear that Jerry is not the sort of grown man who spends his time browsing the Teen Hollywood site.)

Tikrit or Treat? - I'm going to get optimistic. The reports are that the US is preparing for a major assault on Tikrit, the city with the "Birthplace of Saddam Hussein!" billboards next to the Cracker Barrel franchise. I think there's a good chance that Tikrit too will surrender without much of a fight, if any. Sure, Tikrit did well under Hussein; sure it's likely to be the "most loyal" enclave in the country.

But how dumb and stubborn are they? It's over. Things aren't going to be like they were. They may be better, they may be worse, but even in Tikrit people have to be asking themselves, "Well, what now?" Why become Grozny-on-the-Tigris for no upside whatever?

I'm tempted to tie the pattern of sudden collapses of resistance in our recent wars to the "Feiler Faster Hypothesis" Mickey Kaus is always booming.

The basic idea is this: The news cycle is much faster these days, thanks to 24-hour cable, the Web, a metastasized pundit caste constantly searching for new angles, etc. As a result, politics is able to move much faster, too, as our democracy learns to process more information in a shorter period and to process it comfortably at this faster pace. Charges and countercharges fly faster, candidates' fortunes rise and fall faster, etc.

I think the phenomenon extends beyond democracy, because "24-hour cable, the Web, [and] a metastasized pundit caste" and the whole armature of the information age extend beyond the democratic world. In a recent Everyday Economics column on Slate, Steven E. Landsburg argued that every war begins with at least one side being overconfident almost by definition - if both sides have a clear view of the likely outcome, either the attacker knows better than to attack or the defender has the sense to knuckle under beforehand. There would have to be some exceptions regarding matters of indelible honor - countries that go to war knowing they will lose, but concluding that the loss of prestige or conscience in surrendering ahead of time outweighs the consequences of defeat. But in general, it seems reasonable to say that both sides imagine their chances look at least decent and one of them has to be wrong.

I argued before that Iraq began the war expecting to win. But at some point, it became clear to somebody that Saddam's was a lost cause. Then, thanks to the Feiler Faster Hypothesis, it became clear to everybody, and just like that it's Sauve qui peut. The collapses of official resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and Iraq in 1991 all fit the pattern. May they process information as efficiently in Tikrit. I would say that, unless Saddam himself is there with many henchmen, and maybe not even then, they will. Hell, they might have surrendered while I was trying to find the link to Landsburg's essay.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Olvax Starshatterer for digging up the link to Landsburg's essay after the first edition of this piece hit the web.

Return of the Anthraxblog Post - The Baltimore Sun reports that "sources" close to the Army's project to reverse-engineer the anthrax used in the Fall 2001 murders on the Eastern Seaboard have concluded that "

it was made using simple methods, inexpensive equipment and limited expertise, according to government sources familiar with the work.

The findings reinforce the theory that has guided the FBI's 18-month-old investigation - that the mailed anthrax was probably produced by renegade scientists and not a military program such as Iraq's.

The article includes a speculative demurral by a former UN weapons inspector, Richard O. Spertzel.

The big clue that this was a DIY operation and not the gift of some government's biowarfare stocks? The lack of an additive coating:

"Everybody was looking for a coating, but there wasn't one," the investigator said.

There is a downside to this conclusion:

The new research, carried out at the Army's biodefense center at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, raises the disquieting possibility that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups could create lethal bioweapons without scientific or financial help from a state.

Well yes. As I've said before, nonproliferation is a fantasy.

(Link via Counterspin.)

Declare the Pennies on your Eyes - Jesse Walker reports on fiscal reform in Free Iraq.

With Friends Like These - The Modulator on George W. Bush, "Friend of Capitalism":

W 'built' most of his wealth on the backs of the local taxpayers who will be paying for the Texas Ranger's stadium for many years to come. And there is nothing about this that is anywhere close to the free market capitalism I think Luskin would espouse.

If the elimination of the double taxation of dividends (see the Luskin quote above) were part of a cohesive, well documented, long term plan to move us toward a truly capitalist society I might accept his argument. But this is not the case and there is little else, if anything, that W has initiated that suggests tht this is his goal.

More Guns, More Blogs - Interesting items by DipNut and Givernment Monkey.

Dipnut:

We find that individual arms are neither necessary nor sufficient for freedom. But they help immeasurably, more than any other material asset. And the question of whether a disarmed society can remain free for long, is still open. I personally doubt it. The gun embodies the will to resist. Let it be taken from you, and in a generation or two the culture will have lost its backbone.

Which may be true. Government Monkey provides an amusing reading of a Washington Post report of US marines on a house sweep in central Iraq:

The interesting thing though is that the Marines didn't consider an AK-47 to be anything to worry about, and that in fact they are common items in Iraq. Weird...here in the USA I couldn't own a full auto AK-47 without an annual tribute to the Treasury and the entry of my name into a Federal database run by the BATF. Land of the free, home of the brave, and all that. I'm assuming that given the weapons cache the Marines found that the Iraqi in question is either Kim Du Toit's long lost brother or (much more likely) a member of the Fedayeen. This raises an interesting question as to just how "even" private weapons distribution was in Saddam's Iraq, and just who got to own what. How one would go around researching that I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.

Meanwhile, Derek James tries to find more data on the distribution of guns through Iraq's population, but concludes "The resources for this sort of information on the net are pretty paltry, and even after quite a bit of digging, I'm not satisfied that I'm any closer to the truth on this issue."

Note: Charles Dodgson feels I mispresented his gun item from earlier in the week. He may be right that I read more emphasis on partisan politics than the piece contained. I plan to revisit that question over the weekend, but for now I just want to register his disagreement.

It Doesn't Add Up - Someone needs to get to the bottom of this:

Jayde Hanson is on the lookout for a new assistant - and quite possibly a new girlfriend - after leaving the previous incumbent with a gashed head on live TV.

The circus star was trying to break his own world record (120 knives thrown in two minutes) live on ITV’s This Morning when one knife got a little close to Yana Rodianova’s head.

Jayde continued to throw knives before realising something was amiss when Yana clasped her hand to her head . . .

ITV of course warned viewers "not to try this at home." But here are the parts that don't go together. Hanson says, “In 11 years of performing, I’ve only hit my assistant on five occasions.” Megastar reports that "Hanson is now advertising for a new assistant as Yana, who bears two scars from other wayward knives, wants to quit to concentrate on her Hula-Hoop act" and further that "His previous assistant also quit after being hit in the foot - her third knife injury." So what is it, five times or six? What is Jayde Hanson hiding? Why is the lapdog media just repeating his story instead of investigating? Are they that in thrall to Big Novelty Act? Surely the blogger who pursues this story to the bitter end wil become the next Instapundit or Atrios.

The Smaller the (Record) Weasel the Better - According to this story in the Christian Science Monitor, if you're not a music-industry oligarch, you're probably doing okay.

While executives at those labels wail about the industry's imminent collapse, indie labels and artists are singing a much happier tune. Profits are up - in some cases by 50 to 100 percent. That's in contrast to overall album sales, which dropped about 11 percent in 2002.

"We don't do too much crying over here," Cameron Strang, founder of New West Records, admits proudly. The home of artists like Delbert McClinton, the Flatlanders, and John Hiatt has doubled its business for the past three years and is projecting a $10 million income in 2003.

The big secrets? Eschew graft. Market to adults.

You won't hear many of these labels' artists on pop radio - and ironically, that's one of the secrets to their success. By avoiding the major expenses associated with getting a tune on the air - which can cost upwards of $400,000 or $500,000 per song - independent labels are able to turn a profit far more quickly, and share more of those profits with their artists. Another secret of their success is that the labels target consumers - namely, adults - who are still willing to pay for their music, rather than download it for free.

Okay, good for the independent record companies. What about the poor artists? At least according to the article, things are looking up there, too:

At a major label, most artists are unlikely to earn anything unless they sell at least 1 million albums, and even then, they could wind up in debt. Everything from studio time to limo rides are charged against their royalties, which might be only $1 per disc sold. That compares with an indie artist, who can sell a disc for $15 at a concert. If they make $5 profit a disc on 5,000 discs, they pocket $25,000.

Plus more equitable expense sharing, plus artists get to keep more of the rights to their work.

Unexplained in the article: a photo of Aimee Mann looks rather like a blond Marilyn Manson. Strange. But here's her United Musicians site, which provides support for independent artists.

Some More Warblogging! - Also from David Ignatius' Post column yesterday:

The intelligence officials offered a tantalizing coda for conspiracy-mongers. They said the "crude forgery" received by U.N. weapons inspectors suggesting the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from Niger as part of their nuclear program was originally put in intelligence channels by France. The officials wouldn't speculate on French motives.

Let the conspiracy theories begin! (I, of course, believe Batroc the Leaper has a hand in this somehow.

Some Warblogging! - A quick tour through the Op-Ed page of the Post today. The situation on the ground is fluid, as the triumph of the war per se slides seamlessly into the chaos of victory. It's great to see statues of tyrants topple and read fragmentary reports of children being freed from prison (assuming we didn't simply liberate a reform school). It's sobering to read stories of mob murder and the third known suicide bombing of American troops since the war began.

I didn't blog about the first one because I was too goddam mad, at the bombers, and at the people who put American troops in that entirely predictible situation. I opposed this war because the best-case scenario was always that the suicide bombings would start after we won. In the event, they couldn't wait that long. Also, I vowed at the beginning of the war not to obsessively follow every momentary twist and turn of the conflict. To the extent that I followed my own advice, I saved myself a lot of "UPDATE" entries and worse. (Link via every blog in the world except Salam's. Stay safe, guy.) The one time I picked up something like "breaking news," I got burned.

So, sticking with this site's tidy sideline in the Long View, let's bloviate about bloviators for the rest of this item, specifically today's "Fall of Baghdad" columns in the Post.

David Ignatius offers reasons things have gone so well so far. Some good, if obvious points. And this:

Hussein's mental condition seemed to worsen after U.S. planes tried to kill him March 20 in a bunker outside Baghdad. One official said that intelligence assets reported that afterward, the steely Iraqi was "behaving oddly" and "showing psychological instability." After the March 20 surprise attack on the leadership, the officials said, it was never clear who was in charge of Iraqi military decisions.

Hunh. So I guess they knew he was alive the whole time.

Ken Adelman publishes the most restrained "I told you so" column possible. He's entitled. I'll give him "cakewalk" (silently amended to "cakewalk into hell") if Tikrit doesn't end up becoming Grozny-on-the-Tigris. I'll give him "weeks rather than months" if the last pockets of armed resistance (not suicide bombers and snipers - that wouldn't be fair) are snuffed out before May 19. Odds look good. Here's the surprising grace note that made me like the column:

Turkey proved a disappointment in its decision not to allow U.S. ground troops to rush in from Baghdad's north. Nonetheless, having an Islamic democracy is worth the wrong decision it made.

From your lips to Dubya's ears, Ken. It's hard to see how ratifying the will of 90% of your population is a "wrong decision," but his attitude sure beats "screw all those who cross us to the wall."

Next to Adelman and the uneven Ignatius, Charles Krauthammer's column suffers from a repetitious and somewhat premature triumphalism. He writes

These "irregulars" were not insurgents; they were counterinsurgents. They did not represent the people they used as human shields; they ruthlessly repressed them.

Most of these enforcers were Sunnis from northern tribes, alien to the Shiite population they ruled. In the secret police prison in Basra, seven of the 16 officers were surnamed Tikriti, i.e., they came from Tikrit, Hussein's hometown in Sunni north-central Iraq. They were not guerrillas, Mao's "fish swimming in the sea of the people." They were aliens who survived by torturing the locals and, when the British liberators arrived, by shooting civilians in the back.

True enough. But we've spent comparatively little time so far among "Sunnis from northern tribes." We'll see how many fish are in that sea soon enough. Krauthammer, by the way, has dubbed this the Three Week War. Contrariwise, Hesiod thinks we've still got a week to go.

The uneven Richard Cohen gets what Krauthammer doesn't:

The trap would be to think that the jubilant Iraqis of today will be the Iraqis of tomorrow. Unlike the people of Eastern Europe, who loathed communism and admired the United States, it's likely that most Iraqis loathed Hussein but have no particular fondness for the United States. Among other things, we have been bombing their cities and killing their soldiers for the past three weeks.

The United States is once again in a part of the world that is not Christian and not Western and not particularly enamored of America's values -- everything from its hip-hugging secularism to its unstinting support of Israel. Americans have been welcomed in such parts of the world before -- Lebanon, Somalia -- and then sent packing when elements of the local population turned homicidal. This could happen in Iraq as well.

Actually we've been bombing them for twelve years, but you get the idea. As usual with Cohen, you have to endure a certain amount of talk about his feelings, so come prepared. He's also enthusiastic about involving the United Nations, a subject on which I'm of two minds. The UN may be good at delivering humanitarian aid, as Cohen says, but they're not so good at ending aid - at moving prostrate people from dependence to independence. (The classic example is UNRWA, which still exists to "help" the displaced Palestinians of the wars of the late 40s.) The other argument for involving the UN is that it brings "credibility" independent of the United States. I don't think this is true. I think that, to the extent that the UN cooperates with US policy, it will be seen as the tool of that policy. That is to say, I don't think it will take the heat off us.

On the other hand, I'd like us out of Iraq (and Saudi Arabia) as soon as possible, so nobody gets any bright ideas about all the other places we could be attacking.

Mind you, Robert Novak reports that Colin Powell doesn't think that's going to happen.

The fact that Powell, not Rumsfeld, delivered this message [warning Syria] was widely interpreted as a signal that the United States has not designated Syria as its next military target. Powell is not signing on to World War IV. He believes (and surely hopes) that Bush shares his outlook.

Powell puts a high premium on pursuing Bush's road map for a Palestinian state, a prospect that evokes little enthusiasm among Pentagon civilian chiefs and even less in the Israeli government. The secretary of state considers it an essential component for U.S. foreign policy and restoration of the world's good opinion of America. That will be Colin Powell's burden in the months ahead.

Either Colin Powell wins the 21st Century Taking the Long View Award or President Bush is Lucy with the fooball. I'll hold out the hope of peace with Iran and Syria and you come running up and kick it.

Gun Wails - Writing about guns inspires passionate responses. Who knew? Much mail. Also, interesting blog items (that I have found at Electrolite (the action is in the comments), Unruled, Asymmetrical Information and Through the Looking Glass. I'll be coming back to most of these. For now I'll say that I think Jane Galt's skeptical piece on Iraqi firearms is marred by assuming that the news reports that indicate widespread gun availability are incomplete and the various stories of Iraqi rebellion and non-rebellion are complete. (Broadly, there must be more to the story of Iraqi gun availability than the New York Times reports of John Farquhar, but if Jane hasn't read about Iraqis turning guns on the Fedayeen - as opposed to ripping them to shreds or stabbing them - it must not have happened.) Charles Dodgson makes some good points about curtailments of liberty during the Ashcroftschina, but his piece would benefit from engaging the concept of "necessary but not sufficient." It also suffers, to my mind, from more attention to party politics than to structure - something Charles is typially much less prey to than more popular, less visible liberal blogers.

In Electrolite's comments, Derek James doubts that guns are evenly distributed throughout Iraqi society. "I am highly skeptical, for example," he writes, "that there is any sort of parity of gun ownership between the Shia and Sunni populations. Can anyone point to reliable sources on this?" This strikes me as a great thing for Derek James to research and blog about. It would also explain the disparities Jane Galt seems to note in the news reports from southern Iraq - if a disparity were proven and if the news reports from southern Iraq are complete and accurate. Which does not strike me as likely.

But enough about my fellow bloggers. Let's get to the mail, shall we? We're going to do this "Eve Tushnet style" with lots from readers and little from me. Except I know how the blockquote tag works.

Speaking of Eve, she suggests checking the "Deacons for Defense" items in this archive page from her site.

First up, Julian Davies, proud, and I use that word advisedly, subject of the sceptered isle:

For gawd's sake American,

come down off your high horse. Remember, the internet cuts across national boundaries.

It's astonishing how even the brighter and more urbane citizens of your country can't help moralising about the tritest of issues.

Guns. You want 'em. We don't. Not good enough apparently.

"...gun rights as canary in the coal mine. On this theory, the right itself is less important than the possible loss of it - that is, when a government ceases to trust its citizens (if we can still use that term) and a people cease to trust themselves and their neighbors to responsibly wield potentially lethal force, that society has become chronically . . . cowardly? decadent? distorted? This argument I accept wholeheartedly..."

Well thanks a bunch, pardner. And the same to you with brass knobs on.

Cowardly? How so? We fought off Hitler single-handed, alone in Europe, for years until the Japanese kicked the US off the fence. Our forces have just taken Basra. Politically stupid, but not cowardly.

Decadent? Well perhaps you're not so urbane after all. Yes cities have a decadent influence, and the UK is perhaps more citified than the States. But where, in the excesses of Hollywood and New York, does the US hold the high ground here?

Distorted? Well this at least makes some kind of sense. All foreign cultures seem like a distorted reflection of our own. Only an American could try to make this sound immoral.

"...but when we see Britain first confiscate guns and then propose curtailing jury trials things suggest themselves..."

Just lay off Britain, will you? I suggest your own country has enough problems of its own with the Patriot Act, holding prisoners without charge or representation, et-bloody-cetera. Blunkett's controversial proposals are a radical, possibly misguided attempt to cut the costs of trial for certain trivial offences. Compared to the fate of 'suspected' terrorists in your country they seem wholly benign.

A little lesson in another culture:

We don't have guns here because we don't want them. We don't consider we would be safer if we had them. They weren't 'confiscated' from us; we never had them in the first place because we didn't want them. Their main use was criminal. Properly licensed guns are still legal here for deer-culling or whatever. To the extent that we are worried about invasion by other countries we prefer to spend the money on a well-trained and equipped military. We do not think that giving up our guns leaves us vulnerable to a tyrannical government. A pop-gun is no defence against a tank anyway.

Britons generally find American's obsession with guns as bizarre as you no doubt find our position. What seems most bizarre is the moral convolutions Americans will take to 'justify' their obsession.

Boy is Julian Davies going to be mad when we return to the subject of Britain, crime, gun control and societal sickness later in the week!

Mike "Epoch" Sullivan thinks the political value of guns does not require that you can win against the State:

Something I always thought was a useful feature of private ownership of guns was not that it allows you to fight off government army action -- rather, that it forces the government to bring the army against you (as you mentioned, in the case of the Branch Davidians).

What good is that? Armies are noisy. They're big. Your neighbors know all about them. And they can't take you quietly at night. When the government brings massive overwhelming force to bear against its own citizens, the media notices, and gets involved. And, however superficially, your grievance with the government, or the government's grievance with you, gets aired.

That, I think, is the protection against tyranny. Not that you can somehow battle the government to a standstill -- you can't now, and you couldn't in Revolutionary War days. But that everyone can see what the government is doing, and then they can oppose it if they choose to.

This theme recurs in Leonard's item on Unruled. (See link above.) The Branch Davidians famously lost, but the outcry over Waco, MOVE and Ruby Ridge changed the way federal law enforcement approached later confrontations with fringe groups. It doesn't seem to have dissuaded drug warriors from no-knock raids, though. And societies with guns can still have people quietly disappear, as the friends and family of Mike Hawash will attest. And somewhere on Where is Raed, Salam Pax recounts the apparent "disappearance" (in the transitive, Argentinian sense) of his boyfriend.

Speaking of Iraq, one of the news reports I read yesterday included observations of civilians making their way around the city with Kalashnikovs. These were not presented as Fedayeen and they were not described as engaging American troops in combat. They could have been Iraqi soldiers who deserted with their weapons. In any case, a strange report, since the article found the sight unremarkable and US troops seem not to have reacted. Any more reliable than anything else we've read about the war? Beats me.

Doug Turnbull of the dormant Beauty of Gray blog writes

Two additioanl objections to the idea of extending the rights of private ownership to all weapons as a means of combatting tyanny.

First, simply having the right to own a helicopter gunship is meaningless for most citizens, since they can't afford it. Even with quite a large budget, the war in Iraq shows that it's really not possible to oppose the US (or any other first class military) with any conceivable force that could be built up in private.

This is a big part of why governments exist. The formation of strong central governments and nation states was largely predicated on their ability to marshall the resources necessary to supply, equip, and maintain standing armies, something which smaller groups or individuals could not rival. With the advance of military technology, and the corresponding acquisition and maintenance costs, this disparity between government and individuals has only gotten larger.

Second, even if you could equalize the armament between the government and all private citizens, it's hard to see how this would have a positive effect. It might eliminate the possiblity of tyranny, but only at the cost of anarchy. Somalia is the obvious example here. Afghanistan, too. This sort of warlord-driven anarchy is held off by the Leviathon of state power. Take that enforcement mechanism away, and the rule of law is replaced by the right of power.

The question of Somalia is interesting. There are intriguing suggestions that it is coming to terms with statelessness rather nicely, and that impressions of the country's turmoil are now some years out of date. I want to investigate a lot further before accepting the Somali rosy scenario though. Leonard's discussion of genocide bears on Doug's points, but I'll admit to generally agreeing with Doug that the alternative to governments is less-regulated armed gangs. This is why I'm a libertarian and not an anarcho-capitalist, but the anarcho-capitalists consider that they have good reason to think otherwise.

Finally (for now!), Jonathan Hendry echoes one of the themes in Charles Dodgson's item:

The problem with this theory is that gun rights are the *only* rights which Mr. Ashcroft and the Bush administration seem to consider sacrosanct.

Rights are being curtailed, but the canary is still singing along just fine.

The Republicans, not known for their hostility towards gun rights, are precisely the people who want to make the Patriot act permanent and institute Patriot II. Meanwhile, Ashcroft resists using gun purchase records to look for terrorists.

Seems to me that widespread gun ownership would probably be useful for an authoritarian right wing administration, seeking to keep people in line through volunteer militias - something like the 'bourgeois riot' in Florida, but with guns.

Here again, what I consider a misplaced focus on partisan politics. If the Patriot Act becomes permanent, it will happen with the cooperation of Democratic politicians, just as it was first passed. Perhaps an authoritarian left wing administration would be able to do nicely without volunteer militias, though the various right wing authoritarian governments out there also seem to have done well enough without them.

The other problem with Jonathan's thesis is that we have had serious gun control in this country for between 30 and 130 years, going back to the post-Civil War ban on private (read: labor union) ownership of gatling guns. So the canary has already taken some bad air.

More on a structural consideration of gun control later in the week.

Back at You - Andrew Olmsted muses about my, ahem, military reform proposals. It's an interesting enough piece, though our different goals and understandings are clear when he writes

A strong navy protects trade, a key plank in American prosperity. Almost as important in the Cold War and post Cold War world, a strong navy allows America to project its power overseas.

Indeed. I've come to consider this a bug rather than a feature, for the same reasons I discussed in my original item. It's become clear that, just as, if the government has money it will spend it freely, if the government has rampant military superiority it will employ it freely. Therefore, we must put the government on a diet of both cash and force.

Now, I take Andrew's point about the proud history of the American Navy, and I said cut it, not eliminate it. But as for protecting trade, I think it's been quite some time since the US Navy saw much anti-piracy duty. Come to think of it, it's not as if they lack for opportunities to do just this if so inclined. Huh. A new cause beckons. Demand that our navy fight the scourge of sea raiders!

But where was I? Oh yeah. PJ O'Rourke once said "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." I'm aware that O'Rourke would not agree, but it appears that giving money, power and large navies and long-range bombers to government is like giving whiskey, car keys and handguns to teenage boys.

I believe in a strong defense. I also believe that far too little of our national security policy involves "defense" at all. (It has as much to do with "defense" as current interpretations of the Commerce Clause have to do with interstate commerce.)

Anyway, my bold stand has already sewn up the coveted Chip Taylor vote, so it's just a matter of time until I'm using the IRS to launch vendettas against my enemies.

Meanwhile, both Aaron Haspel and Ikram of Path of the Paddle pick up on the recent discussion of "meanness" in poetry. Aaron Haspel joins Eve and me in the "What to call it if not meanness?" game and plumps for hatred. For my part, hatred isn't the word I was going for, which is fine, since Aaron can go for his own words. I tend to think of hatred as just another stance that can produce good or great poems, but is neither necessary nor sufficient in itself.

Ikram sets out to do something very interesting, which is apply Tony Hoagland's "meanness" precepts to Andrew Motion's recent antiwar poem, "Regime Change," in the Guardian. Ikram partly conflates meanness with challenging your audience. I think that much is probably wrong, though challenging your audience is important. Epatez les epateurs! was my watchword as a poet, to the extent that I had one. Certainly the Guardian's readership is primed to nod approvingly at war protest from the poet laureate, in that mutually reaffirming way that drives anyone with any gumption whatsoever crazy at the typical poetry reading. (You approve my sentiments! That makes you good, and me too! And vice verse! And so on!)

I don't think Motion's poem is very good. It's padded and full of stock figuration. Free verse chauvinists might say, by way of condescending excuse, that "the form [heroic couplets] is forcing" Motion to write this way. Nonsense. Form never forced poets to do anything. Some poets settle, that's all. Motion wrote something topical and didn't hold it back for revision long enough.

Mind you, I've disliked Motion ever since his hatchet-job biography of Philip Larkin, but I don't think my animus is leading my taste astray here.

Now, for gratuitous meanness in poetry criticism, I should mention that every single poet I've read on the Poets for the War site, which is a lot fo them, sucks ass. Couldn't they recruit at least one real poet from the ranks of the hawks?

Tomorrow: More Guns, Less Sublime.

To Swell a Progress - Kieran Healy compares the size of the winter's antiwar events with a database of event sizes in recent American history. His conclusion: these were indeed big marches. (Sorry, Mayor Bloomberg - rally, in your case.)

A protest with ten thousand participants puts you right in the big leagues, up in the 98th percentile for the period. Only a very, very few events — less than forty out of 6,774 — have reported estimates of more than fifty thousand participants. A good number of these are now-famous civil rights or anti-Vietnam war protests.

Based on news reports, quite a number of recent anti-war protests have had many more than 50,000 participants and several, notably in New York and San Francisco, have had more than 100,000. Only about 20 events in the dataset have a reported size greater than this.

The database he's using is currently restricted to 1960-1975, something of a Protesting Golden Age, if you like that sort of thing. I have a couple of hesitant demurrals. The country is bigger now by almost 50% and communications have improved considerably. It's easier to organize an event now than it used to be. But I suspect post-1975 data will still show the winter protests to have been pretty darn big regardless.They just didn't work, for you pick your favorite reasons.

Dialogue from a Bad Movie

"Disarm, or face the consequences!"

"You don't scare me. You can only kill me once."

"Wrong, villain!"

(It's the hockey mask. Get that off him and he can't come back any more.)

Gun Rights Now - Not a slogan, the title. Rather, an acknowledgement that those of us who believe in gun rights have work to do in light of two recent developments. My immediate occasion here is an item by Patrick Nielsen Hayden about Iraq and guns - it turns out Iraq has quite a lot of them in private hands. (Something - warning! Advantage: Unqualified Offerings item coming! - readers of this site knew in January.) Patrick's reasonable question:

If gun ownership is such an effective and important bulwark against tyranny, how is it that a country in which most households own at least one gun turns out to be one of the most oppressive dictatorships in the world?

He links to a Timothy Noah article on the matter that I haven't read yet because IT'S LAZY BLOGGER NIGHT.

Patrick does not discuss the recent controversy over John Lott's work. Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, has faced serious doubts about the existence or, failing that, soundness of a 1997 survey he says he carried out on defensive gun use. (Libertarian Julian Sanchez has been one of the most tireless dogs on Lott's evidentiary leg. Much of the investigative work has been by Tim Lambert.) Most of my earlier discussion of the Lott case is on this archive page (several items). After hearing from Lott himself and following Julian's investigations and analysis, I've arrived at my original, snap judgment:

Again, it stands to reason that most people fire their guns only as a last resort. But we can not currently use Lott's work as proof of this.

So. Two big issues that gun rights supporters need to address (and not duck, as some of Lott's famous friends seem to prefer). It's Lazy Blogger Night, so I'll just toss out a couple of preliminary things. I'm hoping some of my heavy-hitter colleagues will weigh in soon.

The Iraq matter speaks to the question of private guns as a defense against tyranny. Iraq has plenty of private guns, but little freedom. One possible explanation - Iraq is not remotely as bad as painted - I reject as unlikely. That leaves two possibilities:

1. Private gun ownership enables a people to resist tyranny, but only if they want to.

2. Private gun ownership isn't worth squat for this purpose. Helicopter gunships in private hands might mean something. Rifles and pistols? Nah.

I hate to say this - I think I've managed to avoid using this phrase for the entire life of this weblog so far - but I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the mid - . . .

Man, this is embarrassing. As to possibility one, Iraq's wide distribution of private weapons is one more reason I was disinclined to spend American blood and treasure "liberating" Iraq.

But I think there's a lot to possibility two. In pre-weblog days, when planning an essay on Waco, I expected to write about what that atrocity showed regarding the limits of firearms ownership as a defense against government. The government will always have "the big battalions." Inconvenience them, as the Branch Davidians did by successfully fighting off the BATF, and they will simply call in the reinforcements (the FBI's "Hostage" "Rescue" Team, in that case).

There are two possible programmatic responses to this. One is radical: insist that any weapon the government may have, private individuals may have - the Gully Foyle Solution if you will. Needless to say, this one is a tough sell. I only half buy it myself. In addition to the sheer fright value, it rests on a "More guns, less crime" principle itself, and implies a "More guns, less politics." That is, an armed society is a polite society, to coin a phrase. In any case, such a society, better or worse, would be so different from what we're used to that the prospect can't but frighten most anyone who considers it.

I can't think of what the other programmatic response is.

But there's another perspective: gun rights as canary in the coal mine. On this theory, the right itself is less important than the possible loss of it - that is, when a government ceases to trust its citizens (if we can still use that term) and a people cease to trust themselves and their neighbors to responsibly wield potentially lethal force, that society has become chronically . . . cowardly? decadent? distorted? This argument I accept wholeheartedly. We are talking about a process that unfolds over time, but when we see Britain first confiscate guns and then propose curtailing jury trials, things suggest themselves. Ask a western Canadian about Canada's gun restrictions and you can probably get a list of similar baleful developments.

That's a semi-practical objection. We'll save the moral objections for later.

Next: X Guns, Y Amount of Crime.

Weekly Fitness Blog Post - 182 pounds, 36.5" waist.

Health developments: My doctor wants to put me on Lipitor and a low-fat diet for my cholesterol. "Low-fat" in this case meaning no land animal flesh or products for six weeks. I could keep nuts, olive and canola oils and eat fish for protien. I was ready to try this in the spirit of science. I've done a high fat diet and learned some things - I could learn some things from going in the opposite direction.

But I've decided against it for now. I still want to try losing the rest of the weight I want to lose and changing my exercise regimen first. He doesn't think these steps will reduce my LDL enough, but we'll see. I'm due for a complete physical this fall, so I'll monkey around with other solutions until then. If my cholesterol is still too high, then I'll do it his way.

Two things settled me on this approach. First, looking over blood tests from three and four years ago, it's clear that my HDL has been in the thirties for quite some time and my LDL has simply been creeping up with age. That means that the Atkins plan as such hasn't caused my cholesterol levels. The most you can say is that it hasn't, so far, alleviated it. Second, don't tell Michael Croft, but I tried making vegetarian chili this week, from peppers, onions and mushrooms, finely diced. (Recall that I am bean-averse.) I used the same spices, tomato paste and beer from my standard chili recipe. It was - okay. Then I added an extra ingredient - beef - and it got a lot better.

Anyway. I plan to work in more fish and white meat chicken and reduce beef. I'm also trying to give up eggs for breakfast in favor of high-fiber cereal in skim milk with Splenda sweetener. The cereal isn't bad, but the two days I've done it so far have been two days of major headaches by mid-morning. Accident? Coincidence? Conspiracy?

On the exercise front, it's time to roll out Fortnightly Fitness Fun in earnest. This program will run on a two week cycle as follows:

Sunday⁰ - Slow-cadence weight training
Saturday⁰ - Heavyhands panaerobic workout
Monday¹ - Heavyhands panaerobic workout
Wednesday¹ - Heavyhands panaerobic workout
Friday¹ - Heavyhands panaerobi workout
Sunday² - Slow-cadence weight training.
Saturday² - etc.

And we'll see how it goes. I'm scheduled for more blood tests in six weeks. If cholesterol is still bad, I'll shake it up again - maybe add even more fiber and cut back to one day of red meat a week.

Got a nice exercise bench that inclines and allows me, if I choose, to do leg exercises with weight plates. It would be an excuse to give up those beastly squats, but that might be wimping out.

Survey, Pot. Pot, Survey. - The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has one of those Neoconservatism in One Lesson articles today. They're especially interested because of the connection with that city's Bradley Foundation, which they identify as a major funding source. Interesting statistics are in this part:

The neoconservatives argue that we no longer live in a bipolar world, as when Russia faced off against the United States. They see a unipolar world, with America as the Rome of the 21st century, a colossus that can dictate its will to the world, noting that America spends as much on defense as the next 15 countries combined and has troops stationed in 75 countries.

75 countries. And they say we tried isolationism and it didn't work.

Thought for the day: statists charge and anti-statists hope that the purpose of even such minor and dilatory tax cuts as President Bush has proposed in his first two years is to starve the government of money so that in time it must do less. I'm absolutely okay with this principle. The implication is that those of us who still want that "humble foreign policy" we were promised need to put the defense department on a diet too. Pay the troops we keep a living wage, continue R&D and cut overseas deployments way back. Demand that we get out of half those 75 countries in the next four years, then half again in the next four. Don't even be too particular about which countries - pass a kind of interventionist version of the old Gramm-Rudman Act that sets a ceiling of, oh, a dozen countries we can have troops in at once in peacetime. Once you hit a dozen, any new deployment automatically triggers a withdrawal. Reduce the navy; keep up the nuclear deterrent.

We'd never get this enacted in the present climate of course. That means the first task remains to change the climate.

Streamside - I haven't felt ready to fish yet this year, so instead I've been making surveys of local trout waters. This entails walking the banks, observing stream flows, identifying likely fishing spots and testing my equipment with casts into the water using real lures and even, forthoroughness, bait. This is at least theoretically dangerous, as it is possible that a fish might, not understanding my intent, sully the purity of my investigations by striking at my lure or bait. Fortunately, this has only happened once in three outings, and I was able to shake my lure free of that fish well before I got my line completely reeled in. I can only pray this near-total success continues.