More on Democracy, Race and Such - In response to the item about Eric Mauro's e-mail, Matthew Weiner writes a substantial item whose flow I will interrupt repeatedly. I wrote:

For [libertarians], representative democracy is a means, not an end. The electorate gets it wrong plenty. We just figure other systems would get it more wrong.

Matthew writes:

I don't think libertarians have a monopoly on your solution, if libertarian means opposing the nanny state. I'm a big-government liberal--I favor social safety nets, public education, public works, rakka rakka rakka--but, like you, I don't think that the point of representative democracy is that the electorate will get things right. The point of representative democracy is that it's the only humane way to run a government. Since the government gets to make the rules for the citizens, it's a basic human right that the citizens get to choose the government. If the electorate gets it wrong, then we folks who know better can try to change their minds, or find a better electorate to live with. Or blow off steam on blogs and comments.

This means reversing your slogan: Representative democracy is an end, not a means. It's not that representative democracy makes fewer errors than other methods, on the way to some other goal. It's that representative democracy is a Good Thing, period. If the electorate gets it wrong, that's too bad, but in most cases no one has the right to shove the right answer down their throats.

In most cases... because of course we've got to avoid tyranny of the majority too. Hence the Constitution.

I'm with Matthew, mostly, though a big concern I have is that among the things representative democracy is is a way for political enthusiasts to force everyone to share their enthusiasm whether people like it or not. There is a point at which having to change somebody's mind about traducing your rights is itself an intolerable burden. The classic hypothetical would be a system in which there was "due process," but anyone could petition to have you put to death at any time. Yes, you could try to change their minds. The odds would even favor you on a frivolous motion. But it would be intolerable that you were forced to occupy yourself with the matter regardless. (In the absence of serious evidence of wrongdoing on your part.)

To me, representative democracy can't morally be an end because it is possible for representative democracy, by the workings of its own procedures, to become a liberty-destroying thing. Eric refers to the importance of the Constitution and I agree, but that document contains within it lawful procedures for modifying it in such a way as to eviscerate all rights to speech, personhood and property. They made it as difficult to change as possible, which is good, but the potential is still there and has been realized in part. (Remember declarations of war? When what you decided to grow on your own land for your own use was not considered "interstate commerce?") Also, because the constitution has no armies or police forces of its own, its meaning is at the mercy of the sum over all factions in power.

Matthew again:

And hence the problem with the racist constituencies of the 20th century, because it's not just that they were making the wrong decision for themselves; they didn't have the right to make the decisions they were making for black people. (Eric overlooks, BTW, that the 20th century racist governments weren't representative democracies, because black people couldn't vote.) So a little court-ordered integration wasn't a bad thing.

Yes. Much of the court-ordered integration we saw I have no problems with. There's more though: Jim Crow hideously deformed the liberties of black people, but it traduced the freedoms of white people too. Under Jim Crow, you didn't have the option of running an integrated hotel or serving blacks in your restaurant or marrying the melanin-rich. Jim Crow laws were passed to reverse voluntary integration. Who volunteered? Various white people. The instant those laws were passed, not only black people who wanted to ride integrated trains but the white people who had been running them were less free. These white people were "represented" in the system. That didn't make the abridgement of their rights tolerable.

Matthew concludes:

Where liberals differ with libertarians--or, where I'd expect you to differ with me--is in the decisions that the electorate gets to make. I think the electorate gets to make decisions about economic policy that affect everyone--everyone has to pay some taxes to build this road, like that--but not decisions about whether two adults can have sex with each other. I'll guess that you think that it's not good for the electorate to make decisions about how everyone's money will be spent--everyone should get to make those decisions for themselves, just as much as decisions about who to sleep with. Fair?

I suspect so. I think it's been proven pretty thoroughly that I can't speak for all libertarians, but I favor maximizing voluntary cooperation and minimizing conscription. Taxes and public expenditures are a form of conscription. So they should be minimized. Not being an anarcho-capitalist, I don't see eliminating them entirely. All governments are gangs like the Rothbardians say, but not all gangs are governments. Make governments go away and other gangs will remain, and have their own ways of making you share their enthusiasms.

The constitutional republic is an ingenious if not entirely successful attempt to tie the dominant gang down in lilliputian procedural ropes. In exchange, the gang gets a greater sense of coziness than most gangs get to feel. Constitutional government should work like fairy lights in a swamp - luring the ambitious and immiring them in its bogs.

For those who care, my priorities of what to eliminate run roughly as follows:

1. Foreign interventionism, including NATO, various "peacekeeping" missions and permanent security guarantees to other countries.

2. Drug prohibition. This has been the biggest driver of pernicious abridgements of freedom up until the "war on terror."

3. Corporate welfare, including the associated official service organizations such as the Commerce Department.

4. The Administrative Law Court system, where most regulatory proceedings are adjudicated by a judge who works for the agency bringing the proceedings.

5. The expansive reading of the Commerce Clause.

6. "Safety" and licensing regulations that exist primarily to safeguard cartels. An excellent example would be the laws against jitney service in most big cities.

7. The tiered, graduated income tax.

8. The present social security system.

9. Government welfare for individuals.

I suspect this priority order makes me a "left-libertarian." I think there are plenty of libertarians who would argue that putting non-corporate welfare programs as far down the list as I do means that I wish to continue to snare poor people and minorities in a web of perverse incentives and infantilization. I agree with them that the welfare system does this, but I think there are bigger gains in overall liberty to be found elsewhere. Plus, to eliminate welfare while still making poor people jump through impossible hoops to become hairdressers, cabdrivers and babysitters, among other low-capital entrepreneurial activities imaginable, would be perverse.

The truth is, if we saw the top three in my lifetime I would die content.

NGO, Ho Ho Ho - Bryant Durrell of Population One suggests we consider Microsoft as a non-state actor in this item about the rise of post-national organizations and in the following e-mail:

You cite Aum Supreme Truth and Al Qaeda as the first non-state actors. I think Microsoft counts too; Gates is willing and able to engage in serious diplomacy. It's not as obvious, because his goals are not the same as the typical nation's (or even the same as the two groups you mentioned), but I think it's there.

Eric Raymond recently published another internal memo from Microsoft, here -- you may wish to ignore the snide comments in green. I think that's a memo about appropriate diplomatic action in the event of a certain type of behavior from governments, myself.

This last is pretty broadminded of him, though I worry that they'll strip his liberal blogger badge if he keeps talking like that.

The "megacorp" is such a cliche of recent dystopian fiction that one resists taking it seriously. But there's probably a genuine phenomenon there, worth more sophisticated analysis than the anti-globos have done.

Humanitarian Intervention and After, Addendum - MSNBC.com has a slide show about the plight of Kosovo's Roma (gypsy) exiles, driven from the province in an act of ethnic cleansing by "the returning Albanian majority and the KLA (under the protection of NATO) . . .

this group and some 150,000 other Kosovar Gypsies now live in tenuous exile across the Balkans and Western Europe. Without documentation or help, Kosovo’s Roma are now forced to survive as best they can on the edge of the crippled societies of the former Yugoslavia. Three years after the end of the fighting, most are still far from home, with little hope of returning.

Our boys, the KLA. Al Qaeda's boys too, but never mind that. Who gets to be in the post-Iraq slide shows? I guess we'll find out.

Blame it on the Rain? Snow? - The Men's Fitness magazine list of "America's Fattest Cities" is out. The ten "fattest" are

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Philadelphia
5. St. Louis
6. Cleveland
7. Atlanta
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Dallas
10. Charlotte, N.C

The ten "thinnest" are

1. Honolulu
2. Seattle
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado Springs, Col.
5. San Diego
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Denver
8. Virginia Beach, Va.
9. Tucson, Ariz.
10. Sacramento, Calif.

First I wondered if it was coincidence that cities with crappy winters predominate on the "fat" list while milder winters visit the bulk of the thin cities. (The outliers are suggestive too - Dallas and Houston on the fat list are crappy places to be outside much of the year, while "thin" Denver and Colorado Springs are winter sports centers.

The complete list problematizes this theory, as there is a greater diversity of climbs among the "lesser fat" and "greater thin" cities. But a perusal of the methodology casts doubt on just what is being measured. It turns out that actual obesity data is but a single factor among many that go into the rankings. The rankings also factor in the number of health clubs, nutrition stores and fast food restaurants in the area, but if these numbers are truly salient they ought already to be reflected in the obesity data. The editors announce that they've added a Smoking factor, but since when does smoking cause obesity? (Doctors used to prescribe smoking as a means of weight loss in more innocent days.) They include air and water quality measurements too. Clean air and water are fine things, but what they have to do with obesity is far from clear.

In other words, you could be Whaleville, but if you meet certain "green" criteria and have a lot of businesses of the sort that advertise in magazines like Men's Fitness, you'll do very well! But Sticktown, full of walking beanpoles but also pizza parlors and donut shops, with no park space or vitamin stores, will take it in the shorts.

On the question of actual obesity, what you would think something called "America's Fattest Cities" measures, fourth-ranked Colorado Springs rates better than third-ranked San Francisco, which gets the same grade as twenty-fifth ranked Washington DC. Fourth-"fattest" city Philadelphia grades out at a B- on Obesity. Third-"fattest" Detroit pulls a C - an average - for having actual fat people, a better grade than any of the "Top 10."

To be fair, most of the "10 Fattest" have obesity scores from C or below while all of the 10 "Thinnest" have obesity scores of C+ or above. But there are cities in the Great Middle (as it were) that are, on Men's Fitness' own grading, better than some Top 10 cities on body mass and obesity risk factors. But they don't have the advertiser density or trendy "new urbanist" cachet.

All of which is to say, phooey. You can get the actual CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for obesity here (2001 data). Interested parties may wish to examine the CDC's own methodology for soundness and pertinence.

Humanitarian Intervention and After - Preston Mendenhall of MSNBC.com writes about rampant sex slavery in the Balkans, where NATO, the UN and the EU have been bringing peace and building democracy:

AFTER SPENDING BILLIONS of dollars on military and humanitarian interventions to douse the flames of four Balkans wars, international efforts to maintain a delicate peace between warring ethnic groups are increasingly threatened by rampant corruption and the unchecked flow of guns, drugs and human smuggling through the region.

Diplomats and local officials say the lack of resolve by top bureaucrats to get tough on corruption and police fears that a crackdown on crime syndicates could spark a new bloodbath along ethnic lines are preventing the region’s recovery from a decade of conflict.

Mendenhall's piece is relentlessly apologetic for the occupiers and interveners and as hard as possible on authorized villains like the Macedonian government. You'd never know from this article that UN officials have been running slave rings, for instance. As much as possible, Mendenhall presents sage, worried international observers fretting over the mess those crazy southern europeans are making. But the demand for local color requires that his piece at least brush up against the truth:

The trade in humans is visible everywhere, even in the Macedonian capital. After the closure of the Panorama Hotel bar, perched on a hill above Skopje’s government ministries, the flesh market has now resurfaced at the Irish Pub, a downtown watering hole on the Vardar River packed with NATO troops and international workers, who as clients fuel the business. On a recent night, a dozen women watched by a minder left one by one with British, American and German soldiers on 96-hour leaves from Kosovo, where they keep the peace in another Balkans region plagued by trafficking.

(My emphasis.) Ask yourself: who can afford prostitutes in a region whose economy has been devastated by war and terror? Not the locals, mostly.

“The lack of political will so far to solve the problem is stalling the country’s recovery,” said Bart D’Hooge, the Organization for Security and Cooperation’s official in charge of developing a multi-ethnic police force in Macedonia. “They have to see that one problem is linked to another problem. And if you want to solve one problem, you have to solve them all. It’s a vicious circle.”

The stars will fall from the sky before Mr. D'Hooge will admit, or maybe even recognize, that "the problem" exists because he is there. Question Preston Mendenhall might have done well to ask: "Mr. D'Hooge, how many members of your own staff avail themselves of the opportunities provided by forced prostitution?" In another article, about the freed slave Natasha, Mendenhall writes

Even though she was surrounded by a multinational peacekeeping force, Natasha’s savior appeared in the form of a client, Safat, who used her sexually three times before negotiating a deal with her pimp — and paying $2,500 to set her free.

That "even though" has it backwards. The "multinational peacekeeping force" substantially constitutes the demand for women like Natasha. Another MSNBC article that Mendenhall wrote with Preston Binder faces the matter less flinchingly:

NEARLY TWO YEARS after NATO troops drove Serb forces from this region, rebels are believed to still be skimming profits from drug and sex slave trafficking to fund illegal arms purchases for ethnic Albanian rebel movements.

This trafficking has allowed both the Kosovo Liberation Army in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and the National Liberation Army in Macedonia to be outfitted with the latest in rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, mortars, sniper rifles and night-vision goggles.

A look at European police blotters provides evidence of the close links between the rebels and Balkans trafficking.

Those are our boys, people. The ones that Presidents Clinton (Kosovo) and Bush (Macedonia) sponsored.

Prostitution follows soldiers and war like flies flock to a corpse. It will follow them to Iraq too. But then, the hawks said we need to transform their culture.

Knights, Phooey? - John Bono writes

I read Glenn Reynolds' response to Jim Henley's post about what WMD, surveillance, and high quality military bode for the future, and I've got a major nit to pick about their view of medieval cavalry being the king of the battlefield. It wasn't. No cavalry charge ever broke a line of infantry that maintained ranks, either before or after the invention of the stirrup.

It's an interesting point. Seems to me that "infantry that maintained ranks" is a heck of a qualifier. Also, I was writing about armor, not horses, and the idea that the relative invulnerability it conferred translated to political power over commoners. John may have an answer for this too, but it doesn't appear in this particular item. The comments section has a debate about the Battle of Adrianople, though.

Space-Saving Tip - Mike Sugimoto of Under a Blackened Sky wonders

Parenthetically, you notice how every time someone wants to make an anti-war argument, they almost always have to qualify it by saying something akin to "yes, Saddam is a bad guy, BUT"? Can we just agree that this is the case and save ourselves some typing? I mean, seriously -- is there anyone out there who thinks he's a good guy anymore?

Hm. At the very least, an abbreviation wouldn help, like YSBB ("Yes, Saddam BAD - But!")

That's One Way of Putting It - In the pages of the conservative Spectator, former British and Canadian military intelligence officer calls the military conquest of Iraq "A War for Fools and Cowards." I agree, though I stress that the fools and the cowards are mostly different people. I addressed the cowardice problem in The Million Mom War and the foolishness elsewhere, but Gene Healy's essay is now the state of the art on the latter problem. Just a taste of Robinson:

Today we are reduced to twitching over fantastic delusions of enormous enemy capabilities and make-believe scenarios of future holocausts, and Tony Blair can drive us inexorably towards an unnecessary and quite unjust war. When we were fighting the Cold War, the British Army Intelligence Corps used to produce a marvellous magazine called Threat. Full of grainy pictures of the latest sexy Soviet equipment, articles about the newest variant of the rear sprocket of the T-80 or BMP-2, and depictions of Motor Rifle regiments attacking from the line of march, Threat drew its readers’ attention to a serious danger existing just beyond our borders. The point about Threat is that the capabilities described were real. The equipment actually existed. The tactics had been used in recent military operations. By contrast, the ‘threat’ from Iraq is a figment of some overactive imaginations.

Credit Where Credit Is Due - Bush? Clinton? Derek James has the right idea about whom to blame for North Korea's nukes.

The Final Voyage - Positively the last e-mail roundup about Tolkien and the sea.

Mr. Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles e-mails

The crucial piece missing in the discussion of boats in LotR is that despite Tolkien's fascination with all things Anglo-Saxon, he was a relatively modern Englishman, with a relatively modern Englishman's conception of distance. If you think that driving fifteen miles to go shopping is a day trip, you can perfectly well have adventures on a small island without needing to get on a boat. And on top of that, an Englishman is likely to deny that there's anyplace worth sailing to, other than maybe a mystical paradise far off in the West...

Further evidence of Tolkien's English-ness is found in the way the Fellowship decided to attempt to cross high mountain passes on foot in the middle of January...

Oh wait! RGB Bill Dowling's e-mail isn't about boats at all. And it includes stuff I did not know:

Just got back to work and was catching up on my unqualified offerings and read your article on the two towers. [I wrote]:

Everyone in my group also felt that the assault on Isengard was staged and shot in such a way as to make the ents look too small. Ents should be big fucking majestic things.

I saw a show on special effects (but not specifically about the Lord of the Rings) once where they were talking about working with water. They said it was one of the hardest things to add into a scene because the water droplets had the annoying tendency to always be the size of water droplets, even when the rest of the set (i.e. the models of Orthanc and whatnot) were at a scale other than 1:1. They talked about being able to cut the water with something to help out somewhat in shrinking the droplets, but that it only worked a little. I was thinking about that during the big flood where the ents looked like miniatures.

Also, while your point on Frodo is well taken, he does have at least one decision yet to make. After all, it's not as if he's actually going to destroy the ring.

Jonathan Hendry suggests

Clearly, Lord of the Rings is a Cuban fable.

That, at least, would explain why the only way anyone leaves is by boat.

There was also that part about the Great Elrond, who does all things perfectly in spite of the bone spur in his hand.

Bruce Baugh sounds themes similar to Chad Orzel's. It's like they read the same book or something:

The England that Tolkien would naturally think of was not a great seafaring nation. It was a land of small kingdoms, occasionally united and occasionally invaded. The people farmed and hunted and fished, but how many Angles or Saxons went off in fleets? Even after the Norman invasion, which would be getting out of Tolkien's bailiwick, there's seldom a great bunch of ships tearing around. Brittania, Mistress of the Waves, is the product of much more recent forces - of Tolkien's own time, from the point of view of someone for whom Chaucer is modern.

And that'll about do it for that topic. Next up: Real chili is Orc-style chili, made from pure minced hobbit with no beans. Discuss.

All in One Place - Gene Healy has written just about the definitive case against the military conquest of Iraq. Published in hardcopy in this month's Liberty, it's available online from CATO. It is the security-centered case against war and most of the arguments will be familiar to regular readers of this site, since I've made most of them myself. But Gene has given them shape and form.

UPDATE: On Stand Down, Max Sawicky whipped up a sequel to Gene's piece in no time. I'll happily take my stand with the arguments of these two.

UPDATE: Minor cavil. At the end of Max's piece, Max asks, "But if Iraq is less of a threat than NK, why Iraq? Can anyone here argue that it is not in fact all about oil?" Answer: Sure. A particular (flawed, in my opinion) view of Israel's security plays a major role. So does the National Greatness Conservative's desire for a unifying project - in this case the forcible transformation, or attempted transformation - of the Muslim middle east. Plus, as Gene suggests in the comments to this Stand Down post, the desire to be seen to do something on the part of the Bush Administration. And behind that, of course: raw, naked gibbering fear. I can't shake the sense that many hawks, particularly in the blogosphere, are like Annie Hall demanding that Alvie Singer come over and kill the spider for her.

Imitation Tech Blog Post - For MT users only: Michael Croft of Ones and Zeros pointed me toward this set of third-party Movable Type plugins.

All Shall Give Prizes II - Asked by Eve to recommend some comics, I called in the experts, in the form of Mr. Franklin Harris. His double dose of usefulness: his year's best and his recommended graphic novels. See also the last 2002 and first 2003 columns from his Pulp Culture site. For the real specialist, Nielalien has year-end awards for Doctor Strange-related categories only.

The Color Line - Eve Tushnet has been writing an incredible, challenging series of items on race. Start here and scroll up.

Just Mentioning that nominations are now open for the 2003 Bloggys.

Anarcho-Capitalists Unclear on the Concept - At Objectionable Content, Jim suggests that Ariel Sharon is . . . not doing so good. Among other things:

Sharon's policies have helped make 2002 the worst economic year Israel has seen in four decades. It is also the year that saw more Israelis killed in terrorist attacks than in any other period. Luckily for Sharon, political scandal might distract the Israeli electorate from his horrendous destruction of their country.

Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim. You are forgetting the first law of geopolitics, man.

Being a hawk means never having to say you're sorry.

Best Non-Libertarian in a Libertarian Role: The Continuing Series - Aziz Poonawalla takes on Sun v. Microsoft and concludes that Sun are little weenies. Being Aziz, he doesn't put it quite like that.

Second in a Series - Alan Sullivan's next essay on Tolkien, focusing on Two Towers the movie and the "Tolkien: Racist or Multiculturalist?" question is now up on Seablogger. It's worth every Tolkien reader's and movie viewer's time. He also briefly addresses the Great Boat Controversy - he gives it no more space than it deserves but is on point.

If you still don't read Alan's Seablogger regularly, huh? Why the heck not?

Oh You Like That Don't You - Avedon Carol is brilliant here and here in an exchange with Ampersand about pornography, feminism and fantasy. Nut graphs:

Worse, if you take your cues from mass culture, from the wisdom of your elders and most literature, you're likely to get an even more sexist and misleading picture of women, of men, and of sex than you'd ever get from a steady diet of hardcore pornography.

So, basically, I regard the critique of pornography as an agent of sexism in our culture to be, at its very best, a red-herring, a distraction from a real examination of the sources of sexism and violence in our world. But more often it is much worse than that, actually helping to stigmatize sexual agency and to encourage memes that corrupt our understanding of sexuality.

Read the whole thing.

Psst! II - Shh! Be vewwy quiet. Don't tell anyone, but Ginger's back.

The new edition weblog proudly mixes mundane and fannish interests, gaming cheek by jowl with politics right next to tech stuff. She calls it Perverse Access Memory, but you might think of it as the Foods Touch blog.

One, Two, Many Afghanistans - Uh, guys? This isn't good, no matter what they tell you. (Link via Atrios.) Time for what used to be a signature Unqualified Offerings move: check the Pakistani press directly.

The International News article focuses on a condemnation of the US by the Norwest Frontier Province Assembly. Why it matters: The writ of the Pakistani national government extends only tenuously to NWFP, and NWFP has longstanding blood and ideological ties to the Taliban. To the extent that Pakistan's cooperation with the US is sincere, it faces a couple of unpleasant options: Rely on local troops whose enthusiasm for cooperating against the Taliban is low or bring in troops from outside with no local ties and maybe even antipathy - a recipe for unrest.

The News also runs an unsigned editorial. (Warning: Link will decay.) Excerpts:

The sequence and details of the events are, however, less important than the fact that tension had been building up for some time and has, finally, brought the US and Pak forces to a face-off. [My emphasis - UO.] Needless to emphasise, the self-evidently sensitive situation must not be allowed to drift any further. The US, Afghan and Pakistani officials, who are reported to have met, need immediately to settle the rules of engagement in the explosive border areas.

And

Considering the difficulty the US and Afghan forces are facing in bringing order to the eastern provinces of Afghanistan, there could be a tendency to shift the blame on to Pakistan and, specifically, hostile elements suspected to be operating from its side of the border. This rugged region has never been easy to patrol, let alone seal against cross-border movement. Therefore, it may be easier to level allegations than to refute them.

And

On the contrary, emotions were inflamed by incidents like the US bombing of a wedding ceremony, a convoy of Karzai supporters and storming of houses during which even women were reportedly handcuffed and body-searched. Such high-handedness has never been tolerated in the deeply conservative and fiercely independent Pakhtun society. There is, therefore, no way now of saying with certainty as to who the gunmen attacking the US forces might be. They could be remnants of Taliban and Al-Qaeda, as alleged by the US, or ordinary Afghans angry at the US attitude.

And

It would be a grave mistake if the Americans, in their propensity to simplify complex foreign situations, desire an extension of their military operation to the Pakistani tribal area. The matter has "handle with care" written all over it and could very well test Pak-US military cooperation in the border belt and, in the larger context, Pak-US relations as they have developed lopsidedly after 9/11.

It's pointless to sputter and fume at the "anti-American" tone of the editorial. The attitude is itself a fact. Indeed, it's a more certain fact than the variously denied details of the bombing and firefight themselves. You can't wave the political problem away by giving it a comforting label.

The Dawn's story is much shorter, but the tone is very sympathetic to the NWFP Assembly.

The worrying thing here is that what we're reading are the english-language reactions of the westernized Islamabad elite here. You can imagine what the Urdu media outside the capital must be saying, let alone the rumor mills.

As Bad As All That? - Glenn Reynolds has written a substantial response to my "Brief History of the Future" from last month for Tech Central Station. I'd find it worthwhile reading even if it weren't flattering that he spent all that effort writing about my damn article. The general theme of Glenn's article is "The bad guys have indeed gotten more powerful. But so have the rest of us." He makes some interesting points, such as this one about Afghanistan:

And though Henley points out the rapidity of our victory in Afghanistan as an example of the superiority of modern armies against armed irregulars, that somewhat misconceives the actual war there, which relied on lots of armed irregulars on our side.

Well, on our side part of the time anyway. But you get the idea.

A couple of brief responses: Glenn is absolutely right that the direst aspects of the future I sketched are only a possible, not an inevitable outcome. I for one hope like hell that he's right about the countervailing forces. I think we could be in for some messy times even if, at the end of them, the good guys win. Also, a caution, from my friend in the national security bureacracy. Glenn also discusses, as I did, countersurveillance efforts such as the John Poindexter Awareness Office. What my friend Toiler, as I've traditionally called him in this space, said was Don't imagine that the IAO on the one hand and the JPAO on the other are operating on a level playing field. He ought to know.

Must-See TV - What looks like a good documentary about the Voyager space probe is coming up on A&E on the sixteenth of this month.

COSMIC JOURNEY:

The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message

2-hour TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL FOR A&E NETWORK

PREMIERES JANUARY 16, 2003 at 9:00 pm

Encore presentation: January 25, 1:00 pm

Written, produced and directed by Phyllis Geller, who is a super nice person and has worked with Ken Burns among others, the documentary also relies heavily on Ann Druyan, Kent Gibson and Dr. Carolyn Porco.

So far Judas is leading A&E's poll question, "Who is the most infamous traitor?" by 50% over his next closest competitor, Benedict Arnold.

Sail Away - A swarm of Tolkien "aficionados" have been bombarding me with "evidence" about "boats" in Tolkien's "works." No less a personage than Teresa Nielsen Hayden e-mails that

The reason Frodo's an orphan who lives with his Uncle Bilbo is that his parents were killed in a boating accident. He himself has no problem with the Anduin river boats.

So there.

Big Science Fiction sure is feeling the heat on this one, huh? River boats. Phooey. Reader Mary Kay takes up the river boat theme too:

What the heck do you mean, Frodo not at all. The Fellowship takes boats out of Lothlorien down the great River Anduin. Frodo leaves the rest of the Fellowship in a boat.

Again with the river boats! It sure was touching when Frodo decides to go to hell rather than turn Jim in to the slavecatchers, huh?

Frodo leaves Middle Earth in a boat. The wondrous islands? Well, mostly they're not in LOTR, but in the earlier days of Middle Earth. Numenor, Tol Eressea, the Enchanted Isles.

Oh look at the time! Best move on to the next e-mail, eh? Reader Jeremy Osner writes

I am talking off the top of my head here so may well (as always) be mistaken; but it seems to me there is a distinct paucity of navigation in the Arthurian legends. I mean, someone comes from France, presumably by boat; but I don't know that much is made of the means of transport. And I think the King is himself a landlubber.

Clearly, Jeremy Osner hates America! Also, didn't Tolkien complain that even the Arthurian saga was mostly French? (Breton, anyway.) That's my story, dammit.

Reader Lou Gotts writes, accurately, that "I'll bet you're getting hammered on this (or would be if it were not New Years Eve)" and continues

The next-to-the-last scene in the last chapter has FRODO in an ELF-SHIP sailing from the Grey Havens for Elvenhome. I have heard that there is no Scouring of the Shire in LOTR III: I hope they have not cut the Grey Havens.

Well if you want to be that way about it . . .

Okay, I'm going to, in a modified way, conced the point here, but only, I stress only, because unlike me these people have actually read the books sometime in the last twenty years.

Still, darnit, seafaring seems somehow more peripheral to the tale than you'd think, Britain really being an island nation. I wonder if this isn't because Tolkien was right when he said his WWI experience marked the Ring saga far more than World War II did, and Tolkien spent WWI in the trenches rather than the Royal Navy.

Meanwhile, there sure are a lot of ships in The Broken Sword . . . (Link is to quite a good review of Anderson's great contemporary and dark twin of Lord of the Rings. The author, William Thompson, gets it right that Sword is a much colder work than Tolkien's, for all that Tolkien's has much darkness about it.)

Arthur Anderson Award Update - Scrappleface has more. And an update for 2003: Scrappleface is still funny.

All Shall Give Prizes! - Micah Holmquist and The Agitator have given out awards of their own.

Beat the Rush - Brendan O'Neill has already completed all his blogging for 2003.

Happy New Year! - Resolutions for this year: Sell some articles. Stop the War. Be prompter about e-mail. Read one improving book or magazine a week. Be better to parents.

Oh wait - these last two were Jay Gatsby's resolutions.

Unqualified Successes 2002 - At the time of the 2001 awards, this site had a few dozen readers and the Maryland Terrapins were getting blown out of the Orange Bowl. Things have changed for the better! This year's format is as follows: New categories will be marked with an asterisk. Repeat categories will have last year's winner in parentheses. Before any of my fellow bloggers get their hopes up, I should state that the Unqualified Successes are not primarily intended to be awards for bloggers. So if you don't win anything, it doesn't mean I don't love you. I might not, of course, but you can't tell from this list. (Mostly.) Thank you very much to everyone who takes time to read this site, everyone who takes time to send e-mails about this site and everyone who has been kind enough to link to this site or cite items from it. Now then!

Least Dispensible Weblog - Instapundit.com (2001: Instapundit.com)

Hawk of the Year - Perry de Havilland (2001: Christopher Hitchens)

Dove of the Year - Amram Mitzna (2001: Alan Bock)

"Turning Japanese" Award, for the Best Case of the Vapors - Tie, Everyone who was convinced the Capital Area snipers must be Al Qaeda terrorists (2001: Andrew Sullivan)

Best Non-Libertarian in a Libertarian Role - The Talking Dog (2001: Mickey Kaus)

Best Libertarian in a Neoconservative Role - Brink Lindsay, CATO Hawk (2001: Glenn Reynolds)

Best Meme Insertion - "Chickenhawk" by whoever thought it up (2001: "Our Good Friends, the Saudis" by Virginia Postrel)

Best Libertarian in a Libertarian Role - Julian Sanchez (2001: Samizdata)

Least Annoying Liberal - Patrick Nielsen Hayden (2001: Ginger Stampley)

War is the Health of the State Award, Executive Branch Division - President George W. Bush (2001: John Ashcroft)

War is the Health of the State Award, Legislative Division - tie, Rep. Charles Rangel and Senator-Elect Saxby Chambliss (2001: Charles Schumer)

War is the Health of the State Award, Fourth Estate Division - David Broder (2001: Peter Jennings [broadcast], every mainstream liberal columnist in America [print], Bill Moyers [political magazines] - no way I was putting myself through all that again, so a consolidated media award this time)

*War is the Health of the State Award, International Division - Ariel Sharon

*War is the Health of the State Award, Super-Colossal All-Time Grand Prize - John Poindexter

*War May Not Be the Health of MY State Award - Hamid Karzai

*Jumped the Shark Award - "Anti-Idiotarian"

*I Seen My Opportunities, and I Took 'Em Award - Kim Jong Il

*Blog Trend of the Year - Unretiring

*Baleful Blog Trend of the Year - Public de-linking

*To Call It the Baleful Blog Trend of the Year Would Be Evidence of Unconscionable Bias on my Part - the liberal blog new wave

*Arthur Anderson Award for Innovative Accounting - OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr, for his new, lower-cost "estimates" of the cost of conquering Iraq

Special Achievement Award - Antiwar.com (2001: Blogger.com)

*Food of the Year - Chili without beans

Tagline of the Year - "Harabist," Aziz Poonawalla (2001: "We can fact-check your ass," Ken Layne)

Spouse of the Year - Mrs. Offering (2001: Mrs. Offering [same one])

Longer Boats - About my item on Tolkien as British mythology, and why the Ring saga is so land-locked, Patrick Nielsen Hayden quickly wrote:

What do you mean, "where are all the boats"? In Tolkien's mythology, sailing is how you get to Heaven, more or less. Sounds reasonably English to me.

Mariners are a Big Deal in Arda, I'll remind you. One of them was so successful, he got turned into a star, and Elrond is his son, too. An entirely Age of the World (the Second, to be precise) was dominated by dauntless navigatin' men. Eventually they decided this naval power stuff was so spiffy, they'd just use it to conquer the gods. Trouble ensued.

Even in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Aragorn enters Minas Tirith at the head of a mighty fleet, one of the most visually-dramatic scenes in THE RETURN OF THE KING and one I hope doesn't get lost on the cutting-room floor.

Just like Patrick to confuse the issue with facts. Still: It doesn't seem like much. Where is the littoral coastline? Where are the wondrous islands? Beowulf sails a lot. Sir Patrick Spens sails. Frodo not at all.

I'm wondering now if Treasure Island isn't "a mythology for Britain."

Libertarian Simplifies Your Life - Eric Mauro e-mails about Know-Nothings, neo-confederates and other disagreeable people:

I've been wondering about that as well, after the Lott affair. Lincoln would have got nowhere being a total abolitionist, but then again there were abolitionists at the time. This is a big problem with revisionism. If you believe in the essence of electoral politics, that the electorate always makes the best decision, then you have to accept that the racist constituencies of the 20th century were making the best choice they could be expected to. It makes it a little easier to accept the idea that presidents from Lincoln on couldn't effectively establish voting rights laws (although all politicians ought to be held accountable for any violence they incited). Admittedly that is awfully close to excusing their racism. Don't know where to come down on this.

I think this problem is easier for libertarians because we don't have to believe that "the electorate always makes the best decision." For us, representative democracy is a means, not an end. The electorate gets it wrong plenty. We just figure other systems would get it more wrong.

Unmixed Signals - Say this for the Bush Administration - it has sent a message to potentially hostile regimes that is admirable for its clarity if nothing else: Get nukes as fast as you can, one way or another. If you miss your deadline, like Iraq, you can be toppled with something close to impunity. If you act with dispatch, like Korea, you're golden.

The optimistic reading of the Korean scenario is exactly that North Korea is taking advantage of the Bush Administration's obsessio focus on Iraq to arm up and secure itself from the same fate. Kim Jong-Il has figured out how the Axis of Evil works: he who has nukes survives. The pessimistic scenario is that North Korea will attempt to extort money and concessions from Japan and South Korea with its weapons just as it extorted US aid with the mere prospect of a nuclear program in the 1990s. Korea is an economic basket case of its own making, unlike Iraq, and its Communist Party may be the one that decides to take everybody else down with it.

Ironies abound here. South Korea wants to practically cut the US out of resolving what Colin Powell assures is is not a crisis. US-South Korean relations are probably the worst they've been since the 1970s. Meanwhile, North Korea is trying to cut everybody but the US out:

"There is no need for the third party to meddle in the nuclear issue on the peninsula. The issue should be settled between the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S., the parties responsible for it," said the North's ruling-party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun.

(Link via Instapundit.) I've read, though I can't find a link now, that Japan seems similarly more uneasy about what the US may do in response to the Korean situation than what the DRPK itself might do.

Darn those ungrateful Japanese and South Koreans, your neos are saying now. But here's the thing: it's their ass on the line much much more than ours. We have 37,000 troops, maybe, with a lucky shot, one or two small cities and some steelhead streams at risk from North Korea. South Korea and Japan have their whole countries on the line.

A lot of libertarians say, rather casually, no one knows how to live your life better than you do, as an argument against bureaucracy, regulation and the shepherd-client state. This is obviously wrong at least some of the time. I have family members whose lives I could do a tolerably smarter job with than they've managed themselves. The real argument is different: If you fuck your life up, you suffer the consequences. If I fuck your life up, you suffer the consequences. I may be smarter than you, some time in some ways, but I'm not infallible. But a system where you pay for my mistakes and it's my job to make your mistakes for you is a bad idea.

As so often, interventionism is the nanny state applied to international relations. The consequences of our Korean mistakes will fall almost everywhere but on us.

Unqualified Offerings Unclear on the Concept - Bruce Rolston talks about Tolkien's desire to create a mythology for England. Okay, they talk of nothing else on the bonus DVD disks too. Here's my question . . .

Where are all the boats? What self-respecting island nation's mythology is centered in a thoroughly landlocked tale?

(Is this one Seablogger can explain?)

Blogwatch Auxiliary - A few goings-on . . .

Duckboyz? - The webfooted lad announces that he too will be taking in strays, like Asymmetrical Information and On the Third Hand before him.

Spleenville - Big ol' thread on Tolkien and the merits of fantasy. Reading the chief antagonist of the thread may be hazardous to those who have high blood pressure, the surname "Nielsen Hayden" or both.

Where is Raed - Salam Pax on the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra by candlelight. Plus, how close does Iraq think we are to war? and better uses for human shields.

Colby Cosh - Fun with French, one of those unaccountable paeans to the manual typewriter and Italian cultural insecurities.

Seablogger says, America: Empire, No; Monarchy, maybe. Also, new boat stuff.

Hot Buttered Death has lots of self-test results and, yes, a Two Towers review, among other things.

Thanks to retiring Washington Redskin Darrell Green. There was a period in the mid-nineties when Mrs. Offering and I managed to get to about one game a year at the stadium. The best thing about being at the game rather than watching it on TV was the chance to watch Darrell Green work an entire play. He liked to try to bait quarterbacks into throwing to his side by laying back a step or two off the receivers. When they did though, came that famous closing speed, and the leap. You wouldn't believe a 5'8" man could get up that high. It was his jumping ability that let him hold his own with much bigger receivers. Also his smarts. Twenty years, the last two full of indignities borne with admirable grace.

People Unclear on the (Invidious) Concept - Judging from this item, Charles Dodgson may not understand the "Being a hawk means never having to say you're sorry" principle.

Surely, on the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld does.

A Fanboy's Notes, Holy Shit Department - Jesse Walker informs me, and it's apparently confirmed, that Michael "Kavalier and Clay" Chabon is writing the script for Spiderman II. I should be embarrassed to admit how thrilling I find this news. Chabon's unused proposal for the first X-Men movie can be accessed from this page of his website.

Jesse is whiling away the intervening time with year end movie "best of" lists - for 1992, 1982 and 1972.

Department of Hunh - The Peanuts Arcana Tarot Deck. Pretty amusing. (Link via (woolgathering).)

Eschaton-ological Mail - My brief, carping item about liberal bloggers, especially Atrios, brought some mail, which is so far running about 2-1 against me. That is, I heard from three people, one of whom was Atrios, who was very polite, one from a leftist reader who wrote "I read one of his commenters joking about cutting out Lott's heart, pretty sad stuff." and one from Zizka, whose work I had occasion to cite back when we were all discussing Orwell. Zizka's e-mail is substantial and worth running in its entirety. I will, impolitely, interrupt it a time or two. My apologies to Zizka:

I wasn't on the thread you cited, but I'm one of Atrios' "extreme" commenters, or at least I try to be, so I thought I'd respond to your snippet pasted below.

I can't blame you for thinking that liberals and Democrats should always be open-minded and temperate rather than partisan and combative, because many liberals and Democrats think that too.

Where it came from I don't know, but what a dumb idea! In order to function at all, a political party or political tendency needs to have some partisans. If you don't have some fighters on the ground, you lose.

Nobody makes such a demand of conservatives or Democrats. George Will publishes about three moderate and zero liberal pieces a year, and no one screeches. Paul Krugman -- a moderate Clinton Dem, incidentally -- is equally partisan, and a pack of jackals howls at his door 24/7.

Actually "thoughtful Republican syndrome" is legendary among cynical observers on the right. A "thoughtful" Republican is any Republican who rolls over for Democratic proposals. Obviously any Republican who isn't "thoughtful" is . . .

I take Zizka's point that "In order to function at all, a political party or political tendency needs to have some partisans." But that doesn't make such partisans interesting. As a political extremist, I regard an ardent affection for either major party as akin to an enthusiasm for Theosophy. Bright people can certainly believe such things - I'll admit to a doubt that it's the bright part of bright people who so believe - and be worthwhile reading to boot. Yeats was gaga for Theosophy, of course, but still a fascinating thinker and writer. But his ideas on Theosophy itself are not what most of us go to Yeats for.

The demand that liberals should always be temperate and judicious can come from only one place, and that is the belief that there's something so terribly, terribly wrong with liberalism that its advocacy is just plain stupid. But if you believe that, you're not a liberal. (Kaus and Peretz claim to be liberals, but they aren't. They hate liberals).

Moderates are OK with me. So are cautious liberals, and so are tweeners such as yourself. What that means is that if you agree with me, I'm cool with that, and that if you disagree with me, I'll argue. Because I actually believe what I say I believe.

Actually, I don't recall demanding anything. Nor was I complaining that liberals advocate liberalism.

I've stayed out of the Atrios/ Hesiod controversy, but to me one thing the Democrats absolutely have to do is to keep pounding away at the fact that many important Republicans are far too close to the neo-Confederates. It's not just Lott, and it's not just that one thing Lott said. Ashcroft and Sessions come immediately to mind, but we've only just started looking.

And no, not all conservatives are racists. But the Republican Southern strategy panders to the racists, and everyone who plays along with that is tainted. (Are the Democrats tainted by their association with Sharpton? Yes, but Sharpton's just one guy. He's not the Majority leader, he's not a Senator, and as far as I'm concerned he's far less obnoxious than a dozen or so of the Republican neo-Confederates in Congress. You are free to disagree).

I can't agree that there is "just one guy" like Al Sharpton that the Democrats are beholden too. The question of "taint" is genuinely interesting. Something I've been meaning to write about since Lott-ergate is this whole vexed question of where one trolls for votes. Because the issue goes way back - to the very birth of the Republican Party in the mid-nineteenth century out of the ashes of the Whig Party. The Republican Party would not have thrived were it not for a concerted and largely successful effort to coopt the Know-Nothings. The Know-Nothings were hardcore nativists, anti-immigrant and especially anti-Catholic. Lincoln and the early Republicans never proposed a systematic anti-immigrant program of the sort the Know-Nothings might have liked, but they played artfully on nativist resentments, with an eye to convincing this voting bloc to fear free blacks less than free Irish. At the same time, of course, the Democratic Party was attempting not just to succor its urban immigrant constituency but to frighten it with the prospect of competition from free black labor. Southern Dems similarly played on poor white fears of competition from free blacks, a tactic that had a century yet to run on it.

My point? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to have a point. In a democracy, "taint" is structural. Parties are essentially constituent service organizations and any given constituency is going to have its disagreeable atavisms, e.g. the widespread antisemitism among african-americans and homophobia among rural whites. Politics also abhors a vacuum, so every constituency is going to get at least lip service from some party. There are votes in it.

The question becomes, how do you honorably troll for votes among people with disagreeable beliefs.

Last, we have the "just as bad as ...." canard. As I understand, the posters on LGF routinely propose nuclear genocide. Limbaugh and Coulter routinely misrepresent facts and seldom retract anything. Limbaugh, Coulter, and the Freepers routinely accuse liberals of treason. Coulter and the Freepers routinely toy with death threats. Please detail what it is that you've seen on Atrios' comment section that approaches any of this.

Atrios's own e-mail included an interesting formulation on the matter. He wrote:

I don't think rabid partisanship - i.e. "all republicans are evil" (or "all demonrats are evil") is comparable to rabid bigotry " all muslims/arabs are evil." I don't thnk Rush Limbaugh is a bigot for the things he says about liberals, for example.

I don't mind LGF's commenters when they're talking about how liberals want to destroy america and replace it with an ISlamist theocracy - this is just juvenile, if ridiculous, stuff. I mind when they think all muslims should be rounded up in camps or nuked for the sins of some of their members.

I take Atrios's point here. Certainly there's a bright line between "members of a political party" and "members of an ethnic group" - you're not a member of an ethnic group because you believe things. You're a member of an ethnic group because you got born into it. I don't think the distinction between "members of a political party" and "members of a religion" is as clean, since belief and ideas about the proper ordering of the world are in the nature of both.

I'll note also that I wondered if Atrios' site was "on its way to becoming a Democratic Party version of Little Green Footballs" since, hey, why include weasel words in the first place if you're not going to use them later. That said, I agree with Zizka that there are two key differences between the sites now:

First, none of Atrios' commenters that I've seen wish violence on "you, and anyone who looks like you," which is not the case on LGF. Second, Atrios doesn't moderate his comments. Charles Johnson does. The fact that Johnson is reportedly zealous about deleting comments he considers to be antisemitic while letting stand comments that are bigoted toward muslims gives him a level of personal responsibility that doesn't attach to Atrios. (Note: Somehow the LGF Avengers did not go into action after my original post, no doubt due to my sheer insignificance. I'll be grateful for their continued discretion.)

Having just spent way too much time among the Eschaton comments, I found some really worthwhile stuff among the dross, too.

Oh the Irony Item - Reading this Airstrip One item a symmetry finally hits me: American WWII revisionists generally accuse Roosevelt of being overly attached to Churchill. At the same time, British WWII revisionists suspect Churchill of being overly attached to Roosevelt. This isn't one of those cases where "They can't both be right," but it's still interesting.

Splash! - Electrolite finds - quite the headline.

He's also got a great Tolkien roundup with links to further reading. And Avedon Carol now has a Sideshow Annex devoted to Issues Mesoterran.

Imitation Tech Blog Post - Primarily for fellow MT users . . .

I've been meaning to brag about my Movable Type fu. Last month I decided to really learn MT, beyond just the minimum needed to get a blog up and post to it. In the course of doing so I completely redesigned my Nobilis site (dedicated to the game by R. Sean Borgstrom). Unqualified Offerings is . . . unadorned, by design. Here content is not just king - it's the whole damn kingdom. I wanted a bit more ornament for the Nobilis site. I also had the notion that I could use MT as a content manager to produce something that looked very much like a traditional website, not a blog. That turned out to be true.

By manipulating style sheets, template modules and index templates I was able to produce a traditional welcome page, as for a static site. From there the reader can choose either a weblog view or a "trad view." It would have been possible to eliminate weblog view entirely, but when you created the first ever Nobilis weblog ego reasons militate against this.

There are things Movable Type doesn't do, in the version I'm using at least, that I wish it did. For instance, you can set up a multi-category archive using BOOLEAN statements. I created a "campaign-free blog" using this technique so that people who don't want to read minutiae of our particular game don't have to. But I wish I had an "ALL EXCEPT" ("NOT") option for categories. I'd appreciate some more robust sorting options for the category index. But I was very pleased with what I was able to do with the available options.

Anyway, pretty cool huh?