January 30, 2013

Martial Law in Arkansas Town

Crime is supposedly up in Paragould, Arkansas, so the city government is putting SWAT on the streets. As the chief of police explained at a town meeting:
Stovall told the group of almost 40 residents that beginning in 2013, the department would deploy a new street crimes unit to high crime areas on foot to take back the streets.

"[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck," Stovall said. "If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, check for your ID.
...
Should an individual not produce identification, Stovall said his officers would not back down. Individuals who do not produce identification when asked could be charged with obstructing a governmental operation, according to Stovall.

"I'm hoping we don't run across [any] of that," Stovall said. "Will there be people who buck us? There may be. But we have a right to be doing what we're doing. We have a zero-tolerance. We are prepared to throw your hind-end in jail, OK? We're not going to take a lot of flack.
This pig obviously does not consider himself a public servant addressing his employers.

More here, here and here (Radley Balko), via the Wikipedia link above.

Nope, no need for that Second Amendment. None at all.

January 27, 2013

Islam and Western Men

If Islam could demonstrate it can run a modern society--technology based, reasonably democratic, reasonably pluralistic, reasonably noncorrupt--there is an enormous base of potential converts among Western men disillusioned by today's feminized culture.

(Cf. Sarah Hoyt's recent post, which moved me to finally write down this thought.)

Addendum 20130130: Islamic science is staffing up. (HT: Instapundit.)

January 25, 2013

The Dilemma of Moderates:
Muslims and Social Conservatives

Caution: the analogies in this post should not be taken too far.

Where are the moderate Mulsims?, it's sometimes asked. My guess is that some of them tacitly support the extremists but may not want to admit it, perhaps even to themselves. My guess is that some of them are bullied or worse into silence.

How to support moderate Muslims, especially the latter group, against extremists? A multicultural policy is unlikely to achieve this because it is inclined to accept the extremists as "authentic". What would Genghis do? He'd make the moderates more frightened of him than of the extremists; as it were, Your god has sent me to exact vengeance for the blasphemers you harbor. It's an unpalatable recourse, but I can't say that it will never come to that.

Something on a far more modest scale may be going on in US politics. I suspect that some social conservatives are open to compromises regarding abortion but they are being intimidated into silence by thuggish religious kooks. This may be coming from the top: just as the GOP establishment would rather control a minority party than share power in a governing coalition, the socon leadership might rather control their faction than do the same.

Obama's False Dichotomy

Supposedly it's a choice between We're all in this together and You're on you're own. Kumbaya vs. Hobbes and Darwin. Among other things, this ignores the safety net and focuses only on the downside of a market economy (just as Warren's You used our roads! rant ignores the jobs created by a factory builder).

John Althouse Cohen rips apart the deliberate fallacy and a commenter goes one better, emphasizing the different between voluntary cooperation and compulsory collective action. (HT: Instapundit.)

January 23, 2013

Obama's Big Talent

His famous self-description:
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.
There's more to that statement that I first thought.

In particular, Obama serves as a blank screen on which Kook Squad "conservatives" project their pathologies for all to see, discrediting themselves to anybody but fellow denizens of the cocoon.

And discrediting the conservative movement.

January 22, 2013

Gun Control and Abortion...Huh?

In response to gun grabbers' emotional appeal wrt Sandy Hook and other school shootings, some "conservatives" mention the "babies" supposedly killed by abortions.

This brings up, yet again, what such people's real motives are.

Would they accept a gun ban in exchange for a ban on abortions?

Addenda 20130130: Will Real Conservatives™ persuade themselves that the Second Amendment prohibits abortion, and call for judges who "follow the Constitution"? tI seems too ludicrous to post, but a time or few I'd have looked prophetic had I posted things that seemed ludicrous.

If an amendment banning abortion and gay marriage magically appeared in the constitution, it wouldn't take a week for the "conservative" kook squad to fabricate another "moral crisis" unacceptable to most of the country.

January 18, 2013

American Bastards

Should unwed mothers be disincentivized or thanked? Are they instinctively keeping the species going during a time of what may be transformation or may be decline/collapse? Are they minxes or heroines? (Finally got around to posting this thought now that Instapundit did so.)

Maybe the distinctions on which the above paragraph is based no longer apply completely.

The very fact that the title of this post is jarring says something, though I'm not sure what. The Democrats' Julia shtick says something more clearcut: they want to make hay by abetting a trend which is in all likelihood bad for the country. The danger is that we may have a class of voters who are not just indifferent to, but invested in, the country's decline (the stupidity of Romney's 47% remark notwithstanding).

I'm pretty sure that asking whether men or women are to blame is a false dichotomy.

Addendum 20130602 Apparently China is hard on single parents. The linked piece is by a British former single parent who whines about how hard it was without once considering whether it was a good idea; she ignores or is unaware of Helen Smith's trope that if you subsidize something, you get more of it. Made a bad decision? Blame society!

(Is there a positive correlation between readily available welfare and single motherhood? There is an anecdotal one (destruction of the black family, etc), but I wonder about the rigor.)

Nothing in this Addendum is intended to erase my concerns about false dichotomy.

January 14, 2013

Aaron Swartz

Alan Turing comes to mind. To a lesser extent, so does Jan Palach.

January 7, 2013

14-0 Eight Minutes In

One of the few loyalties I've retained from my Midwestern Catholic boyhood is an affinity for Notre Dame. Being content without a TV, I decided to spot-check the game online.

It's been like sitting down to follow the election returns. I conceded and edge to the opposition but expected a close contest and a real shot for my side.

Whereupon I was shocked to realize that my team didn't even belong on the field.

(That said, Alabama knew what to expect in a championship game and Notre Dame didn't. I can't make the same excuse for the Republicans.)

January 5, 2013

I Was Wrong About World War I

I had thought it ended with the collapse of Soviet Communism, but neo-neocon is right: the damage to the West's cultural confidence has never been repaired.