Bug-zapping

This is me, blog-flexing. – GAH!- I just received an email from Opera, informing me that the Blogger bug of which I had informed them has been fixed and will be incorporated into the next release. Caloo Calay!

Vox Popoli, making the world just a little bit better, one step at a time. (Space Bunny enters, whispers something into my ear.) Excuse me, make that just a little bit STRANGER, one step at a time.

Posted by Vox Day.

Set the schools on fire, not the students

A 13-year-old Denver girl said she was threatened with a knife at her middle school and her hair was set on fire, yet she was the one who was told to stay home for the remainder of the school year while her alleged attacker wasn’t suspended or even investigated. Courtney Glowczewski has a small right arm and leg because of cerebral palsy, a disability that her teachers say has not kept her from working hard in school and being a good student…. But her physical appearance has made her a target of taunting and of physical attack, which she said has never been addressed by the administration at Martin Luther King Middle School. Last week, she said the bullying got worse when she said she was threatened and assaulted by a seventh grade boy.

There’s your pack mentality at work. I’m guessing that the boy ranks rather low on the totem pole, and scenting a victim, took advantage of the opportunity to score a few cruel points to ensure that he stayed on the abusers side of the fence instead of the abused.

It’s amusing to me that the school systems work so hard to try to get homeschoolers in school, and yet anyone determined to get out of the system could arrange to get sent out of it in a heartbeat. Granted, it’s a little harder now that they kick out the victims instead of the perpetrators, but it’s still doable.

Posted by Vox Day.

You can buy one today for $50

Papapete rants: All you Civil War history rewriter, YES, IT’S ABOUT SLAVERY!!! You can say “States Rights” like a mantra as much as you want, but the South didn’t secede because it didn’t like the current OSHA regulations. The “States right” that we’re talking about was the “right” to OWN other human beings. What do you think the Missouri Compromise was about? Have you ever heard of “Bleeding Kansas”? The South seceded because they were afraid that they would lose the right to keep other people as property. Period. End of story. The rest of the argument is smoke and mirrors.

That’s a pretty silly argument. I’d be interested in hearing an explanation of why the New England nations were discussing secession in the 1820s if the Civil War was about nothing but slavery.

The underlying motivations are actually unimportant. The simple fact is that the states had a right to secede, regardless of why they wanted to do so. This right was abrogated by military force. Therefore, the war was over states rights. This is supported by the post-war fact that secession is now no longer considered a states right.

What mystifies me about the hysterical SLAVERY SLAVERY shouters is that it is not as if slavery is an automatic casus belli. The institution has been practiced continuously throughout human history and is being practiced today in more than a few countries. The fact that the South wished to continue what had been a legal institution throughout the entire nation since its founding is hardly outrageous. Furthermore, it ignores the economic realities of the time, which is that the North was forbidding the South to trade with England and France through the use of severe import taxes.

Remember, war is always about exerting power and resisting the exertion of power. Always. The very notion that the North went to war to free the poor black slaves is downright laughable when viewed through the dispassionate eye of a military historian, particularly considering that the Northern slave states did not free their slaves until after the war.

Consider an analogy. A state which has always permitted abortion suddenly votes to ban it as infanticide. The mores have changed with the development of prenatal technology, and it is now viewed as a disgusting procedure by the majority of the populace. The large city in the center of the state, with a high population of morally suspect women who can’t figure out how to use birth control, is shocked by this ban and decides to exercise its right (postulated here) to secede from the state. Does the state have the right to invade, pillage and prevent the city from seceding, even if the city has the right to secede and the state has no written or explicated power to stop it from doing so? After all, these people are murdering babies!

Posted by Vox Day.

Case law

Papapete writes: Case law is what determines what the law means. You may disagree with the result, you may not like it, but reality is what it is, not what you want it to be. Right now the Constitution is what the Supremes say it is, like it or not. Try that argument in a court of law. I guarantee that your butt will be in the slammer so fast your head will spin. That’s reality, deal with it.

As in all cases, the fact of a need for an adjective substantively changes the meaning of the noun. Case law is not law. Case law is a modern substitute for law, completely changing the nature of a system that was originally conceived to be “a nation of laws, not men”. So now, once more demonstrating that the American Revolution is over, (or, alternatively, has gone full circle), we have a nation of men making dictates.

For example, case law in Minnesota dating back to the 19th century has modified the meaning of “private property” to mean “things that grow in the soil”. This has been upheld multiple times by the Minnesota Supreme Court. Orwell didn’t see the half of it.

The silver lining is that since the law is manifestly no longer Law, you are under no moral obligation to pay it any regard whatsoever. One cannot obey something that does not exist. As W. Somerset Maugham wrote: “do what thou wilt, with due regard for the policeman around the corner.” That, too, is reality, and one that always frightens the authorities cowering behind their facade. Abandon the truth and eventually your lies will crumble about your head. This does not bode well for the future of our society, but then, news that the world is fallen should hardly be a surprise to anyone.

Posted by Vox Day.

Fat and freedom

Matt Drudge has a link to a British story about a three-year old child who died of heart failure due to her obesity. Meanwhile, today’s Star and Sickle covers the ongoing debate in St. Paul to ban smoking from restaurants, bars and night clubs – all in the name of health.

It seems to me that if health trumps everything, it’s time to shut down the fast food restaurants of America and start arresting everyone who is more than ten pounds overweight. Why should smoking – which isn’t anywhere nearly as bad for you as being fat – be quasi-banned while people walk around openly double-fisting Dunkin Donuts?

Now St. Paul officials are saying that a state-wide ban is needed because St. Paul will be at a competitive disadvantage as people will go elsewhere to eat and smoke, drink and smoke and dance and smoke. Non e’ merde, signor Holmes. I despise totalitarians of all stripes, but the sanctimonious health fascists are particularly annoying.

Why do people so despise freedom? Freedom necessarily involves the ability to make stupid and short-sighted choices too.

Posted by Vox Day.

From anywhere?

I am not surprised by the fainting couch reaction from many people when I suggest that, considering the war has been won, we bring our troops home. They raise a whole host of arguments of how doing so will cause Iraq to somehow become worse than the hellhole it was under Saddam Hussein, which is a bizarre point considering that an Iraq under Iranian or Syrian or Saudi Arabian domination is precisely NO more dangerous in a world that already has Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

But let’s forget Iraq for now. Can we at least agree that Japan is unlikely to fall under the control of neighboring jihadists? Can we bring our troops home from there? No? Okay, how about Germany? No? Italy? Belgium? Can’t we at least bring our troops home from freaking Belgium?

Americans absolutely hate to be told that they have constructed an Empire, but assuredly, future historians will regard it as one. Yes, it’s a virtual empire of sorts, but it’s real for all of that. And, as every student of Rome knows, empire follows republic just as collapse into barbarism follows empire. From economics to shifting social mores, I see absolutely no sign that America is not following this historical progression.

Posted by Vox Day.

Let them twist in the wind

Robert Novak writes: [former OK Congressman Tom] Coburn’s problem is that he takes seriously the professed Republican agenda: limited government, entitlement reform and anti-abortion advocacy. He was a rare sincere GOP supporter of term limits, leaving the House after three terms as he promised to do. The result is scant support for Coburn from the Republican establishment, in the nation’s capital as well as Oklahoma. If elected to the Senate, he will do it largely on his own.

That situation suggests the current realignment cycle in American politics is nearing an end after 36 years, with the Republican Party displaying symptoms of a nervous breakdown. The party’s leadership, from President Bush on down, went out of its way to push the undependable Republican Sen. Arlen Specter to victory against a staunch conservative in the Pennsylvania primary because he was considered a stronger general election candidate. In contrast, dependably conservative Coburn gets no establishment support in the contested Oklahoma primary though he is the best bet in November.

This is some of the best proof that the Bush administration is nothing but ur-liberals in conservative clothing. They fought hard for the liberal Specter over a legitimate conservative in the primary, supposedly in the interest of holding the Senate, but won’t lift a finger for the genuine conservative who is the strongest Republican candidate in Oklahoma. Strange, a Pennsylvania senator has no more votes than an senator from Oklahoma… I imagine the president wanted to have Arlen as chairman of the judiciary committee so the American people could be saddled with more of those great Republican Supreme Court nominees like Souter, O’Conner and Warren.

A person’s motivations can be determined by his actions, not his words.

Posted by Vox Day.

Just asking for trouble

A book by three current and former U.N. employees about peacekeeping operations portrays wild parties with alcohol and drugs, and convicts and mental-asylum inmates passing as soldiers. Embarrassed U.N. officials have threatened firing or other disciplinary action against two of the authors, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson. U.N. rules bar employees from writing about their work without approval, which had been denied in this case.

Right, let’s turn Iraq over to the UN. Whether your beliefs are driven by the priority of human freedom or geopolitical stability, you should be able to see that the UN would ensure complete disaster. I’d rather see us hand the keys to Saudi Arabia, Iran or Hezbollah. Five randomly selected Iraqi teenagers would be a wiser choice.

Remember, human rights under article 27 of the UN’s declaration of human rights are only held at the pleasure of the UN.

Posted by Vox Day.