The Red State Ranger

"He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative." - GK Chesterton

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving!

General Thanksgiving

By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America

A PROCLAMATION


WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Happy Thanksgiving, and God Bless America!

Enjoy the Turkey and family and everything else!



Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Barbarians in the Ports

By now, you've all seen the news. Thar be pirates.

For nearly a century, during peacetime, there has been freedom of navigation for all on the high seas. This universal freedom was bought and paid for by the US Navy. Similarly, we have freedom of navigation in the ether of modern communication - space and these interwebs right here - thanks to the US Air Force.

Does this mean the US Navy is no longer strong enough to maintain full freedom of the seas? Make no mistake; you're going to hear from people blaming this on the atrophy brought on by the War in Iraq, or the War on Terror, or the Failed Bush Policies, or even Clinton's Peace Dividend. Don't believe them.

I agree with the premise that the US Navy can no longer control and defend the entirety of the sea. But the reason is not through the fault of the Navy. The economies of the world have expanded explosively, and commerce is more and more global. Heck, one look at the multi-national crew manifests on these ships is evidence of that. Simply put, there's just too much traffic, and too many sea lanes to protect every single one - especially when it's not really your job in the first place.

But we're not facing the end of global shipping, nor even the end of "Made in China" tags. The good news about the expansion of other economies is the expansion of self-interest. Other countries are stepping up to defend their economy and their sense of nationhood.

If it's the Wild West, the cattle rustlers have ticked off just about every sheriff on this side of the Pecos.

What's really interesting is we've been here before. A nation, relatively new to the global scene, stands up to defend its commerce and interests against piracy on the high seas.

This ties into the War on Terror, as well. The Barbary Pirates came about as a result of the Crusades; it could be said that that medieval battle between Europe and the Middle East didn't end until the conquering of Algiers in 1830. And it's safe to say that these Somali pirates aren't exactly independent of the modern-day crusade. Will history repeat itself, and will those aggrieved by piracy set aside their differences and put down the barbarians at the gates? (You can watch - isn't the internet cool?)

Two things are certain - First, in indiscriminately attacking vessels of all nationalities and origins and destinations, the pirates have succeeded in making the war (not just the battlefields) truly Global in nature, and they've given us some allies in the process. That should be capitalized on in this global counterinsurgency.

Second, everything old is new again:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

Sound familiar?

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The Audacity of Audacity

Michael Yon has an interesting piece referring to a story he wrote in one of his earlier books.

Go read it - it's hilarious. I'll see you back in a couple minutes.

Welcome back. Maybe that's the breakthrough in this past election. It's not about shady funding and massive spending after all. The thing that Changed Everything this year was that we discovered the concept of Election by Meme.

It doesn't matter who you are, or what your past is, or what you will be. All that matters is that you have some concept that's sufficiently vague - say, "Change" - and the audacity to turn that concept into a magic mirror, showing everyone what they want to see.

The internet was hailed as an achievement of and monument to Reason. Instead it's become a better propagator of memes and hysteria. For example, it doesn't matter if Rickrolling is dumb and pointless - it's still funny, and therefore it must go on. It was well-documented that no one could really describe or explain "Change," but it didn't matter. It doesn't matter if "Change" as a policy is stupid and pointless. They saw in it what they wanted to see, even if they couldn't put it into words. Reason cannot penetrate either.

Of course, all of this proves why democracy becomes a crude and cruel system, and why the Founding Fathers did all they could to dampen its influences. Otherwise, we all find ourselves voting for Bill Gurley. I mean, he's a good guy, and I guess we like him, but who's in charge when he gets elected?

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

In the Palm of Your Hand

In the wave of support for “Green Energy,” we’ve seen support for about every form. But the future of energy isn’t in clean coal, it’s not in windmills, nor water mills, nor distilled cereal grains. We’ve been doing all of those for centuries, anyway.

Two companies – Hyperion Power Generation and Toshiba – are developing for market mini-nuclear reactors. They’re the size of a tool shed, made of no moving parts, and can be buried for security and safety. Hyperion’s provides 25 megawatts of power, and lasts for up to 10 years. And it’s all in a generator that needs no infrastructure but the road to drive the truck on, and the cable coming up from the ground.

But it’s nuclear – and nuclear’s scary, right? Not really. They’ve been safely using this source of power – thermocouples turning radioactive heat into electrical energy – on deep-space probes for decades. It’s material that’s refined only enough to stay hot, but not so much to be hot enough to melt down. And they say it would take roughly the same level of technology to “weaponize” it as pure ore.

That means countries like Iran that feel the need to have nuclear programs “for the energy” can do just that without needing an the infrastructure that’s strikingly similar to nuclear weapons programs. Don’t you just hate it when plausible deniability disappears like that?

That’s not to say it’s without fault. I don’t know how “dirty” a dirty bomb using the material would be – but it’s probably worse than using regular dirt. Also, in 10 years, you’d have a bunch of radioactive material come due for reprocessing or disposal. And that disposal problem has proven tricky in the past.

But, in the end, it’s the technology to dig a hole and plug in the world – whether it’s remote drilling sites in the Canadian far north, or cell towers linking rural Africa to the global market. And that’s pretty darned cool.

Welcome to the Nuclear Age. Even if it is some 60 years late.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A More Perfect Union

"Our union can be perfected." - President-Elect Obama

Those were words from his acceptance speech last Tuesday night. I'm sure it was a rhetorical flourish, meant to refer back to the Preamble of the Constitution. But it says so much more.

When you compare the Preamble (see the title of this post) to the quotation, however, you'll note an important difference. That difference is the word "more."

That one simple word belies a significant difference in philosophy. You see, the Founders, and, indeed, most people from the beginning of time, viewed people as inherently imperfect, and therefore imperfectable, creatures. And, as such, any human system, be it family, group, or country, is imperfectable as well.

But we're not here to just throw up our hands in resignation at our flaws. No, we ought to seek to make ourselves more perfect tomorrow than we are today, and the world a more perfect place, too.

That lasted for a few thousand years, until the early 1900s. (Though there are stirrings of it in The Republic) About then, the political class found themselves flush with all sorts of new knowledge and understanding. Darwin, Einstein, Marx, and countless others had been able to unlock the wisdom of the ages, and make it accessible to everyone else. With scientific understanding of biology, and physics, and economics, it became possible to understand people, and societies, and social systems.

If only you could get the right technocrats, the right Brain Trust in place, they could apply these new and wonderful sciences to society. They'd have to be able to do this by fiat, of course, because when you can make everything perfect with your knowledge, why would you need to stick to democratic ideals? A sufficiently enlightened dictator ought to be good enough, if they can make things perfect.

This was the source of a philosophy that called itself Progressive (sound familiar?). Essentially, they justified this wave of Applied Social Sciences with the concept of pragmatic governance - If it works, who cares how you do it - into a new technocratic ideal.

The thing is, the concept itself is distinctly illiberal. If you can drum up the support of the people through populism (which can often be easy with the "just do it" pragmatism), so be it. But if you can't, well, they're all hoopleheads anyway, and they'll thank you later. When you have a Brain Trust of the Smartest People in the World, you don't need popular support. You just need the power to make things better. To "perfect the Union," if you will.

Now I don't know if the President-Elect meant all this or not by that one turn of phrase. But knowing the progressive roots of his Party, it makes one wonder, doesn't it?

But it gets worse. You see, in other countries, it wasn't just society they sought to perfect through Applied Social Sciences. These ideas followed naturally to applying the other Applied Sciences of biology and chemistry and physics to not just human social groups, but to humans themselves. The wave of interest in eugenics came from the exact same stream of thought. In some cases, it took the form of selective breeding, in others, various genetic and biological experiments. In others, it focused on culling certain folks, rather than keeping certain folks. If you get my drift.

No, it's been tried before. It didn't end well.

For decades, the Left has been emphasizing that this Union is not perfect. Well, no kidding. But that's the definition of any human society. Can we make it more humane? Every day. Can they, or anyone, make it perfect. Not only no, but Hell No.

I'm reminded of a speech from the climax of the movie Serenity. (Highly recommended, if you haven't seen it.) They've discovered the story of a Government that had tried its own experiments at perfecting a society. It didn't end well, either. It's from science fiction, but the words can be a call to us, too.

I know this - they will try again. . . A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that.
- Malcolm Reynolds

No, we're not perfect, nor is this Union. But no government, no Brain Trust, no quasi-messianic President-Elect can perfect either. We can only strive toward a more perfect self, and a more perfect Union, one person and one act at a time.

I don't know if it was a rhetorical flourish, or if it was a hint at a more dangerous philosophy rearing its head. I hope it was the former. But if it was the latter, well,

I aim to misbehave.


Saturday, November 08, 2008

Updates Enroute

More updates coming - ETA, Next Tuesday at the latest.

Until then, I updated the Links/Blogroll section at the side. Definitely check out the Eject! link to start - his latest is good stuff.

See you in a couple days.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

What Now?

Whither now the GOP?

Will Obama be a centrist, or led by the nose by the other two in the Troika, namely Harry and Nancy?

What guns should we get first?

Open thread.

Election Live Blogging

Welcome to the 2008 Election Live Blog fun!

It begins now-ish. Just post whatever - snarks about obnoxious media-types, criticisms of campaigns, updates on your area, ideal weapon choices for the coming Apocalypse - and we'll all have a grand time.