Year: 2004

Chicago following Britain’s lead with huge surveillance camera network

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Following Great Britain’s lead in setting up an Orwellian, surveillance-camera-ridden society (see here: http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=08032002-020813-4448r , and check out these chilling, official British government posters boasting of their “watchfulness”: http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/Big_Brother_is_watching_sml.jpg
http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/watchful_eyes_bus_03_sml.jpg
http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/Croyden_500_CCTV_sml.jpg ), Chicago has now decided to follow suit, creating a linked network of over 2000 surveillance cameras: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/print_090904_ap_ns_camera.html

Perhaps I’m naive, but I find … More ...

Defense Priorities/Budget

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Given the threats that exist, a defense budget of 50 Billion Dollars(or less) is sufficient.

Getting rid of 80% of our current military hardware would end the crime of replication of roles and missions.

We need intelligent, slimmed down and very professional military. 100,000 men should do it!

More on the CBS forgeries

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People who haven’t dealt much with difficult family members and co-workers are sometimes puzzled when someone takes an utterly indefensible position, insists it’s beyond question, and refuses to budge. The strategy’s rational in the right setting, though. If someone who can’t simply be gotten rid of (wife, brother, colleague, pastor, CBS news, whoever) insists that … More ...

How bad will things get?

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Right-wingers are alarmed by totalitarian features of advanced liberalism: its insistent universalism, its theoretical coherence and simplicity, its resolute suppression of alternative principles of social order, its principled rejection of common sense, inherited ways, and the very concept of human nature. In the long run, they ask, how much difference can there be between “inclusiveness”—putting … More ...

Neo-Confederates and Free Markets

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Why do Neo-Confederates give a nonreflective adherence to the ideas and practices of the free market, when such adherence results in social and political consequences at odds with a a conservative social order?

What, generally speaking, is to be done?

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A commenter asks those who post here “What does your ideal America look like?” The question’s worth discussing.

From the standpoint of specific practical political goals, I don’t really have an ideal America. No society is ideal, since every society depends on the cooperation of imperfect human beings. The specifics of what’s good politically depend … More ...

The politics of being

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In America politics is more and more a matter of social metaphysics:

  • If your position and beliefs incline you to believe that the social world is horizontal and self-contained, and consists solely of the individual and various contractual and legal collectives (e.g., if you’re single, godless, a celebrity, an elite lawyer or
… More ...

The band still plays on

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I’ve commented that the AIDS industry promotes death through a sort of perverse moralism: sexual freedom and sex equality, which from the standpoint of advanced liberalism are absolute metaphysical necessities, trump medical and public health considerations, which the spoiled children of techocracy believe infinitely manipulable. One illustration: the World AIDS Conference, at which sexual … More ...