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Jane Hewes, Ron Paul

You don’t win converts by being rude

“I’m going to be 100% honest with you,” her email started. “I want you there but I don’t want [her] there.” That’s the excuse I was given for why I was not invited to a friend’s engagement party. As an ardent anarcho-libertarian, she didn’t want my girlfriend in attendance. My expected guest committed the gravest of sins: she “honestly believed Romney would be a good president.” That belief might as well be the same as robbing starving children of their last scraps of food. My girlfriend also had the audacity of criticizing libertarians for both being too purist and not casting a ballot for Governor Romney when it mattered. In the libertarian world, this accusation is the equivalent of first degree murder. So she must be shunned.

When I first received the email, I stared at it for a minute before clicking off and hitting the “trash” button. At first I smirked about the declined invitation. I used to be a militant defender of libertarian non-politics. I avoided company with government workers, preferring to withhold my presence from those awful “thieves and murderers.” I understood where the disinvitation was coming from. But even still, I was hurt by the sentiment. I was being kept out of gathering of friends because of my girlfriend’s political beliefs. She’s not some bullhorn Republican, aggressively deriding everyone who doesn’t vote straight R. She’s as amicable around liberals as she is around conservatives and libertarians. This was strictly politics.

The liberal press loves to fret about the current polarization in politics facing America. Tea Party Republicans are painted as intolerant of compromise. President Obama’s aloof stance toward the loyal opposition is seen as a necessary undertaking if he is ever to get anything done. Washington, we’re told, is a town divided on ideological lines that is as cynical as it is inept. There’s a lot of truth in these caricatures. But the American polity isn’t all that venomous or divided as it was two centuries ago. In the contentious campaign between then-President John Adams and then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson, sycophants from both sides called the candidates everything from “a hideous hermaphroditical character” to a “gross hypocrite.” If anything, political discourse has cooled down to a level of respectful civility.

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‘Une bouffée de mitraille’

Isegoria explains:

As a young Brigadier General, Napoleon once dispersed a mob of Royalists with “a whiff of grapeshot” — although it’s not quite clear how to translate that very Anglo-Saxon phrase back into French. Une bouffée de mitraille?

The phrase likely sounds so Anglo-Saxon because it was coined by Scottish essayist and historian, Thomas Carlyle, in The French Revolution: A History.

Mitraille is the French word for grapeshot, and it is also the root of the French word for machine gun, mitrailleuse, because the original French proto-machine gun was a multi-barrel affair meant to deliver a volley of rifle rounds, as a new and improved form of grapeshot, and the term stuck, even as true machine guns arrived on the scene.

More on that unusual phrase here. And more from Carlyle here:

`It is false,` says Napoleon, `that we fired first with blank charge; it had been a waste of life to do that.` Most false: the firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain that here was no sport; the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch Church show splintered by it, to this hour.–Singular: in old Broglie`s time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was promised; but it could not be given then, could not have profited then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the man; and behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is blown into space by it, and become a thing that was!– …

On the whole, therefore, has it not been fulfilled what was prophesied, ex- postfacto indeed, by the Archquack Cagliostro, or another? He, as he looked in rapt vision and amazement into these things, thus spake: (Diamond Necklace, p. 35.) `Ha! What is this? Angels, Uriel, Anachiel, and the other Five; Pentagon of Rejuvenescence; Power that destroyed Original Sin; Earth, Heaven, and thou Outer Limbo, which men name Hell! Does the EMPIRE Of IMPOSTURE waver? Burst there, in starry sheen updarting, Light-rays from out its dark foundations; as it rocks and heaves, not in travail-throes, but in death-throes? Yea, Light-rays, piercing, clear, that salute the Heavens,–lo, they kindle it; their starry clearness becomes as red Hellfire!

`IMPOSTURE is burnt up: one Red-sea of Fire, wild-billowing enwraps the World; with its fire-tongue, licks at the very Stars. Thrones are hurled into it, and Dubois mitres, and Prebendal Stalls that drop fatness, and– ha! what see I?–all the Gigs of Creation; all, all! Wo is me! Never since Pharaoh`s Chariots, in the Red-sea of water, was there wreck of Wheel-vehicles like this in the Sea of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall they wander in the wind. Higher, higher yet flames the Fire-Sea; crackling with new dislocated timber; hissing with leather and prunella. The metal Images are molten; the marble Images become mortar-lime; the stone Mountains sulkily explode. RESPECTABILITY, with all her collected Gigs inflamed for funeral pyre, wailing, leaves the earth: not to return save under new Avatar. Imposture, how it burns, through generations: how it is burnt up; for a time. The World is black ashes; which, ah, when will they grow green? The Images all run into amorphous Corinthian brass; all Dwellings of men destroyed; the very mountains peeled and riven, the valleys black and dead: it is an empty World! Wo to them that shall be born then!–A King, a Queen (ah me!) were hurled in; did rustle once; flew aloft, crackling, like paper-scroll. Iscariot Egalite was hurled in; thou grim De Launay, with thy grim Bastille; whole kindreds and peoples; five millions of mutually destroying Men. For it is the End of the Dominion of IMPOSTURE (which is Darkness and opaque Firedamp); and the burning up, with unquenchable fire, of all the Gigs that are in the Earth.` This Prophecy, we say, has it not been fulfilled, is it not fulfilling?

The other famous usage is attributed to the Duke of Wellington: “Pour la canaille: Faut la mitraille.” For the mob, use grapeshot.

Bursting my bubble

Yesterday was the first meeting for the first Students for Liberty club in Honduras.  I spoke briefly about the Zonas de Empleo y Desarollo Economico (ZEDEs).  There followed a wide ranging discussion about the advantages and pitfalls of the ZEDEs.  While the students seemed to grasp the potential, they feared the political process would corrupt the outcome, worrying that the ZEDEs might end up being used to enrich politicians at the expense of everyone else.

Afterwards I had a few drinks with Christian Betancort, a SFL representative from San Pedro Sula who had also been present at the talk.  It was my first extended discussion with a libertarian in Honduras and helped clarify my thoughts about the different social dynamics in moving to Honduras.

To put it bluntly, the culture shock of leaving the DC libertarian bubble has been far greater than the culture shock of living in Honduras.  Libertarians, as I imagine most social groups, have their own assumptions about knowledge, and even language, that is particular to them.  For a basic example, libertarians have a fairly particular definition of freedom.

I realized what has been most difficult for me socially is shifting out of the libertarian mindset.  Most foreigners in Honduras work for NGOs or teach.  Competition and commerce is not immediately assumed to be good.  Public choice problems are not implicit in discussions of government.  Cultural reference points for libertarians, and even DC residents in general, don’t exist.  People don’t know what a think tank does.

While I have spent most of my adult life in the libertarian bubble, I realized it was a bubble.  What I didn’t realize is how differently it functioned from other social organizations.  I had assumed other societies had similar bubbles.  There would be a progressive bubble, a Silicon Valley bubble, etc.  What I now realize is that such well defined bubble are the aberration, not the norm.  The NGO bubble is far less clearly defined than the libertarian bubble.  The sense of shared ideas and mission are weaker.  The social bonds function in a different, weaker, way.

I am not sure why this is.  It could be a testament to the power of libertarian ideas.  It could be due to libertarian organizations.  To some extent, it is probably due to both, though it is unclear why libertarians should have advantages in over other goal oriented social groups.  I would have expected development workers to have a similar canon of books, a similar private language, a similar sense of shared mission.

I now believe the libertarian movement is more unique than I did before.  Its social organization seems superior.  I am very excited to help extend this circle to Tegucigalpa and beyond.

Keep digging: ISI employee Stephen Herreid doubles down on character assassination

Grand inquisitor, Intercollegiate Studies Institute employee, and amateur blues musician Stephen Herreid feels very threatened that I said he should apologize to Artur Rosman for this disgusting post, so he decided to publish my email to him and insinuate that I’m guilty of conservative treason. You can read it here. Honestly I think I come off pretty well.

I mentioned that he works at ISI and that I hoped the number of articles — really, there are a lot, this is not a one-off thing — he has written going after trads and porchers hadn’t been encouraged by his superiors; he says he found that “menacing.” Boo hoo. I know many who share the concern that the institution, for which I have great respect and have benefitted from professionally, not devolve into GOP/conservative movement boosterism of the sort Herreid seems to wish he was the vanguard of. He edited the acronym ISI out of my email to him, presumably because he knows what he’s doing is shameful, so I note it here in the hope that this sparks some conversation.

There’s a lot wrong with Herreid’s post; I said if he didn’t apologize he could expect to hear from the blog, by which I meant this space, not the Daily Caller, which is not a blog. He knows that, but frames the piece around the Daily Caller so he can claim I’m holding a double standard, criticizing him for his ad hominem attack while working for a publication founded and edited by a person who defended Romney’s 47 percent remark. I suspect he also knows that there’s a big difference between making an intellectual argument about tax-payers and tax-receivers and attacking the character of the poor.

He claims:

J. Arthur Bloom … criticized me in an email sent to my place of work, made allusions to my employers that I found menacing, and seemed to me to be trying to use a reputable, patriotic, pro-free-market publication to intimidate me into apologizing for my defense of the American way. I cannot respect that, even if Bloom does claim to represent a publication that I very much admire.

If Herreid thinks it’s necessary to treat Rosman the way he did to defend the American way, then there’s really nothing further to be said. The ends justify the means. Vote GOP. And if Herreid feels intimidated that I said I’d blog about him, well, maybe he’s not the brave defender Christendom needs.

The Mitrailleuse will continue to be a place where well-intentioned people of the left and right can discuss ways to get away from people who conduct themselves like Mr. Herreid.

Update: I’m reminded of something a wise person once wrote to me: “It is very easy to convince yourself that you’ve dealt handily with the devil without selling so much as an inch of your soul. But the devil knows the difference, and so do you.” Just so.

jfk2

Occam and Me on JFK and 9/11

(Thank you very much to J. Arthur Bloom, Prop. for the opportunity to write for The Mitrailleuse. My personal blog is Neoreaction in the Diamond Age)

The first reference to Occam’s Razor I ever saw, age 12, was in Robert Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel, which sent me to the encyclopedia (and yes, I’m that old), because who could read the mysterious words “Occam’s Razor” and not be dying to know what it was?

I began reading about the assassination of President  Kennedy when I was 14, my interest sparked by Josiah Thompson‘s book Six Seconds in Dallas, which I found through the proven technique of a random walk through the public library stacks, scanning spines for anything that caught my eye and grabbing it. Who knows why or how these fascinations begin, but by the time I finished Thompson’s well-written and reasonable book I was hooked, leaning toward the “second gun” theory, and on the prowl for more of the seemingly endless supply of fact (and especially, fancy) on the events of November 22, 1963. (more…)