Kill enough people and become a governor

I found a new favorite blog. It is dedicated to popularizing North, Wallis, and Weingast’s (hereafter NWW) framework of violence and social orders. The argument is that the natural type of government is vicious and predatory. It is what we see in the third world today. Modern liberal governments only really emerged in the 18th century and are still largely restricted to Europe.

A main contribution of NWW is changing the frame of reference for government action. Good governance is not the norm, but the exception. In much of the world, local tyrants are rewarded with power, rather than punished. This post details David Yau Yau, who, having lost an election, decided the best way to keep his rents was to start low-scale warfare:

On again off again since 2010, he’s led one of the most vicious, mindlessly murderous little tribal guerrilla wars you’ve never heard of for control of his home region in Jonglei State’s Pibor County, just near Ethiopia.

For his troubles, he was appointed governor of the area he terrorized. While this offends basic notions of justice, it is probably better than the alternative. Theft by governments is far less socially damaging than raiding villages and murdering their inhabitants.

Leaks and the rule of law

Conor Friedersdorf has a new piece critiquing the liberal moderate critics of Greenwald and Snowden, most recently George Packer in the Prospect. Below is an excerpt, but I recommend you read the whole thing, it is excellent:

Stepping back, notice that in the same passage, Packer contrasts the wrongs of Greenwald with the Obama Administration – the people who’ve persecuted whistleblowers, presided over domestic spying on Muslims and launched drone strikes that kill Americans without due process – yet it is Greenwald who, according to Packer, doesn’t understand that “the rule of law has to protect people regardless of politics.”

I think Friedersdorf doesn’t go far enough in his critique of how writers equivocate regarding Greenwald versus the NSA’s respect for the the rule of law. A simple interpretation of the rule of law is that the laws that apply to people also apply to government officials. The important part of the equation is government officials. No one doubts laws apply to the average citizen, it is how they constrain government officials that matters. Arguing that the actions of private individuals violates the rule of law fundamentally misconstrues the rule of law itself, as a constraint on government action.

nigel-farage-at-stony-stratford

Isolationism stops ‘creeping,’ gets up, takes a stroll, has a smoke

It sure is nice to see a major politician smoke again, isn’t it? I mean, in view of the cameras.

Despite an assertively rootless parochialism that may be our chief character trait, your average American Memorial Day celebrant may nonetheless find the distribution of Ukip voters in this week’s election interesting.

John Smith’s hometown in Lincolnshire went for the anti-EU insurgents this week, as did Yorkshire and South Somerset, all points of origin of the colonial Cheseapeake’s oldest, less permanent architectural traditions, like the Virginia frame.

As the sort of person who saves his fortune cookie slips, I find something poetically satisfying about this. Tom Rogan frets that the U.S.’s interest is in the U.K. playing a moderating role as a fully-integrated member of the EU, which is the sort of realpolitik that usually gets you called heartless.

Whatever’s going on in the gash suddenly torn open in progressivism’s teleology, the new nationalism of the 2010s is more isolationist than that of the mid-20th century, as James Traub notes: “As India has grown stronger, it has become more defensive about sovereignty and less prepared to defend the international order.” In an echo of the last broad-based American antiwar movement, Modi has tried to downplay his Hindutva associations with the pan-ethnic national concept of “India First.”

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Hugh Peters, and his spiritual counsel

The Millerite left

We’ve had sauce for the gander, so let’s take on the sound geese, shall we?

Wherein Chauncey DeVega reflects that progressivism hasn’t quite been severed from its protestant roots:

Several years ago, I watched students become unhinged and hysterical in response to Right-wing professional bomb thrower David Horowitz. They cried. They shambled about in a confused state. Some of them were taken to special areas for healing and hugs.

There are religious types who handle snakes, speak in tongues, or have fits of religious ecstasy. As I witnessed it, in the cult of left-leaning political correctness, personal outrage and tear filled histrionics were a sign of being one of “the elect” or “saved” when facing the likes of David Horowitz.

It’s almost as if the sensitive, 21st-century metrosexual and the Pentecostal football captain who only cries in church may have more in common than either would admit. We’ve touched on this subject recently, but in light of Richard Dawkins’ narrative collapse it’s worth revisiting.

Recent events threaten our reigning strain of self-hating protestantism embodied by Dawkins — the one Joseph Bottum’s been tilting at — with a fate something like the Millerites. Modi, the EU elections; we aren’t going where we’re supposed to be going.

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Secession lagniappe

Nationalia depicts a wrinkle in the EU elections this week:

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Open Europe worries about whether the critical reformers are being edged out by the “malcontents bloc.”

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Paolo Bernardini, interviewed about Venetian secession.

Biden affirms Moldovan independence.

*****

In praise of Abe, from across the Sea of Japan.

Sailer writes earlier this week that the Indian election shows that as “strange as it may seem to consumers of the American press, conservative nationalism is the leading political trend of the 2010s.”

The Dalai Lama congratulates Modi.

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Getting rid of commencement speakers

Why do we still have commencement speakers?

It is a question that is certainly worth asking as we approach the end of college graduation season, in the wake of the recent “scandals” involving several important figures who, for some reason, needed to speak to college graduates as part of the ritual known as commencement. A few figures were denied a chance to speak to speak at one college or another, others withdrew voluntarily. Most were being given useless honorary doctorates.

The reasons vary for each speaker’s removal, all of which skirt the real problem: The idea of a commencement speaker itself. There has never been a more useless source of bloat in any sort of event in recent times than that of some possibly self-important figure, speaking to college graduates who are already sick of the ceremony about… something. Whatever the traditional intent of the commencement speech, that intent is long gone, replaced with a scattershot approach of “talking about what it’s like to be an adult.”  Of course, should not these graduates already have at least a vague sense that already, even in the coddled walls of the campus?  Or has helicopter parenting gotten that bad?

As it stands, almost all commencement speakers tend to not to be memorable. If I were to ask you if you remember your commencement speaker, and/or that person’s speech, could you say with a straight face that yes, you do remember them? I doubt it. There are good reasons for that. For one, the speeches tend to be long affairs, probably the longest aspect of a commencement ceremony outside of the actual handing of the diplomas to graduates.  One would be better off giving a lesson on Russian history, for it would have the same effect.

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