Thanks to David Aitken for pointing out Joe Katzman’s wonderful description of the history and meaning of "idiotarian" and "anti-idiotarian" at Winds of Change. It’s a must read. 

Katzman links to Eric S. Raymond’s Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto, and it’s even more of a must read. It’s new to me, and I’m just blown away. I finished it with tears rolling down my cheeks. If you only follow one link from my blog, ever, let it be that one. Here’s a sample (emphasis added):

WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive anti-Americanism…

WHEREAS, the Right has failed us by pushing ‘anti-terrorist’ measures … prejudicial to the central liberties of a free society…

WHEREAS, even many of the Libertarians from whom we expected more intelligence have retreated into a petulant isolationism…

WE THEREFORE ASSERT the following convictions as the premises of the anti-idiotarian position:

1. THAT Western civilization is threatened with the specter of mass death perpetrated by … terrorists …

2. THAT the terrorists and their state sponsors have declared and are pursuing a war not against the vices of Western civilization but against its core virtues…

3. THAT no adjustments of American or Western foreign policy, or concessions to the Palestinians, or actions taken against globalization, or efforts to alleviate world poverty, are of more than incidental interest to these terrorists;
   …

After laying out the premises, the manifesto declares and affirms a number of things, among them (emphasis added): :  

WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Left — the moral blindness that refuses to recognize that free markets, individual liberty, and experimental science have made the West a fundamentally better place than any culture in which jihad, ‘honor killings’, and female genital mutilation are daily practices approved by a stultifying religion.

WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Right — whether it manifests as head-in-the-sand isolationism or as a  Christian-chauvinist political agenda that echoes the religious absolutism of our enemies.

WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization to be worth defending. …

The Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto spells out all the convictions I arrived at and conclusions I reached in the period between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion, when I, as a libertarian, felt compelled to do some serious learning and thinking. It does so with language that’s elegant and powerful. Please read it. And thank you, Eric.

I am, of course, adding the AIM (Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto) logo/link to my sidebar.

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For several years, I’ve been getting together pretty regularly with a small group of Denver libertarians for breakfast on Saturday mornings. It’s usually the same 3-6 people, and I enjoy those breakfasts quite a bit. We have some lively conversations over a wide range of topics.

This morning was especially lively and enjoyable, as we were joined by two new people, both bloggers. I’d invited Nick Horianopoulos of Libercontrarian, and he persuaded Jed Baer of Freedomsight to show up, too. With breakfast regular David Aitken of Life’s Better Ideas and me, that made four bloggers at the table. And of course, the other regulars, Michael, Randy, and David, don’t lack for ideas and opinions either. I noticed a woman at an adjacent table listened rather intently for quite a while as we discussed the liberal/left tendency to embrace determinism, and then swerved into the related subject of their mechanistic view of the economy.

That was one of at least a dozen topics discussed, and of course a couple of them involved firearms. Nick and Jed were going shooting after breakfast. I’d like to have joined them (I haven’t been shooting in nearly a year), but had a haircut appointment. In fact, I had to leave early, so I don’t know how long the lively discussions lasted or if they persuaded anyone to go shooting with them. Maybe next week. I’ve got all these boxes of 9mm and at least one of .40S&W. Not to mention the crate of 7.62×39 and the SKS I haven’t taken out in at least 3 years.

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Wendy McElroy of ifeminists.com announced about a week ago at Liberty & Power that she’s ceasing distribution of her email newsletter because of new "child protection" laws already in effect in Utah and Michigan, and coming soon to other states. These laws create registries of email addresses to which children have access and punish severely anyone who sends prohibited material to an address on these lists.

What’s prohibited? For starters, anything that contains or merely links to information about "alcohol, tobacco, gambling , prescription drugs, or adult-rated material."

In short, e-newsletters (such as ifeminists.net) are not permitted to send to registered email addresses if those newsletters include URLs to news sites that, in turn, link to child-inappropriate commerical information or products such as casino or viagra ads, tobacco or alcohol for sale.

McElroy noted that you’re breaking the law even if someone at the listed address requested the newsletter, and the penalties can include up to three years in prison.

The only protection is for the emailer to make sure that a particular address is not "illegal" by matching his/her mailing list against the registries. That process requires at least two things that I am unwilling to do: 1) turn my mailing list over to the government; and 2) pay a per-address fee for the matching process. Moreover, since I cannot easily ascertain whether a hotmail or aol address has a final destination within Utah or Michigan, I’d have to turn over and pay for virtually every address on a monthly basis to two state governments. (There now are two; there will soon be several more and I would have to keep up with the variations in law in each state.)

McElroy also worried about what the enemies she’s made might do with these laws:

Second, it is difficult to over-state the viciousness and dishonesty of some of the people who attack father’s/men’s rights advocates. Some have crusaded to destroy the careers, lives, and even harm the families of those who advocate positions like the presumption of shared custody. Given that no notification of an inappropriate address is necessary before penalties can be imposed, I believe it is likely that one of these malicious feminists will subscribe to the ifeminists.net newsletter under an inappropriate address and, then, file a complaint when the e-newsletter arrives.

So, from now on, her newsletter content will only be available as part of a news page on her website.

Meanwhile, the amount of real spam you receive won’t be affected one whit. What a crock. 

Thanks to Tom Palmer for pointing this out. Take a look at the wonderful button picture that he uses to illustrate his post, "I’m Speechless."

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Last night, I attended a meeting of Jewish Republicans. And they were both nice people. [rimshot] Seriously, it’s a sizable and growing group. There were about 50 people there, and I was told that turnout is lower than normal in the summer months.

I was drawn by the appearance of David Kopel. If you’re a regular reader of The Volokh Conspiracy, or NRO’s The Corner, or keep up at all with 2nd Amendment issues, you’re probably familiar with his work.

I’ve heard Kopel speak a number of times over the years and have had a few chances to talk with him, and he’s always a treat to listen to — extremely knowledgeable, articulate, and with a nice, dry sense of humor. On this occasion, he discussed the laws in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and Talmud related to self-defense. His presentation was based on his Penn State Law Review article, "The Torah and Self-Defense" (link is to PDF), from which I quote below.

This is fascinating stuff, even for a non-believer like me. As Kopel notes in a footnote of the article, the Torah is one of the foundations of Western thought. I was interested in his explanation of the distinction between the laws God gave to Noah after the flood (the first legal code in the Bible, sometimes called "Jewish natural law"), which are supposed to apply to all humanity, and later laws that are supposed to apply only to the Hebrews (such as the dietary prohibitions). Kopel argued that the concept of human rights was born in this first set of laws (footnotes omitted):

God forbade murder, and required the death penalty in cases of murder: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” The rule helps explain why human life is sacred: because man is made in God’s image. The concept of imago Dei would become a foundation for the development of human rights. Made in God’s image, all humans necessarily have an inherent dignity.

Kopel went on to discuss relevant lessons from the stories of Abraham and Moses, Torah laws regarding home defense and the right and duty to come to the aid of others who are attacked, Talmudic commentary, and the absurdity of mistranslating the Sixth Commandment as a prohibition against all killing. Regarding the latter, Kopel notes:

No one actually interprets "Thou shalt not kill" completely literally. The commandment, after all, does not say "Thou shalt not kill humans," but simply says "Thou shalt not kill."  …
…
Theoretically, one could live entirely by eating wild berries and other fruit, thereby not killing anything through food consumption. But even then, one might sometimes kill insects, rats, or other pests in the home. Anyone who takes antibiotics, or uses antibiotic soap, is deliberately killing millions of bacteria.
…
… The word in the original Hebrew text is r’tzach, which would be translated as “murder.” The Jewish Publication Society commentary on Exodus explains that the Hebrew verb stem “applies only to illegal killing and, unlike other verbs for the taking of life, is never used in the administration of justice or for killing in war.”

You can find all this and more in the PDF linked above, but you’ll unfortunately miss the terrific question-and-answer session that followed his presentation.

If you’re interested in gun/self-defense rights, other human rights, environmental law, media analysis, or terrorism, you should add DaveKopel.com to your list of resources. Highly recommended.

UPDATE: It’s simply unforgivable of me to write a post on the Torah and self-defense and not include a link to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. JPFO bills itself, justifiably, as "America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership." It also works hard to promote the Bill of Rights and to encourage commemorations of Bill of Rights Day (December 15).

JPFO has also created the award-winning documentary film, Innocents Betrayed, that tells the story of the 170,000,000 civilians murdered by their own governments in the 20th century — after those governments first deprived them of firearms.

You don’t have to be Jewish to join JPFO. I’m a Life Member, and I’m of Austrian/German heritage and an atheist. I encourage you to join JPFO, purchase Innocents Betrayed (and share it with others), sign up for JPFO email alerts, and visit the JPFO site often.

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Operation Save America, formerly Operation Rescue, is holding a convention in Denver. Tuesday, about a hundred of them took time out from — I dunno, making more fetus posters or whatever they do at their convention — to drive up to Boulder and try to save CU’s poster child for ending tenure, Ward Churchill. From the Rocky Mountain News:

About 100 members of Operation Save America gathered at CU’s Ketchum Building, where Churchill has a basement office, to pray for his salvation.

"That’s the power of Christ, to set the captive free from the lies and from those demons that are inhabiting Ward," the Rev. Flip Benham, of Concord, N.C., told the gathering.
…
"This man has been a blight and a disgrace throughout America," Benham said.

You go, Flip! That’s the first thing Operation Rescue has ever done that I liked. Let’s get those demons that are in him! How about an exorcism? Can we try an exorcism on Ward? I want to see his head spin around.

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David Aitken, one of the fathers of the Colorado Libertarian Party and a tireless activist for more years than I can count, had a thoughtful response for a friend who wondered if David was becoming more conservative:

I’m becoming more of a realist. Whether that’s conservative, I don’t know. Most libertarians seem to ignore reality, at least on foreign policy and immigration issues. …

Read the whole thing.

But, David, there’s another, shorter, answer: We’re getting old, which practically guarantees that we’re getting more conservative. 😉

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I understand that continued membership in the pajamahadeen requires me to say something about the nomination of John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court. Well, I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that Bush didn’t pick Janice Rogers Brown.

I’ve read umpteen opinions, analyses, recollections, etc., about Roberts, I’ve reviewed descriptions and discussions of a few of his opinions, and I’m still not sure what to think.

For more information and links on Roberts than anyone can possibly handle, just go to the Supreme Court Nomination Blog. Their recent post, Roberts’ Place On The Ideological Spectrum of the D.C. Circuit, was quite interesting. I like the fact that Roberts agrees with Ginsburg almost all the time. But the small sample size, modest variances, and amazing unanimity of D.C. Circuit decisions make it hard to draw any hard and fast conclusions. The preceding post provided nice summaries of Judge Roberts’ separate concurrences and dissents. But I’d really have to read Roberts’ arguments themselves, and I don’t have time.

Roberts is clearly an impressive candidate in terms of intellect, character, and work ethic. I suppose I share the misgivings Randy Barnett expressed so well at Volokh Conspiracy:

But what sort of Justice will Judge Roberts make? I have no idea. I have never met him, so all I have to go on is his public record–a record of enormous accomplishment. But so far as I know, we know nothing about what he stands for apart from the fact that he is undoubtedly politically conservative. Is he an originalist? We don’t know. Is he a majoritarian conservative like Robert Bork? We don’t know. Would he find any limits on the enumerated powers of Congress? We don’t know. Would he have ruled with the majority in Kelo? We don’t know.

… In his distinguished career, he has somehow managed not to give a speech or write an article that reveals the core of his judicial philosophy. As a result, we simply have no idea what to expect from him other than "well-crafted" opinions, and are unlikely to find out. …

Am I being too hard on Judge Roberts? Perhaps. But I do know this. Writing an article, giving a speech, or even writing a column or blog about how the Constitution should be interpreted–taking a position, and defending it against all comers–is hard. … It requires a knowledge of one’s own principles and an ability to articulate them and defend them publicly against contrary views.

This is a type of trial by ordeal that hones one’s beliefs and commitments. Consider it the academic equivalent of briefing and oral argument about one’s judicial philosophy. Even engaging in private debate is no substitute for public disclosure and scrutiny by other scholars. John Roberts has been able somehow to avoid this ordeal throughout a long and distinguished career. This degree of avoidance would seem to have taken effort and discipline.

Yeah, what he said. In fact, read the whole thing.

I’m not sounding an alarm like Ann Coulter. For one thing, I don’t share her social conservatism and rabid anti-abortion agenda, so I’m not looking for the same things she is. But the lack of any record of an articulated judicial philosophy, while certainly making Roberts easier to confirm, is cause for concern. Has he failed to form one, or has he deliberately concealed it for career reasons?

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The Weekly Standard’s online poll question of the week is:

Women of SCOTUS 

If President Bush nominates a woman to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, which of the following candidates would you prefer?

Right now, Janice Rogers Brown is the overwhelming leader with 53%. Trailing her are Edith Clement (21%), Edith Jones (16%), and Other (11%). Maura Corrigan, Priscilla Owen, and Karen Williams are all at 0%.

Go now and vote for Janice Rogers Brown! I understand they read the Weekly Standard in the White House. 😉

Update: D’oh, I forgot the link.

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Eric was bemused by this "Libertarian Communist" site:

… How on earth does that work. After all, among other things, libertarians believe in the right to property and communism is adamantly opposed to private property or an individual’s right to property. 

Maybe I’m just confused and you guys can help me understand?

Eric, Eric — you’re attempting to apply reason and logic. There’s no place for reason and logic among the libertarian communists.

Besides, that’s not even the most bizarre misuse of the word "libertarian." I submit that the prize goes to the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party. I defy anyone to top that one.

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Oops, I got distracted by Real Life® and forgot to submit an entry for the 3rd Carnival of Liberty! Oh, well, Eric got a veritable cornucopia of great posts. If I had submitted something, it would have just gotten in the way. Check them out at Eric’s Grumbles or the LLP group blog.

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I’ve had a nice little surge in traffic in the past 36 hours — nothing like the Vodkalanche that followed my post of Democratic Underground quotes, but significant. I finally looked at my referrer log to see the source. It was a post by James Wolcott, the haughty, supercilious, elitist contributing editor of Vanity Fair who delights in sneering at all us yahoos out here in fly-over country. I won’t provide a link, but if you insist on giving him a visit, you can probably intuit the URL from his name.

Wolcott’s post is in praise of a Kung Fu Monkey post. Think I’m making up the elitist sneering part? Wolcott describes the subject as:

… Hollywood and its corrosive influence on everything heartland Americans cherish and value (when they’re not doing crystal meth).

Wolcott quotes the Kung Fu Monkey post at length, which is fine. I really don’t need too much of Wolcott’s arrogant, affected writing — he addresses his readers as "O grasshoppers," for God’s sake. Capital O, no h. How, um, quaint.

At the end of Kung Fu Monkey’s defense of Spielberg ("one of the greatest directors to walk the planet, … compassionate, a patriotic man …"), Wolcott appends his closing zinger:

Which hasn’t spared him being slimed by the usual suspects.

Wow. I’m one of the "usual suspects." It seems like only yesterday that I achieved mammalian status, and now I’m a "usual suspect" to Wolcott. My heart swells with pride. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have sneer at me.

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At work, I use a printer named gilligan connected to a printserver named selfserve. I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t print, so I wanted to look at the settings for gilligan. I encountered this strange message:

[Update: For the benefit of those without 19-21" monitors, I shrunk the picture and put the message in its alternate text (hover mouse over it) in case it’s hard to read.]

Now, I see a couple of problems here. First, someone in Redmond, WA, who gets paid good money to decide things like how permissions should work, decided it should be possible for a user to have permission to change printer permissions without having permission to view them.

Second, someone else in Redmond who gets paid good money to write user messages and dialogs for Microsoft decided it’s important to let users know when they have permission to change permissions that they can’t look at (and therefore have no user interface through which to make changes).

You’d think a $30 million usability lab would catch stuff like this, wouldn’t you?

[sigh] I suppose if were working in Linux, I’d get a message that said something like:

FATAL ERROR! Operation concluded successfully with return code -3759.

And if I complained about it, someone would tell me, "Just fix it in the source code and recompile."

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Via Brainster comes this feel-good story:

Here’s a good one:

Afghan villagers sheltered a U.S. Navy SEAL wounded in a battle last month with the Taliban until they could get word to American forces to rescue him, a military official said Monday.

An Afghan villager found the SEAL and hid him in his village, the official said.

According to military accounts, Taliban fighters came to the village and demanded the American be turned over, but villagers refused.

The SEAL wrote a note verifying his identity and location, and a villager carried it to U.S. forces, the official said. The note indicated to U.S. troops that they wouldn’t be entering into a trap. The commando was rescued July 3.

Heroes pop up in the most unlikely locations. The Afghan villagers mentioned here clearly qualify.

I’ll second that. And I’ll also note that it speaks pretty well of our efforts in Afghanistan when residents of a remote village in one of those backward, mountainous regions that’s a "stronghold" of the Taliban choose to be on our side.

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