Iran creates international panic

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Not an un-word, Cicero... merely an inchoate unwillingness to accept it, and I'd say that's a problem you need to fix. Attaching prefixes is by no means illegitimate, as any seventh grade English teacher could confirm for you.

Dar, frankly, your reply contradicts itself from one paragraph to another. You say you're for reason, rationality, honesty and fair play, yet you want to object to the removal of rulerships and societies that refuse to do any of these things -- and are not these things what you are saying? Can't have it both ways, Dar old son.

Recognizing that, I don't have it both ways.

Our problems from foreign parts do not stem from democracies or constitutional monarchies. They come from one kind of source -- places where the rule of men supercedes the rule of law. Can you think of any place that gives us trouble that isn't that way? We don't shoot at democracies, nor they at us. For over a century, every fight we've fought has been against undemocracies. Every single one. I'd say we're in the habit.

You think you're going to show we're doing something else? Man, you've got a pile of work ahead of you, and even if you manage it, it's likely I can make one observation about your giant, antidemocratic effort that will pull the whole construct down like a Jenga tower.

For instance, it's clear you still believe we "rushed into war" in the Iraq campaign. I guess the only way you can sustain that belief is if you read no recent history whatsoever, at any time, for the remainder of your life. I dunno; reading history makes a pretty good hobby, it seems to me. The eighteen-month span of September 2001 to March 2003 hardly looks like anybody was in a big hurry to war, and there were all those UN Resolutions both passed and sought, plus Saddam's government's pattern of guilty behavior. The Ba'athist neofascists don't seem to have been smart enough to run a country... nondemocracies don't select for clearheaded intelligence the way democracies do.

The guy who believes the Iraq campaign in the overall GWOT was a lamebrained mistake is a man without any strategic understanding. We are undermining the whole terrorist bully-the-West rationale, by handing them defeat upon defeat, and having the backs of the peoples who are turning slowly but steadily against the Taliban and their brutality, against the shitheads and their terrorism. With every Muslim head they lop off, they chop away their own support. Since the Taliban are so generally recognized as mean shitheads, which is better: defeat them this year, or defeat them forty years from now? Should one put up with mean shitheads for the span of a generation?

I say this year is best. Vigorous elimination of the radical anti-Americans is not only good for us specifically, but is generally good for all of humanity, as a moment's thought will show you. Had you really, honestly never thought about it that way?

If there is any wrongness in removing undemocracy and replacing it with democracy, absolutely no one has been able to explain it. Dar, I'll be frank: a few people on this very Cellar have tried. None have been convincing, all of them were in error. They ended up trying to defend oppression, and failing to liberate the oppressed. This is a particular failing of the Left and the left-of-center, to the point where it is clear these people wouldn't recognize goodness or righteousness if it bit their leg off. The Left whores for oppression and undemocracy, and for that reason it should be abandoned by every human on earth, and left solely the province of the utterly inhuman, who then get jailed and executed for their other heinous crimes.

I await your intellectually dishonest reply, and will in rebutting it show you a better path than has hitherto satisfied you.

[DanaC]

Crazy MoFo

[Griff]

mmm... sig

[xoxoxoBruce]

Iran was a democracy... until we stepped in. :p

[Undertoad]

absolutely no one has been able to explain it

or if they did, you ignored it and went about your business, whistling past the graveyard.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Undertoad, there are no explanations. Examine the sentences I wrote after that one for their truth.

[Undertoad]

UG, there are explanations. Examine the post I wrote for its truth.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

An explanation that does not work and is based upon nothing is no explanation. I fight with radar about this all the time, UT, and I win a lot.

The idiots are trying to get me, a moral being, to accept tyrannies. That shall not happen. Instead, the idiots are going to supervene their unfortunate condition by taking the view of tyranny I do: that it should be made extinct, and that killing tyrants off should happen daily if not hourly, on the commonsensical assumption that the dead tyrants are the ones least likely to.

I'd say you should be recalled to what led you to a libertarian philosophy in the first place. I fear you're going foggy, not getting it any more.

[Undertoad]

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?p=479090&post479090

UG: It is, after all, hardly unlibertarian to remove libertarianism's most determined foes, or democratic republicanism's as an intermediate step in the development of a more libertarian society in a country that not only could use it, but is probably incapable of being run any other way, between geography and psychology.

UT: That, UG, depends on whether what ends up there is a Democratic Republic. Most pundits say it won't. Does that change your usual?

UG: (no reply)

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So here's the reply, then: accurate, however delayed. All you need do is continue removing any foes of libertarianism that present themselves. Whether by conversion or by gunfire, the absence of antidemocrats is very much a good thing, is it not?

The pundits simply point out a difficulty that could transpire. Well and good; why shouldn't they? Shrinking the Non-Integrating Gap, refusing to brook rivals to the rule of just enough law to keep things orderly while preserving maximal freedom of action, maximizing connectivity in the flow of people, finance, ideas, and general security -- these are the things that are necessary to reducing the world's misery. There are misguided people on the one hand and highly motivated sociopaths on another who will resist this kind of progress. It's a fact people will fight like mad dogs for power -- whether they actually can have it or only think they do seems to make no difference. So, yeah; expect troubles on the way, to put it mildly.

So, there you have it: no, it doesn't change my usual. I like liberty. I've seen with my own eyes what trammeling liberties does, and I coolly and cordially detest that. I'm ready to kill over liberty, though I know killing feels terrible. Always have been ready, nonetheless. Can you show that kind of commitment? Should you come up with an excuse for not?

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

So here's the reply, then: accurate, however delayed. All you need do is continue removing any foes of libertarianism that present themselves. Whether by conversion or by gunfire, the absence of antidemocrats is very much a good thing, is it not?

The proof is in the results, sir, is it not? If after five years you have killed every antidemocrat you can locate, and still Democracy has not taken hold, surely you must now wonder whether the kill/convert recipe works.

What we notice is that, now, only our promise to depart quickens the rule of law in Iraq. We notice that this was not a part of your recipe and that you fight it tooth and nail.

I'm ready to kill over liberty, though I know killing feels terrible. Always have been ready, nonetheless. Can you show that kind of commitment? Should you come up with an excuse for not?

Certainly. If you kill in the name of liberty, and liberty does not result, you are now a murderer, and you haven't furthered the human race one iota.

In killing for no result, by definition you become the tyrant you hate so well.

[DanaC]

Explain to me the difference, Urbane, between adopting a kill or convert strategy to enforce freedom and democracy, and kill or convert to enforce God's saving Grace?

[Ibby]

the UG doctrine:
point a really really big gun at the head of an 'undemocratic' government.
blow away the undemocratic government.
when another dictatorship fills the power vacuum, repeat.
when no more dictators rise up, and anarchy reigns like in somalia, call it a success for democracy and leave.
when a dictatorship comes again after you leave, return to step 1.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Explain to me the difference, Urbane, between adopting a kill or convert strategy to enforce freedom and democracy, and kill or convert to enforce God's saving Grace?

If you think there should be a difference, I guess you're just not thinking like I do, and thus are not much of a disciple of liberty at heart, are you really? I'm brave enough to be the real deal, and let the dead fascists fall where they may.

If there's a deficiency in the West, it is the lack of such an attitude -- far, far too solicitous of a tyrant's tender feelings.

I keep telling those without ears to hear that the dead tyrants are the tyrants least likely to, and this bit of ordinary horse sense quite escapes the unenlightened. In essence, they assign something else greater importance than human liberty, and that is simply crazed.

I'll sum up, DanaC, by reminding you that democracy is not a superstition. You live by it, I live by it, Undertoad lives by it, plenty of foreigners die for lack of it, and none of us thinks they should, not really.

Ibram, you're being careful not to understand the whole program: you left out the part about actually nurturing local democracy, so you could erect a strawman caricature and feel good about knocking it down. The thoroughly unenlightened caricature me a lot; I remain unimpressed.

We notice that this was not a part of your recipe and that you fight it tooth and nail.

What??

UT, you have no reason for that idea. It certainly didn't come from me. I'm not fighting it at all. Did you honestly believe I thought there was only a military solution to the Iraq campaign? You can't show anything in my posts saying that, merely a good deal directed against the people who think we oughtn't to be shooting America-haters and Democracy-despisers because we might, you know, offend them. I've never let such loser-think contaminate my love for deposing tyranny, and I recommend the same course for you.

I think the flaw in your argument is that you're assuming you can't get results by vitiating tyranny's human resources. Where is that written? How well is that thought out? All of World War Two is evidence against your view, and just what is different now, down at the fundamentals? Are we not still shooting at unfreedom and its makers?

Did we ever become Nazis in killing Nazis and other Germans? Did we ever become Communists in killing North Koreans, Chinese, and North Vietnamese and Viet Cong?

Specious, sir, wholly specious. If you're not in the habit of tyranny yourself, you're unlikely to replant tyranny after you've cut it down -- that is a description of America that beats the shit out of the ideas current among the likes of MoveOn.Org. Nor, frankly, does this show up in any of the places we've been fighting -- we've been outlasted by people who did predictably plant tyranny. That they suffered a crop failure wasn't thanks to us -- we stayed the hell out of Vietnam until well after they began to wise up and abandon Communism and its undemocracy.

[Undertoad]

We notice that only promising to depart Iraq has quickened the rule of law there.

You have been against departing or setting a timetable.

Do you deny this.

I think the flaw in your argument

You think? In other words, you don't know of a flaw. Nice!