Full video here.

Kurt Westergaard, cartoonist behind the image of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, had a visit from a Somali Muslim with an axe. Westergaard is doing well, apparently, as he retreated to a safe room specially prepared for such an incident until police arrived.  He’s been threatened many times in the past.

Cartoons here. (Westergaard’s is the 2nd down, I don’t have the rights to reprint).

Addition from the Christian Science Monitor-The same man was plotting an attack against Hilary Clinton in Kenya?

See Also:  If you thought the cartoons were bad, more on the Fitna movie here.  Libertarians stand firm on this issue:  Repost-A Canadian Libertarian Making Noise: Ezra Levant

Via The A & L Daily-Interview With Christopher Caldwell At Spiegel Online

Christopher Hitchens At Slate: Yale Surrenders

Full post here.

“More than 600 civilians have now lost their lives to such attacks since the Pakistan Army began a military offensive in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan in October.”

We need Pakistan to ramp up these efforts to prevent safe haven for the Taliban if Obama’s troop increase is going to work.  What do the Taliban represent to many Pakistanis and to the tribes of the region?

Freedom Fighters against occupation?  Over-zealous enforcers of a rigid vision of Islam?  Corrupt Warlords? Providers of Security?  Keepers Of The Faith?  Mountain Rubes?

Also: From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”

And:  Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

Full post here.

A brief timeline of health care reform …

Addition:  A reader sent in two quotes from Henry Hazlitt, libertarian economist:

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

and

“The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians.”

Related On This Site:  From KeithHennesey.Com: ‘My Foggy Crystal Legislative Crystal Ball’ Clive Crook At The Atlantic: ‘Peterson-Pew on the fiscal outlook’ Atul Gawande At The New Yorker: ‘Testing, Testing’…From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”

Full piece here.

Steele argues that race and illusions around race (especially the liberal pieties, extending beyond their use) have helped get Obama elected, and he’s not up to the job:

“And yes, white America conditioned Barack Obama to emptiness—valued him all along for his “articulate and clean” blackness, so flattering to American innocence. He is a president come to us out of our national insecurities.”

Perhaps, but the end game here is political; a somewhat opportunistic move to attach more conservative principles to the new political landscape? 

 Steele applies this line of thought to Aghanistan, where I think Obama has been questionable, but reasonable:

“On the foreign front he has been given much credit for his new policy on the Afghan war, and especially for the “rational” and “earnest” way he went about arriving at the decision to surge 30,000 new troops into battle. But here also were three months of presidential equivocation for all the world to see, only to end up essentially where he started out.”

 I’m still not sure by Obama’s logic we aren’t heading toward withdrawal, but as President he must also defend our interests (I don’t think any sitting President can allow a terrorist attack to be plotted on his watch).  It is a difficult situation.  It requires a lot of thought and grim decisions.

Also On This Site:  From Pollster.Com-National Job Approval Rating For Obama Among Independents

Barack Obama President Elect: A Few Hopes From An Independent

Full article here.

Is the Taliban gaining strength?

Also On This Site:  From The Associated Press: The Text Of Obama’s Afghanistan Speech, December 1st, 2009

From Bloomberg: More Troops To Afghanistan? A Memo From Henry Kissinger To Gerald Ford?…From The NY Times Video: ‘A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey’…From The WSJ: Graham, Lieberman and McCain “Only Decisive Force Can Prevail In Afghanistan…From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”

See Also:  Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

Full chart here.

Disapprove 51.7%, Approve 39.8%

I originally put up a post as an independent around the time Obama was elected:

A few of my hopes:

1.  Obama can lead a response to terrorism that deals with the subtlety and danger of the threat: the relatively low probability but extremely high consequences of a potential terrorist attack.  My post here Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads.

A response 12/28/09- So far,  I like Obama’s pragmatism as regards Afghanistan.  I think he understands the bigger picture, and the necessity of isolating American interests and using force to defend them when necessary, but also understanding that such force is a part of a larger strategy.  Our war is not with Islam itself; our military force is being used to contain a violent and extreme group of Islamists.  Our strategy should be in part to gradually make it difficult for the extreme and radically violent group of Islamists to perpetuate their vision of Islam and attract followers.   This a chess game.  I also hope he has mettle enough to lead the armed forces wisely and resist the pressure on a democratic president to prove his mettle, or to overreact, especially from the democratic party itself.

I’m not sure I trust the always disorganized Department of Homeland Security or large bureaucratic institutions to respond the nature of the terrorist threat.  It’s not Obama’s problem alone, but his vague reliance on those around him investing a lot of energy building large bureaucratic institutions is a little troubling to me, give the track record on this subject.

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2.  Obama can find common ground between the United States, Europe and other interested parties in this endeavor and do the hard work necessary to forge alliances of common international self-interest (in the face of of what I think is an inadequate institutional framework to do so).  Can we include China without comprimising too much?  Must we continue to have to rationally pursue so much of our self-interest outside the U.N.? Can Obama include shrewd moral realism (he is a law professor) as well as liberal internationalism in his world view?

Response-I want him to be reasonable, but I hope the Copenhagen global warming mess is not an indication of which principles Obama seeks to base the pursuit of self-interest and international debate.   Not a good sign.

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3.  Some commitment to politically pragmatic individualism at home.  Even as Obama may pursue policies that require redistributive measures on trade and the economy to make good on his promises and fulfill his vision…perhaps he will be able to deepen and attach those policies to ideas broad enough to keep sight of the importance of personal liberty, open-markets, and a collectivism that doesn’t too much threaten free-thinking.

Current Response-I don’t know if he could, nor wants to, pull this off.  Possible but not likely.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Also On This Site-Barack Obama President Elect: A Few Hopes From An Independent

Part of Bryan Magee’s series:

Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic Greek (the beginning of the end).

See Also:  Jacques Derrida discusses deconstruction here.

From a friend…found here on wikipedia’s Leo Strauss’s page.  How do you read the Greeks, or any text, for that matter?…:

“Strauss wrote that Friedrich Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand relativism, an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian historicism. Heidegger, in Strauss’ view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche, whereas Nietzsche believed “our own principles, including the belief in progress, will become as relative as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be” and “the only way out seems to be…that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth”.^[4] Heidegger believed that the tragic nihilism of Nietzsche was a “myth” guided by a defective Western conception of Being that Heidegger traced to Plato. In his published correspondence with Alexandre Kojève, Strauss wrote that Hegel was correct when he postulated that an end of history implies an end to philosophy as understood by classical political philosophy.”

A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche’s Moral And Political Philosophy..A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy

Full post here.

A few positives:

—Paglia is intellectually deep, and someone of broad aesthetic understanding and experience.  She also enjoys good poems.  She has tirelessly criticized the professionalization of poetry and its move into academia (largely doing so from outside of academia).  In particular, she’s attacked the effects continental philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida have had on American Universities (though I don’t know how well literateurs ever understand philosophers and I don’t know if I would class Foucault and Derrida entirely as philosophers).

A few negatives:

—Her reasoning is not always sound, and like the metaphysics of the artists she reads closely, many of her ideas are unfounded and logically inconsistent.  Her Nietzschean influence also carries a lot of baggage (often dangerous) with it especially when taken from the aesthetic realm (though like H.L. Mencken demonstrates, that depth can translate into useful, trenchant and wickedly funny social criticism).

All told, I think Break, Blow, Burn rather successfully makes poetry accessible to millions of people to whom it wouldn’t otherwise be.  A lot of this success is acheived by something many other poetry popularizers are currently missing:  the potential of good art to transcend politics and current intellectual trends.

And perhaps more importantly in Paglia’s case:  the potential that good art criticism has to illuminate the many current social, political and intellectual trends that try and hold good art aloft for their own reasons…and maybe Paglia’s reasons as well.

Addition:  Is Paglia intellectually deep?  What is she doing with Nietzsche anyways?  Please see the comments for a deeper discussion.

See Also:  A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…Camille Paglia Answers Reader Letters: Democratic Ideology…Highbrow Timewaster…Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy

Full piece here.

Hitchens has some unkind words for Pakistan.  Some of his motivation is likely his anti-theism, but he does point out the following:

“Successive U.S. administrations used to keep certifying to Congress that Pakistan was not exploiting U.S. aid (and U.S. indulgence over the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan) to build itself a nuclear weapons capacity.”

We’ve been sending a lot of checks to Pakistan (and Musharraf played us quite well, as I don’t think you can ask a leader to be too far from his people).  Pakistan is not an entirely reliable partner in pursuing our aims due to the circumstances on the ground.   Yet, we need Pakistani support to prevent haven across the border if the plan in Afghanistan is going to work.  So, we’re making more deals and sending more checks.

He also takes a parting shot at anti-war liberals:

“American liberals can’t quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he’s ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.”

Part of my fear has been a sitting liberal President picking up a war and feeling pressure to act aggressively.  But let’s not put more of that kind of pressure on him to spite liberalism.  He’s been pretty reasonable so far in my opinion.

Also On This Site:  From The CSM: ‘WIll Pakistan Military Go After Taliban In North Waziristan?’

See Also:  Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

Full post here.

Waiting on the Senate…(for the rest of the week)

As for me, I don’t see how extending coverage to 30 million new people will not come without profound and potentially harmful social and political consequences (as regards personal liberty).   The political system is, in my opinion, neither the best nor most efficient way of addressing the jerry-rigged health-care delivery system we have…and its rapidly rising costs.  Atul Gawande, however, makes a decent, evolving, pragmatic case for some government involvement:

Atul Gawande At The New Yorker: ‘Testing, Testing’…From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”

I do think political compromise is a necessary way to reduce the current ideological pressures on our elected officials and political system, so we can solve the problems we have, like rapidly expanding medical costs.  However, I also think much of the momentum behind this bill is simply leftist (we have a moral obligation to the poor, and that obligation is best met by growing the government) and a chaotic, not sufficiently organized left in power (and splintering and coalescing) under Obama.  Such is politics.  I think Milton Friedman points out some problems in spending other people’s money on other people:

How Would Obama Respond To Milton Friedman’s Four Ways To Spend Money?

And I don’t think anyone arguing the ‘health-care is a right’ argument has convinced me of the necessity of this bill as it’s looking now, or that our moral obigation should take this path (rather than unite the left’s interests around common cause).

From If-Then Knots: Health Care Is Not A Right…But Then Neither Is Property?

It just seems like partial failure of the imagination on all of our parts.

Just a few thoughts from center-right libertarian type.

Also: From KeithHenessey.Com: ‘The House-Passed Bill’s Effects On Health Insurance Coverage’

In response to Obama’s presidency and the current political landscape, is Will Wilkinson moving toward a more liberal youth?:  Will Wilkinson And Jonah Goldberg On Bloggingheads: Updating Libertarianism?