And now for something completely different

Thanks (?) to Jeffrey Tucker, I have discovered The Remnant, an interesting Catholic publication. Every person with unpopular opinions fancies himself part of the Remnant (from the Latin remaneo, stale leftovers), and so it is here. But while most Remnants hold themselves out as a witness against the sinful majority, this Remnant is most offended by other Remnants… especially those of a libertarian bent.

As I show in the book, this movement is casting more and more Catholics under its spell, thanks to the tireless efforts of its Catholic leaders, including Lew Rockwell, President and Founder of the Mises Institute, Tom Woods, Jeffrey Tucker, and their liberal Catholic allies such as Father Robert Sirico, whose Acton Institute—named after the anti-Romanist Liberal Catholic, Lord Acton—has sponsored Tom Woods’s widely criticized book attacking the Church’s Social Teaching, The Church and the Market.

Interestingly, I consider the Mises Catholics to have been instrumental in my conversion (along with Vox Day and Fr. Cyril Crume). Also interestingly, it was a libertarian (David Macko) whose arguments persuaded me that there was a legitimate state interest in protecting the unborn. I will admit to still being catechetically unformed by the church’s social teachings; when I read the documents of the last century, I suspect that there were Communists in the Vatican. But I do have to come to terms with those teachings, one way or another, and perhaps reading an extremist interpretation will help in that. But it doesn’t help to read  ”I find [Mises'] economics useless and his philosophy jejune.” I’m not nuts about the anti-clerical strain of libertarianism, but I understand it; the Church has often used the State’s means to its own ends. And I’ve yet to be persuaded that taxation is not a violation of the 7th Commandment.

Anyway, if you’re curious about such things, stop in and poke around.

Coulter v. Farah

Ace nails the thing, I think.

I guess that I’m a Dispensationalist in that I really don’t seen any evidence that, post-Jesus, God is in the business of smiting populations. Sure, the Jews got it good in 70AD, but that was blowback for things that happened before (immediately before, perhaps?) the Resurrection. And there is karma; some sins (coveting your neighbor’s house and demanding a subprime mortgage so you can get one too) carry their own punishment. I’m open to the argument that gay marriage is one such, but nobody is explaining how that works. I’m with Glenn Beck on this; I don’t care on a personal level. I care on a theological level; sin is sin, and I’m not going to pretend that homosexual monogamy is somehow superior to homosexual promiscuity, or that it’s OK for a bishop to be actively gay because he’s only doing that with one person. But for the average guy, it’s not my business; that’s between you, your partner, and God. That’s tolerance, and tolerance is not like. If you’re expecting a gold star in “Plays well with boys”, forget it. I don’t get one for “plays well with girls”. And I could argue that, at certain times in my life, my sexuality was just as disordered as yours, just in a straight way, so I don’t get to throw stones. I’m glad that Ann Coulter (and the Hillboyz) are doing outreach. We need all the sensible people we can get on our side. We don’t need to drive them away, as Farah seems to want to do.

Moral equivalency circus

The Kossak Egnor doesn’t get it

Yes, the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they were more about optics than actual harm. The economy was already taking a hit before the Twin Towers fell.  The reaction of the nation to seeing two major buildings in New York fall on T.V. has boosted the attack out of proportion. While the loss of even a single life is to be condemned and the devastation these deaths caused the families of those killed, more than this number of teens are killed every year in car crashes. These are also tragic losses but we do not make the kind of high profile issue of it that the 9/11 attacks are.

If those teens were being murdered in deliberate head-on collisions by Muslims driving stolen cars, we’d be talking apples and apples. They’re being killed by combinations of alcohol and bad driving skills. We call those situations “accidents”, because they weren’t intentional; no teen drives off to get himself dead. 9/11 was not an accident (as I thought at about 8:45 on that day). Those planes were stolen and flown into the Towers. We make a high profile issue out of 9/11 because it was murder, not because it was death, which is after all distressingly common, occurring to 100% of us.

If Bill the Dog’s Typist doesn’t get the difference, he should leave blogging to somebody with a conscience.

Vox Day vs. The Blogger Formerly Known as Jane Galt

Need I announce the winner?

McArdle wouldn’t know what a real libertarian was if Murray Rothbard’s zombie bit her on her bony ass.

Blogetery

There’s been quite a bit of conjecture about this affair being “a test of the Internet kill switch“. Apparently, it wasn’t quite that, yet. The Fibbies found some Al Quada material on a Blogotery blog, and went to Blogotery’s server BurstNET, who cancelled the account as a TOS violation.

The Blogetery guy doesn’t sound as if English is his first language, and he doesn’t sound like a whiz on server law either. Should he realistically be expected to police 69K blogs? Is it reasonable for BurstNET to terminate 69K bloggers over the actions of one? What this tells me is that a “kill switch” isn’t needed: the government can pretty much shut down what it wants, under the guise of “fighting terrorism”.

A representative for Burst.net said the company had offered Blogetery’s operator his money back, but that “should be the least of his concerns.”

Personally, I think Burst has just as much to worry about as Blogetery. If I were a customer, I’d be looking for a new server.

The Blimp of Flint steals a news story

Michael Moore is a liar. You don’t think he will go the extra mile and become a thief?

There’s no “become” about it. Moore’s entire Weltanschauung is based on disposal of other people’s property. So when he flagrantly rips off somebody’s intellectual property, why should it be surprising or even worthy of comment? The man is what he is.

Good way to kill a partisan website:

…don’t allow anyone to express disagreement with the current administration. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

They don’t call them “DUmmies” for nuthin’.

Charles Johnson with tits

I’ve always known that the Ann Coulter-wannabe Debbie Schlussel had some, shall we say, issues. But since I find her generally unpleasant and don’t go there often, I had no idea it was as bad as this.

God rest her soul.

Ace is kidnapped, replaced by pod person

He spends a whole big post pondering whether it’s not such a bad idea for Obama to censor children’s advertising. People are not amused:

Please tell me Ace is not turning into the next Charles Johnson.

But if you insist upon Barak Obama being the “nanny” to any but his children, or when his children are “burdened” with his grandchildren, then the game is up. And you should go quietly into the long night.

Either ace had a stroke, his account was hijacked, or he just became best friends with Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan.

Next, I’m going to read Andrew Sullivan on how to woo women.

Glaze over all you want at the slippery slope, just take a look at England.

The beatings will continue until thinking improves.

Was there ever liberty?

At LRC, they’ve been whining about David Boaz going after Bumper Hornberger. I wrote Cato off in ’08 after too much Ron Paul-bashing, so I found the whole thing as interesting as debate on whether the sky is blue. But then Venlet weighed in, and I actually read David’s piece.

Here’s David’s problem: he has forgotten that liberty is an individual value. He argues under the assumption that there’s some average amount of liberty in a society, and that because Negro slaves enjoyed no freedom while Caucasian males had a lot of freedom, “we” are just as free as they were. In other words, it’s a rip-roaring collectivist fallacy. As a Caucasian male, I really don’t give a shit about the state of 19th c. Negro slaves; they’re dead, my ancestors had nothing to do with it, and the society I live in hasn’t done that for a century and a half. Now, I very much would care about slavery now, for moral reasons, and because I’d rather not live with a ticking time bomb. And I understand why Negros would have a different take on the earlier 19th century. But the servitude of some is relevant to the freedom of others only to the extent that the freedom of some is dependent upon the servitude of others, and that the free are responsible for that servitude. Why isn’t everyone now as free as in the late 19th-c, after slavery? Why, for that matter. is everyone not as free as they should be…which is an absolute that has nothing to do with history?

Boaz here comes close to using the favorite liberal slur against Hornberger et al: “you’re a dirty RAAAAACIST!” They pulled it against Ron Paul. They’re a little more gentle with Hornberger, more like “HIs RAAAACISM has caused him to forget…” and there’s that side-swipe against LRC:

I note that I’m not concerned here with self-proclaimed libertarians who join neo-Confederate organizations or claim that southerners established a new country and fought a devastating war for some reason other than the slavery on which their social and economic system rested

In short, Charles Dickens was a RAAACIST because he argued at the time for the tariff causation of secession, and it is a point that cannot ever be made…nor can a new country be established for any but the highest reasons. That’s not a very libertarian position. If Boaz quacks like a liberal collectivist, shouldn’t we entertain the notion that he is a collectivist?

UPDATE:  Beck wades through the comments, so that you don’t have to…like the sparrow who pulls the grain out of the horseshit.