freedom is on the mar- ahh, fuck it
Don't tell the other fanboyz, but the Iraq War's number one fanboy doesn't believe in the premise of the war:What is here suggested is that in Russia the very process of "westernization" helped preserve autocracy and repression.-- Frederick W. Kagan, The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 8-9.
The reason for this apparent paradox is that the first part of "westernization," the creation of the rechtstaat, the state ruled by law, in fact strengthens the autocrat's ability to control his state, implement his will, and crush other opinions if he so chooses. The development of modern, efficient, "western" methods of government, in other words, can serve an autocrat just as well as a democrat.
More to come, and I'm withholding the funniest parts for now. I'm gonna milk this one. But here's a fun Historiblography quiz, and no fair looking:
Who's the first person Kagan thanks in the acknowledgements?
posted by Chris Bray @ 4:25 PM
12 Comments:
Richard Pipes? (Full disclosure: my then-wife-to-be took a course with him once: freaky experience, apparently, and explains a lot about his son, Daniel)
Nope, even better! Here's a hint: It's funny in the other direction.
Those wacky John Does are at it again:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/top_story/story/7477512p-7372344c.html
"Christie called the camera shop owner that alerted federal authorities an American hero. The suspected terrorists had gone to the shop about 16 months ago to transfer training videos from video tape to DVD's.
"The camera store owner saw Muslim men in military garb toting weapons in the woods. He heard them talking about jihad and how Allah was great. He called the FBI and became a hero," Christie said."
Maybe CAIR can file a lawsuit against the video clerk.
Yeah, that's just like reporting someone for looking a little Muslimy in public. Whenever I think of Grant Jones, I'm reminded of Emerson's quote about the foolish man having no scale to his register; every dumbfuck who panics and calls 911 at the sight of someone with a tan praying in public is now just like the guy who appropriately and necessarily reported a video of armed guys talking openly about committing an act of real violence. Keep up that shrewd argumentation, Grant. You'll make Eagle Scout yet.
Aloha Chris,
Someday you may be able to generate a shrewd argumentation instead of a crude ad hominem. You will no doubt make Ph.D yet.
"Maybe CAIR can file a lawsuit against the video clerk."
Why, that sounds almost like a...a...
Crude ad hominem. From a twelve-year-old, to stick with the established pattern.
Discussion with Grant Jones...
Grant: You're a Marxist left-wing postmodernist moron!
Other person: You're an idiot.
Grant: Hey, that's a personal attack!
So, yeah. You're one of those idiots who doesn't realize it. You're an irritation, like a cold sore or some old garbage. You worship at the altar of state authority and militarism; you quiver at the collectivist impulse of the hilarious John Doe "movement"; and you think you're a conservative, spewing hatred at people you've pathetically misidentified as leftists. Please stick to Malkinite circle jerks, where people are dumb enough to think you make sense, and leave the decent townsfolk alone. I don't read your blog, or comment on it, and I have no plans to. Maybe you could return the favor.
Aloha Chris,
Tu quoque, :-)
P.S. I'm not a conservative.
Seems to me that the video clerk was acting more or less within the bounds of caution, but the feds who instigated a sixteen month investigation in which they took the role of "handlers" for the crew need to go back to Quantico for retraining.
Back to the original question: is it Howard Zinn?
Aloha Chris:
One last question, you wrote: "I don't read your blog, or comment on it, and I have no plans to."
Then how do you know what I "spew" or what my political philosophy is?
Because of your years-long ranting in the comment threads at Cliopatria, unless someone else is using your name there. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be mistaken for you, so I doubt that.
Just a quick logic 101 refresher. Ad hominem does not mean, "He called me a nasty name!" Saying that, because Grant Jones is an idiot, the argument he has made must be wrong would be an ad hominem. What Chris did was explain why Grant's argument (or rather implication since he avoided making an actual argument) was invalid. Following that, based on the abysmal quality of thought revealed by that and others of his comments, Chris concluded that Grant Jones is an idiot. To logically refute Chris's claims, Grant would need to identify a logical error in one or both of Chris's arguments. It might be hard to successfully argue that reports to the police based on racism or other bigotry are equivalent to reports of actual evidence of a crime so I'd recommend focusing on the second artument. There certainly could be a way to support the claim that, just because pretty much everything that Grant Jones writes is stupid, Grant Jones is not actually an idiot. For example, if he were to offer proof that he has a rare learning diability which causes him to always write the opposite of what he actually means, that would be powerful evidence that he is actually quite bright.
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