Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Perry de Havilland gives NYT's David Brooks a proper fisking at Samizdata.
Brooks:
If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.
PdH:
State… nation… are not ‘mediating institutions of civil society’, they are mediating political institutions and the observation these are materially different things is hardly a new one. They are violence backed imposers of laws, the means of collective coercion… and the process for deciding who gets the guns pointed at them is what we call ‘politics’, which is quite quite different to how elective things like ‘family’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘religious group’ (unless it happens to be Islam) and ‘world’ work as these are collections of people you can invite to mind their own damn business and turn your back on them, with all the good and bad things that might come of that… or embrace them wholeheartedly, as you see fit and as they deserve, generally without the cops kicking down your door one way or the other.
It's short. RTWT.
Brooks:
If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.
PdH:
State… nation… are not ‘mediating institutions of civil society’, they are mediating political institutions and the observation these are materially different things is hardly a new one. They are violence backed imposers of laws, the means of collective coercion… and the process for deciding who gets the guns pointed at them is what we call ‘politics’, which is quite quite different to how elective things like ‘family’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘religious group’ (unless it happens to be Islam) and ‘world’ work as these are collections of people you can invite to mind their own damn business and turn your back on them, with all the good and bad things that might come of that… or embrace them wholeheartedly, as you see fit and as they deserve, generally without the cops kicking down your door one way or the other.
It's short. RTWT.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
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The daughter is on a Gameboy and just got to the part of Zelda that says "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this." She laughs and says "If it's dangerous to go alone, why does he give him a sword? Why doesn't he give him another person?" In all these years, I never thought of that.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Sad news
My heart goes out to our longtime mentor/friend Gene Parson and his family. The man who shot himself in Big R two days ago was his oldest brother.
Let it rain
The ground is still muddy from last nights downpour. The lightning show was like nothing I had ever seen, and it was right over the town. For about an hour, not two seconds went by without lightning, and usually it was like a string of firecrackers. Them clouds must have been in a rolling boil.
The last three days of rain must be good for the several wildfires going on. Nice time to do back burning (hint, hint). Maybe in my grandchildren's lifetimes people will be able to go camping and cook over campfires again. Legally, I mean (cough).
The last three days of rain must be good for the several wildfires going on. Nice time to do back burning (hint, hint). Maybe in my grandchildren's lifetimes people will be able to go camping and cook over campfires again. Legally, I mean (cough).
Mmmm, PETA Chips
I woke up with a major craving for PETA chips, and none in the cupboard. I'll get extra cream cheese so I have some left over for what friend JohnZ calls "sex in a bowl": equal parts cream cheese and marshmallow cream, blend well, serve with strawberries, give to significant other just prior to delivering bad news (especially the kind that gets you in trouble). ToriZ says it works. I'll leave the subtle implications to the reader.
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