Posse Incitatus

Can we end the War on Drugs now?

Because so many of our younger Posse members were already ill, we ventured to the pharmacy tonight to pick up some elixers and lay in an emergency supply of cold medicine in case we also came down with whatever bug is going around.

Ordinarily, this would be a thoroughly mundane activity, worthy of mention only by a James Lileks-style blog, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

However a strange thing happened when we tried to buy some generic Sudafed:  we had to buy it behind the counter and the clerk made us show i.d.

It was at that moment that we knew the War on Drugs was finally, utterly and irretrievably lost.

What nonsense is this?  Cold medicine now a controlled substance?  What next, fingerprinting to buy Nyquil?

The irony abounds:  the Looney Left is all atwtitter about legitimate intelligence gathering and bogus book bans yet a very real curtailment of liberty is staring us all in the face.

Where are our self-appointed protectors of civil liberties who only days ago were working themselves up into lather because Islamofascist moles might actually be discovered through completely legal wiretaps?

We understand there is some strange new drug called methamphetamine which uses Sudafed as a primary ingredient.  Swell.

Our thought is: knock yourselves out, guys.  If they ban Sudafed, some twisted numb-nuts will probably figure out a way to distill baby powder into cocaine.  There is something to be said for limiting the availability of truly deadly substances, but things are getting rediculous.

As much as the Posse enjoys the thought of lice-infested hippies getting busted for growing pot, the stuff is so prevalent and so easy to grow that we may as well let the tobacco companies diversify into it and then sue them out of business, er, regulate them for the public's benefit.

At the very least, spare us the 10-minute wait, fingerprinting and background check before we buy a box of decongestant.

The fiction-based community

The Posse hopes our readers have had an enjoyable holiday.  Though blogging is, of course, a labor of love, it was nice to shut the computer down for a couple of days and concentrate on Christmas, particularly the younger Posse members.

Alas, duty calls and it's back to the salt mines.  Glancing through the stories of the day, we find that once again the self-proclaimed "reality-based community" is erupting in outrage over something that simply didn't happen.

It is a sad commentary on American politics that the paragons of civil liberties who immediately climbed onto their soapboxes to denounce the horrible spectre of totalitarianism can't ever bring themselves to climb down.

No one cares what books one checks out of the library, even if they are written by vicious mass murderers.

Okay, we'll put a caveat on that:  the government should care if one is a known terrorist trying doing extensive research into chemical weapons production.

It is for that reason that most Americans aren't unduly alarmed by the thought that the government is eavesdropping on overseas phone calls to suspected terrorists.  Indeed, we'd venture that this would be a policy that -if the government wasn't doing it, it should start immediately.

But we digress.

Our point is that once again we have a fake controversy.

What is more, this is hardly unique.

Off the cuff, we can name several of these:

1. The forged Bush ANG  papers,
2. The plastic turkey,
3. White phospherous,
4. Koran flushing,
5. US troops purposefully targeting journalists,
6. Fake Rangers,and
7. Fake dead soldiers.

It says something about the opposition that they are so bent on bringing down the president that they are so willing not only to embrace any and all negative stories, but that they are willing to make them up and keep repeating them, even after they are proven false.

While this may be good for the GOP, it is bad for America.

At some point, the Dems need to decide what they stand for and whether an inconvenient truth really is better than an advantageous lie.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

Having just returned from midnight mass, the Posse wishes all of our readers a merry Christmas.

Posting may be light as we take in the joys of the holiday, particularly the delight of our younger Posse members.

What kind of fortress can one build with marshmellows?

That was fast.  In our comments, Kevin Baker offers this rebuttal:

I hope you're right. I really do. However, I don't think humanity has changed all that much in the last two milennia, and I think Eric Hoffer's observations on the nature of mass movements are frighteningly accurate. What a successful mass movement does is motivate people to action. The spread of Bush Derangement Syndrome among otherwise nominally sane people is greatly disturbing to me.

Right now the only thing holding it all together, as far as I can see, is economic prosperity. If the jihadis manage to strike at something that creates a real economic depression, I fully expect the rise of that mass movement.

They are already motivated; the problem is that they are cowards.  Unless the left finds a way to give these people injections of courage, they won't be able to do anything, no matter how enraged they get.

Should the economy collapse, they will lay down and starve because they are quite incapable of self-help.

The problem you have overlooked is that the highest ideal these people aspire to is victimhood.  That is their idol, the source of all virtue.

Unlike earlier mass movements which emphasized strength and discipline, these people value their own weaknesses - indeed they celebrate them.  The more helpless individuals are, the greater their stature within the movement.

While the Posse is not familiar with Eric Hoffer's work, we belive that it must be taken with this information in mind.

It is true that human nature is fundamentally unchanged, but it is also true that differing environments make for different attitudes.

The generation that spawned Bolshevism, Naziism and Fascism was raised to exalt military action and place personal courage as the essential virtue about all others.

The "vanguard" of all three movements were battle-hardened veterans of the Great War.  Their leaders had experienced the tender mercies of dungeons and torture at the hands of secret police.

Our current crop of radicals believe that depriving them of tenured faculty positions that pay six figures constitutes unusual cruelty.  Their tender constitutions cannot even withstand Lawrence Summers bringing up the merest possiblity that men and women are somehow different.

The resulting abuse directed at Summers was heated, but it was also entirely verbal - and largely made from the protection of tenured chairs.

It therefore strikes us as great leap of logic to believe that people who can't even handle free discussion will somehow acquire the courage to face bullets. 

Faced with any kind of negative consequences, they shriek and run.

Compared to the leaders of earlier mass movements, these people are non-entities.  Instead of relying on a cadre of hardened warriors, they count on bogus soldiers and deserters who openly admit they are afraid of doing their duty.

The Posse would gladly face any number of these scum so long as we have the likes of LT Smash, Blackfive and Greyhawk at our side.

The heroes in uniform would make short work of these rabble and they know it, which is why they won't try anything.

The real danger isn't that Cindy Sheehan will lead an army of rabid peaceniks to plunder our fair nation, rather it is that they anti-war left will manage to demoralize and enervate the rest of us to such an extent that the Islamofascists will hardly have to nudge us to put us into the grave.

Who fears an army of cowards?

We haven't visited the Smallest Minority much of late, largely because we don't have a lot of time and every time we visit Kevin's site, we end up having to write a lengthy response.

His latest encyclical takes a look at mass movements and draws deeply from his ample well of pessimism.

The Posse agrees that the anti-war left has long left rationality behind and that mass movements need no real reason (in the logical sense) for being, merely a cause.

However we do not share his belief that the leftover left, pathetic anti-war movement and waning gun control lobby are either growing or of much long-term consequence.

Cindy Sheehan's 15 minutes of fame expired long ago.

Who then would lead this mass movement?  What would it do?  How would it act?

Recent years have seen Americans becoming more self-reliant.  In addition, the relaxation of gun control laws have ensured that more Americans are willing and able to protect themselves.  This makes the cost of staging an uprising prohibitively high.  As we have seen in New Orleans, ordinary law-abiding citizens can and will organize for their own defense.

This is even more important when one considers that the most disaffected members of society - the core of this "movement" - are utter cowards.  Their most impressive acts are anonymous firebombings of unguarded construction sites or university labs.

All they can bring themselves to do is carry signs and shout insults at the wounded - and even here, a modest show of opposition sends them scurrying away.

It is one thing to talk big on Kos, or Democratic Underground.  It may stroke the ego to paint American soldiers as Nazis or dredge up the pathetic "chicken hawk" slur, but when it comes down to it, most of these people - we mean the overwhelming vast majority that would form the core of any mass movement - are simply gutless.

They talk big, cheer terrorists, even make common cause with them, but one can count the number of actual volunteers on one hand.

Even the much-discussed flight to Canada after George W. Bush won re-election never happened.

It is hard to build a revolutionary movement based on people too lazy to put down the remote or step away from their p.c. 

That is why we aren't losing any sleep over this.

Are we at war?

Once again, the Posse is amazed by the reaction to the news that the NSA is listening in on international phone calls.

LT Smash's comments section provides a good summary of the anti-war movement's feelings on the matter: there's no war on, impeach the president.

What interests us in this is the utterly blindness of those involved, who clearly believe that the Bush administration poses a greater threat to them than international terrorism.

It is as if the World Trade Center, Bali, Madrid, Beslan and London attacks never took place.

Of course, given that the stated position of the Democrat Party on the war is that it has no position - and no plan to win it - we suppose we should not be surprised.

The Posse wishes that these would-be defenders of liberty could muster but one-tenth of the anger they harbor at the administration for use against the actual armed anemies of our nation.  It would be better for all of us.

A priesthood of non-believers

There are times when reality moves beyond parody.  The tide of non-belief sweeping Europe has now reached that point.

The Man Without Qualities offers this unbelievable proof of how bad things have gotten on the Continent.

Are these people serious?  What is the point of even having a church if no one believes what it preaches?  No wonder the pews are empty and that Islam is rising in Britain:  in the battle of faith, Christianity has quit the field.

The Posse is in the process of converting to our ancestral Catholicism and one of the refreshing things about it we have noted is the genuine faith we have encountered.  The Church has many faults, but at least its practitioners believe in what they say.

This reminds us of another one of the problems with Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven: he assumes that the churchmen of the 12th Century were just as jaded and agnostic as the Anglicans and Presbyterians of today.

They were not.

Religion in that era was not immune from politics, but if anything the belief in the divine was far stronger than in our skeptical age.

For all their faults, the Crusaders believed just as fervently in their cause as their Muslim opponents, yet Scott never shows Christians at prayer or in religious contemplation.  There is no mass before battle, no conditional absolution, no blessing, merely a gutless and dishwatery speech by Orlando Bloom about the virtues of multiculturalism.

No wonder the film was a flop.

Even with massive special effects and an all-star cast Europe can't make it's post-Christian vision interesting.

Why is anyone suprised that the Sunday version does any differently?

Why religion is a good thing

Typepad having returned to the land of the living, the Posse is now able to comment on this article by Mark Steyn.

Though we have nothing but the greatest respect for him, we feel he's missed a huge opportunity to set the record straight and drive a stake through the heart of the "all religions are evil, but Christianity is the worst" dogma.

Here is how he begins the article:

Peter Watson, the author of a new book called Ideas: a History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, was interviewed by the New York Times the other day, and was asked to name ‘the single worst idea in history’. He replied:

‘Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.’

Steyn does an excellent job of noting that Marxism has - in its century and a half of existance - done banner work in exceeding all previous records for slaughter and violence. 

But he fails to pick out two very easy counterarguments to the central thesis.

"Ethical monotheism" is a polite way for saying Christianity, and forcing its defenders to also defend every other faith, whether they agree with it or not. 

This allows the writer to tap into the old argument that religion has caused more wars than anything else.  Unfortunately for him, this belief is demonstrably false.

Religion doesn't cause wars - people cause wars.  The secular left has a tendency to assume that any and all people of faith are merely witless automoatons waiting to be told who to kill and what to do by their priestly masters.

In fact, religion has been essential in curbing the basic brutality of humanity.

Now the secular left has an ingrained habit of twisting facts (hence its support for gun control) but it is also monumentally ignorant of history.

Even the most cursory review of history reveals that religion is at best a minor factor in the conduct of war.

Was Carthage sacked because the Pontifex decreed it?  Did Sparta and Athens war out of a religious disagreement?

Did Rome embark on centuries of conquest and empire out of a a religious need?

In fact if one reviews the list of wars on record we find that they are predominantly about:

1. Control of territory (boundary disputes)
2. Control of resources (farm land, water)
3. Control of the state (dynastic succession)

Religions hardly factor into any of this.  Even the much-maligned Crusades were not a purely religious affair.  There were strong dynastic reasons for getting involved and strategically they were necessary to check the onslaught of Islam after the disastrous Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071.

Moving along into the "Wars of Religion," we find that once again, theology takes a back seat to traditional power politics.  That is why Catholic France (led by a Cardinal, no less) can support Protestant princes in Germany against Spain and Austria.

France also had little problem with allying with the Muslim Ottomans against Austria and the Catholic League, again demonstrating the limited reach of religion.

Indeed, for much of history, the question of the royal (or imperial) succession has been far deadlier than disputes over predestination and transubstantiation.

The second problem with Watson's idea is that it also ignores the benefits of "ethical monotheism," particularly Christianity.

If one compares the pre-Christian world with the Christian one, it is not (as some neo-pagan revisionists would have us believe) a golden age of tolerance and openness vs. one of close-minded orthodoxy, but rather a world of personal gratification vs a higher calling to goodness.

Pagan cultures were tolerant only within a narrow range of beliefs.  So long as the local gods were in tune with the accepted pantheon, they could be quite tolerant.  Hence the Greek and Egyptians were able to get along reasonably well.

However if there were serious differences, the pagans pretty much wrote the book on vengefulness and spite.  The Jews and early Christians found this out to their great sorrow.

The pagans also had no real notion of what we call "Christian charity" or forgiveness.  Everything was tempered by the pursuit of power and the needs of the world.  Gods could be bought off with sufficient sacrifice and anyway, they did pretty nasty things to each other so who were they to judge?

The gods did impose horrific punishments on those that displeased them, but this had less to do with violating universal commandments than offering a particular insult to one of them.

This fickleness only added to the blood-soaked nature of warfare and society.  The pagan world, while not wholly devoid of what we would consider virtue, was far less friendly to the oppressed and weak.

Constrast this with the historic role of the Church and its emphasis on healing and caring for the poor.

While no organization is immune to tempation and corruption, the Christian tradition has remained remarkably consistent.  Even the "evil" Crusading orders had a merciful side.  The Knights Hospitaller - who unlike the Templars remain active to this day - took a leading role in healing and caring for the poor.

(Indeed, it was partly for this reason that the Hospitallers were not suppressed: they were always short of money and when the threat of war passed, they had their hospitals to run.  The Templars, being a purely military order, got rich and dangerously bored in peacetime.)

The contributions of the Church in art, human rights and individualism cannot easily be reckoned.  To claim that monotheism is the "worst invention" is merely to be ignorant and spiteful toward a tradition and faith that is the foundation of our current enlightened society.

It is not surprising that space constraints kept Steyn from bringing this out, but we would have liked to see at least one shot pointing out that "ethical monotheism" was a damn site better than polytheism or atheism.

That is, like democracy, it is the least worst way to live or, in more postive terms, the best option we have.

The beginning of the end

Pajamas Media has wall to wall coverage of the voting in Iraq.  Sissy Willis dubs the event the "Carnival of the elections."

Over the past few weeks the Posse has been viewing World War I: the complete series on DVD.  We recieved it for Christmas last year and this time we have  paid extra attention to its treatment of post-war Europe.

This, coupled with some of our other readings convinces us that wars are invariably confused events, and their ends are seldom tidy.

The war in Iraq is winding down, at least as far as the US presence is concerned.  Despite the last-ditch efforts of Democrats to secure America's defeat, the momentum is simply too strong.  The Iraqi military is reaching a point of greater confidence and competence.

In many ways, fighting the insurgency is the easy part.  The enemy is clear, the goal is obvious: make Iraq safe for democracy.

Now comes the hard part - getting that democracy to work for its people.

World War I took on a dynamic that none of its participants expected or anticipated.  Its aftermath was so uneven and unsettled that it required another war to sort out.

Indeed, immediately after the fighting, Germany was in turmoil, and hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were stationed within its borders to enforce disarmament and reparations payments.

The successor Weimar government was notoriously unstable - leading to the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

If it is true that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, the naturally corollary is that no peace plan survives the end of the war.

This is why we can ignore the carping of weak-kneed hawks like Andrew Sullivan.  He desires perfection where none has ever existed or indeed can exist.  Democratic electoral politics by definintion are imperfect.

The Iraqis we have freed will make their own mistakes and nothing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld or any other American official can say or do will prevent this from happening. 

Iraq must now determine its own fate.  Its people will determine if the liberation brings the hoped for peace and prosperity.

We wish them the best.

UPDATE:  Austin Bay notes the institutionalized defeatism of the New York Times continues, despite the overwhelmingly positive news coming out of Iraq.

With the war virtually over, it is clear that the anti-American left will now attempt to spin the peace as a defeat.

The Posse looks forward to endless hand-wringing stories about Iraq's chronic political instability, unworkable coalitions, flawed system of government and of course rampant human rights violations.

Iraq's political failures will daily be features stories to demonstrate the foolishness of ever invading.

Meanwhile, Syria's brutal dictatorship will recieve not a word of criticism.  The House of Sa'ud's dungeons will be utterly ignored and the "Cult of Stability" will extol the virtues of working with Iran's sham democracy.

If war is merely the extention of politics by other means, the decreasing violence merely means that war has entered a new phase.  The gradual return of US soldiers is cause for celebration but not complacency. 

The end of the war in Iraq is finally in sight.  The war about the war Iraq is just beginning.

Bush's political courage

The Posse generally agrees with Vodkapundit , despite the fact that we cordially dislike vodka in almost all its incarnations.

Unfortunately his lates post has the time frame jacked up.

Writing in response to a Ralph Peters column that predicts an American troop draw down - whether or not it is justfied by facts on the ground, Stephen Green states:

Don't try and tell me that Bush would never do such a thing, because he already has - delaying Second Fallujah until after his reelection was secured. That politically-savvy blunder cost American and Iraqi lives. In fact, the only reason I supported Bush over Kerry was that in the broad sense, President Kerry probably wouldn't have waged a Second Fallujah, anywhere, ever.[Emphasis added]

But this is quite clearly not true.

Bush didn't delay the counterattack until his reelection was assured.  Far from it, he sent US troops into battle during the crisis point of the campaign.

Bush had the option to postpone the conquest of Samarra and Fallujah until after the election altogether.  He did not, giving the anti-war movement a surge in casualties to use against his administration. As we noted at the time:

A lesser president would have flinched from the challenge, viewed it as an unnecessary risk. Too much could go wrong, too many bad things could happen.

George W. Bush is not such a man. That is why, despite several disagreements, the Posse stands firmly behind him. He is in this thing to win.

In terms of political courage, there can be no question that the man has it to spare.

Here is the Real Clear Politics rolling average poll from the election.  By October, Bush was losing support and Kerry was closing the gap.  The conventional media story was that Kerry would finish strong and close the deal.

If Bush really was that timid, why would he remind voters of the earlier defeat at Fallujah at precisely the point where he was at his weakest?

Fair-weather hawks like Andrew Sullivan were already bolting from the GOP tent, and the battle in Fallujah gave them renewed opportunities to point out how the administration had screwed things up.

This renewed focus on Iraq - and possible mistakes there - was no doubt what led to the abortive NYT hit piece on Al Qaqaa.

This is basically the opposite of what Vodkapundit alleges.  Normally we respect him, but in this case his facts are simply muddled.