MANY NEW POSTS ON MY WEBSITE

Well, "new" in that I just put them there, though most of them are actually between a few months and a few years old. Still, I'll advertise them a bit.

Some of them are posted in a fairly decent-looking blue-and-white format. Others are old web pages that I made in February with a hideous color scheme. Check out one just to see how hideous it is, then jump back. The content of some of these articles is good, but probably not enough to justify the suffering a reader will endure because of the awful color scheme. One of these days I'll go back and adapt those to the blue-and-white color scheme. You can read them then.

ARTICLES WITH THE NICE COLOR SCHEME

On the Iraq war, "WMDs Don't Matter, Stupid" and "Robin Hood Imperialism" make the case for war in fairly similar terms, though one was written early in 2004 and one late in 2002. Frankly, events on the ground have never really been such as to change the original case for war. An excerpt from "WMDs Don't Matter:"

The absence of WMDs doesn’t affect the case for the war as a liberation. They don’t affect the case for war as a way to prevent the threat of a nuclear Saddam without killing children. Nor, be it noted, do they affect the legal case for war, since Saddam did fail to cooperate with the inspectors, even if he had nothing much to hide. They undermine the claim that Saddam was an “imminent threat,” but that claim was not made. Maybe some of the American people thought it was made. Maybe some of the American people believed it. Maybe some of the American people thought that that was the only reason we were going to war. There’s a word for those people. Stupid. But the case for war was not stupid. It was subtle, varied, profound, noble, visionary, decisive and as far as I’m concerned, irrefutable for informed people of conscience (of which, as the episode sadly revealed, there are precious few).

"Robin Hood Imperialism" is an article with huge ramifications. Here's the crux (and read the whole thing if you want more context):

But what about international law? Even some who are entertaining the idea of war in Iraq, such as French President Jacques Chirac, argue that “there are rules,” that the US can’t be allowed to just run amok and take out anybody it wants. The appeal to international law is usually made in reverent tones, an appeal to a higher moral authority. It’s like Gulliver and the Lilliputians. The US is so much bigger than anyone else that in practical terms there’s not much they can do to stop us, but they try to use the threads and needles of treaties and resolutions and inspections to neutralize our military strength and tie us safely to the ground.

The term “international law” implies some sort of world constitution. Is there such a constitution? Nobody in Texas has heard of it, certainly. But we can say by now that there is a world constitution, based on treaties, conventions, laws, comprised in organizations like the WTO and the World Bank, but above all in the UN. The due processes of this world constitution were on display, for example, when “peacekeeping” forces were sent to free East Timor from Indonesia.

So there is a world constitution of sorts, and what’s more, it’s a pretty lousy one. Take the General Assembly: it is admirably “democratic,” one-country-one-vote, whether that country has a billion or a million. Petty dictators have as many votes as the Western democracies. But then, maybe this is all right since the General Assembly is pretty powerless. More important is the Security Council, which has the opposite problem: in a concession to the realpolitik of long ago, the US, France, Russia, Britain and China sit permanently on the Council and wield mighty vetoes over all its actions. It is in these vetoes that Saddam Hussein hopes for salvation. The UN has very strict rules against inter-state aggression but none about how states may treat their own people. So while the world constitution has a “democratic,” or at least consultative, skin, its core is Hobbesian. Whoever takes power may keep it, even if he is a genocidal (though, admittedly, only on occasion) tyrant like Saddam Hussein. If no one manages to, you can no longer import order from your neighbors by being conquered: instead, enter the failed state, where life is nasty, brutish and short. Don’t forget human rights conventions, either—they allow free countries to preen themselves on their virtue, while obligating dictators (who, in Julius Caesar’s day, used to be fairly honest) to engage in more hypocrisy. Enforcement seems not to be the point: many human rights groups opposed even the war in world-champion human-rights-abuser Afghanistan, and hardly any signatories of human rights conventions back a war against Iraq, the best hope of Iraqis gaining the rights to free speech and the vote.

Coming from the plains of Texas, as a man uncorrupted by intellectual subtlety, you can understand why Bush has troubled grasping why exactly this “international community” is seen as a source of higher moral authority.

Of the two blue-and-white articles on Europe, "In Defense of the French" (hehe, oh yeah!! ;) is more worth reading than "Allies Worth Keeping."

"The Democrats Cry Wolf" is a good dismissla of the Democrats' unwarranted and self-serving gloom about the economy over the past few years. Voice of common sense on the economy, and casts a few aspersions on the Democrats' character. And... here's the proof that I actually did back (or consider backing) Edwards earlier this year, which proves my perfect nonpartisan objectivity in deciding that Bush would be a much better president than Kerry. No, just kidding. An excerpt from "A Strange Endorsement of Edwards":

Yet the good times don’t feel that good. We don’t have the sense, as we did in the late 1990s, that we’re in the midst of a Golden Age. Why not? Because the intelligentsia (journalists, academics, and so on) has taken it into their heads that Bush is all sorts of nasty things; corrupt, a fascist, a pawn of corporate interests, “unilateral,” and so on. The intelligentsia, you know, is sensitive, vain, stubborn, and easily outraged when it doesn’t get its way. Right now it is in a very grumpy mood. And by being so grumpy, even in good times, the intelligentsia spoils it for all of us. They’re so articulate, they control the media, it gets to the point where just for being happy with the present, hopeful for the future, and supportive of the administration, you’re some kind of pig. It doesn’t matter how good your arguments are. In most social settings where the intelligentsia are present, arguing in favor of Bush is not considered appropriate. Bush supporters must know their place: to keep quiet, or to state their opinions and be seen as a pig.

That’s why the idea of John Edwards for president is appealing. I disagree with him on some issues, particularly trade; but at least with someone else in the White House, the intelligentsia would hopefully be less grumpy, and quit spoiling it for the rest of us.

But I won't extend the same favor to John Kerry. For starters, his disdain for Bush seems calculated to insult those who have been Bush supporters (whom Edwards might be able to seduce); but there's a million more reasons that Kerry would have far less chance to get my support than anyone else in the Democratic field. (Lieberman-Edwards, I'd vote for; even Dean-Gephardt might have a chance; but John Kerry is a bad man.)