Friday, December 02, 2011

Way Of The Gun

In a video posted at Unc's, the commander of the Dutch Army gives an interesting speech, which is worth listening to if you have a few minutes, despite being very alien to my ears. (Worth noting is the visceral reaction of the audience when they realize they are in the same room as a real, live gun.)

Still, the embrace of government violence as something that protects good people from bad guys is a two-edged sword, as I noted in comments:
Central governments have managed to turn murder from a hobby pursued at home by individual craftsmen into a wholesale industry churning out slipshod and substandard corpses in numbers that can’t be read without sounding like Carl Sagan.
Even the worst serial killer has to operate at a retail level; you need uniforms and flags and stylish logos to go truly wholesale.

18 comments:

Bram said...

He has me until about halfway through. Then he starts talking about a "state monopoly on violence" legitimized by democracy. At that point, I thought I was listening to a third world dictator.

Kevin Baker said...

Yeah. When he started talking about the "state monopoly on violence" I thought to myself, "Hey! THAT's what G. Eyclesheimer Ernst looks like!

Anonymous said...

Well, unless we're talking about Africa.

Then they'll quite happily hack, burn, drown, impale, starve, etc tens to hundreds of thousands of people without any flags, uniforms, votes, etc.

Boat Guy said...

Of the many things "the state" should NOT have a monopoly on, violence ranks first.
I'm OK with "the state" establishing weights and measures and I think the Patent Office is kinda nifty, but after that I quickly start running short of things "the state" should do at all, much less exclusively

Duke said...

It was interesting however he indicated that governments should be the ones to control guns and slammed countries where there are guns in the streets.

Panamared said...

What is it about the Swiss example that the rest of Europe does not understand. Yes it is true that part of Switzerland's ability to stay neutral is based in there terrain, but without a willingness and the training necessary to defend that terrain the Germans would have overrun the Swiss as quickly as they did the rest of Europe.

I understand that the shooting sports are no longer held in as high a regard as they once were by the Swiss, I hope that doesn't come back to bite them in the future.

Tam said...

Anon 9:35,

Sadly, while there was no lack of organization of the spontaneous sort in the most recent attempts by sub-Saharan tribes to get on the leaderboard, that very spontaneity proved their undoing.

Apparently it's just harder to get into the rhythm of genocide when it's set to the inanaga as opposed to the violin or jinghu.

karrde said...

Interestingly, I'm reminded of that guy you posted about a few weeks back, who runs Necrometrics.com.

In his opinion, the title for bloodiest century in recorded history is split pretty closely between the 17th Century and the 20th Century.

However, the Thirty Years War was another instance of governments turning death-and-destruction into a wholesale business.

Takashi Sheffield said...

Ju-sus, that speech just got increasingly repugnant as it went along. He may as well have ended it with a shout of "Civilize them with a Krag!"

WilhelmDurand said...

Massacre seems to be the natural result of a leadership beset by two afflictions: A crisis of security and a lack of responsibility.

An insecure leader, especially one that was democratically elected or rose to power in a populist organization, is much more likely than a secure one to eliminate large swaths of their constituency. Stalin is a marvelous example of this.

I would make the analogy: You can, of course, feed people to grain threshers. You can also use them for their intended purpose.

Tam said...

Wilhelm Durand,

"You can also use them for their intended purpose."

Oh, please, you Star Wars-quotin' Starcraft nerd!

Do enlighten us all on what the "intended purpose" is for humans. A Zerg rush?

WilhelmDurand said...

Hahah. Oh English, you so crazy.

My apologies for the pronoun ambiguity.

Tam said...

If you think that "pronoun ambiguity" has led to me misinterpreting your point, you merely prove mine.

Quick! The Phantom Menace is showing on HBO! There may be deep revelations of Sith philosophy you've missed!

Roberta X said...

Dood! The intended purpose of humans is to copulate until they pass out.

Pity you didn't pay more attention to cardio.

Cybrludite said...

I think he meant using the grain threshers for their intended use, not humans.

Tam said...

Yeah, I've been reading through his blog. It's a delightful mishmash of frustrated PUA nonsense and The World Just Doesn't Understand My Genius weltschmertz that some just never grow out of.

RL said...

I noticed the general's beloved strait-shootin' father learned to shoot on a farm (presumably with his own gun) and that the State compelled him to fiddle on a fiddle that was inferior to the fiddle he had back home.

...So inferior as to make it impossible for him to defend his self, community, or his ideals from the marching Stormtroopers.

js said...

Usually, people who are into the repulsive fraud of PUA are also people who sneer at the notion of inherent rights.

Gee, I wonder why that might be?