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.
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.
ReplyDeleteYeah. When he started talking about the "state monopoly on violence" I thought to myself, "Hey! THAT's what G. Eyclesheimer Ernst looks like!
ReplyDeleteWell, unless we're talking about Africa.
ReplyDeleteThen they'll quite happily hack, burn, drown, impale, starve, etc tens to hundreds of thousands of people without any flags, uniforms, votes, etc.
Of the many things "the state" should NOT have a monopoly on, violence ranks first.
ReplyDeleteI'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
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.
ReplyDeleteWhat 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
Anon 9:35,
ReplyDeleteSadly, 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.
Interestingly, I'm reminded of that guy you posted about a few weeks back, who runs Necrometrics.com.
ReplyDeleteIn 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.
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!"
ReplyDeleteMassacre seems to be the natural result of a leadership beset by two afflictions: A crisis of security and a lack of responsibility.
ReplyDeleteAn 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.
Wilhelm Durand,
ReplyDelete"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?
Hahah. Oh English, you so crazy.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies for the pronoun ambiguity.
If you think that "pronoun ambiguity" has led to me misinterpreting your point, you merely prove mine.
ReplyDeleteQuick! The Phantom Menace is showing on HBO! There may be deep revelations of Sith philosophy you've missed!
Dood! The intended purpose of humans is to copulate until they pass out.
ReplyDeletePity you didn't pay more attention to cardio.
I think he meant using the grain threshers for their intended use, not humans.
ReplyDeleteYeah, 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDelete...So inferior as to make it impossible for him to defend his self, community, or his ideals from the marching Stormtroopers.
Usually, people who are into the repulsive fraud of PUA are also people who sneer at the notion of inherent rights.
ReplyDeleteGee, I wonder why that might be?