I was just watching Crimson Tide on tv and there was a mention of the famous dictum by the Prussian general, military historian, and theorist Carl von Clausewitz: “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”
There is a profound truth in that dictum. It identifies shared characteristics of statist politics and war: anti-social conflict, some imposing their will on others, destruction and redistribution of wealth, etc. When statist political means fail to have the desired result and recourse is made to naked war, the true character of both the aggressors and the statist political process is revealed.
But I think that von Clausewitz got it backwards; the observation would have been more profound and true had he written instead: “Statist politics is the continuation of war by other means.”
Ballots replace bullets within the democratic state but conflict persists with special interest groups vying for the reins of power so that they can use the perceived legitimacy of the state to impose their will on each other. Beneath the sophisms that grant the state legitimacy there lies the same threat or use of initiatory violence that is present in war. Open war is traded for the illusion of peace.
Update 12/11/07: Might this quote from Ronald Reagan touch upon a similar insight? “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
ORLANDO, Fla. — An argument that erupted between several Indian men during a cricket match in Orlando led to a shooting that seriously injured one of the players, according to police. Sunday, November 4, 2007.
Officers said Singh apparently became involved in a fight and threatened Devan Bascom, 37, with a cricket bat.
Police said Bascom then pulled a small semi-automatic gun and fired at Singh, hitting him at least once.
“The shooter was defending himself from an attack with a cricket bat which is simlar to a baseball bat but it’s flat,” Orange County sheriff’s Sgt. Spike Hopkins said. “For this man to bring a firearm to a sporting event is odd but then again, he has the right to do so. He has a concealed weapons permit and if, in fact, he was protecting himself, he was authorized by law to do so.”
Hat tip to Dick Clark for bringing this to my attention.
Well, I’ve finally completed the first draft of my first dissertation chapter, chapter two (chapter one being the introduction which I will write later). This is the central chapter of the dissertation. I’m hoping to get it published as a separate journal article as well. The working title is “Eudaimonia, Virtue, and the Right to Liberty.” Comments welcome. For more information about my dissertation, see this post.
Abstract
The paper is a dissertation chapter. It seeks to build on the work of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in developing an Aristotelian liberalism, which holds that the right to liberty is a metanormative principle necessary for protecting the possibility of self-direction, a necessary condition for all forms of eudaimonia (human well-being, flourishing, happiness). Contra Rasmussen and Den Uyl, however, it will be argued that rights are first and foremost a set of interpersonal moral principles the respecting of which is a necessary and constitutive part of human flourishing. The natural right to liberty is a normative safeguard for that feature common to all forms of human flourishing and necessary for moral agency as such: self-direction. For an action to count as virtuous, and therefore constitutive of a life of well-being, it needs be chosen not only because it is right and good but chosen freely and because we desire it. As rational, political, and social animals we ought to conduct our common affairs through public discourse, rational persuasion, and voluntary cooperation rather than through violence or the threat thereof. Liberty and respecting the equal liberty of others are thus essential and constitutive parts of one’s own eudaimonia. Rights-violating behavior not only infringes on or destroys the moral agency of the patient but also harms the well-being of the agent.
I’ve got a couple of months worth of gun updates to catch up on.
I joined the Eastern Nebraska Gun Club on October 15th. I haven’t been able to go shoot there yet, but I’m planning on going this weekend. There’s a monthly USPSA Practical Pistol match and an HP Rifle Silhouette match on Sunday. I’m thinking of going to watch. Not sure if the pistol match will take up all of the pistol ranges or not.
I bought a 135-count case of clay pigeons for $9 and a clay target thrower for about $25 to practice trap shooting with my shotgun. I’ll probably give it a shot this weekend on the trap range.
In September I took and passed a concealed carry course given by Omaha Concealed Carry. I had a good time and learned a few things.
By now I’ve fired off another few hundred rounds of 9mm through my pistol since the last time I posted an update (not all at once though). Not a single FTE (failure to extract), which gives me far more confidence in my Taurus PT111. I think it is finally broken in, or it likes the ammo I’m using better, or I’m cleaning it better, or I’m handling the recoil better, or some combination of these. Oh, and it also turns out that the reason my pistol was shooting low was me, not the gun. My CCW instructor noticed I was anticipating recoil, jerking the trigger and therefore the muzzle downward before the shot went off. I’ll have to work on that.
For eye candy, to tide you over until I post pictures of my guns, here are two targets I shot with #3 buck at 20 ft. One target took 10 shells, the other 15. Not bad for my first time shooting my shotgun, eh? The bigger holes you see in odd places are the shot wad or shot cup following the buckshot into the target.
I have uploaded a brief essay giving my interpretation of the relationship between values and virtues in Rand’s though. It was written to fulfill the writing assignment of the TAS/TOC 2007 Grad Student Summer Seminar I attended in August. Enjoy.
A disturbing excerpt from a speech that Giuliani delivered in 1994:
What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
