Texas Fred is understandably livid over the manner in which the msm treats the soldiers. He notes this in a recent posting to his blog. For those unaware of his site, Texas Fred's weblog is a somewhat regular read for your weblog host. In some respects Texas Fred reminds me of an old neighbour of mine years ago -a very tough veteran who actually earned his purple hearts and other medals.{1} I reviewed the above posting from Texas Fred and I share his lividness though not because of the title of the article -well not exactly anyway.

I am among the last people to defend the msm but with this posting I will make at least a slight exception to that rule. This is done because I do not believe media stories are always titled by their writers. I have heard of a number of cases where the writer of the story was not the author of the title -this happens with articles and even (sometimes) with books. I am not sure if this happened here or now but it may have; ergo my reason for noting it here.

In reviewing the story briefly, it is evident that the title of the story should include the assassination of Adbul-Sattar Abu Risha because that is what 75% of the story is about. But they know they cannot manipulate the American readers with that kind of report so they mentioned the deaths of four US soldiers as the eye-catcher.

Texas Fred is right that the mentions of the soldiers in the article are for the most part flippant and showing an obvious lack of respect for them.{2} I am not sure though that his criticisms of the title of the article are on track though for reasons noted above. Nonetheless, I recommend giving the article a read because a good chunk of his commentary resonates with how I view the msm on the matter of their coverage of the situation in Iraq.

Notes:

{1} Unlike John F-word Kerry.

{2} And that the msm (along with so many of their willing accomplices in other media outlets) is so evidently wanting to see us fail in Iraq. It is a case of agendas over national security and the safety of the American people and that sort of thing is beyond repugnant to me.

Points to Ponder:
(On Avoiding Rash Judgment)

DO NOT yield to every impulse and suggestion but consider things carefully and patiently in the light of God's will. For very often, sad to say, we are so weak that we believe and speak evil of others rather than good. Perfect men, however, do not readily believe every talebearer, because they know that human frailty is prone to evil and is likely to appear in speech.

Not to act rashly or to cling obstinately to one's opinion, not to believe everything people say or to spread abroad the gossip one has heard, is great wisdom. [Thomas a Kempis (circa 1418)]

How Wives Can Kill Their Marriage: Part One

How Wives Can Kill Their Marriage: Part Two

How Wives Can Kill Their Marriage: The Final Straw

With the anniversary of 9/11 upon us, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of the importance of Santayana's dictum on history as it applies to the subject or war

Points to Ponder:

(On Civility in Argument and Proper Dialogue)

Barbarism likewise threatens when men cease to talk together according to reasonable laws. There are laws of argument, the observance of which is imperative if discourse is to be civilized. Argument ceases to be civil when it is dominated by passion and prejudice . . . when dialogue gives way to a series of monologues . . . when the parties to the conversation cease to listen to one another, or hear only what they want to hear, or see the other's argument only through the screen of their own categories; when defiance is flung to the basic ontological principle of all ordered discourse, which asserts that Reality is an analogical structure, within which there are variant modes of reality, to each of which there corresponds a distinctive method of thought that imposes on argument its own special rules. When things like this happen, men cannot be locked together in argument. Conversation becomes merely quarrelsome or querulous. Civility dies with the death of the dialogue. [John Courtney Murray, SJ]

"From the Mailbag" Dept.
(On Distributivism)

The emailer's words will be in darkgreen font.

Shawn,

I wanted to share some thoughts on your recent posts regardind distributivism. I do not consider myself a distributivist. My observations do not really come from reading Chesterton or Belloc. My observations come more from my time reading about a 19th century strains of libertarianism known as mutualism and georgism, which seem to have some (at least facial) simialrity to distributivism.

Ok.

I think that reading through the dialogue, the main issue is what constitutes "property" and what constitutes "theft". How was property first obtained? If a person made a fense and said "all land herein is mine", is that necessarily his property?

This is a very good question. Ultimately we either operate under a rule of law or a rule of the jungle. I for one prefer the rule of law with the caveat that the rule of law does not precede the fundamental rights of man. Nor are the fundamental rights of man derived from law. Instead they are God-given.{1} Property can change hands in a variety of ways and there is a variety of what can be constituted as "property" with land but one facet of the equation.{2}

Then they found other people and paid them to work the land, and took the produce of the work. Some would say that this is theft of the product of the worker who was prevented from owning the land he works because someone else who never worked the land found some way to claim the property as his.

The problem with your analysis would appear to lie in the idea that ownership depends on the individual or their family physically working the land. If this is applied across the entire spectrum of what constitutes "property" without arbitrary constrictions on the matter as you will undoubtedly do (even if you are not conscious of doing it), then there is not and cannot be ownership of anything whatsoever.

According to mutualists such as Benjamin Tucker, one cannot own property that one does not personally occupy or use.

This analysis implies that one has to make use of what they own and therefore they do not really own it. Ownership involves the right to make use of what is owned in the manner the owner determines. There are obviously some limitations to this approach{3} but morally not many.

Once you justly obtain possession of land, it is yours, and any charge of rent is plunder and theft.

Then it is not yours. If it was then if you want to charge others who want to make use (within certain limits) of your land, what are you plundering from them??? The answers is: nothing. Plunder involves taking from others what is not yours and giving it to someone else. If there is an agreement between you and me for you to work my land for a fee that you pay me, there is no plunder. Or as Claude Frederic Bastiat noted in The Law:

[H]ow is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. [Excerpt from The Law (circa 1850) as quoted in a Rerum Novarum posting (circa May 7, 2005)]

How does one identify "just possession" in your view of things??? Furthermore, if you own the land, how are you plundering those who want to make use of your land by paying you for the privilege to do so (within certain limits)???

Illegal plunder is if you steal my property and either keep it or give it to someone else. Legal plunder is the same thing except with the government doing it. Either way plunder is heinous and contrary to a fundamental right of man. But if you agree to pay me for the privilege of using my property, there is no plunder because you have given consent to pay me to use my property and I have given my consent for you to do so. As long as what we are doing does not break any legitimate laws (such as me allowing you to use my property to set up a crack house), there is nothing illegal or immoral in what we would be doing.

I will go to the example that is mentioned in the post. That is where the twenty families owned all of Taiwan, and then there was land reform. According to your theory such land reform is plunder and theft.

Not necessarily. It depends on how it is gone about. If the government stole the property and gave it to someone else, that is plunder which is theft. If however, I of my own choice gave you some of my property, there is no plunder involved at all because I acted of my own free choice on the matter with my own property in giving it to you.

However, I think that the distributivists and mutualists may have a plausable claim that the fact that twenty families owned all of Taiwan is in itself plunder and theft of property belionging to others.

This is a presupposition they do not bother to prove. Barring certain legitimate enactions of eminent domain,{3} those families have a right to their property. If they owned the property then there is no plunder whatsoever if they consent to either sell or give it to someone else.

The paragraph of Leo's enciclycal that seems to be bantered about so much starts with the sentence expressing the sentiment that every person has the right to own land.

Yes but this does not mean they have the right to take someone else's land or have someone else take it and give it to them.

However, if twenty people own all the land in Taiwan, nobody else on the island has the right to own any land without their permission.

You assume that they are stuck on Taiwan and cannot go elsewhere. My ancestors were not allowed to own land either in Ireland or the Ukraine. They solved that problem by moving to a place where they were able to acquire land of their own in various legitimate ways.

Once I was a very traditional type of American Libertarian. I read Friedman, Rothbard, and Rand (not exactly Catholic, I know).

I am not going to criticize you for that. I have read a lot of sources on various subjects and not all of them are Catholic either. Frankly, most of what passes for "economics" written by Catholics I do not find very inspiring or impressive. Catholic writers can be quite good at outlining broad principles which are important for considering when looking into a panoply of issues. However, when it comes to application, some of it leaves a lot to be desired for a variety of reasons too numerous to go into here.

However, eventually I came to realize that a landlord, in a way, is a government.

This is true; however it is also false. Governments are institutions established by man but the right to property is a fundamental right from God. It is because of the fundamental rights of man that governments were established to begin with: to protect those rights from usurpation by others.

If twenty people own all the land in Taiwan, they might as well be the government. They can tell everyone else what to do because it is their land!

Within certain limits, yes but only on their own property.

So much for freedom!

You have a few presuppositions to your outlook here which I want to highlight briefly. First of all, you are presuming that there is a finite pie here. (Taiwan is not the only land on earth.) Second, you are presuming that there is no freedom involved here for these people to go elsewhere -essentially you are saying they have to stay where they are indefinitely. Are they somehow constrained from moving???

While I have much sympathy for your view, I am beginning to see that theories such as distributivism (and similar theories) may have much more plausibility.

So stealing from someone to give to another person "may have much more plausibility" to you??? That is a disturbing thought because if you do not defend the fundamental rights of man, then everything else is arbitrary. Either there are certain fundamental rights which are God-given and which governments are established to protect or all rights are derived from government. You have implied support for the latter and that is the seed from which all totalitarianist forms of government grow. I hope you are willing to reconsider that in your assessment of these matters.

Notes:

{1} A Collection of Threads on Claude Frederic Bastiat's Theory of the Three Fundamental Rights of Man and the Role of Law in a Just Society -Spanning October 31, 2003 through January 5, 2007 (circa January 19, 2007)

There is also a link in that posting to a similar thread collection from August 25, 2002 through October 30, 2003.

{2} There is by some categorizations three types of property: real property (land), personal property (other items), and intellectual property.

{3} This is a matter which requires significant care because of the rampant abuse that can come about by it. However, there is some rationale where it can be properly utilized and I noted one such example in one of the previous threads on distributivism earlier this year:

A person can do with their property what they like within certain limits. One of those limits is what is called the "common good" which Bastiat recognized at least implicitly in his 1850 synthesis. Another is a concept that did not explicitly exist in Bastiat's time but which is a Catholic principle incorporated into Dignitatis Humanae and that is what is called "just public order." The latter is an objective verifying criteria to balance out the criteria of "common good" which to some extent (and taken by itself) is prone to subjectivist rationale.[...]

For example, if I wanted to build a nuclear reactor on my property (assuming I could), the state would have a right to deny me my project because of the endangering of the common good of my neighbours under what can be called "just public order" resulting from my endeavour. However, if the state wanted to take my property and give it to Walmart to build another super mall, that would be a violation of my right to property and a perversion of law. The reason for the latter is it would be the taking of private property to sell to another party which does not involve the common good but instead the enrichment of the latter party at the expense of the former. At least in the extraordinary circumstances in which eminent domain can be justified the beneficiary in question is the public at large. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa May 31, 2007)]

Excerpts from Classic Writings:
(Claude Frederic Bastiat's 1850 Opus Economic Harmonies)

Let us take a man belonging to a modest class in society, a village cabinetmaker, for example, and let us observe the services he renders to society and receives in return. This man spends his day planing boards, making tables and cabinets; he complains of his status in society, and yet what, in fact, does he receive from this society in exchange for his labor? The disproportion between the two is tremendous.

Every day, when he gets up, he dresses; and he has not himself made any of the numerous articles he puts on. Now, for all these articles of clothing, simple as they are, to be available to him, an enormous amount of labor, industry, transportation, and ingenious invention has been necessary. Americans have had to produce the cotton; Indians, the dye; Frenchmen, the wool and the flax; Brazilians, the leather; and all these materials have had to be shipped to various cities to be processed, spun, woven, dyed, etc.

Next, he breakfasts. For his bread to arrive every morning, farm lands have had to be cleared, fenced in, ploughed, fertilized, planted; the crops have had to be protected from theft; a certain degree of law and order has had to reign over a vast multitude of people; wheat has had to be harvested, ground, kneaded, and prepared; iron, steel, wood, stone have had to be converted by industry into tools of production; certain men have had to exploit the strength of animals, others the power of a waterfall, etc.—all things of which each one by itself alone presupposes an incalculable output of labor not only in space, but in time as well.

In the course of the day this man consumes a little sugar and a little olive oil, and uses a few utensils.

He sends his son to school to receive instruction, which, though limited, still presupposes on the part of his teachers research, previous study, and a store of knowledge that startles one's imagination.

He leaves his house: he finds his street paved and lighted.

His ownership of a piece of property is contested: he finds lawyers to plead his rights, judges to reaffirm them, officers of the law to execute the judgment. These men, too, have had to acquire extensive and costly knowledge in order to defend and protect him.

He goes to church: it is a prodigious monument, and the book that he brings with him is perhaps an even more prodigious monument of human intelligence. He is taught morals, his mind is enlightened, his soul is elevated; and for all this to be done, still another man has had to have professional training, to have frequented libraries and seminaries, to have drawn knowledge from all the sources of human tradition, and to have lived the while without concerning himself directly with his bodily needs.

If our artisan takes a trip, he finds that, to save him time and lessen his discomfort, other men have smoothed and leveled the ground, filled in the valleys, lowered the mountains, spanned the rivers, and, to reduce their friction, placed wheeled cars on blocks of sandstone or iron rails, tamed horses or steam, etc.

It is impossible not to be struck by the disproportion, truly incommensurable, that exists between the satisfactions this man derives from society and the satisfactions that he could provide for himself if he were reduced to his own resources. I make bold to say that in one day he consumes more things than he could produce himself in ten centuries.

What makes the phenomenon stranger still is that the same thing holds true for all other men. Every one of the members of society has consumed a million times more than he could have produced; yet no one has robbed anyone else. If we examine matters closely, we perceive that our cabinetmaker has paid in services for all the services he has received. He has, in fact, received nothing that he did not pay for out of his modest industry; all those ever employed in serving him, at any time or in any place, have received or will receive their remuneration.

So ingenious, so powerful, then, is the social mechanism that every man, even the humblest, obtains in one day more satisfactions than he could produce for himself in several centuries.

Revisiting the Absurd "Chickenhawk" Purported "Argument" and on the Odds of a Military Draft Anytime Soon:

My interlocuter's words (with only the most minor of modifications to remove the parties addressed originally) will be in darkgreen font and pertains to a subject discussed in a forum over a month ago.

[I]f invading Pakistan brings down the Musharraf government, then what? We'll likely end up with an Al Qaeda-dominated government with a full nuclear arsenal.

Where is anyone talking about overthrowing the Musharraf government??? The talk about military endeavours in Pakistan (and that is all it is) involves assisting the Musharaaf government in dealing with Al Qaeda operatives should they actually be in northern Pakistan as is believed to be the case right now.

In light of certain major examples of worldwide intelligence snafus with regards to the Iraqi situation pre-war, it is not likely they are going to jump too quickly on this one if they can help it. And any military involvement is not likely to be extensive but instead smaller special forces stuff or (perhaps) targeted bombing campaigns.

Unless of course we invade Pakistan in toto. This would, of course, require tons more troops.

I do not seen anything akin to a massive invasion of Pakistan happening anytime soon. Not (at least) until things are a lot more stable in Afghanistan and Iraq than they are now and troops are taken out of there. (That does not rule out using small special forces units of course.)

I hope you, [Vvvvvv], and the rest of the Laptop Bombardiers are ready to sign up

Do we have to listen to this fallacious argument again??? There is enough of a problem keeping those who in overt and covert ways undermine the projects in Afghanistan and Iraq at bay as it is already. The idea that every person who supports a military excursion should be willing to register to fight -assuming that they all would pass the military physical and general evaluation which is a stretch and a half in itself- would mean that the home front would be left to every fifth columnist seditionist without challenge to thereby poison the home front and thus weaken military morale.

If we should have learned anything from Vietnam -a war won on the battlefront but lost in the halls of Congress due to the influence of the marxist sponsored "antiwar" movement- it is what happens when there is a loss of support on the home front.{1}

Should that scenario you seem to want to see happen, I hope you like chanting in Arabic facing Mecca five times a day amigo -cause refusing would get you a dull blade being sawed through your throat while you are told in chant how "great" Allah is.

rather than blithely sending those of us of draftable age

The last draft we had in this country ended in 1973 and even with Selective Service there has not been an attempt to enforce it since the mid 1980's. (Probably before you were born.) There is no support in the public for it and there is no support amongst the legislators for it either -well except for those who are trying to play politics with the war.

The bottom line son is that there is no draft and there is not likely to be one anytime soon. I remind you that the last congressional motion to institute a draft for this war -and which was only brought to the floor for a vote to shut up the Democrats who tried to make it a political issue in 2004- was voted on October 5, 2004 and was defeated in the House 402-2.

into the Valley of Death for your grand End to Evil theories.

My concern that we are entering another Dark Ages of people who do not understand reason logic and how to use it properly is not helped when I consider how may young folks today parrot antiwar slogans and think that they are in doing so somehow speaking intelligently.

I doubt you will bother to take seriously informing yourself from sources apart from the kool-aid you are drinking courtesy of the geopolitically-challenged Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers. But take heart, you need not worry about being drafted anytime soon as the party that endorsed re instituting the draft would commit a form of political hari kari.

There is a resolution in the House right now which was introduced by Rep. Rangel of New York six days into the Pelosi-controlled House of Representatives. You can follow it by googling HR 393. I doubt anything will come out of it because most introduced bills die in committee anyway. I kinda hope it does pick up steam so that the Republicans can make it an election issue in 2008: then watch how many candidates run from this issue like a vampire fleeing a crucifix.

Note:

{1} This subject has been covered from time to time on this weblog most recently prior to this posting in this thread.

I mentioned recently that I was working on a sports posting. This is not that posting. However, as the Mariners have lost 11 of their last 12 games, I am predicting as of tonight that they are finished this year as a playoffs contender{1}. I hate to say it but it is what it is -at least Seahawk football starts tomorrow that is all I will say on these matters for now.

Note:

{1} My normal prognosticating accuracy is inverted when it comes to sports predictions. (Meaning, unlike with other subjects, with sports I am wrong a lot more often than I am right.) If the M's want to prove me wrong on this, they can be my guest and I would gladly eat crow. But barring a miracle, that is not going to happen so this prediction is a pretty safe one.