That is a great article, thanks for sharing.

I've been making similar arguments, though not nearly as eloquently, at Stross' war discussion page. That was great ammunition.

http://www.quicktopic.com/16/H/3bvnVhUbcmVKJ

The view that a dictator can commit any atrocities that strike his fancy so long as he keeps it in his demense is a classically liberal one Bill?

Maybe I need to reread On Liberty and The Persian Letters.

Jason -

DEAN'S statement critiquing the UN is "classically liberal."

I apologize for my evidently challenging implicitness. Post modified.

I just finished reading the essay "Democratic Peace Lost and Found" by Rummel which makes a compelling distinction between the classic liberalism of our founders' era and the variants modern liberalism which are dominant today. In this view, the more post-modern the liberalism, the more leftist the political view. I wonder if we are better served by reclaiming the original idea of liberalism and enforcing the distinction. There is a certain sanitation in stripping the post modern absolutists of the benevolent identity that belongs to classic liberalism. We might do well to neuter the koolaid drinking absolutists on both sides of the political isle. Absolutism is no more a conservative value than it is a liberal one.

Perhaps I'm just dense today.

Well, Dean makes a good point... except that it's completely fallacious and utterly without merit, that is. Either Dean has a total lack of understanding about the way international politics works (which, having read his blog for quite a while, I seriously doubt) or he's being deliberately obtuse, or some third explanation that I can't even begin to fathom. Not only that, but to make this kind of argument is to effectively say that the UN needs to be more powerful than it already is, which is a pretty strange position for a libertarian right-winger to take.

To begin with, there is nothing anywhere in any official UN document that in any way states, implies, concedes, or even hints at the attitude Dean attributes to the UN as an organization; in fact, quite the opposite:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, ...

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

So that at least nixes any possibility of this attitude being an explicit structural element of the UN as an international body. But then, of course, Dean's not saying that anyway; I just wanted to be clear, for starters, that the UN has, officially at least, a pretty similar attitude toward freedom and human dignity as that expressed in the U.S. Constitution.

Then of course there's the simple matter that the U.N. (as in, United Nations) is a democratic body much like, say, the U.S. Senate. It's composed of a large number of distinct entities each with their own interests, historical perspectives, relative positions in the power hierarchy, and so on. These entities, much like Senators, are in a constant battle to promote the interests of their constituencies, i.e. the citizens of the countries they represent. So, like, they don't really agree all the time. And even when they do agree on a particular situation, they don't necessarily agree on how to deal with it. And even when they agree on how to deal with it, they don't necessarily agree on who should pay for dealing with it. And even if they agree on that, there are a million other fucking reasons why they might not be willing to commit their national resources in order to protect the human rights of people in other nations... and most countries don't have anywhere near the capacity for humanitarian intervention that the U.S. has.

This is not about "understanding their perspectives"; it's about accepting the simple reality that a large democratic body that has no practical enforcement power over its members is often going to be gridlocked when it comes to dealing with something as serious as military intervention for humanitarian purposes. This is especially true when dealing with nation-states and the extreme limitations that must be placed on any supranational body in order for membership to be a viable option. The U.N. was never supposed to be a rapid-reaction force; it was supposed to be a forum for solving conflicts before they erupt into world wars. Bill, you've talked in the past about being tired of dealing with people on the left who seem to have no historical perspective about the capacity of human beings to inflict suffering on each other (in relation to the "multiculturalism" or "relativism" of certain leftist foreign policy attitudes), and that's a valid point; but in this case, it seems to me that by dismissing the "war is bad" attitude as "old school", Dean (and you implicitly by highlighting his post) is failing miserably to take into account the original reasoning behind the creation of the U.N.: two world wars in the space of 30 years. Neither you nor I can, I think, really even conceive of the scale of destruction visited on Europe and Asia during that time period; I'm sorry to say it, but we both know that it makes 9/11 look like a day at the beach (which is not intended in even the remotest way to minimize 9/11 or dismiss the threat of terrorism).

What we can do is try to keep in mind that under every imaginable human system, there are tradeoffs. One of the tradeoffs for preventing world wars may be the presence of a bloated, bureaucratic multinational institution that acts as a check on the more bellicose impulses of its member states. This is not to say that it can't be better; but to imply that the U.N. as an institution is fundamentally indifferent to human suffering is to entirely miss the point. So I'll put it to you this way, much as Iraq war supporters have done in response to criticism of the war: if the U.N. is too spineless to protect freedom, too bureaucratic and corrupt to be acceptable to libertarian sensibilities, and yet also powerful enough to actively harm American interests, then what, exactly, do you propose as an alternative?

I hereby declare ill non carb's comment as the longest non sequitur / strawman argument in blog history.

non sequitur

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Same goes for "strawman". Other than that, I'd say you just more or less have no idea what you're talking about, and since you didn't offer anything substantive to debate, I can't really argue with you. So, um, fuck off.

Actually, ill non compos, I do know what the terms mean. And your vomitus was a classic example of both. The idea that you can ignore the history of the UN's actual actions because you ... wait for it ... read a founding document.

Quantity doesn't substitute for quality.