Failure to solve the climate crisis probably means plunging civilization into a new dark age -- but humanity has survived dark ages before. According to Bill McKibben, the Holocene era of stable climate is already over -- but before the dawn of civilization, humanity lived through several drastic changes in climate. There's no reason why anyone ( Read more... )

"The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future."

- Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

This blog entry is not for the faint of heart. I was ( Read more... )

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety ( Read more... )

Link to my original post on the topic

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The standard progressive story is that terrorists are desperate people who live under oppressive regimes with starkly limited economic opportunities and, unable to strike at their own governments, are pushed instead by unscrupulous leaders to blame the West for their problems. The standard conservative riposte is that many terrorists have middle- ( Read more... )

America is not a country built for war. We sometimes do well at it because of our large size and advanced technical abilities, but mostly we are a different kind of strong. Our primary strengths are our prosperity and a system of government that gives the people a voice. We may not have the highest overall quality of life in the world, or the ( Read more... )

Look, it's true: an American withdrawal from Iraq will be seen as "retreat and defeat" by anti-American fundamentalists and will embolden them. But you know what else emboldens the terrorists? How about the fact that much of our military, including half of the National Guard, is holed up in Iraq, embroiled in a civil war and being gradually ( Read more... )

I freely admit that I still haven't done much of a literature review, but one possibility I won't accept on the climate-change front is that global warming is just a sensational myth. There is no vast left-wing conspiracy capable of spinning a global scientific consensus out of thin air. At least some of those scientists must be smart, reasonable ( Read more... )

Francis W. Porretto is a "classical liberal" who apparently believes that all of the scientists who promote action on global warming are people with a juvenile mentality who are perpetuating a complete myth. Yet in his very next post, Porretto wrote down these quite moderate "Commandments Of Beneficial Conservatism":

1. No one is as smart or ( Read more... )

You've heard of the Nuclear Doomsday Clock? Well, twelve days ago, the American Fascism Clock was brought forward to about three seconds to midnight. And I haven't posted about it until now ( Read more... )