the910group

This ain't your daddy's (global battle to save mankind against a hegemonic foe with a totalitarian ideology ....

2006-12-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

... and mad utopian delusions about how to create a better world by destroying America and occupying Europe). Nope. It sure ain't.

Editors note: If you're a member of The 910 Group, this site is now deprecated.

V has indicated that certain CEOs and power brokers have determined that this blog no longer reflects the optimal persona of the group. Ouch! I swear I didn't know.

All I did was talk about transparency, make an effort to understand how the enemy thinks, and do my best to critically examine the internal dynamics of the group. I really was only trying to help raise standards and expectations. Good organizations do that.

B has provided a new blog where such outrages will no longer occur.

so .. where were we? ...

Wrong War
It's easy to fight the wrong war, the last war instead of the next one. People do it because they know how. They know how to raise the money, make the arguments, describe the enemy. The social infrastructure for the war is already in place. It's usually in power.

For example, obsessing about multiculturalism, particularly its manifestations in Europe, is one way to fight the wrong war in the current instance. Multiculturalism is not an alien implant in the west, but an enormous part of the West’s dialog about itself. It may be the source of a thousand vulnerabilities and it may be misguided in another thousand ways, but it’s still part of who we are. We have to win this war with all that baggage, in spite of it, probably because of it. When conservatives throw themselves into anti-jihad as if it were part of an ongoing culture war with the left or, worse, a cold war reminiscence, they're fighting the wrong war.

The culture war (CW) is not a bad thing. I'm actually a fairly passionate partisan on the conservative side, but it is what it is and it's not the counter jihad (CJ). The temptation to fold the CJ into the CW, which is mostly a financial temptation, will lead to failure. Gearing up the old anti-communist machine might be a great way to raise money, as is revving up the right wing on any of its favorite subjects, but conflating this conflict with the priorities of the conservative movement in general will hand the enemy a victory he has been working hard for, a divided society with its left wing exposed. We saw in 2004 what a disaster that can be. But other than opportunistically, and because we let it happen, the Jihad has not joined forces with the left, although they'd love for you to think that, and many of you do think that.

Seriously, the left is not the enemy and jihadists are not leftists. Duh. This war is not a replay of the communist threat faced by the last 2 or 3 generations. That was something internal to our civilization. There may be some similarities but the conclusions one would draw from those similarities are more likely to be misleading than helpful.

The wars of the 20th century were largely wars between western powers fighting over the spoils of the colonial era. That's a simplification, of course, and one can see in conflicts like the Vietnam and Korean wars both echoes of the 19th century and foreshadowing of the 21st. Nevertheless, in general terms the 20th century was about restructuring and repositioning among western powers. While the ideas that were fought over were important, all parties were coming from the same tradition and responding to the same history.

Have we not all read the same critique of false religion?

And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.

The Grand Inquisitor, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky

This time we have an external enemy who doesn't give a damn about the future of our political tradition and whose youth, critically, do not read Dostoevsky. This one is not a fight for the soul of the west. It's something else. Obviously, a good place to start fighting it would be to figure out who the enemy is, and who it is not.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Wrong Group

There are two key strategies that have to be pursued to fight this war. One is to unite the west on common ground and the other is to harness the chaotic energies of this age to work for us instead of against us.

Unite the west on common ground
Harness the chaotic forces of this age

I joined The 910 Group thinking it was a perfect vehicle to go after these two objectives. Now I don't think it can accomplish either one.

On the first point, the group's members can't distinguish very well between one enemy and another. You need to be able to do that. Recent alliances tend to shore up the group's conservative credentials at a severe cost, I think, to its ability to function as a network of networks for counter jihad, which is its stated objective.

Make no mistake: this is a civil war within the heart of the West, between those who would appease Islamic tyranny and those who want to eliminate it;

As I've noted above, this is a good characterization, but of the wrong war.

Uniting the west on common ground doesn't mean that left and right have to agree on much, certainly not strategy. What it does mean, and I can't think of a simpler way to say it, is that the adults need to be in charge on this one.

On the second point, the group has abandoned most of its original open source ideas. Indeed, there is now clear hierarchy, with more and less privileged classes, staff and subgroup designations, a chain of command. Among the privileges of staff, the most visible and touted perk in fact, is the ability to delete and edit other people's posts in the forum. That's not a good foundation for an open source culture and because of it, the 910 group will not be able to harness the energies of the most creative people. They'll have to make do with groupies.

The group is likely to successfully raise its profile, raise money and produce a lot of stuff, some of it perhaps useful. They'll never run out of willing participants. But there's no longer any reason to expect great things from them. If you're one of those participants, try to keep in mind that your compliance is what they have to sell. They will be able to raise funds precisely to the extent that they can pitch a story about a coherent network of people, working as one, etc. That's not to say they won't pitch the open source idea to raise money, particularly to people who don't really know what it means, but they'll never live up to it.

This is what 5GW looks like

2006-12-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

All theories be damned. This is how it's done.

The Open Society

2006-11-29T00:40:00.000-08:00

"The Open Society is death for Closed Cabals".

Thanks to ThunderPig, again, for bringing the tdaxp blog to my attention. It's a rich resource along with a few others in that sphere.

Plus, an editor's note: The concensus usage of the term 5GW is exactly the meaning I argue against here. In order to participate in the wider discussion, I'm going to leave that question aside and allow that 5GW is a stealthier, spookier and more super-villain-genius like version of 4GW, at least for now.

Now to go on. From ZenPundit.

"Are democratic governments inherently poorly organized to fight 5GW? What structures (gov and non-gov) should a democratic nation-state develop to fight/detect 5GW?"

I think open societies are actually better poised than authoritarian or totalitarian ones to survive 5GW attacks because decision-making is decentralized, information flows are wide open and the degree of transparency is far higher ( if not actually transparent).

Nicolae Ceausescu was undone by elements within his own Stalinist security apparatus that kept him in the dark, manipulated and betrayed him. By his own orders and actions Ceaucescu's information feedback loop had come to resemble a funhouse mirror so that he did not even seem to realize that he had become the most hated figure in Romania until a fenzied mob was shouting for his blood. He died running frantically around a room screaming as Army recruits vied to be the first to blow his head off at close range. Three days earlier Ceaucsescu had the life of every Romanian in his hand - or so he thought.

What happens when access to the avenues of speech are closed, or when a small group or an individual control those avenues? We know what happens. Horizons narrow, flexibility dies and robustness wanes. The organization (or society) becomes an easy target for 4GW or 5GW attack.

What makes The 910 Group different from all the other anti-jihad organizations? That question was asked here once in one of the comments. One of the answers is this blog, where the gadfly and the rabble become part of the discussion. It's the rare and exceptional organization that takes this step right from the start.

It's this step that keeps this group from becoming just another closed cabal, a few people exploiting your passion for liberty without scruple. The fact that I'm here, shouting from the hilltops, is the reason you should join The 910 Group.

I make it my business to explore strategy in the context of principal, looking for the modes of action that maximize both. I admit to a bias. My bias is that strategy and principal are natural allies, so that efficacy is greatest when they're in sync with each other, as is true in the case of 4GW and Jihad. The West's answer to that is somewhere in this discussion.

There is no dog but Rufus

2006-11-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

.. and I am his prophet.

And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming; --your dog is a true philosopher.

Why?

Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance?

Plato's Republic, Book II

Here is the pivotal moment in Plato's Republic. Actually it's a little further up in the text, where Glaucon explains that what he wants is not so much a state that is good, but one that can allow him to "lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and [..] have sauces and sweets in the modern style."

Why?

Why, because the mechanics of reaching beyond the bare necessities of life requires people to specialize, then exploit one another, and then go to war, not necessarily in that order. It's a rather obvious observation made by someone (Plato) who knew a lot more about the life of a subsistence farmer in comparison to the life of a city dweller than any of us ever will. Consider it a primitive exercise in anthropology, if it makes you uncomfortable, or look past it and pay attention instead to Plato's larger project.

I've done my bit to talk about refinement, particularly the way in which refinement of processes and ideas can lead to a precarious plateau of false stability. But this is also the way change happens in social and behavioral systems. Paradigms fail, dramatically, sometimes tragically, and almost always along the fault lines of their internal contradictions, which are relentlessly exploited. Just because Hegel said it, doesn't mean it ain't true.

But Plato said it first, and I don't think I'm claiming anything unconventional to say that Plato's larger project, in the Republic as elsewhere, was to try to understand man's connection to the divine through his capacity for creation. To make things, to change things and to understand the process by which one thing leads to another is the divine, Plato would say erotic, act.

Glaucon wants sofas and sweets, for which he requires servants and slaves, hence power over others and the ability to defend oneself, ..., and all the rest follows. One need begets another until man is engaged in an amazingly complex social arrangement from which there is no return to simplicity. Imagination begets desire begets action. Action creates instability and uncertainty, and is answered with more action until finally a new plateau is achieved. A stalemate. It's as brittle as any other but for the moment, Glaucon gets his sofas and sweets.

And this is how man creates a civilization out of nothing. Out of nothing!

So how does one thing lead to another? Disruption, instability, renewal. Social and behavioral trends, as lines drawn through time, are a fiction. History never works that way. Like markets, or living organisms, social forces are opportunistic and advance through conflict and competition.

One application of this idea is as a criticism of the OODA view of the generations of warfare (h/t Thunder Pig). You can't draw straight lines through evolutionary processes to predict the future. If you could we'd all be rich and happy (we know now that fat is not happy).

Gen 4 was not a theoretical continuation of Gens 1, 2 and 3. It was a break from them. 1, 2 and 3 expressed a continued refinement of state organized massed (man/fire)power.

Gen 4 is simply not a continuation of any kind, but a response. Specifically, it's a response that is based on an ideology in which the very idea of a state is considered to be unnatural and evil, and comes at a time in which a single state, the US, is dominant in the world. Whether that dominance is a function of excellence in Gens 1,2,3 or is due to extraneous factors doesn't even matter. All that matters is that the trendline is broken.

And what is Gen 5? Speculations about its being all about stealth, or integration, all miss the point. Gen 5 is not going to be some kind of better, faster, lighter, more awesome Gen 4. Nor is it going to be some new development on a continuum of developments that can be theoretically skewered on an x/y axis.

It may not even happen, because to happen the states that are under attack have to make the choice to defend themselves. They have to want to survive. There are strong indications that they do not, which would prove that they really were just a momentary historical stalemate, in fact a bloody one that we'd all have been better off without and that, somehow unconsciously, we know enough to let go of. At least that's the question on the table.

If it does happen, Gen 5 will be the umbrella term given to describe the whole range of things we think up to do in response to Gen 4. I started looking at that list of things in my response to Christine here, but, as I note in that comment, the whole range of Gen 5 activities won't be enumerated until the war is over, assuming our side wins.

If we don't win, Gen 5 will be an internal Islamic rebellion, where the weapon of choice will be Rufus, the one true dog.

Homework review

2006-11-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

I'm returning to Eteraz' fictional philosopher, this time not to debunk his arguments but to feel them out for insights. We're listening for those unarticulated cultural truths that underlie the made up arguments. I think Ali has a great feel for those genuine sensibilities that are the emotional starting points from which the arguments later bubble up.

The fictional philosopher is a tragic example of what happens when you try to graft western philosophical ideas onto eastern thought patterns. So, for the moment, I'd rather look underneath at the emotional worldview that informs jihadists, but more importantly their hundreds of millions of passive supporters.

They find our justice system cold and inhumane, untouched by the qualities of judgment and compassion. They find our legal system abstract and absurd, unconscious of human nature. Our political system, in their eyes, is a whore house.

One way to see underneath the argument is to look at the fictional philosopher's expressed view of Hobbes. The state of nature for Hobbes is a state of total war, every man against every other man. It's a state of unqualified brutality. To the fictional Muslim philosopher, the state of nature is a state of immanent and compelling relationships, warm flesh and blood people taking heed of one another and, naturally, at war with the state, with Leviathan. Man should be governed, in their view, by divine grace and the tools of divine grace, not the cold abstraction we call a state. That state, for Hobbes the solution to mans problems, is here a terrible imposition on and perversion of human nature. More importantly, it's a violent intrusion into man's relationship with god. Law, as the nation-state propagates it, is something stupid and unfeeling. Order, as the nation-state imposes it, is the order of slaves.

One can understand their enthusiasm for 4gw. It's a way of war that truly flows from their deepest convictions about the world. If we call them nihilists, we've entirely missed their point. They only want to sweep away the impediments to the natural fulfillment of human life as god intended it to be, and the greatest of these impediments is the nation-state.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

I'm doing a quick thanksgiving post because, besides whatever we may individually have to be thankful for, strictly in the context of what we're doing here we have a lot to be thankful for as well.

We're fortunate to be confronted with a fascinating challenge that makes demands of us on many levels. Growing up, I was often dismayed that a person like me, interested in political philosophy and political theory, would have little to do or think about in this age. Instead, all intellectual effort flowed like waste into the meat grinder of political science, a dronish activity that took root in shadow of the hollow empire of technocrat liberalism.

I have more respect for political science as a discipline today, but I'm also happy to know that ponderous burning core ponderings are still a necessary part of the discussion. In fact there's plenty to do for everyone, men of action and scribblers alike, and all of it is difficult and interesting. I'm thankful for that.

Homework Assignment

2006-11-20T08:33:00.000-08:00

Ali Eteraz, whom I've discussed here before, has a very creative piece in which he imagines himself a Neo-Traditionalist philosopher. (h/t - Winds of Change)

I can't tell you what a neo-traditionalist philosopher is, because I've never heard of one, but I can tell you that Eteraz does a very good impression of postmodern pseudo-leftist Islamist sophistry. Readers of this blog should be able to debunk every part of it, point by fallacious point.

So that's your assignment.

closing thoughts on open source

2006-11-16T22:49:00.000-08:00

We've come full circle and I find myself naturally led to review Christine's comments that were quoted in the second post on this blog.

... what I think is happening is an “open source” movement in public diplomacy – sort of like the open source software movement of the last decade, where developers decided to work together, on the Internet, voluntarily, to improve software (Linux OS resulted from open source software development).

Some things are just too important to leave in the hands of the experts, or the bureaucrats, or certainly the State Department. If, as Clausewitz said, “War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means…” , then the asymmetric warfare being waged against Western civilization requires a countering asymmetric “politics” – an internet based, “open source” movement committed counter-attack against the internet based jihadist ideologues.

Unlike the current blogosphere, open source was highly disciplined, in a kind of milling-about, “wisdom of crowds” complex system way – they did have a final product they were working towards, and everyone just kept trying to improve it and use it at the same time.

While I don't think Christine specifically meant to contrast open source with 4gw, our conversations have led us to do so, particularly because of the fact that organizational choices have moral and social consequences. Compared to 4gw, open source feels wholesome and clean. Leadership in open source culture is strictly merit based, participation is always self selecting and self directed, and the basic organizational model is "follow me".

An open source political model would necessarily be transparent and, because of that, invite principled behavior among its participants. That's nothing like 4gw which, as we saw, excels to the extent that its participants exploit their host society. That should call to mind a few comparisons between government models. It also illustrates how easy it is to draw the practical distinctions that will keep projects on the better path, even though both styles share a lot of buzzwords like asymmetric, distributed and networked. None of these superficial similarities can make up for the huge differences in the underlying ethos of these two ideas.

Most open source projects never attract participation from anyone beyond the original creator. On the bright side, the effort to work up to public standards is a good excersize and there is always the hope that someone will show up later to extend the work. That's a familiar set of conditions for most academic work, not surprisingly.

In an open source work environment, work tends to speak for itself and people show up to do work rather than talk about it. It's like showing up at the gym instead of, say, a coffee shop. In many publicly viewable projects, you're lucky if you find much more than the code itself and an out of date readme file. In a political context, more chit chat is to be expected, but one can still hope to find more project tables than chat rooms in a community that is aiming to work along open source lines.

This post, low key as it is, wraps up what I'll call chapter 1 of this blog, so I want to finish by reemphasizing the idea that has dominated my thinking about The 910 Group. That idea, and I know I'm beating it to death but repetition is necessary in these things, is that the defenders of a culture inevitably shape that culture. Therefore all the choices that are made and all the habits that are cultivated have consequences beyond the group itself. In the same way that Michel Corleone could not protect his family from violence by embracing violence, The 910 Group can only protect the values of western society by fully embracing those values within itself.

Copycat

2006-11-12T21:54:00.000-08:00

Interest in 4gw concepts continues, understandably, since the jihadists have mastered these concepts to greater and lesser degrees (depending on the group) and it seems that we should master them as well. Therefore I think a look at the limitations of 4gw concepts is in order.

At the end of the recent war between Israel and Hizbollah, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad remarked on his intention to create a Hizbollah like group on the southern border between Syria and Israel, on the grounds that Hizbollah had shown much greater success than Syrian troops had ever shown against the IDF.

What Assad was glimpsing was the efficacy of 4gw in battle, albeit in a hybridized form specific to southern Lebanon and the particular politics of Hizbollah. The ability to blend with the population, recast a military battle as a moral one, fight with little or no battlefield communications and manage expectations so that merely surviving amounted to winning were a few of the advantages that Hizbollah enjoyed in that war.

Another key advantage, a subtle one and one that is shared with all Islamic terror groups, is that surrounding populations are able to quietly support them at no nominal cost. What that means is that individuals can and do claim no responsibility for the actions of this or that faction, deplorable as those actions surely are, and reject the argument that appeasement, apologetics and passive support of various kinds amount to culpable participation. Because the groups are not officially responsible for the population, the population does not have to claim responsibility for them. It's a scheme that challenges the protection racket foundation of every social order we know of, going back as far as you like.

I say 'nominal cost' because obviously the living conditions in a place like Gaza surely amount to a cost that would not otherwise be born. Having your village wiped out by the Israeli air force is also a stiff cost. The benefits of culpable deniability in these cases are limited to gaining sympathy after the fact. The benefits on the ground in western countries are far less limited, and I'm sure all of you can name the organizations that reap those benefits.

Another downside to 4gw is that there are moral consequences to society. If the fighting class is not responsible to protect people and territory in the traditional sense, and the people have no duty to claim allegiance to the fighting class, then forthrightness is simply lost as a social value. Since the viability of 4gw fighting groups is based on their being unofficial and under the radar (and therefore hard to target by a traditional military, which is the whole point), the more important they are to the group they're fighting for, the more perverted morally and intellectually that group must become.

The 4gw warrior is an anti-hero. He provokes and then exploits the misery of his people and is willing to corrupt them for the cause. A hero doesn't do these things.

For these reasons it's obvious that no prominent western counter-jihad groups can adopt 4gw concepts wholesale without substantial risk to the culture itself.

These same risks would necessarily attend the creation of a Syrian backed freelance fighting group on the Golan. However, since conditions in Syria are completely different from those in Lebanon, the risks to Assad as a copycat are far higher. His regime already lacks even marginal legitimacy. Leaving aside the logistical weaknesses of the idea, any effort to disclaim the activities of this fighting group, say volleys of rockets into Israel, would undermine it further.

So what do we have? 4gw threatens the bonds of loyalty and faith that ideally exist between a population and its fighting class, ultimately leading the society itself to become morally corrupt and unhealthy. We've seen this among Palestinians in a most acute form, as well as in other places.

At the same time, adopting some 4gw ideas both appears to be necessary as a counter to jihad and appears to be inevitable as a response to the failure of western governments to mount a sufficient response. In other words people are picking it up, risks and all, and we're left with the question of how to manage those risks.

A fighting class

2006-11-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

In a previous post, I mentioned the idea that a community, or a civilization if you want to think big, takes the political form of those who defend it. The political habits of the fighting class become the political habits of the community as a whole.

For example, lawyers are the fighters in the corporate world, and business practices from top to bottom reflect their influence.

Following the same logic, In a world where bloggers fill the truth seeking gap left open by the MSM, ..., what? Where does this lead? If the fighting class in the world of reporting and media is made up of amateurs, what are the consequences to that world? What are the values of these bloggers? How do they relate to each other? What are their internal social codes?

If The 910 Group seriously intends to accomplish great things, it needs to start by answering these questions. Such self knowledge is a prerequisite to success.

A mission statement that talks about liberty and jihad is nice, but in the context of its goals The 910 Group is effectively a media guild, and it needs to codify a set of first principles for itself that are relevant to that identity.

Some of those first principles are going to be obvious. They're the same principles that one would desire a major media organization to uphold.

- transparency
- truth seeking as an end in itself
- vigilance

Others may be less obvious, perhaps reflecting the advantages that bloggers have over professional media. For example, instead of pretending not to have biases, bloggers begin by revealing their biases. Honesty thus removes the veil, permitting a freedom of thought and exploration that are not available to someone whose personal beliefs are being suppressed.

Surely there's more. But adding items to a list doesn't accomplish anything. Each item has to also be true in the deepest sense.

I'm going to start by getting this blog in line with the first principle listed above, transparency.

I detest secret societies, exclusive cliques, private clubs and all those sorts of organizations that function according to the dynamics of the inner circle. There's my personal bias. Instead I value transparency, particularly for this group that is so much about addressing the failure of media.

I'm going to make a rule about this blog, and one that will also apply to everything that flows from and follows this blog. The rule is simple, and it states that anything anyone needs to say about this blog can be said publicly, right there in the comment section.

What could be simpler, and it goes directly to the heart of the idea that the way we, the bloggers, the new fighting class, behave will become the model for the society that follows us and is influenced by us.

The 910 Group exists to nurture a stronger, more self conscious and self consciously proud western civilization that can withstand attacks on its identity. We should begin, like the Athenian citizen soldiers, by behaving among ourselves according the principles we claim to uphold for all.

re-circulated mission statement, RFC

2006-11-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

In the endless international game of rock/paper/scissors, paper beats rock. The enemies of the west are currently well stocked with paper and the west, mainly the US, is currently well stocked with rocks. So we have a problem.

The west needs a good pair of scissors.

I view The 910 Group as being in the scissor business. What that means exactly is still being worked out. Does it mean manufacturing scissors? Being them? Collecting and distributing them? I guess individual group members have to work that question out for themselves.

The group is in constant debate about its identity and purpose. Here's the original mission statement and here's a more recent longer version. In my last post, I talked about arriving at a consensus about social values and purpose. It's good to see that process continuing.

You Bastards

2006-11-06T08:35:00.000-08:00

Islam is the Real Civilization

The Islamic society is not one in which people call themselves 'Muslims' but in which the Islamic law has no status, even though prayer, fasting and Hajj are regularly observed; and the Islamic society is not one in which people invent their own version of Islam, other than what God and His Messenger-peace be on him-have prescribed and explained, and call it, for example, 'progressive Islam' [...]

The Islamic society is, by its very nature, the only civilized society, and the jahili societies, in all their various forms, are backward societies. It is necessary to elucidate this great truth

It should be easy, as a fundamentalist, to judge the legitimacy of a government. But it's not easy. Your sources are static and the world is not. You may be restless and perpetually unsatisfied. You may grow violent and obsessive. You may have competitors claiming to have greater zeal and better judgment than you.

The matter is important because a community has to function on some basis, knowing itself and its justification. If you can't arrive at a comfortable consensus for the justifications of your way of life, your culture will fail to provide the soil that nurtures life. Everybody cares about that.

Legitimacy in western political thought is bound up with the knowledge of human fallibility. No human created thing, including a government, is capable of perfection. Since there are two major threads of political thought, left and right, this idea takes two broad forms. On the left, continuous progress is the common element of a range of ideologies that includes Marxism at one extreme and a kind of maternal statism at the other. While Marxism is actually based on a theory of history, all left wing political thought assumes constant political evolution. On the right, while there is no emphasis on an idea of directional progress, it's nevertheless understood that constant striving for and falling short of perfection is the way human life, and thus human government at its best, unfolds. Ideally, a society can adapt without losing its soul.

The fight between these two halves of western political thought is huge. It's massive. It has at times consumed the world and at others threatened to destroy it. But both are still expressions of the same idea.

Antigone.

CHORUS singing

- strophe 1
Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year.

- antistrophe 1
And the light-hearted race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the deep, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills; he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull.

- strophe 2
And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come: only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies he hath devised escapes.

- antistrophe 2
Cunning beyond fancy's dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, proudly stands his city: no city hath he who, for his rashness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never think my thoughts, who doth these things!

This question of legitimacy is not merely academic. Systems increasingly govern the world. Two of those systems (EU, Islam) have ambiguous territory and are inscrutible to non-experts. The societies they rule over are therefore incapable of self criticism, even if they desire it.

A pretty dragon

2006-10-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

RiverCocytus brought up a piece at winds of change discussing "Basic Principles of the Islamic Worldview" by Sayyid Qutb. Here is a fragment from a quote by Qutb at the very end of the article.

Establishing the "Islamic system" to have beneficial sway over all humanity, those who embrace Islam and those who do not, does indeed require Jihad as does the liberty of men to follow their own beliefs. This goal can only be accomplished with the establishment of a virtuous authority, a virtuous law and a virtuous system that calls to account whoever attempts to attack freedom of worship and belief.

Is there anything new to say about the folly of utopian idealism? No? That's fine - I'll say something old about it. Actually I want to look more deeply at a subject I had to gloss over in a previous post. The subject is Thomas Hobbes' use of the allegorical figure of Leviathan to represent the state. It's a bit of an arcane subject but it's also an element in a broader picture I'm trying to draw in this blog, so please bear with me.

Hobbes' choice to use the biblical creature, Leviathan, in such a way represents a profound rejection of utopian thinking. The book by the same name arrives at a place that we would find familiar. The authority of the state is not based on its divine pretensions or its perfectibility, but rather on the social contract plus those expedients necessary to make up for the flaws of human nature. Those flaws are central to the understanding of this political philosophy.

CHAPTER VII - OF THE ENDS OR RESOLUTIONS OF DISCOURSE
OF ALL discourse governed by desire of knowledge, there is at last an end, either by attaining or by giving over. And in the chain of discourse, wheresoever it be interrupted, there is an end for that time.

If the discourse be merely mental, it consisteth of thoughts that the thing will be, and will not be; or that it has been, and has not been, alternately. So that wheresoever you break off the chain of a man's discourse, you leave him in a presumption of it will be, or, it will not be; or it has been, or, has not been. All which is opinion. And that which is alternate appetite, in deliberating concerning good and evil, the same is alternate opinion in the enquiry of the truth of past and future. And as the last appetite in deliberation is called the will, so the last opinion in search of the truth of past and future is called the judgement, or resolute and final sentence of him that discourseth. And as the whole chain of appetites alternate in the question of good or bad is called deliberation; so the whole chain of opinions alternate in the question of true or false is called doubt.

- italics are mine

Hobbes was not impressed with man, indeed no more so than the author of The Old Testament book in which Leviathan appears (the book is Job) who shows the people surrounding Job to be incapable of understanding that love and faith, not fear, is the genuine relationship to God. To Hobbes, the converse was as important a point to make, that obedience to the state should be exclusively a practical matter. There is no virtue in offering ones soul to a creature such as Leviathan (or the state!) that deserves only a mixture of fear and respect.

Job Chapter 41
1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?
or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest
down?
...
5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt
thou bind him for thy maidens? (the implication
is NO, you would not dare do these things)
...
8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do
no more.
...
10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then
is able to stand before me?
11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him?
whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.
12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor
his comely proportion.
...
14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth
are terrible round about.
...
24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard
as a piece of the nether millstone.
25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid:
by reason of breakings they purify themselves.
...
33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made
without fear.
34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over
all the children of pride.

The Children of Pride is not an image of the pious before God. The King over all the children of pride, Leviathan, is no virtuous state. Far from it. It's a state that compels obedience through force. The social contract is not a utopian vision. If it were, we wouldn't need this "King over all the children of pride" to keep us in line.

The bottom line, however, is that this anti-utopia, which is really the modern police state as we know it and live in it, when coupled with a good constitution, has proven itself to be a solid framework for the development of liberty.

The problem with most Muslim fundamentalist (yes yes, whoever they are) is that their education consists mostly of memorizing sections of the Koran. They haven't read Leviathan. This is a shame, because they're probably the only people left with a sufficient attention span to get through it.

Here's something shiny for the rest of us

A pretty dragon

Yeah, but can he hit?

2006-10-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

We've already noted that, by virtue of being a culture that rewards risk taking, we're blessed with risk management tools and sensibilities that, to a great degree, inoculate us against totalitarian ideologies.

So what went wrong? How did the anti-globalization movement of a decade or two ago, which may have been reactionary but was at least rooted in a healthy skepticism about the nature of huge and opaque institutions, become today's paranoid anti-americanism? How do the good instincts that freedom tends to breed become confused?

The answer, or at least part of it, can be discussed with the help of something called the Sharpe ratio. I'm sticking with financial and risk management terms because they're so good at capturing social as well as market processes.

The Sharpe ratio is a ratio that measures the volatility of a series. I won't get into the math, but what it tells us in general is how well a series adheres to its own internal trend. If you have an economy that is being managed to yield 3% growth, you want that number, not 4% and not 2%. The Sharpe ratio, by measuring the stability of the series, is therefore also a measure of the refinement of the processes by which your goals are sought.

The problem, however, is that more highly refined and stable processes are more fragile when they do break down. They are less robust. In this way, refinement can be self defeating, and that is something that western societies are currently experiencing.

Just as the fed stands at the sidelines of the economy, tinkering with the few tools at its disposal in a constant effort to manage its way toward stable growth, there are similar processes that unfold in political and social arenas. Political managers, like money managers, want stability and predictability, the more the better. As a consequence they do their best to control themselves as well as us, so that everybody is always on point and on message. We do the same to them by applying normative pressures.

The polarization in national politics today is a natural result of an increasingly sophisticated political environment, filled with managed expectations and talking points. These tools were supposed to produce a more stable politics, but they really only create an illusion of stability within a narrow range.

Just beyond that range, there's nothing but a sheer cliff. The political horizon is amazingly close by, since to function politically today all you have to do is be able to stick your finger in either one nostril or the other. Once you've done that, the rest of us know what side you're on, and that's all we want to know about you anyway. As a result, everybody can pitch but nobody can hit. Everybody is a well practiced critic of the other side, but real thought is scarce. Outside the comfort zone of political identity, there's an abyss of fear and uncertainty. This helps to explain why raw emotions, hate and hero worship, are such a common feature of the political landscape now. People feel lost and helpless and they want to know who is going to save them, or at least who to blame.

The left is especially vulnerable. The key goals of the progressive movement have long ago been achieved and adopted universally. As a result, they're caught in a freefall of process and form without substance. The political tools that govern the relationship between politicians and their constituents are operating at full strength, but there's no real life purpose to guide the process and provide a reality check.

But everybody is vulnerable to some degree. To the ears of the young, in particular, a haunting moan and clatter is all they hear of political debate in America. Real debate has been managed into such oblivion that politicians themselves act surprised when it occasionally crops up. By comparison, a voice like that of Islam is clear and strong. Even if your place in the Islamic story is death or dhimmitude, at least there is a story. And behind that story, a mesmerizing and terrifying presence. You bet they have our kids attention.

These are the dangers of refinement, efficiency and overcooked risk management. They lead to stability and predictability, which are desired, but at the cost of narrowness and fragility.

So let's re-ask the opening question. How do the good instincts that freedom tends to breed become confused?

A higher purpose

2006-10-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

Eteraz has a piece up about a letter from a man who watched his mother being stoned to death in Iran, 26 years ago.

Myself, I am always afraid to click on links in which this topic is discussed, because I don't want to see the pictures. It's not that I can't stomach them, but that some part of me rebels at the idea that, by voluntarily choosing to look at something that I don't need to see to get the point, the death of that victim becomes a matter for titillation instead of dialogue.

This is what I worry about, because it takes a choice to avoid graphic images that are potentially dehumanizing, both to the victim and to the viewer. Even a squeamish person like me is momentarily tempted by the spectacle alone.

At the same time, a publisher must publish such images in spite of concerns about exploitation. They are documentary evidence of a crime.

Further down in the post, another choice awaits the reader.

By the way, I really want to warn all of you to not use such human rights violations as a way to try and undermine Iran’s national interests. Ms. Kars seems to be opposed to that.

There's a bit of conflict here. Ms. Kars states plainly that the regime makes it all but impossible to repeal the stoning law, yet she appeals to us to not use these stonings against the regime.

We're being asked to square a circle, to act on this horror and yet avoid attacking the regime that is responsible for it. I'd like to hear suggestions.

One thing I would point out is that the letter has been posted by Eteraz at Kos and by others at sites that lean more, in fact all the way, to the right. While there was no shortage of invective against the other side of the domestic political scene in either location, there were similar and similarly sourced expressions of sympathy for the victims. Maybe it's an opportunity.

John-a-dreams

2006-10-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

As I was reading some comments left on this blog, my thoughts turned to the screen name of one of the commenters, Aeneas. (I don't know this person or how this screen name was chosen, so please don't take offense at what follows)

Aeneas was the founder of the city of Rome, but his key achievement was simply getting out of Troy alive when the Greek armies brutally sacked it.

And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'

'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--'
'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced:

But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'

Hamlet, ACT II Scene II

Aeneas didn't succeed in defending Troy, or in rebuilding it, or in preserving any part of it (Rome was culturally Greek). He succeeded only in leaving it behind.

That would seem to make him an unlikely father figure for an empire, but the theme turns out to be common enough. John Galt, Moses and Aeneas were all legendary founders whose founding act was running away. The Pilgrims offer an interesting example as well, and a contrast. Two, probably related, observations that one can make about them are that they are real, not legendary, and that there is no single hero to personify them in our minds. There are other examples, both ancient and modern, but it should be enough to point out that Aeneas is not the only hero whose epic story begins with defeat or exile.

It's much harder to understand the escape fantasies that people indulge in today. The presence of an enemy so well adapted to exploiting the weaknesses of our society does tend to focus the mind in that direction, but other than post-apocalyptic survivalist movements that arise occasionally, there are not very many models for what a 21st century epic renewal would look like.

But I can speculate. For example, how a society is organized is often an adaptation of how its military is organized. Athens was a democracy because that's how the Athenians fought. The Roman republic, Hitler's Germany and Hamas' Palestine all follow this rule. The organizing principles of the fighting class tend to determine the organizing principles of the society as a whole.

We're fighting a 5th generation war against a 5th generation enemy. On the assumption that the West will have to adapt to this method of war, presumably any newly birthed society would be so influenced as well. What does a 5th generation society look like? Is it free? Is it tribal? Is it possible to have a legal and legitimate underground economy? If we were to begin our exodus to the new world today, what would be the form of that exodus?

There is, in fact, an exodus from the MSM underway, but that's an adornment of the old regime, not the regime itself. More generally, the more I think about these questions, the more overlap I see between 5th generation concepts and those of a much more familiar political philosophy, anarchy, a notably poorly developed philosophy. From there the choices seem to be about wardrobe and whether your personal history is more filled with shotguns or video games.

I can understand the appeal of a global, extra-territorial, networked social structure that belongs to the good guys. It's harder is to be encouraged that such a structure can allay concerns such as those that drove Thomas Hobbes to seek a solution to the horrors of lawlessness in his time.

When he articulated how the state should operate and what its relationship to the individual should be, he saw that state as an assurance of liberty and as a liberation from the state of nature, which is utter insecurity. Those are big shoes for any new political philosophy to fill.

It's fascinating to contemplate new political and social forms, but it could also be an escapist daydream that leads people to neglect the defense and exercise of a system that is still living.

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made.

Hamlet, ACT II Scene I

The road to hell

2006-10-17T17:44:00.001-07:00

There are two things you know about the road to hell.
1) we're on it
2) it's paved with good intentions

The second of these two things is not accidental and is not cheeky folk wisdom. It's the necessary result of a phenomenon called Moral Hazard.

This is a concept you'd better get familiar with because exploiting moral hazard is the core strategy employed by the apologists for terror and jihad.

Let's start with a simple example.

If insurance companies didn't investigate arson, there would be more fires.

This example explains both the concept and its source, as Moral Hazard is primarily an insurance and financial risk management concept. This fact is important, because it points to an underlying truth about western culture, namely, that we engage in and reward risk taking behavior. In a culture that rewards risk taking, sometimes to extreme extents, the practice of risk management also reaches high levels of refinement. You've experienced this first hand if you've ever actually read the find print on a contract.

Islamic cultures, in contrast, do not encourage risk taking (or individualism, which is just cultural risk taking). But cultures that discourage risk taking behavior also have fewer safeguards to prevent the exploitation of moral hazards. Besides being a moral hazard in itself, this fact helps to explain the heavy reliance on deception in the practice of jihad. They're used to getting away with it.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Examples of moral hazard are everywhere. The abuse of trust in a religious setting is a stark example, as is the abuse of post colonial guilt in Europe.

Good intentions, for example the desire to make amends for the exploitation of the colonial period, lead to acts of good faith (good faith gestures) which are inherently risky acts. For example, during the Oslo period, Palestinians were constantly asking for good faith gestures on Israel's part in order that she demonstrate her desire for peace. These could be prisoner releases, softening of checkpoints or other measures. The idea was to use moral pressure to compel Israel to take unnecessary risks and especially unreciprocated steps, and the idea often worked.

Good intentions lead to risk taking without the benefit of risk management, in other words to moral hazard, which is certain to be exploited. The results of Oslo are a demonstration.

To wrap this post up, I'll bet you didn't know there's actually a moral hazard factory. There really is. It's in New York. It's right on the road to hell.

The Collective

2006-10-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

your culture will adapt to service us
you will be assimilated
resistance is futile

| +++ | +++ | +++ |

Why not submit to Islam? Have you considered the benefits of membership in a global collective, acting as one, growing in strength with each new member?

If you're not impressed with that suggestion (likely), let's discuss why you're not impressed.

Going back to the ancient Greeks, the western intellectual tradition has had very specific contours. Whether or not we're aware of it, these contours continue to determine how we value and evaluate information, the way we judge what others are saying to us, and the way we behave politically. It's a tradition of radical doubt and radical individualism in which great individuals, often working centuries apart and against the current of their times, engaged in a philosophical and scientific conversation that has ultimately led to the civilization we know today.

In the last post here, I talked about everything being on the table in a way that few are prepared for. The truth, however, is that for the west that's nothing new. Everything has always been on the table, including the most sacred truths. That, in essence, is our tradition, a tradition of doubt and brutal self examination.

In action, this brilliant tradition rarely looks so brilliant. It's messy, often encumbered with self serving agendas and short sighted gatekeepers. It's also easily misunderstood as being weak.

We should let others make that mistake. We shouldn't make it ourselves.

-----------
benefits of membership: # http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/tamir.pdf
submit: # http://mlife.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=648

Citizen action, or something. an open source model for war

2006-10-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

Recently a group came together with some big ideas, nothing less than the proposition that people from around the world can come together, united only by a common intention, and be in a position to affect world affairs.

What took shape at the Gates of Vienna might have seemed outlandish, but in the wake of a small war last summer, and a scandal that followed, the world has changed.

Universal literacy, cheap technology and a global talent pool that guarantees an infinite supply of creativity, passion and genius have brought the world to the edge of a cultural revolution.

But this revolution may not be what you were expecting. It's personal (12 million blogs), and playful (more). That's the good news. But it's also going to put everything on the table in a way that few people are prepared for.

Participants in The 910 Group, though rooted in the counter jihad purpose that brought this particular group of people together, are also aware of themselves as being part of a larger social evolution, beginning with the premise that you don't need permission from anyone to stand up for what you care about.

Participant Christine writes:

... what I think is happening is an “open source” movement in public diplomacy – sort of like the open source software movement of the last decade, where developers decided to work together, on the Internet, voluntarily, to improve software (Linux OS resulted from open source software development).

Some things are just too important to leave in the hands of the experts, or the bureaucrats, or certainly the State Department. If, as Clausewitz said, “War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means…” , then the asymmetric warfare being waged against Western civilization requires a countering asymmetric “politics” – an internet based, “open source” movement committed counter-attack against the internet based jihadist ideologues.

Unlike the current blogosphere, open source was highly disciplined, in a kind of milling-about, “wisdom of crowds” complex system way – they did have a final product they were working towards, and everyone just kept trying to improve it and use it at the same time.

There's a paradigm shift happening. It's real. It's related in some way to Web2.0 and IVth generation warfare, but it's not simply equivalent to those things. What it ultimately means is still unclear. William Lind argues that it is premature to talk about a 5th generation, and I agree.

From what I have seen thus far, honest attempts to discover a Fifth Generation suggest that their authors have not fully grasped the vast change embodied in the Fourth Generation. The loss of the state's monopoly, not only on war but also on social organization and first loyalties, alters everything. We are only in the earliest stages of trying to understand what the Fourth Generation means in full and how it will alter - or, in too many cases, end - our lives.

The 910 Group is a worthy experiment in purpose driven social organization that might just offer a first hint at what lies beyond those first loyalties. If authoritarian societies respond to the times by becoming more ideologically radical, maybe free societies should respond by looking deeper into themselves as well.

This blog's purpose is to hold an ongoing conversationin in which group participants can take that deep look. Let's begin.

Mission Statement

2006-10-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

The 910 Group has come together because we have a similar vision -- that of ensuring that Liberty prevails worldwide. We realize it is vital to work actively for it, and to actively oppose those forces against it. Our job is to support, encourage, and inspire each other so that we may coordinate our good intentions into practical action.