Population: One

Glenn Reynolds notes that North Korea supports US unilateralism, but somehow fails to miss the irony inherent in the idea that this new supporter of Bush’s policies is one of our biggest foreign policy headaches. Me, I find it amusing. “You were right, guys; the North Koreans are in our corner!”

OK, OK, some real commentary. This is kind of interesting. Who does North Korea want uninvolved? Answer: Japan and of course South Korea. Japan in particular is likely to be more worried about North Korea than we are, because Japan is a lot closer and definitely within North Korean missile range. In fact, Japan is strongly considering sanctions against North Korea. That’d have a fairly major impact. North Korea would love it if the US discouraged Japan from taking action. Japan’s more likely to take painful action (from the North Korean standpoint) than is the US.

Meanwhile, South Korea is criticizing North Korea for ignoring the world community; it’s no surprise that North Korea would react to that by taking the opposite position.

Daily Kos asks how Southerners get away with displaying the Confederate flag. Well, you know, it is a symbol of Southern pride. Recognizing that is just as important as recognizing that US arrogance pisses off the rest of the world, sometimes.

The issue here is that the Confederate flag has two meanings, and the second darker meaning is not inherently associated with the first. It’s not safe to assume that those who care about the first meaning also care about the second. It is possible to be proud of one’s heritage without being proud of slavery. It’s futile to tell an entire region that their entire heritage is crap because of one prominent blemish.

It is equally important for those flying the flag to recognize that it’s deeply painful to another group of people. Maybe I don’t associate the flag with slavery; that doesn’t mean it’s wrong for you to make that association.

Beating people over the head isn’t going to solve the problem. Gotta step back, say “I understand that you are flying the flag for reasons other than racism” or “I understand that the flag has very bad connotations for you,” and work from there.

Kevin Drum challenges us to come up with a two-axis system of political temperament classification that makes sense. OK, I’ll bite.

Preferatory, I’ll note that I think it’s important that the ends of the axes are non-pejorative. The Libertarian quiz fails because the questions are slanted. Any useful system can’t be biased towards one result. That’s propaganda, not political science.

So: axis one is Freedom vs. Safety. What’s more important to you? There’s no “right” answer to this question, in my book. I have my own strong preferences. That’s me. Someone else might have different preferences. Note that this isn’t a question about rights; I might think that everyone has a natural right to be safe but personally prefer to give up that right for the sake of freedom.

OK, but what about the question of freedom for /me/ vs. safety for /you/? You can’t talk about freedom and safety in the abstract. You have to acknowledge that sometimes the question is whether you’re willing to compromise someone else’s freedom in order to secure your safety. Do you think it’s OK to remove the Afghani government (compromising their freedom) in exchange for greater safety for the US?

I was thinking that this is the Personal vs. Global axis, but I’m not sure if there’s really a range there. I can’t think of a case in which you’d take someone else’s freedom in order to increase your own; same goes for safety. It’s easy to find cases where you compromise someone else’s safety for your freedom, or their freedom for your safety, but if you’re already on one side or the other of that axis then there’s no difference between the personal decision and the global decision.

There’s the nugget of something there. I think the question of whether you consider rights to be universal or personal is important. Just not sure how to phrase it.

Yeah, so I hesitated for about half a second before pointing to NationStates. Now you, too, can run your own country with whatever policies and attitudes you like. On my first day as ruler of the Free Land of Velodrome, I was faced with an animal rights issue: “The increasingly militant Animal Liberation Front struck again last night, freeing dozens of chickens bound for delicious snack packs.”

I had to agree with Billy-Bob Longfellow, who said “These nuts have got to be stopped. They need to face the fact people want snack packs, no matter how many innocent chickens must be sacrificed. Besides, chickens would do the same to us if they had the chance.” Sure, my economist argued that we should just tax meat-eating, but I’m not a tax and spend kind of a guy.

I’ve created a region named Blogistan. Anyone who likes is welcome to join me. (Don’t be clicking that until after you’ve made a nation, sport.)

This seems somehow much healthier than squabbling over Patty Murray. Maybe it’s just me.

According to the Washington Post, the CIA is torturing prisoners in Afghanistan. The best quote from the article: “‘If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job,’ said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists.” Fun stuff. Reportedly, the CIA has also turned prisoners over to various countries for interrogation, including Syria. Last time I looked, Syria was not near the top of our friendly powers list.

I believe that these tactics have made it easier to carry out operations against Al Qaeda. No question at all. Information is power.

I also believe that these tactics are flat out wrong, because I think that sometimes we must sacrifice efficiency for the sake of our values. Or, if you like, for the sake of those human rights so casually dismissed above.

Bill Whittle wrote a piece on gun control, which many conservative bloggers linked to with great relish. It is burdened with a great deal of irrelevant anti-European sentiment, which I find ignorant and superficial. I could write an entire post on the ways in which his snideness about France trivializes the substantial and noble risks taken by the French resistance during World War II.

However, he said one thing in particular which I think is exceedingly relevant here. Those who would defend the use of torture in our conflict with Al Qaeda would do well to consider it, and how it relates to the matter of torture, rather than simply waving the matter off with some comment about how much more efficient this strategy is. He’s talking about the dangers of totalitarianism here: “Try and understand this about Americans like myself and others who can look such horrors in the eye: We are not going out like that. Get it? We’ll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road.”

That’s a reasonable statement. Yes, handgun ownership may result in deaths. He’s thought about that and he thinks it’s worth the price. Freedom is worth some sacrifice.

Now think about that in relation to torture. Is it worth giving up our ideals in order to keep ourselves a little safer? Is safety more important than knowing that we are not the kind of country who tortures other human beings?

You can have a pretty serious argument about that. I know what my answer is. Yours may be different, and I don’t think that disagreement here is insane or unwise. It’s just different priorities. The important thing is not to pretend that there’s no possible debate, and that the tradeoff is inevitable. This is not a question to be handwaved.