Well, thanks for taking the time to spread the good word on PGP/GPG encryption. It’s good stuff—and could be a really revolutionary technology if a critical mass of people started using it.

The question is, how? What can we do to promote the idea, and to explain it in terms everyone can get? What can we do to reduce the work involved in getting and using GPG, and to give people a good reason to bother with it?

Enigmail is a good example of a big step in the right direction that I love to death, but of course most people don’t use Thunderbird in the first place. I don’t know. What do you think?

mac in japan finds it “Odd how the fruit always got picked, and the toilets cleaned before 1965, when only Americans were around to do it.”

Think what you will about Mexican immigrants and the work that they do; but this is pure bunk. American agribusiness has always been dependent on immigrant labor; from 1942-1964 that dependency was supplied, in the hundreds of thousands every year, under the bracero program. Braceros lived and worked in the United States for the term of their contract, then returned to their homes in Mexico when the contract expired at the end of the season.

To make accurate economic judgments, you have to start with an accurate accounting of the facts.

N.B.: Think what you will of professed “anarcho-capitalists”; Roderick is not one. He identifies himself as an individualist anarchist in the tradition of Benjamin Tucker. He talks with anarcho-capitalists, and is willing to use their terminology when it helps to make a point, but he has also repeatedly raised worries (to them and in public) about identifying with “capitalism” given the origins of the term and the critique by the 19th century individualists that Rothbardians sometimes claim as their allies.

As Chuck0 says, it’s your project and your call, but it’s important to keep in mind what positions Roderick is actually arguing for and how he actually identifies himself. How to deal with people who do explicitly identify themselves with anarcho-capitalism is another, separate question.

I’m unclear on what the excellent point that Goldberg is making is supposed to be.

There’s an extensive literature by Leftists on the tortured relationship between Leftism, anti-imperialism, and nationalism. Everyone from internationalist Marxists to milksop Social Democrats to anarchists has written and argued extensively about when, where, and how you might support nationalist movements. Explicit topics of discussion have included Zionism, competing forms of Jewish nationalism (Bundism), Arab nationalism, Palestinian nationalism, etc. (The discussion hasn’t been confined to post-colonial nationalism; it’s also discussed phenomena such as Black Nationalism in the United States.) In spite of a lot of intense disagreements, there has always been a general consensus that “It’s the Empire, stupid!”—i.e., that there’s a big difference between nationalist tendencies that are struggling against international empires and those that are struggling to strengthen the resolve and power of international empires. The main debates focus on how cautious the Left has to be about which anti-imperial nationalisms they’re willing to support (i.e., supporting most, some, or none), with different answers coming out all around, but none of them urging an uncritical embrace.

I might mention that this is precisely the position which has been taken by some L&P posters on secessionist movements here and around the world.

I don’t expect Goldberg to agree with either any of the particular views or the general consensus of that discussion. Heck, I don’t even expect him to know much about it. But if he doesn’t know about it, then why is he still writing about it?

Frank clarifies: “Oh, and the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand…”

So, we’ve got all of Europe, and apparently the British colonies where the majority of the population are now the descendents of the colonists.

What about Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, etc.? Are these part of the “West”? Why or why not?

Dan Dare suggests: “My answer would be that the West is those countries that have a Christian heritage. That includes recently secularized societies like Europe. But I would perhaps also include at the fringes, Russia and Latin America.”

I don’t get it. Why would “Russia” and “Latin America” be “at the fringes” under the explication you’ve given so far? Russia and Latin America are certainly countries that have a Christian (or “Judaeo-Christian”) heritage, if anyone at all does.

However, I’m a bit afraid that this explication might rule out too much or too little, given what people normally mean. For example, Albania and Bosnia-Hercegovina have been majority Muslim countries for centuries. But it’s hard to conceive of any reason, short of ad hockery, to exclude them from “the West” while including Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, etc.

Dan goes on: “I might be tempted to include societies that were based on Classical Roman and Greek models even if they were not Christian, but no such thing exists any more. (Unless one means the modern “pagan” West). This recognises that “the West” has classical as well as JudeoChristian roots.”

There are two different claims you could be making here:

1. Classical pagan thought and culture is counted as part of “the West” as we know it today.

But if that’s what you mean, then what sort of argument could you give that Jewish thought and culture is more closely related to classical pagan thought and culture than it is to Islam, such as to group Jewish thought and culture, and classical pagan thought and culture, together while leaving Islam as an outlier?

1. “The West” as we know it today has continuities with, and roots in, the classical pagan thought and culture, but classical pagan thought and culture are not, properly, counted as part of “the West” as we know it today.

If this is what you mean, then things become a bit clearer. But you’d have trouble convincing, say, Averroes or Avicenna or al-Farabi that classical pagan thought and culture is the exclusive property of Christendom.

So, since I continue to be puzzled, let me add a bit to my original dumb question. The new dumb question is: “What is ‘the West’—and on what basis do you determine whether a society is part of ‘the West’ or not?”

I have a basic, stupid question here.

To wit: what is “the West”? What societies does it include and over what time periods?

Tim S. said that Democrats should: “Blame yourselves, and blame your party for ignoring how most of working class america feels about moral and domestic issues.”

But Tim, “working class America” didn’t vote for George Bush; it voted for John Kerry.

If only people making under $50,000 per year had voted, John Kerry would have beaten George Bush 55%-44%. (In fact, John Kerry would have even won Dixie, 50%-49%.)

In fact, if only people making under $100,000 per year had voted, John Kerry still would have beaten George Bush by a margin of 50%-49% nation-wide.

Kerry won every single income bracket from under $15,000/year to $30-$50,000/year. It’s professionals making more than $50,000/year who voted for George Bush, and the richest 18% (people making $100,000/year or more) who put him over the top.

(Source: CNN Election 2004 national exit polls, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html and Southern regional exit polls, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.3.html)

Working-class people don’t elect Republicans. Middle managers, CEOs, and trust-fund babies do. If the Democratic Party wants to win more in the future, then obfuscation about who their electoral base actually is certainly won’t do.

Good post. I’m excited about the crosslinking and cross-pollination I’ve been seeing too.

A technical note: rather than keyword screening, might it be best to just encourage people to submit a category feed, if your blog ranges over a lot of (say) non-political topics? Most blog software makes this not too difficult to set up, if it doesn’t come that way straight out of the box. I don’t have category feeds set up for my blog yet, but I know I’d be glad to do it and put up some information to help others do it, if there were a demand for it. I just fear that keyword screening is going to be a pain to manage and turn up too many false negatives.

Rivers, I live in Michigan at the moment, but I lived in Auburn for ten years (junior high, high school, and University). I’m well aware of why you think poor people in Alabama are the problem—I thought the same thing for many years. The problem is that it just ain’t true. Here’s the exit polls for Alabama specifically:

TOTAL VOTE: BUSH: 63% KERRY: 37%

VOTE BY YEARLY INCOME:

Under $15,000 (10%) BUSH: 42% KERRY: 58%

$15-30,000 (23%) BUSH: 52%
KERRY: 47%

$30-50,000 (30%) BUSH: 52%
KERRY: 46%

$50-75,000 (21%) BUSH: 78%
KERRY: 22%

$75-$100,000 (8%) BUSH: 78%
KERRY: 22%

No statistically significant data was available for people with incomes above $100,000. However, since the overall Bush vote for people with incomes below $100,000 (59%) came out below the overall Bush vote (63%), you can pretty reliably predict that the trend got even worse with richer Alabamians.

Once again, poor people don’t elect Republicans. Rich people do. Even in Alabama.

Of course, on Parallel Earth where, due to an increased youth turnout or to the Rapture, Parallel John Kerry managed to pull it out, the Parallel DLC would have taken it as plenty of ammunition for saying that it was proof positive that his weaselley liberal insider politics were what the Party needed to convince voters, rather than Deaniac rabble-rousing. Never mind that Kerry lost on turnout—on the depth of support rather than on the breadth—the DLC still thinks it’s time to blame the uppity queers. If weasels win, they think that’s proof that Democrats should move to the Right; if weasels lose, they think that’s proof that Democrats should move to the Right faster.

Clintonism is dead, but still moving. Time to stick a stake into its unholy heart.