dennis,

You might be interested to read this article from last summer’s issue of The Match!, where Fred Woodworth argues much the same claim. As Woodworth points out, what’s going on isn’t just a matter of government police consciously emulating military training, attitudes, tactics and equipment (although they do do all of that); it’s also a matter of them getting militarized just in simple terms of personnel, through many active programs (in collaboration with the Feds) to recruit former government soldiers after their tour in occupied Iraq or occupied Afghanistan has come to end.

langa: Those on the left are afraid of alienating the radical feminists, many of whom consider porn to be the worst thing in the world.

Huh?

1. Antipornography radical feminists generally oppose, and have repeatedly come out against, the kind of nasty remarks and polemical abuse that’s directed against women in pornography from people (mainly men) on the political Left and Right. Whether you think we are right about pornography or not, I don’t think this is an accurate understanding of the position towards women in the pornography industry.

2. I can find no evidence at all that much of anybody in the mainstream Left is particularly afraid of alienating antipornography radical feminists, or really cares what radical feminists in general think (whether they are antipornography or not). Do you really think that someone like Catharine MacKinnon or Susan Brownmiller has very much influence over what people in common liberal or Leftist discourse, outside of specifically feminist political spaces, think it is or is not acceptable to say?

The idea that people on the male Left really want to object to nasty remarks about the women in pornography, but fear of radical feminist backlash is somehow holding them back, strikes me as bizarre.

Anon73:

Well, Aster mentioned the word “pogrom” before you did, so it’s natural you would repeat it. But I asked because I am unsure about what would count as a “pogrom” in your light.

E.g. would a pogrom against women in prostitution have to involve large-scale murders and massacres (which certainly has happened, many times, but is rarer than other forms of mass violence against women in prostitution)? Or would it be enough if large numbers of women in prostitution were being forcibly rounded up, restrained, beaten or tortured, forced out of their homes and livelihoods, and locked away in prison camps for months or years at a time? If the latter sort of dispossession and terrorization counts, then that’s been the official policy and program of countless patriarchal states throughout the world — among them the state of Denmark until the 1999 partial decriminalization.

Briggs,

I think that’s true, but I don’t think it’s funny. (Neither ha-ha, nor particularly strange.)

It’s entirely ordinary for women to be treated like crap by both the official Right and the official Left simultaneously, and especially women who are perceived as being defined by their roles in the system of sex-class (e.g. sex workers and other publicly sexualized women).

There are very few rules when it comes to the girls, and especially not girls who aren’t seen as “nice” according to prevailing male standards. Or I should say that there are a lot of rules: just not rules of courtesy or common decency, but rather rules of Patriarchal Correctness, which are themselves quite rigid in their expectations of who has the right to act like a dickhead, or even has a positive obligation to act like a dickhead, and who ought to be kept in their place.

Anon73,

I’m not sure what you mean by a “pogrom,” but the decriminalization of prostitution in Denmark is only about 10 years old now — prior to 1999 women in sex work faced the violence of the state, and the partial decriminalization that was put through in 1999 still hurts sex workers by legally constraining their options for work (e.g. by prohibiting brothels). Sex workers in Denmark are, in the very best of circumstances, precariously grey-market workers who have faced centuries-old organized government repression right up into the past decade, who face unjust legal restrictions right now, and who have every reason to worry about facing a return to full-on government prohibition in the future if patriarchal politicians are allowed to have their way with the terms of the debate, I’d say there’s every reason to worry about persecutions, prisons, and pogroms. It’s not exactly unusual for governments — the Danish government included — to go around ruining peaceful sex workers’ lives or to abduct them off the street and lock them in cages against their will.

Hence, solidarity.

Francois,

I don’t do polemical definitions of “revisionist.” I’m using it in a neutral sense: revisionists are historians who critically re-examine common received wisdom and authoritative accounts about history, and criticize or rejecting the “official” or authoritative understanding of the events.

Whether or not this project is really worthwhile depends on what’s being rejected and what the evidence for the rejecting is. Since I tend to think that official/governmental accounts of history tend to be a pack of distortions, fudging, and self-serving lies, I tend be pretty positive on revisionism, so long as the revisionist in question is herself serious and honest. Zinn’s a good example; I’d also consider somebody like J.R. Hummel or Bob Higgs an example of good honest revisionism. Of course, there are other revisionists out there who are ignorant, stupid or dishonest — take David Irving (please!). But the problem with them isn’t that they’re revisionists. It’s that they’re idiots or charlatans.

Francois

Well, don’t look so surprised. It’s not exactly unusual for Lew Rockwell to say kind things about anti-war revisionist historians, including those on the populist Left. He’ll typically say kind things about almost anyone who he thinks is on the right side of the war issue.

If the mic cut-out occurs during a discussion of malign spontaneous orders, one thing to keep in mind is that Roderick does have a pun associated with that discussion — “spontaneous ordure” — which may be the occasion for both the groaning and the apologies, rather than anyone getting upset over the content of the claim.

MBH:

If you are subsidized, then your insurance policy cannot cover abortions. But that’s how the law has stood since 1976 (see Hyde Amendment). So the new legislation changes nothing.

Of course it does. Specifically, the new legislation (through a combination of subsidies, captive-market mandates, and new regulations on insurance corporations) is designed to corral more women (and men) into government-subsidized plans. That is, last I checked, the point of the “reform.”

Of course, more thoroughly statist options (like, say, putting everyone on Medicare, as some “social democrats” have proposed) would be even worse, in that total conversion of the healthcare industry to political allocation would mean the total subordination of women’s reproductive healthcare to the political mandates of Hyde et al. But this proposal is bad enough. And if your response depends on a claim that government subsidies to one good don’t tend to crowd out substitute goods, then I have to wonder where you would get that notion.

MBH:

If that’s not Left-Libertarian enough, I hope this is. Charles suggested it. Please click the red ‘Recommend’ button at the bottom if you like.

Although I certainly do support grassroots-organized community free clinics (on the model of the Panther clinics or the feminist women’s health center / women’s self-help clinic movement), I certainly do not favor having goverment “create” community health care centers. And while I very much appreciate the notions of (1) divorcing the idea of “universal health care” from “government health care”; and (2) doing so through voluntary grassroots alternatives to corporate health insurance, I will say that I strongly doubt that any one big voluntary plan for everyone everywhere is going to cut it. What I want to see is a thousand mutual aid societies blooming, and a thousand different approaches to the problem — not for there to be some one network that everyone signs onto, but rather that every one have some network that she individually can sign on to.

Aster:

The point is that while theoretically libertarians decide these things on individualist principle, in practice the judgment calls on policy options get made according to conservative and patriarchal priorities. This doesn’t have to be the case, but is.

Maybe so, but I may I suggest that MBH’s position on government health care reform is, well, idiosyncratic among self-identified libertarians? And so that the argumentative moves he makes may not be indicative of how most of us would handle the issue?

Aster: This one was merely nightmare fuel, as I said. … An ecological collapse is not a sign of our failure to be humble before nature but of our failure to be rational in regards to nature’s reality. Failing societies lose the capacity to produce to match their habitual levels of consumption, and the process of trying to hold on to effects without causes sets everything afire with debt and inflation. … I agree intensely that the only way out is forward. … But I look at the mentality of the social classes who make the relevant decisions and I tremble. … One could hope that the system will change when it realise that its disfunctionality will come at the cost of its own survival. But I’m not placing my chips on the numbers in accordance with hope, and I don’t think one needs hope to pursue happiness.

Well, maybe not, but if you’re worried about this, why not work on building an alternative for yourself and your neighbors, to the extent that you can under current conditions? I don’t know how the cost of the components varies in New Zealand, but in the U.S., you can get the basics for building out a partial off-the-grid home power system (which can be expanded out on the margin, to take over more and more capacity, as you get the money and the experience with the system) for a few hundreds of US$, and can set it all up with off-the-shelf parts with the help of a DIY manual or two. (I can point you to some resources, if you’re curious. The notion that off-the-grid home power systems cost tens of thousands of dollars is the result of the Green State trying to insist on all-at-once rather than piecemeal solutions, and, especially, on sending people to professional “certified installers” who charge thousands of dollars for the labor.)

Of course, getting up your own home energy production won’t solve the big problem just on its own. But if you’re worried about losing electricity, it will solve that part of your little end of the problem, and that’s something.

I have no hope at all for any global or national systems to change. But I do have a lot of hope for changing things by getting out of global or national systems. And, perhaps, for helping others along the way to doing the same.

Rational modes of production begin at home….