An intelligent man is capable of overcoming problems and difficulties a wise man would have avoided in the first place.
There is only one China
A new level of religious tolerance
Which is worth more, living or just staying alive?
Washington learns from...Florida!
Sniperphobia spreads
Glenn Reynolds on Mars
Make smoking unconstitutional
Pregnant Pigs
Sunday, October 06, 2002
More apt descriptions of the UN from Bill Buckley via Paul Cella. (Have these two guys ever been seen together?)
A thought from Kathleen Parker on going after Saddam unilaterally...
Nevertheless, our commitment to removing Saddam is fair, just, necessary and even noble, given the hypocrisy of other nations willing to watch us die for their eventual benefit. Whether we're up to the task, that's the real question.
In discussing the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of the United Nations, David Warren sums up a principle I like to call centralism,
The belief is that the larger governmental unit is, by definition and always, more legitimate than the smaller -- and more "democratic", since it contains more people. Thus provinces are preferred to municipalities, the federal government to provinces, and "world government" to federal, for whatever purpose -- usually some social engineering scheme. And once again, the idea goes without thinking; for the implications of it are horrendous.
Centralists go by many names; socialist, fascist, episcopol, corporate. The common denominator is obviously that most decisions are made and implemented at the highest level possible in the name of strength, unity, uniformity and other such concepts.
The other end of this spectrum would be localism, where decisions happen at the lowest level possible. Localists value self-reliance, independendence, and personal responsibility and may be called libertarians, liberals (of the classical sort), congregationalists or entrepreneurs.
You may have noticed that terms like leftist, right wing and conservative are missing. They don't really mean the same thing, since many conservatives are centralist and many leftist ideals are quite localist.
If you read the Cracker, you will see these concepts pop up a lot.