You call this light posting? :)
Have any students at Viable asked why you haven't detached your laptop (under your arm) from the mile-long modem cable that follows you around? Or (silly me) are you wireless?

(Anyone there writing stories about midnight bloggers....?)

"We'd be happy to personally push Saddam Hussein in front of a bus, but this current Administration has so disgraced itself that if Ari Fleischer were to announce that the sun rose in the east this morning, we'd want a second source just to make sure...."

I'm guessing that this is an ironic response to Ari Fleischer's thuggish comments yesterday, rather than a qualified endorsement of his observation that the murder of a murderer might be a cost-effective way to save time and trouble (if only the Republican administration would otherwise behave itself).

Personally, I'm nauseous after watching the clips of Fleischer's comments and the further _visceral knowledge_ they communicate that the de facto rulers of our country (or their spokesmen) really are indistinguishable from Chicago mobsters. (Yes, Pierre Salinger said something similar about Castro in the '60s; but that doesn't lessen the impact, for me, of Fleischer's deadpan delivery, yesterday.)

Ready to be lectured now on not reading correctly or being overly sensitive about jokes on the subject of political murder.

"...push Saddam Hussein in front of a bus..."

Somewhere in the bowels of the NSA Blog Monitor corp, wheels being turning that will result in a feasibility study titled "Omnibus Impact as a Instrumentality for the Facilitation of Regime Change."

Preliminary budget: $10,000 a year.

Where is Hassan i Sabbah when we need him?

And I see that good old Amiri Baraka hasn't changed a bit from the days when he was extolling the joys of robbing the "joosh stores."

Gee, $10,000, huh? As another guy living in Brooklyn, I gotta say, in this part of the world, 10 grand don't get you much-- barely a mid-level Hyundai.

On the other hand, if we could offer that money, Saddam style, to, say, the FAMILY of the holy martyr who were to push Saddam in front of a bus... THAT would be a good use!!!

Lenny, I wasn't thinking of any particular recent Ari Fleischer performance. I may have time to post a little from out here on Martha's Vineyard, but I assuredly don't have time to watch Ari Fleischer on TV.

You left out the following line: "Who told Sharon to stay away." It rhymes, so you can tell he's a poet.

Incidentally, Baraka read to and spoke to my fifth (or sixth?) grade English class. Not the whole grade; our class individually, though I think he was being taken around from class to class.

Nothing untoward, however, took place.

Patrick, I was referring to the press conference reported on here, which you might not have seen yesterday, after all.

I don't recall ever saying a positive word about either Fleisher or anything he's said, before -- indeed, I've blogged a couple of negative blog entries on him just in the past couple of days -- but if the following is "thuggish,":

Asked about the cost of a war against Baghdad -- estimated at as much as US$270-billion for a war plus a five-year occupation -- Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said: "The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that."

Asked whether he was really calling for Saddam's death, Mr. Fleischer responded twice: "Regime change is welcome in whatever form it takes."

Mr. Fleischer later backtracked slightly, saying he was making a rhetorical point.

"This is not a statement of administration policy," he said. "The point is that if the Iraqis took matters in their own hands, no one around the world would shed a tear."

Then sign me up for support of this example of thuggishness. It strikes me as a vastly more moral solution than either a war in which civilians and military personnel will inevitably die, or the uncertainties of a situation that otherwise might lead to civilians and military people dying.

The major flaw is that it's not so likely to lead to an Iraqi democracy any time soon, and, more to the point, it's unlikely to happen at all.

But I don't think sending a team to arrest Hussein for crimes against humanity is likely to work. Do you think it would, Lenny?

I believe that murder is murder is not justifiable homicide is not self-defense -- although in some situations the lines between these acts are not as clear and distinct as in others.

If we can agree on a definition of premeditated murder, Gary, it sounds like you're saying that you believe in it as a justifiable act to guard against the possibility that an unsavory neighbor might invade your house and attack your family. I don't. I believe that rules about dealing with societal threats are one of the things that makes us a civilized nation and that civilization is good.

If Gary Farber is willing to sign up for that example of thuggishness, I'm glad I don't live in his town. I wish I didn't live in his country.

Len, it's a commonplace to make that "neighbor" analogy, but the analogy doesn't work. The reason is that we live in a civil society where most of us, most of the time, can count on police, to deal with most semi-imminent threats of violence, and we can, much of the time, count on courts to mete out some justice.

That doesn't apply yet, save in extremely limited situations, in the international arena. Even if we set aside any qualms about any problematic aspects of the new International Criminal Court, and the fact that "international law" largely doesn't yet exist, and has neither a Code nor a Constitution nor an agreed body of case law nor an agreed body of common law, it remains true that it will do no good to indict someone (in absentia?) if they are the head of a country who refuses to listen to the court.

Unless some powerful country is able to back such a threat with sufficient military force.

Which brings us back, though after a couple of years of delay, to where we are right now.

So the analogy fails utterly, as the situations of "my town" and "my neighbor" differ utterly from "my mass-murdering dictator across the sea armed with weapons of considerable destruction."

And I don't advocate policies towards A that I'd advocate towards B any more than I'd advocate policies towards B that I'd call for regarding A.

Since you and Simon are so worried.

I perfectly willing, to hypothesize, with my Broad Mental Horizons, that sometime in our lifetime, in the next couple of decades, we might start to create a comprehensive basis for "international law," and that the world might then consist almost entirely of fair-minded democratic non-corrupt governments, and that a World Government, or the framework for one, might then be a Fair, Fine, and Good Thing. But we don't live in that world yet: not remotely. Right now, that's mostly a description of a dream world for much of the world. And right now we need solutions for the world we live in, not the world we'd like to live in and hope yet to live in.

You may, of course, disagree, and find, say, the human rights and democratic record of, say, Syria, China, Nigeria, Belarus, Myannmar, Chechnya, Paraguay, Congo, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, North Korea, Egypt, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, etc., and much of the world, the fine record of such UN Conferences as the Conference on Racism, the fine record of the General Assembly, something to cheer about, and that it would be just to let such fine fascist oppressive dictators, oligarchs, kleptarchs, and so on, pass judgements and make rules. I find such support of fascists, dictators, and criminals quite illiberal, myself, but that's just me.

The world is mostly not Europe, the English-speaking countries, and the smattering of other democracies and quasi-democracies. This is relevant.

Here's the current membership of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Some current members: Algeria, Armenia, Bahrain, Burkino Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Thailand, Togo, Uganda, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe.

Who doesn't admire these fine democratic governments? Who doesn't admire their human rights record? Who could say they wouldn't be objective and able to render justice? Who doesn't trust them to play the role of police, and court, and jury? Who?

Gary:

Making up an international police force --and using it to protect people from rogue states or abusive heads of state-- is trickier than using a police force to deter antisocial acts within a civilized nation. No argument about that.

My revulsion, here, is for a U.S. government spokesman calling for an *assassination* (not a police action, not a war) in the same way Al Capone might have urged his "New York family" to save time and trouble by taking out Dutch Schultz.

When the CIA tried to get Kennedy to covertly sanction this kind of action against Castro, Kennedy resisted. Now we've got civilian officials, not spooks, using the media to coarsen public attitudes about a suggestion to commit a political murder.

"When the CIA tried to get Kennedy to covertly sanction this kind of action against Castro, Kennedy resisted." Um, in the 41st Chorp Dimension, Len? Cite?

Did that include the plot to poison his cigar to make his beard drop out, that Bobby Kennedy enthused about, or, mere plots to kill Castro that the Kennedy's endorsed. What on earth are you citing? I await your cites with suspense.

I had another thought, but I'm going to stand up, instead, for the idea that political murder is a good idea. Of course, [Godwin] killing Hitler [years before 1938] would have been bad. Defend that idea as much as you like, Len. I contest it. I defend murder, Len. If we are omnicient, of course.

Gary, you're right about the Kennedy/Castro specifics, but I'd also venture that Lenny's main point deserves at least as much energy as you're putting into your sarcastic attacks on this error.

Lenny's main point is that we're seeing a blatant coarsening--his term--of attitudes about this sort of thing. And he's right.

I've got a broad streak of pragmatism myself. I'm neither a pacifist nor an across-the-board anti-interventionist. But I'm as disgusted as Lenny is by the increasingly frank, might-makes-right, rhetorical brutality of the people now in power--and of their apologists. Sometimes nations have to do brutal things. But what I'm beginning to see is an across-the-board campaign to get us all accustomed to thinking like brutes.

The other thing that bothers me about Fleischer's comments is that they demonstrate yet again the Star Wars movie view of things held by the Bush camp. They seem to assume that simply killing Saddam Hussein will magically solve everything-- the evil Emperor falls down the inexplicable bottomless pit, the Death Star blows up, and jubilant CGI crowds across the Galaxy will rejoice as peace and democracy break out all over.

It's not going to work that way-- if Hussein were assassinated, his successor wouldn't be a whole lot more democratic and less thuggish. And they'd still have weapons of indeterminate destruction, and they'd still be repressing the Iraqi people, and all the other semi-substantive arguments used by the hawk crowd would still apply.

The next thug would likely be more pliable, at least in the short term, and wouldn't be the focus of a Bush family vendetta, but if "regime change" means anything other than changing the name of the person wearing the boots stomping a human face, removing Saddam is not a sufficient solution. If the goal is actually to address the many issues raised in hawkish rhetoric, it'll require time, money, and effort on our part, well beyond the cost of a plane ticket and a bullet.

Comments like Fleisher's and Bush's "He tried to kill my dad" just show that their sudden interest in democratic rule for the Middle East is little more than rhetorical cover for a personal vendetta. And the current situation in Afghanistan just drives that point home.

I thank you, Patrick, for acknowledgement of my incredulity at Len's endorsement of the kind, gentle, Kennedys -- I happen to be keen on the incarnation of Bobby in his last years, but I don't shy away from knowledge of his enthused years as a tool of Joe McCarthy, his tear after Jimmy Hoffa, his enthusiastic activities to,hey, there, assasinate, brutally and thuggishly, I hear, Fidel Castro, which involved creating thuggish assasination plot after assasination plot -- I can't understate how astonished I am at the idea anyone would cite the Kennedys as drawing a moral line against political assasination, since they are the most documented case we have of Presidential plots to kill a dictator -- and other less statuesque qualities -- but I'm curious if you endorse Len's implicit call for turning the Iraq problem over to the UN to solve, and whatever thoughts you might otherwise have on the problem,and solutions, yourself.

Chad, that assasination wouldn't bring peace and justice to the Galaxy, er, Iraq, I've acknowledged and written about many times -- dunno if you read my blog, which is rather relevant to my opinions -- that the best justification for further Iraqi intervention is to create an Iraqi democracy is something I've written about at great length, and I'm not unique in this. Nor, I'll point out again, if people aren't reading me, am I firmly, or even quite yet, in the war-now camp. I'm still in the "answer my questions and convince me" camp.

Looking back, I see I already said in this set of comments that "The major flaw is that it's not so likely to lead to an Iraqi democracy any time soon, and, more to the point, it's unlikely to happen at all."

But since it apparently went unread,I'm repeating myself.

Other things that "apparently went unread" include these remarks by me:

"Gary, you're right about the Kennedy/Castro specifics, but I'd also venture that Lenny's main point deserves at least as much energy as you're putting into your sarcastic attacks on this error.

"Lenny's main point is that we're seeing a blatant coarsening--his term--of attitudes about this sort of thing. And he's right."

What this elicited from Gary Farber was this eye-popping run-on sentence:

"I thank you, Patrick, for acknowledgement of my incredulity at Len's endorsement of the kind, gentle, Kennedys -- I happen to be keen on the incarnation of Bobby in his last years, but I don't shy away from knowledge of his enthused years as a tool of Joe McCarthy, his tear after Jimmy Hoffa, his enthusiastic activities to,hey, there, assasinate, brutally and thuggishly, I hear, Fidel Castro, which involved creating thuggish assasination plot after assasination plot -- I can't understate how astonished I am at the idea anyone would cite the Kennedys as drawing a moral line against political assasination, since they are the most documented case we have of Presidential plots to kill a dictator -- and other less statuesque qualities -- but I'm curious if you endorse Len's implicit call for turning the Iraq problem over to the UN to solve, and whatever thoughts you might otherwise have on the problem,and solutions, yourself."

In other words, never mind Patrick's attempt to gently point out that Lenny's primary point had to do with a certain quality of rhetoric. Instead, let's once again dance up and down on Lenny's error of fact. Better yet, let's frame this lengthy chunk of neener-neener inside an ostensibly polite "thank you" directed at me. Nice.

As for Gary's question about whether I "endorse Len's implicit call for turning the Iraq problem over to the UN to solve," this is as phony as the rest of it. Re-reading this comment thread, it's clear that, imprecise though Lenny can be, he's consistently been trying to talk about the Administration's rhetorical tone, and that Gary has been responding by (1) ignoring this and (2) challenging Lenny on issues that Gary wants to argue about. All the way back in this thread's ninth message, Gary wrote "I don't think sending a team to arrest Hussein for crimes against humanity is likely to work. Do you think it would, Lenny?" A perfectly reasonable subject for discussion, except that nowhere did Lenny suggest anything of the sort, so it's a mystery why he in particular should be buttonholed about it.

In message #13, responding to further Farberish finger-pointing, Lenny grants one of Gary's main points, writing "Gary: Making up an international police force--and using it to protect people from rogue states or abusive heads of state-- is trickier than using a police force to deter antisocial acts within a civilized nation. No argument about that." He continues: "My revulsion, here, is for a U.S. government spokesman calling for an *assassination* (not a police action, not a war) in the same way Al Capone might have urged his 'New York family' to save time and trouble by taking out Dutch Schultz."

Following which, Lenny then makes his historical error about Kennedy and Castro. Which allows Gary to completely ignore the earlier part of Lenny's post--the granting of Gary's point, the re-statement of what Lenny is concerned with. Instead, with great gusto, Gary now mocks Lenny for the error. In, now, multiple posts.

This isn't fun or interesting, it's dreary. It's "blogging to win." In point of fact, I agree with Gary a lot, and I have a long history of disagreeing about politics with Lenny Bailes. But I'm tired of the kind of gotcha-ism typified by Gary's behavior in this thread. I'm tired of getting it from the strutting "warbloggers," and I'm tired of it from Gary. If anything, it confirms my initial suspicion that Lenny has a point, and there really is a general coarsening of sensibility going on.

Another flaw of assassination is that it's a brutal act entailing ugly consequences for its planners and perpetrators. That Fleischer spoke of it so lightly is a disturbing sign about what he (and the people he represents) consider to be acceptable behavior -- both for individuals and for nations.

The idea that the administration of the United Nations is shaky and might not now be capable of executing a police action on the order of the Korean intervention (if such an action were called for by the United States) is another issue. I have some aversion to the way Bush & co. are addressing that, too. But that wasn't what I was complaining about in this thread.

Patrick slipped in ahead of my response to Gary (whose urgent sense of alarm over killers running countries in the Middle East, and the lethal consequences of the suicide-bomb mentality they encourage, have not gone unnoticed by me).

Re Gary's third comment in this thread --

The existence of police, courts, and all the other appurtenance of law enforcement, isn't the thing that determines whether we live under the rule of law.

The most important factor is that we recognize ourselves as living under the rule of law, whether or not there's a police officer nearby to back it up. Without that, no amount of law enforcement short of a maximum-security lockdown will do squat.

We won't get respect for international law by making it clear that we don't particularly feel we're all that subject to it.

Teresa, you make an excellent point. And that's what's going wrong: our society has more and more people who obey the law only because (and only when) they fear punishment.

Almost all corporations behave this way; they assess likely profit vs likely penalty * probability of getting caught. But now we have individuals who behave that way.

I fear our "president" is one. In his case it's amplified by the cowboy mentality that says if somebody done you wrong, why then you shoot 'em yourself, you don't wait for no fool court!

I'm starting to feel like I'm in a minority, because my ethics have the test of "what would I do if someone did something equivalent to me," rather than "can I get away with this." I've had the experience of telling people "that's illegal" only to have them laugh and say "how could we possibly get caught?" (I'm tempted to show them how; so far I haven't.) Is that the only point they can see? I fear it is; I've long since given up on telling people "that's wrong" (in a moral sense); then they just look at me like I've said something in Hittite.

Well, belying that statement, here's a moral pronouncement from On High (I'm the top floor of my building): It's wrong to kill people. Even bad people. Even people who are a clear and present danger of immediate grave bodily injury or death to you and your loved ones.

Now I don't mean that it's never the best action. Sometimes NOT doing it is even MORE wrong (another poisonous meme of American society is the idea that there's always a "right" course of action; sorry kiddies, no such luck). One must weigh the consequences and relative wrongness of both courses, and choose: and when you choose an action, you choose its consequences (including guilt, social ostracism, legal penalties etc.).

It may be that taking out Saddam Hussein, even with the losses of Iraqi and American lives that would entail, is the least wrong course of action. But we haven't been given the information we need to make that judgement; instead, we're asked to blindly support people who obviously have abandoned concepts like "right" and "wrong" in favor of frontier justice and (at least in the case of GW "he tried to kill my dad" Bush) blood feud.

And that is Just Plain Wrong.

Maybe so. I do think that anyone using phrases like "cowboy mentality" and "frontier justice" for this sort of thing should probably do some reading about actual cowboys and the actual frontier.

Remarkably pertinent to the "blogging to win" techniques discussed above:

http://www.thismodernworld.com/media/arc/american%20prospect/020528readiness.jpg

Patrick: I do think that anyone using phrases like "cowboy mentality" and "frontier justice" for this sort of thing should probably do some reading about actual cowboys and the actual frontier.

Actually, I've just been reading John McPhee92s "Irons in the Fire", about (modern) brand inspectors among the cattle-raising community in Nevada. There's a definite impression there of a whole lot of folks who are kept on the legal side solely by the knowledge that the inspectors are there to catch them if they stray. It may not be a frontier anymore, but they are cowboys.

Meanwhile, back the Poet Laureat of New Jersey (and boy does that sound like the title of a novel...)

"TRENTON, N.J. - Gov. James E. McGreevey is seeking the power to fire the state's poet laureate, who has refused repeated calls to resign after writing a Sept. 11 memorial poem criticized as anti-Semitic."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4226780.htm

It's easier to get rid of a candidate for Senator from New Jersey than it is to get rid of a poet.

McGreevey's problem is that there's no provision for dismissing a NJ poet-laureate. Thus the perils of poorly-drafted legislation.

Just to weigh in here on, well, something, I would say that the poem is not to much racist as indiscriminate. It has no focus. Even the structure seems disintegrate every 10 or 20 lines. He builds up a grand, gripping swing of questions, Who? Who? Who? but then instead of a crescendo, or even an answer, he asks another question, too long, in the wrong rhythm. He ties atrocities together without any attempt to find a common theme as if all the evil in the world were the same thing. It's your basic, paranoid, conspiracy-theorist world view.

A few comments on all this:

1. Any arguments one makes for the U.S. assassinating Saddam Hussein would seem to be equally valid from an Iraqi point of view. If people are making serious threats against Saddam's life, it would seem to me he would be entirely justified, by this logic, in taking preemptive action. [N.B. I am NOT advocating this.]

2. As some have pointed out, the Ba'ath Party is not exactly a bastion of Jeffersonian, or even Jacksonian, Democrats. Saddam is an evil man. So are most of the men around him, as well as the people around the world, including this country, who sold him his weapons.

3. It might be apropos to look at another man who JFK is alleged by some to have assassinated: Ngo Din Diem of South Vietnam. (I've seen different sources pro and con on whether Diem's death was anctioned by JFK.) But whether or not Kennedy directed the hit or not, it was applauded at the time as something that would preserve U.S. interests in Vietnam. Worked great...

4: Poet laureates have a long history of writing terrrible things. Some of them (e.g John Masefield) have been pretty solid; others... Amiri Baraka is, i'm sure, by no means the worst.

I don't think anyone, at least in this thread, said the poem was "racist." As Max Sawicky pointed out, the lines in question aren't even "anti-semitic." What they are, is stupid.

Patrick sez: "Maybe so. I do think that anyone using phrases like "cowboy mentality" and "frontier justice" for this sort of thing should probably do some reading about actual cowboys and the actual frontier."

Well, as you say, maybe so. Do you think HE did? I think he watched a whole lot of cheesy westerns, and now he's trying to "stand tall" and give Hussein a bad day at Black Rock. Hang 'em high! As someone else said, "we don't need no stinking justification."

I know that cowboys are generally ordinary working men, and always have been. I know that the actual frontier had as much real justice as it could muster (though I'm still deeply unimpressed with Texas' achievements in that regard).

This is not what is meant by "cowboy mentality," though. I was making a pop-culture reference, not a historical one. That's because Dubya (doesn't that mean 'replace your voice'?) is a pop-culture president, not a historic one.

Chris, I hear you, but "I was making a pop-culture reference, not a historical one" is a justification that could easily be used to excuse a lot of statements to which I think you would be the first to object.

If we're discussing history and politics, we're implicitly agreeing to stand by the accuracy of our statements about history and politics. There's nothing difficult about saying, for instance, that George W. Bush's attitudes about the conduct of foreign affairs "seem to have come out of a cowboy movie."

As for Texas, that state was last any sort of serious "frontier" around the same time that Illinois and Minnesota were. Texas is a highly-developed, urban, industrial seaboard state where people like to wear cowboy hats and attitudinize a lot. Northern New Hampshire is more of a "frontier" than most of Texas. The idea that Texas is the epitome of the American frontier era is entirely PR. Actual Texas history for the last 150 years has a lot more to do with urbanization, foreign trade, and waves of European immigration. Which is to say, Texas is a big, prosperous Midwestern state whose actual "frontier" past is as long ago, and as truly relevant to its current-day politics, as Indiana's.

I harp on this because many commenters, particularly Europeans but also Americans from the Eastern Seaboard, perennially build elaborate rhetorical constructs attempting to connect the Bush family and Texas politics (or American right-wing politics in general) to some fantasy of the American "frontier." This is rot.

Of course it's pertinent that many people in Texas feel a special connection to their fantasies of frontier-ness, and political operators like the Bushes are skillful at exploiting this, but in fact it's a fantasy, about as sensible as trying to discuss New York City politics as if we were all still Dutch.

Europeans, in particular, often seem quite attached to the idea that American political pathologies of the Bush sort spring from what they call a "cowboy mentality." This allows them to stay on the script in which the American government is wrong because it's full of back-country people who are, of course, easily-agitated, simple-minded hicks.

The actual fact is that the pathological politics of George W. Bush spring from the same urbane, sophistiated roots as the politics of any East Coast or European politician. Which is a far less comfortable thought for most of them.

Patrick: first, I misquoted Ariana Huffington: she characterized the admin's attitude as "we don't need no stinkin' proof."

OK, I'll correct to "comes out of a cowboy movie." Fair enough, and I take your point.

Texas IS a frontier in one sense: it's on the border of the kind of justice a free society can tolerate - and in my personal opinion is clearly on the other side of that line. I don't have the historical facts on this: have they just made no progress since they were an actual frontier, or have they simply backslid to the 19th century? (And was the 19th century as brutal, really, as they are now?)

Executions based on single-eyewitness-testimony (Rashomon, anyone?), legal shootings by private citizens of persons they suspect of theft, courts that rule that it's legal for police to ignore cries for help solely on the basis of the victim's sexual orientation...the list goes on.

OK, there may be lots of people in TX who object to all that, and the mass arrest in Houston of convenience store customers DID cause a scandal. I guess I'd have to visit there before I actually judge (for my own opinion, I mean). But as it stands now, it's way too scary a place to even set foot in; if they know I'm queer, I can't even count on the police not looking the other way as some thugs beat me to death 10 feet away!

Patrick again: your second reply came in while I was writing mine. I have to cop to being a victim of that same rot. I do know that the Bush family are wealthy New Englanders.

Dubya is just a spoiled-brat rich kid who's never done an honest day's work in his life. With a slight Texas accent. I still think he watched too many cowboy movies as a child (which means he could be showing them in the White House as we speak).

"I don't have the historical facts on this: have they just made no progress since they were an actual frontier, or have they simply backslid to the 19th century?"

This question contains so many assumptions I can barely untangle them all. A big one is this: that Texas's faults and problems (whatever those may be: that's a different argument) are in some essential and exceptional sense tied up with its "frontier" history, in some way that isn't equally true of Mississippi, or Denmark, or British Columbia, or Cleveland, or the Bronx.

As long as you're trying to make sense of Texas with that as your base assumption, you're drinking their Kool-Aid.

I was born in Texas and have lived here my entire life (except for two years in Japan).

Chris wrote: "I don't have the historical facts on this: have they just made no progress since they were an actual frontier, or have they simply backslid to the 19th century?"

No, we've actually made no progress in the past 150 years. We are all essentially backwoods possum-eaters who enjoy shooting one another for sport. I myself sport a fancy two-gun rig for dealing with ornery homosexuals and other minorities. Incidentally, I also ride a big horse to work every day (I work on a ranch...all of us either rope cattle or drill oil, or both). On the weekends I ride into town for a bit of whoring and shooting.

Anyway, glad I could validate your extremely well-informed generalities.

Patrick wrote: Northern New Hampshire is more of a "frontier" than most of Texas.

Quite true, as I can personally attest. And it's quite lovely. I wish I had something better to show, but if you want to take a QuickTime peak through the lens of a moviemaker in norther NH, check this.

By the way, if our approach to Iraq was cowboy or gunslinger-like in any sense, I imagine the Old West would have been quite different:

Gunslinger: "Drop your guns, varmint!"

Varmint doesn't drop his guns.

Gunslinger: "Sheriff, will you tell him to drop his guns?"

Sheriff: "Drop yer guns."

Varmint doesn't drop his guns.

Repeat 15 times.

So yeah, I guess we're acting like cowboys. Very slow, drowsy cowboys coked to the gills with Valium, who exhaust diplomatic means over and over and over again over a decade-long period.

Note to self: rhetorical overstatement is frowned upon in the Electrolite comment section. I can accept that; rhetorical overstatement is easy to mistake for wild-eyed fanaticism. (I'm not actually a wild-eyed fanatic, for the record.)

OK, here's what I really think.

1. Many of the elements of the Texas legal system strike me as nothing short of barbaric (e.g. their high rate of execution). Others strike me as unAmerican (those laws allowing private citizens to shoot thieves).

2. Some of this legal structure (or lack of same) really does make it sound like a very frightening place to be. My friends who have moved there have confirmed some of the scary bits (like the ubiquity of guns).

3. Because of these things, I'm disinclined to set foot in Texas. This is for a combination of personal safety and politics.

4. I do not expect any Texans to sob uncontrollably at this revelation, or even care at all. (Well, some of my friends might like me to visit them. But they're not going to freak out about it, either.)

5. I think some (some) of Dubya's behavior may be derived from Hollywood movies, including but not limited to cheesy Westerns.

6. I think a lot of it is just from being ignorant (I mean that in the Southern sense of gauche, nikulturni...i.e. George Senior and Barbara did not raise him right).

7. I suppose that, like everyone, he considers himself a good guy. He may actually believe in some of what he does. Or all of it, if he's more Martian than I think likely. Benefit of whatever doubt there is.

8. All that said, I think Dubya is an evil person, and I really hope the Dems, pathetic as they've become, can run someone who can actually beat this fool in 2004.

Varmint: I don't actually have any guns.

Gunslinger: I'm pretty dang sure he's got some guns. I thought I saw some peeking out from under his vest, anyways.

Sheriff: Deputy, go see if that varmint's carrying any guns.

Gunslinger: Hold on there, Deputy. He might be hiding them in his drawers. I want the varmint's word that he;ll let the deputy root around in his pants if I say so. Not that I'd trust the varmint's word, mind you.

"1. Many of the elements of the Texas legal system strike me as nothing short of barbaric (e.g. their high rate of execution). Others strike me as unAmerican (those laws allowing private citizens to shoot thieves)."

Chris: could you please name four more of the "many" elements you have in mind? Could you name another three after that?

Are you sure you mean "many," and that you are familiar with "many elements of the Texas legal system"? Cause, old friend, it occurs to me that it seems as if it might just be barely possible that you are actually, alternatively, simply venting prejudice against a state. I may, however, be all wet on that, and if you name ten "elements," I'll apologize profusely that you're basing your statements on, instead, fact.

(I'm setting aside quibbling over how UnAmerican it is to shoot thieves in one's home, rather than waving goodbye to them.)

Gary, every time I hear anything about Texas' legal system, I think it's barbaric. One exception: the mass arrests of convenience-store customers in Houston were, quite properly, regarded as outrageous there.

I'm not going to play this "come up with 10 (un)righteous" game. But it was the whole Police Can Ignore Your Pleas For Help Based Solely On Your Sexual Orientation thing that closed the book for me. If that's a prejudice, so is not wanting to get between a mama grizzly and her cub.

Chris, Austin and Houston have large gay communities. Austin (my former home) is distinguished by having a large well-integrated, well-accepted gay community without a gay neighborhood. Gays live all over town and just sort of blend in. There's a huge Gay Film Fest every year. The biggest local holidays are Halloween and Eeyore's Birthday.

Houston does conform to the TX stereotype in still being something of an oil and gas town, but Austin is high-tech - IBM and Dell are the two largest for-profit employers. There is a sizable minority of former Silicon Valley residents.

More here (follow the link to Greatest Jeneration for my favorite Austin joke):
http://www.hfienberg.com/kesher/2002_09_08_kesher_archive.html#85432617

Somewhat chastened. OK, prejudice. Criticism: absorbed. Action on same: in progress.

I still don't think I'll visit Texas; too hot & sunny. (I grew up near Lansing, MI, which has the lowest number of sunny days of any city in the nation; as I've said many times, I like my skies white.) Also, the whole execution thing still makes this old 70s radical think I shouldn't contribute money to its economy (not that my individual refusal will make a difference, but I choose to behave as I want millions to do).