Against Intervention

Opinions regarding the proper response to the situation in Libya cut across partisan lines, with the full spectrum from not-our-problem isolationism to something-must-be-done interventionism represented on both sides.  The Right is convinced President Obama's handling it poorly, of course, but there's nothing approaching a consensus about what ought to be done.  The confusion is clear at the conservative flagship National Review, whose editorial now supports a no-fly zone (though they initially opposed it) opposite a column from Victor Davis Hanson (one of the preeminent cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion) who opposes intervention.

It's appropriate that opinions are all over, I suppose.  It's a fraught question.  As VDH sums up the humanitarian argument,

Libyans have been living an ungodly nightmare since Qaddafi’s coup in 1969, and it would be a fine and noble thing to lend them a hand to end their four-decade-long misery. The world would be a better and safer place without Qaddafi and his odious clan in power.

 Yes.  But Qaddafi will have to be replaced.  There is simply no indication that there is any significant core of individuals among the rebels who would be any better, and it is a deeply dangerous folly to suggest that things could not get any worse.  Libya's modern history -- a lawless span of coast that nobody else wanted, so the Italians got it -- uncomfortably parallels Somalia's.  And the probably-doomed rebels?  Well, they're the enemy of our enemy, but it's not at all clear that they're our friends:

On a per capita basis, though, twice as many foreign fighters came to Iraq from Libya -- and specifically eastern Libya -- than from any other country in the Arabic-speaking world. Libyans were apparently more fired up to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than anyone else in the Middle East.

It would be whistling in the dark to suppose that whatever demographic cohort sent so many to fight and die in Iraq is not also front-and-center in the ranks of the rebels we are currently debating whether to support.  The most cynical part of me might support a no-fly zone simply to even things up, to prevent this struggle from ending before it has worn down both sides.  Like the Iran-Iraq war, it's a war you wish both sides could lose.  Sadly, the real losers, as always, are the Libyan people, the majority of whom are by all accounts friendly, hospitable, and desirous of rational government.  

I wish there were an easy answer, but there just isn't.  This is the world we live in.  Foreign policy is really hard.  As I've mentioned before, my biggest concern about President Obama at his inauguration was that he seemed convinced that foreign policy is easy and everyone else had just been doing it wrong.  He does seem at least to have been disabused of that notion.

Free Story Concept: Super Bowl Anti-History

While watching the Super Bowl on Sunday (Packers won the Super Bowl! Packers won the Super Bowl! Packers won the Super Bowl!), I was struck by a thought during the ads for commemorative Super Bowl champions gear.  I'm sure that these days they do most of the printing to order, but there's still a non-trivial amount of swag printed with the losing team as champion, "Dewey Defeats Truman"-style.  It's a fair guess that all the Super Bowl XLV Champion Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirts then get dumped on the second-hand clothing market and ends up in the developing world.  So there's my trope, free for the taking: all the "Super Bowl Champion" commemorative swag in the developing world tells an anti-history of the Super Bowl.  Someone could make something of that.

Justified Jingoism

In his September Diary, John Derbyshire shares a quote from the American music critic James Huneker regarding Chopin's Etude Op. 25 No. 11: "Small-souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should not attempt it." Derb kindly linked a video of a performance of this piece by young Korean pianist, Yeol Um Son, who made quite an impression on him. Me, too. Here's the video:

I had an interesting thought on watching this. I emailed Derb about it; I'll just share what I wrote him:

Reading your follow-up today I was struck by something you didn't explicitly address: Ms. Yeol is Korean, and yet she's devoted her life to studying and sharing music written by a bunch of dead white Europeans. How many Westerners have taken the time and effort necessary to become virtuosos of another culture's classical music? I would guess the answer is in the dozens. I say this not to tut-tut the West, but rather as a bit of unashamed cultural jingoism. Our culture produced this, and its surpassing worth is so universally evident that millions of students in east Asia -- confident and economically-successful cultures all -- choose to study it rather than the products of their own well-developed cultures. We're happy to share it, of course. Makes me awfully proud of my heritage, and also a bit guilty that I haven't studied it better, at least in this particular realm. I think Ms. Yeol has inspired me to fix that.

And she has. Also to get back to practicing piano.

On Speech and Freedom Thereof

This is quite the week for the discussion of speech and freedom. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the case of Snyder v. Phelps, which hinges on the determination whether standing outside a fallen Marine's funeral with signs reading "GOD HATES FAGS" and "THANK GOD FOR IEDS" qualifies as protected speech. This, of course, is the penchant of the aforementioned "Reverend" Phelps, who with the few dozen blood relatives who make up his "church" has made an avocation of tormenting the bereaved beloved of this nation's fallen heroes, as well as those of gay victims of AIDS. The premise avowed by Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church is, as far as I can stomach to gather, that God is punishing the U.S. with military defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan for our collective sin of allowing closeted homosexuals to serve in the military under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Presumably God would be appeased if we only cleansed the Armed Forces in some sort of gay-baiting witch hunt, after which our Certified Straight® military would win the War on Terror. I'll admit, I'm not exactly clear on the theology involved.

In any case, the question before the court is whether the "Reverend" Phelps, his minions, and their odious ravings fall under the protection of the First Amendment. I believe they do, and I'll be rather surprised if the court doesn't come to the same conclusion. The protest in question was held at the statutory thousand-foot distance from the funeral, and was thus unable to directly interrupt the proceedings. The remaining argument is that their protest might constitute "hate speech".

Ahh, "hate speech". We are right to be a bit queasy about limiting any speech at all, so if we are going to say that hate speech is unprotected, clearly the definition of what constitutes hate speech becomes a very important matter. Much political advocacy is hateful to its detractors, after all, so it would seem obvious that to define hate speech based on the perceptions of the aggrieved effectively grants censorship authority to the thinnest-skinned in society. Our Supreme Court seems to have recognized this, as I understand they have historically worked from an exceedingly narrow definition of hate speech.

Not so in the Netherlands (you knew I was getting to this, right?). After prosecutors chose not to file hate speech charges against the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, Muslims aggrieved by his short film Fitna took the issue to the Court of Appeals, where they succeeded in forcing his currently-running trial. There is considerable evidence that Wilders's political opponents have been involved in orchestrating his trial. In a way, seeing this trial as just another function of machine politics as usual is comforting, more comforting anyway than seeing it as part of the "legal jihad" to put criticism of Islam off-limits worldwide (as in the UN's ridiculous "Combating Defamation of Religion" resolution). European countries are increasingly embracing a definition of hate speech based on grievance, and the result of the Wilders trial will signal whether Europe continues on the road toward mass censorship by the aggrieved. Speech doesn't become "hate speech" simply because it makes someone cranky. Be thankful that our Supreme Court has upheld that narrower standard.

Blog Bomb for Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who lives under police guard because his life is threatened by radical Islamists.  Dutch Islamists have already murdered the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and forced Van Gogh's collaborator, the Somali-Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to take asylum in the US.  These three have been targeted for the same deeply ironic reason: they have all alleged that political Islam's penchant for violence makes it incompatible with Dutch society's traditional ethic of tolerance and commitment to Enlightenment values.  Not to be outdone by the Islamists where irony is concerned, Dutch prosecutors have chosen to put Wilders on trial [Correction:] after Dutch prosecutors chose not to pursue charges, the Dutch Court of Appeals has ordered Wilders to be tried in response to public complaints regarding his outrageously hateful comments about how the people who are trying to kill him are, you know, trying to kill him.  The Netherlands, see, despite her aforementioned Enlightenment history, has no freedom of speech protections that approach the weight of America's First Amendment (for what that's worth anymore).

This story needs to be told, so I was glad to hear from John Derbyshire that someone's gone and designated this Thursday to host a little blogoriot on the subject.  Parapundit's got the scoop on how this works, but short of it is this: if you support freedom of speech no matter who feels cranky when they hear it, if you think the Wilders story is something America and the world needs to be paying attention to, then you should blog about it this Thursday.  Tell your friends.

On the Surge

It's a week late, but Walter Russell Mead's reflection on the 9th anniversary of 9/11 is still worth reading.  In particular, his commentary on the turning point in Iraq circa 2006 is spot-on:

[But] the Sunni Arabs of Iraq made a choice. They saw Al-Qaeda at its best — volunteer freedom fighters come from around the world to fight for them — and they saw America at its worst: incompetent, insensitive, vacillating and violent.  And they chose the United States... What those Sunni Arabs in Iraq came to understand is the basic truth of this conflict.  The war unleashed nine years ago is not a clash of civilizations between Islam and the west.  It is a clash between civilization and barbarism, and in that clash the Americans and true Muslims are on the same side.

The strategic realignment that occurred in the Iraq theater during 2006-2007 -- what was sold in the US media as "the Surge" -- laid a foundation for a far more momentous and far less heralded realignment of the Iraqi Sunni tribal leadership.

I wholeheartedly agree with Mead that the (self-)rehabilitation of Iraq's Sunni Arabs was more pivotal than any US Forces strategic decision.  Furthermore, I attest (from my own conversations with Iraqis themselves) that a significant element of that realignment was distinctly generational in nature.  The worst of the sectarian violence circa 2005-2006 was committed by Iraqis of my own generation, those with birthdates of roughly 1980-1990.  These young Iraqis came of age during Saddam's most desperate struggles to hold on to power by playing sects against one another, and after the US invasion were egged on by foreign extremists, primarily from Saudi Arabia and Iran among the Sunna and Shi'a, respectively, who both looked to a bountiful harvest in political influence and cold hard cash resulting from the bloody collapse of Iraq.  The violence finally ebbed when Iraqis of my parents' generation -- who fondly remember a long-ago era when nobody knew or cared who was Shi'i and who was Sunni -- stood up and said, "This is not the Iraq we remember, this is not the Iraq we hope for."

I, like Mead, am optimistic for the future of Iraq, and am guardedly so for the future of the Arab world as a whole, and that of the "Muslim World" beyond that. But it is worth remembering, with humility, how limited the American role in directing that future really is.

Breadbasket of the World

Africa alone could feed the world.

That's not a claim most people would think to attach to a continent mostly known in the West for heart-rending images of malnutrition. But to anyone who's seen the way things grow in tropical African soil, and considering the amount of under-utilized farmland, it doesn't seem so far-fetched. The solution, according to the article, is a variant of the plaintive refrain I often heard from a Sudanese teacher of mine: "if only we had peace and good government, we would be a very rich nation". Ah, there's the rub.

On Uniforms

There are some people whose sensitivities are offended by the presence of uniformed policemen or soldiers in public, because they've been raised to see uniforms as symbols of oppression and militarism. In reality, uniforms are a concession to the people, and the most terrifying representatives of state power are the ones who don't mark themselves as such:


What possible message can be meant by parading plainclothes officers, other than a reminder that the eyes and ears of the Party are everywhere? 20 years after the massacre of Tiananmen, China seems to be holding its breath.

Reflections on Cairo

I've avoided any commentary on President Obama's speech to "the Muslim world" from Cairo this morning. I wanted a chance to watch and read the whole thing before I responded, so if I'm coming to completely different conclusions than all the pundits, it's because this is my genuine reaction. I've got plenty of line-by-line quibbling, but I'll post that separately, and keep this response on general principles.

I thought it was a great speech. If its goal was to raise America's approval rating, it will probably succeed, and it could very well cause many Arabs to rethink the reasons behind their knee-jerk anti-Americanism. Obama was more critical of Arab leaders than I expected, and more defensive of America and Israel, and for that I give him great credit. He addressed historical grievances without apology and demonstrated great respect for Islam without kowtowing. He didn't abandon the freedom agenda, but rather defined it more realistically than his predecessor. I got annoyed with his mannerisms and switched to the transcript, but everyone seems to love his style. I guess "robotic" is the "in" thing in rhetoric these days. Cicero would be appalled.

So far, so good. The problems come in the metanarrative. The issue is not his words, but the way he uses them; not the content of his speech, but rather the paradigms the speech concedes. This was billed as a speech to the "Muslim World", and he used the term throughout; he spoke repeatedly of Islam as if it were a country and Muslims its citizens. Insofar as there is a "Muslim World" it exists in the ideologies of militant Islamism, as Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish intellectual writes (via Inside the Asylum)

Islamist ideologues are the only group that strongly advocates the belief that all Muslims belong to a politically untied global community. These same ideologues advocate for the replacement of the modern nation state with a new Caliphate ruled by Sharia law. Why do we legitimize that view by repeating it ourselves? ...A Muslim World is Al Qaeda's conception.

There is a persistent philosophical struggle over Muslim identity between those who argue that Islam is and must be a global political entity and every Muslim's first loyalty must be to Islam, and those who believe that a Muslim can embrace a political identity and remain a faithful Muslim. In how he billed the speech and addressed his audience, Obama accepted the premises of the former. Even while condeming extremism, the very concept of his speech supported the Islamist paradigm.

The second issue is in the categorical confusion. For a speech about the issues of the "Muslim World", Obama focused overwhelmingly on issues of the Arab World, which is home to only a minority of the world's Muslims. Imagine a world leader declares he will address the "Christian World" from Rome, then focuses the entire speech on European issues, and at times even conflates the "Christian World" with Europe. Wouldn't Americans, Uruguayans, Zambians and South Koreans be a bit miffed? I'm quite sure they would be, so lets hope Bengalis, Malaysians, and Albanians are more forgiving.

Finally, by focusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict in a speech to the entire "Muslim World" President Obama acknowledged that the conflict with Israel is a fundamentally religious conflict. The Arab-Israeli conflict is an appropriate concern of the Arabs, the Israelis, and their partners and allies. On its geopolitical face, why should it be a central concern of American relations with Muslims in Indonesia or Pakistan? Again, insofar as Israel is a concern to non-Arab Muslims, it is so because of militant Islamist Jew-hatred that says Jews cannot be tolerated in Dar al-Islam, the realm of Islam. By accepting the premise that non-Arab Muslims have a dog in that fight, Obama tacitly recognized it as a religious conflict, even as he called for a peaceful 2-state solution.

Time will tell what effect this speech will have. I suspect it will blunt anti-Americanism to a degree. But Obama's tacit recognition of the Islamist paradigm will increase the burden on those Muslims struggling to argue philosophically and theologically against political Islam. In general, it confirms my inaguratory fears about Obama and foreign policy: Obama believes that foreign policy is easy, and that his predecessor was just doing it wrong. He is campaigning for America, which is quite welcome, but he also seems to conflate American popularity with America's interests. Warm feelings don't solve problems, however, and even cold allies are still allies. His inability to parse the interconnected webs of implications -- not just of his words but of how and where and to whom he says them -- smacks of cocky amateurism. Foreign policy is fiendishly difficult, and I really hope President Obama doesn't have to learn that the hard way.

Festival Tour

I daydream a lot about lazily traveling 'round the world (again). In one particular version of my daydream, I wander from country to country on the schedule of bizarre local festivals. Whenever I am ready to move on, I'll just see which nearby country is chasing wheels of cheese down hills,


breaking out into a city-wide tomato fight (but only after a ham has been retrieved from atop a greased flagpole),


dousing one another in bright pigments,


or parading toddlers affixed on top of 12-foot bamboo poles in front of multi-story towers covered in steamed buns.


Humanity is a fascinating thing.

A Study In Comparisons

Last week in Jordan, speaking to the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, Senator John Kerry portentously heralded the new "absence of arrogance" in American foreign policy.

Today in Belgrade, Vice President Joe Biden:

"The only real future is to join Europe. Right now you are off that path ... You can follow this path to Europe or you can take an alternative path. You have done it before," Biden said, referring to the 1992-95 war. "Failure to do so will ensure you remain among the poorest countries in Europe. At worst, you'll descend into ethnic chaos that defined your country for the better part of a decade."

As Foreign Policy puts it: "Biden essentially telling Bosnia to follow his recommendations or continue to be known as a violent, poverty-stricken hellhole is American arrogance of near-Rumsfeldian levels".

India's Election Results

Anyone who has a conversation with me about travels will quickly come to know that I'm a huge fan of India, personally and politically. So I find little to disagree with in Michael Barone's column on the significance of India's election result:

The election held over four weeks in April and May has produced a result very much to our advantage. The Congress party has been returned to power with a larger share of the vote than indicated by pre-election and exit polls, and will no longer need Communists and left-wingers for majorities in the Lok Sabha. The [Hindu nationalist opposition] BJP attacked Congress for being too close to the United States; voters evidently decided that this was not a minus but a plus.

[I]t would not hurt to show some solicitude for our friends in India, with whom we share strategic interests and moral principles. The 700 million voters of India have chosen to be our ally. We should take them up on it.

As I heard expressed in many different ways in India, the world's biggest democracy and her oldest democracy are natural partners.

It's Over, Maybe

The LTTE -- better known as the "Tamil Tigers" -- have admitted defeat. Only time will tell if this is truly the end of the conflict. If it is, it will stand both as proof that even a popular, well-funded insurgency can indeed be crushed with conventional brute force, and as a lesson in the human cost of such a victory.

UPDATE: The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the LTTE leader Prabhakaran is dead. Having no leaders, in addition to holding no territory, reduces the chances that the LTTE will fight on, God willing.

Hooray for Nukes!

About time someone's gone out and said it. Thomas Barnett lays out the "Seven Reasons Why Obama's Nuke-Free Utopia Won't Work" in Esquire, and offers a defense of nuclear arsenals that goes far beyond "mutually assured destruction". A few thoughts:

Bartlett, like pretty much every serious proliferation scholar I've read recently, seems to think a nuclear Iran is inevitable at this point. I have to agree, and I even agree that a nuclear Iran in and of itself would be no less manageable than other nuclear enemies have historically been. It's very difficult to be certain of course, but I've become convinced that much of Ahmadinejad's "Crazy Tom" act is precisely that, a ruse to keep us worried and his people appeased. Bizarre heterodox Shia eschatologies aside, Khomeinist Iran hasn't actually done anything to live up to the impression of being dangerously unhinged that they find useful to present to the world. Consider the Iran-Iraq war, in which the radical theocracy's tactics were far more rational than those of the classical secular strongman Saddam Hussein.

But here's my main quibble: my concern in the region is not so much a nuclear Iran as the nuclear Bahrain, UAE, Saudia Arabia, and possibly Egypt that a nuclear Iran implies. Bartlett is right that nuclear powers have no interest in handing their safety umbrellas over to terrorists, but I think he's unduly influenced by the happy fact that nuclear weapons have historically been developed by stable and well-ordered nations. And that's not even so true these days, as there are legitimate concerns that Pakistan could collapse and her arsenal fall into the hands of the Taliban. For that matter, the legal legitimacy of Pakistan's nuclear program didn't keep AQ Khan from selling nuclear secrets far and wide. Where will we stand when half the Middle East has nukes? Offering to extend America's nuclear umbrella as far as the Gulf might possibly convince these states to forgoe nukes, but I wouldn't count on it.

I agree with Bartlett 100% that an American policy of eventual disarmament makes us less safe. I'm far less sanguine, however, that a continuation of current US nuclear hegemony won't still entail significant nuclear concerns.

On "Boycotts", Fascism, and the Israel Obsession

If liberal fascism is fascism with a smiley face, this is what liberal Kristallnacht looks like (via PowerLine):



French activists "boycott" Israeli products by clearing a supermarket's shelves of everything labeled "made in Israel". The French have redefined sabotage as a "workers' strike", and now they're redefining destruction of property as a "boycott".

I've got to admit, I don't really get the Israel obsession. Anti-Israel activists assiduously insist that it's the policies of the state of Israel they oppose, and their rage has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. But that argument is increasingly difficult to swallow. If it's the state they oppose, why do "pro-Palestinian" activists always seem to protest outside synagogues and Jewish cultural centers rather than Israeli embassies or consulates? Besides, even if we grant (and I don't!) every argument against the Jewish state, there are unconscionably oppressive regimes and persecuted stateless peoples all over the world. Pro-Tibet rallies aren't anywhere nearly as anti-Chinese as pro-Palestinian demonstrations are anti-Jewish (zombie has an interesting comparison here).

Most neglected of all, of course, are the world's unluckiest: those anonymous multitudes who have the misfortune of being oppressed by "leaders" from among their own number. I speak primarily of Africa, where colonialism never really ended, but was handed from reasonably competent foreign colonialists to incompetent local colonialists. It's crimespeak to say it of course, but even in the darkest days of Apartheid, black South Africans were better off than their northerly neighbors now are under Mugabe. World opinion rightly condemned the Apartheid regime; why are we so much more comfortable when the oppressors look like the oppressed?

Kids and the Environment

Nowhere in American society is "green" orthodoxy pushed more stridently than in our schools. Green activists have admitted that indoctrinating children to hector their parents about environmental issues is a key plank in their plan to mold an envirorthodox society. We see the result now in a survey that shows a third of American preteens fear an "environmental apocalypse" and over half believe they will grow up to a world less healthy than they enjoy now. (I'm sure the parents of the remaining sixth will be getting concerned phone calls any day now). The survey's a bit hard to read much into, as the article on TreeHugger.com doesn't break down the actual questions or responses. It's still clear that America's youngsters are fully indoctrinated into the Left-environmentalist dogma that we're on a downward ecological spiral. The irony, of course, is that the environment of North America and Europe has been getting cleaner and healthier for decades, and even carbon emissions per person have been more or less level. There's a simple reason, too: we've gotten richer. John Tierney argues in the New York Times that in light of the historical evidence showing that societies inevitably get greener as they get richer, the best thing we can do for the world is to help poor countries develop faster. I couldn't agree more. Nations pass through stages of development that simply cannot be skipped. One of those stages is pretty dirty, and half the world's population is at or just about to enter that stage. Nothing is going to keep them from digging up and using the cheap energy at their disposal. Even if it were feasible -- and it isn't -- deceiving or strongarming the world's poor into pursuing some rich man's vision of "green development" will only trap them longer in poverty and its attendant environmental consequences.

Bravo

I don't know which makes me happier, seeing 20 world leaders and diplomats walk out of the room, or hearing the thunderous applause when they did.

Smart Diplomacy

The cultural performances down in Trinidad must really be something. Even after listening to a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by the Sandinista Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton could only comment on how marvelous the cultural performance had been.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored two questions about Ortega's speech, instead offering lengthy praise of a cultural performance of dance and song opening the summit.

"I thought the cultural performance was fascinating," Clinton said. Asked again about the Ortega speech, Clinton said: "To have those first class Caribbean entertainers on all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space, I was overwhelmed."

I'm sure you were, Madame Secretary, I'm sure you were. At least you're out front in demanding Iran release Roxanna Saberi, you know, like State Departments generally do when their citizens are convicted in foreign kangaroo courts? Oh, right, not so much. Now Ahmadinejad swoops in heroically to promise fair treatment and hint that clemency might be in the cards. John Hinderaker nails what happens next:

Iran takes a hostage; the State Department says Iran will be rewarded if it goes easy on the hostage; Ahmadinejad urges judicial authorities to reconsider. Three predictions: Iran will relieve Ms. Saberi of some or all of her sentence; Iran will be rewarded; American newspapers will praise Obama for his "smart diplomacy."

The mullahs are playing Obama like a violin.

A Disappointing Handshake

There are a few different angles to our President's warm embrace of the autocrat Hugo Chavez. From one, Obama embarrasses himself and sells out America when he accepts left-handed compliments and pointedly ironic "gifts" from leftist thugs. But I like William Jacobsen's point best:

When are those who fantasized about Obama being an agent of hope in the world going to realize that in Obama's quest to be liked by those who hate us, he is throwing freedom-loving peoples under the bus. Obama doesn't need to invade countries, or even attack them. But he could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the hopes and aspirations of Venezuelans, Iranians and others, instead of with their oppressors.

Too true. Nothing President Obama has yet done has disappointed me more than this legitimization of despicable regimes.

Dretful Scorn Goes Viral

Daniel Hannan sounds a bit befuddled by the viral breakout of the verbal blitzkrieg he launched at Gordon Brown on the occasion of the Prime Minister's visit to the European Parliament. The clip became the most-watched video on YouTube in less than 48 hours. As he says, he has "been making similar speeches every week and posting them on YouTube for the past seven months." But for whatever reason, the wisdom of the masses chose this particular speech, and in 24 hours an obscure representative to an opaque transnational government that few Americans know or care much about has gained an international following:

How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting.

Breaking the press monopoly is one thing. But the internet has also broken the political monopoly. Ten or even five years ago, when the Minister for Widgets put out a press release, the mere fact of his position guaranteed a measure of coverage. Nowadays, a politician must compel attention by virtue of what he is saying, not his position.

It's all a bit unsettling for professional journalists and politicians. But it's good news for libertarians of every stripe. Lefties have always relied on control, as much of information as of physical resources. Such control is no longer technically feasible.

All Hail the New Media!!