Archive for Media
Say No to Kony 2012
Posted by: |Almost anyone with a connection to Facebook in the last 48 hours has probably heard of this “Kony 2012” thing making the rounds of the Internet. But what exactly is it?
At the core, Kony 2012 is a propaganda meme spread by the Invisible Children political-activist group. Their 30 minute Youtube video has received well over 55 million views in just a few days. Now, if you watch the video you would be completely justified in feeling mortified and stupefied by the violence discussed therein – everyone ought to feel such things when aggression is used against the innocent. Nonetheless, you need to know what it is really about. As Shaun Connell has well noted:
Like many “youth” targeted movements these days, the focus of the video is extremely vague about what exactly social media “activists” are supposed to do, while making it seem incredibly romantic and important that the social media users have the ability to click the “share” button to help their organization become more famous. It’s a clever way to get users pumped up on powerful soundtracks and clips to click the share button. And it’s worked.
Don’t get me wrong, Joseph Kony has definitely caused a lot of suffering, although I think it is probably a stretch to call him the most evil man alive today as IC wants to imply. I can think of others who might deserve that title more. Even George W. Bush is indirectly responsible for far more deaths and more destruction than Kony could ever hope to accomplish. It is remarkable that we tend to forget such perspectives in the face of rock music and catch phrases.
Kony is ultimately a small fish in a large pond of African warlords, not extraordinarily different from the others. We have to look through the Invisible Children propaganda – they are just a publicity organization that wants to get money so they can lobby the government to start another violent conflict. Sure, it would be nice if Kony were not around anymore, but we should not point the U.S. government’s guns at U.S. citizens’ heads to extract the wealth and lives necessary to do it. Moreover, removing Kony will not do much good because somebody else will inevitably rise to take his place. Don’t think that the Ugandan government is an improvement either.
Africa is a mess, and another war is not going to help.
Non-interventionism is still the solution. We can do a lot better by allowing free passage of goods and people to let people escape and thwart their economic controls over the area. Missions of mercy that get the innocent out will accomplish far more than missions of war which will only result in more death, especially of the innocent. The United States should not police the world, as it has done little good in any continent where it has been tried. We cannot expect that the results will be better this time.
Yes, Kony is a bad guy. No, we shouldn’t get politically involved. We should never forget the deadly lessons of past interventions.
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P.S. Shaun Connell has written an excellent piece on this Kony 2012, and I highly recommend you check it out.
Tags: Africa, government, interventionism, Media, memes, politics, violence, war
Is John Stossel becoming anti-war?
Posted by: |In April, I reported that John Stossel filmed an episode of his show at the Students for Liberty International Conference in 2011. The segment was interesting, but I was genuinely concerned that Stossel, despite being quite decent on many economics issues, had un-thoughtful view of war and history.
However, I was pleased to see the following clip of Stossel on the O’Reilly Factor, where Stossel defends Ron Paul and begins to sound pretty good on issues of foreign policy. It was rather funny, honestly, to hear Stossel say that Ron Paul is “right on everything” – including foreign policy. While Stossel doesn’t talk about jus in bello (ethics during war), where I had the biggest problem with him before, he has the right idea on jus ad bellum (justification for war). Take a look, it’s entertaining to watch that snake O’Reilly squirm and look like an idiot trying to pronounce Keynes’s name to say the least.
I should note, though, that there was a Federal Reserve in 1920. They just didn’t do much in that recession, and thus it lasted for less than a year.
Tags: Afghanistan, economics, ethics, iran, iraq, John Stossel, Media, News, war
I just watched two video clips from the Stossel Show recorded at the Students for Liberty International Conference. Stossel’s guest is David Boaz from the Cato Institute. During the first segment, Stossel and Boaz describe their personal journeys discovering the value of liberty and free markets, and they have pretty interesting stories.
The second segment is on war and society. Boaz’s first statement isn’t terrible; he says war is bad for a variety of reasons. It is costly and does not accomplish anything, and he even blames American occupations as the cause of terrorism. Then Boaz completely refutes Stossel’s suggestion that surge was a good idea. Good for him, that’s correct. But then the Q&A session starts (starts at 3:40) and I just about hit the ceiling.
A students asks, “True or false: slaughtering innocent people is never justified.” Stossel, without missing a beat, says that we “had to kill innocent people to end World War 2.” Really? Regulating aspirin? Oh no! That’s an attack on liberty! Incinerating a city full of civilians whose government is trying to surrender? Fully defensible. Fire-bombing Dresden just because it’s a German city? Fully defensible. But gee whiz, if nuking a city into oblivion isn’t wrong, is there any killing in war that is not justified?
Boaz counters the original question by saying that “slaughter” is a charged term and we need to rephrase the question. Even granting that Boaz’s first counter is true, that the question is loaded, his answer that follows is horrifying. Essentially, he argues that killing innocent people probably is justified if it leads to creating freer countries. “Self-defense and national independence are basically the only reasons” that killing innocents is justified. So he is implicitly affirming exactly what Stossel said. I don’t care that he said it “should not be undertaken lightly,” trying to justify deaths of innocent people is always taking an issue too lightly.
I’m kind of a fan of a certain principle of morality, one stating that you do not get special privileges to do certain immoral things if the “circumstances” are right. Killing innocent people is one thing only: murder. You don’t get a free pass to kill innocents so long as “freedom” is in sight. So, an innocent British traveler dies in the American Revolution because an American soldier became angry? Murder. No special rights because you’re a “freedom fighter.”
And if you concede that innocents die in every war, then you have only one conclusion to draw: War is mass murder. Get it?
I’ll give Stossel some grace considering he has not been very exposed to our philosophy except in limited amounts. He is not being thoughtful toward the issue. Perhaps he would come around just as he did on free markets given a substantive and fair presentation of the information. I met him in Austin about a year ago and I think he is a good fellow, and I truly hope he can figure out this critical principle of libertarianism.
How Boaz can hold such contradictory thoughts in his head, though, is downright baffling. I would plead with him to reconsider such positions. Liberty means liberty for all.
Dear Christian reader, I hope we will not make the same mistakes in our own thinking, lest we fall prey to the next justification for mass murder.
UPDATE: This post is getting a lot of traction right now due to it being highlighted in places like LewRockwell.com and others, so I just want to make absolutely clear that I still think Students for Liberty is a fantastic organization and I am not implicating them at all in this particular breach of libertarian principle. I also hold a lot of respect for the work that Stossel and Boaz have done and I am urging them to become better by talking openly about this.
Tags: history, Media, murder, students, video, war, war on terror
Judge Napolitano pwns Newt Gingrich on Wikileaks
Posted by: |Today is a day for video, apparently. Judge Napolitano discusses Wikileaks and Julian Assange on FreedomWatch with Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House. Gingrich, of course, calls Assange an “enemy combatant” (which is code for TERRORIST oh gee be afraid!!!) and wants to prosecute him. But the best line of all is at 4:30. So says Newt Gingrich:
“I believe when any institution, including FoxNews undertakes steps which increase the likelihood that Americans and American allies will be killed, there’s something profoundly wrong with the system.”
Well if that’s the case, Newt, we should just arrest the entirety of the Federal Government. You continue to suppress our liberties by engaging in unconstitutional and immoral wars all across the globe, thereby making us less free and less safe. It is your fault that every American has an increased likelihood of being killed than they did twenty years ago, not Julian Assange.
And of course, the Judge defends the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. Long live FreedomWatch (and Wikileaks)!
Tags: free society, freedom of the press, Media, war, war on terror, wikileaks
Culture
Posted by: |This article is #2 of a weekly series highlighting the former memes of Bureaucrash, an organization once headed by my friends Pete Eyre and Jason Talley of the Motorhome Diaries. The memes were originally authored by Pete Eyre and Anja Hartleb-Parson, and were intended as means of communicating ideas about liberty in catchy and succinct ways.
Communicating the same principled message in multiple mediums means a larger potential audience. In the past, somewhat dependent on the specific culture, ideas were transferred through spoken language, dance, and later, through books. Though they still play a role, other mediums, such as the Internet, television, and music, must too be broached as people access content via their preferred medium. This does not mean we have to rework our message but only add it to the larger conversation at different points. Otherwise, it’s as though we’re absent from the conversation entirely. For example, government bloat and hypocrisy provides ample fodder for The Daily Show, South Park, Stossel’s 20/20 [now he hosts “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network], and Pen and Teller’s: Bull****!, shows that influence the worldview of millions. And the same anti-bureaucracy, pro-freedom message can just as easily be communicated through Internet radio shows (like Free Talk Live), blogs (like The Austrian Economists), podcasts (such as Bureaucrash’s Podcrash), and webzines. If your interests and skills lie in one of these mediums, you can help reinforce those already countering pro-state rhetoric.
Technology helps us bypass traditional gatekeepers. The age of media being controlled by a handful of barons in bed with government is over (for one example of the harm this sort of relationship brought, read up on William Randolh Hearst, Harry Ansligner, and the criminalization of marijuana). We live in a time where the proliferation of technology has allowed virtually anyone, anywhere to share their ideas with others, whether via a blog post, uploaded video, Twitter message, or shared song. This empowers you, the individual, and threatens the status quo: the power of government and its frequent accomplice, the mainstream media. You no longer have to submit an op-ed to a newspaper editor and hope that they’re open-minded enough to run your piece. Instead, you can ignore them completely and share your thoughts with others via the Internet. Much to the chagrin of mainstream media companies, prominent blogs have readerships that rival the largest circulated newspapers. Using an inexpensive video camera, Joe Sixpack can create and post a video on YouTube that generates more views than movies released by mammoth Hollywood companies. Anyone with a microphone, a computer, and some free software can host a podcast.
Prominent cultural figures hold enormous sway. Like it or not, many folks take cues from the singer of their favorite band, a controversial radio talk show host, a graphic artist, or a documentary filmmaker. These figures could very easily introduce tens of thousands or millions of others to the ideas of liberty. Even if they just plant a seed, it’ll help to nudge their fans just a little bit more toward the ideas of freedom.
Tags: culture, internet, Media, memes
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 