On Liberty

Back in the day when there were liberals on The Left, liberty was a concept that was much-valued by those who called themselves liberals. When I was but a lad, as the expression used to go, I exposed myself to John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, which dealt not so much with liberty of conscience or of will but liberty as exercised by individuals within the civil realm, in the social order. Of course liberty of conscience and social liberty are closely related, but Mill made clear that freedom to express oneself in the marketplace of ideas was a different thing to liberty of conscience.

Those who call themselves liberals nowadays seem to have forgotten any kind of liberty in their pursuit of extirpating all discourse that challenges their dogma in the areas of

homosexual behavior/priviledges

pseudo-scientific dogma in everything from Darwinism to anthropogenic global warming

economic suppositions

statist control of private matters

property rights

education

religion

and just about all other areas that touch our lives.

Of several things that Mill said in his famous essay that influenced much of my behavior during my formative years, two stand out: his comment that truth need not fear debate and that we must always be wary of the tyranny of prevailing opinion stifling debate.

A simple example to demonstrate that the typical soi-disant “liberal” of today is no such critter is Algore’s response to those who would challenge his AGW position with… facts.

“There’s no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. . . . There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the evidence.”

Funny thing, that “no more debate” meme he seems intent, along with other AGW dogmatists, on making fact: real scientists (as opposed to AGW dogmatists) are debating it, examining the facts and the hypotheses. You can find links to quite a few real scientists (AGW dogmatists simply dismiss real scientists as “deniers”) who have some inconvenient facts to discuss with Mr. Gore here, although anyone who can type “google” can find many, many more references (including this one–pdf, and do note the creds the interviewee has that Algore lacks).

Cutting off (or shouting down) debate on an issue to avoid having to deal with facts is the mark of a weak argument, which says a lot about most fake liberals’ arguments.

I do encourage you to track down (there, that wasn’t so hard, was it?) and read a copy of Mill’s essay, On Liberty. I have my copy, first read as a wee lad *heh*, within reach of my right hand, as I have had for many years. You might find it useful to purchase a hardcopy for marking and note-taking (it’s interesting to me to go back and read my “arguments” with Mill and see how they have changed over the years).

BTW, Mill’s arguments concerning liberty bear very closely on an upcoming post on authority, one I keep deferring but need to write soon.


Trackposted to Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Wolf Pangloss, Democrat=Socialist, A Newt One, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Not a petty annoyance

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Found via The English Guy,

“Create an e-annoyance, go to jail”

Yep. Anonymous, otherwise unaccountable trolls may face federal jail time and fines. But, really, who needs the feds in the middle of this? After all, kicking trolls can be fun (if sometimes boring). And cyberstalking–which the law referenced is aimed at–is more than just being annoying… but the law singles out “annoying” behavior as a federal crime, now, punushable by fines and jail time. To be sure, it also strengthens actual anti-stalking provisions, but even there, is that really a federal issue?

Oh, well. It’s law now. *sigh* Might as well start using it as a club for playing Troll Golf.

FORE!

Semi-anonymously graffiti-sprayed at Basil’s and The Conservative Cat.

Funtech

OK, so for several years now, Apple has been selling “MAc” products running a Unix OS. Now,

Apple Shows New Intel Notebooks, Software

Well, you knew it was coming. Apple’s been having trouble for years now, as its percentage slice of the personal computer market has waned to pitiful single digits, getting fabbing for its chipsets, and further improvements in speed and features? Nah, not happening all that much-because of the problem of getting fabbing for such comparatively small runs.

Sure, Jobs had “promised” (to some squealing from Macrodific users 🙂 last June to deliver Intel-based “Macs” (that just looks weird sitting there on the page: “Intel-based Macs”), but apparently, the Intel architecture is so easy to work with Apple’s ahead of schedule (*heh*).

Then, there’s the bow to Intel dominance in announcing new Intel versions of popular Mac-Mac (as opposed to Intel-Mac or MacIntel *snirk*) softwares.

Change ships and call the new one by the old name. Sure. It works in politics, so why not in personal computing? My only thought is, if he’s going to try selling an Intel computer running a Unix-based OS, why should people not just save a BIG chunk of cash and get a plain box PC and pop in something easy like Ubuntu Linux or Mandriva Linux or (for the ease of use, “Aunt Tilly” users) Linspire? Folks who don’t mind a little “rolling your own” work could easily use Redhator one of the other Linuxes or even Free BSD.

A McIntel personal computer. Nah. Not for me. YMMV, of course.

On other funtech fronts: Kinda enjoying my homebrew firewall/router. Was getting a lot of worm attack attempts from Chinese servers and was able to block a whole range of Asia/pacific Rim IP addresses that are known sources of malware/security attacks with just a download/script that updates a database of the worst addresses 3X weekly. Automatically. Nice. Reporting a buncha ping probes from another user IP within my ISP’s network to abuse was fun, too. Lots more detail than other firewalls I’ve used.

Still learning to nav its shell, some of the commands specific to the software and such. Touching base periodically with the user forum. It was pretty easy to build and configure once I decided on what firewalling software I’d use. Used SmoothWall Express 2.0 software. Built a few more network cables. After that, it was pretty easy. Kinda kicking myself for not doing this earlier.

  • Old AT-based server case with monster power supply and AT mobo
  • 64MB memory
  • first handy PCI vidcard I laid my hands on
  • a couple of network cards
  • old floppy and CDROM drives
  • old, spare 15″ monitor (for setup/troubleshooting)
  • keyboard

Was/is fun.

Note

Very light posting today, and perhaps this week. Several “real world” things stacked up on me, for one thing, and then… tired of routers going south on me. *sigh* Going to be on/offline intermittantly this week as I assemble components and test different firewall/router setups using an old P-II as a testbed.possible appliance instead of just going out and buying yet another replacement quirky router-firewall that only does some of what I want…

But that’s just a lil lagniappe from life. It’ll be fun, but eat up some more of that time thing…

Oh. Well. Should have done this years ago.