Nov/Dec at Sunni's Salon
December 23, 2005
7:59 a.m., MT

Double Issue

Peripatetic is the name of the main column, which links to other new items.

Sunni reviews Infernal F. Paul Wilson's latest Repaiman Jack novel and Let Us Prey by Bill Branon. Interviews with both Garry Reed and F. Paul Wilson are also featured. Musical Maunderings highlight meaningful music (another list) and Webby Wanderings include Montag, David D. Friedman, and more.

Come over and look around.

If you find any "glitches" please send me an e-mail

Endervidual

Comments: 5 people have spoken!

On Friday, December 23rd, at approximately 10:34 a.m. Mountain time, Kevin S. Van Horn said:

Some comments on Sunni's interview with F. Paul Wilson:

1. I heartily agree that Black Wind is Wilson's best novel to date, and highly recommend it to any and all. It's a shame Black Wind isn't more widely known.

2. No, it's not true that "the definition of anarchy is no law". Check out the Greek roots of the word: it literally means "without rulers". As David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Bruce Benson have shown via both theoretical argument and historical examples, it's entirely possible to have laws that protect individual rights, without having a state.

I consider myself a "rule-of-law" anarchist. That is, one of the reasons I'm an anarchist is because the state is inherently incompatible with true rule of law (the state and its officers are never subject to the same rules as the rest of us.)

3. As a great fan of Wilson's novels, I was quite disappointed to encounter his "people are no damned good, therefore we need the strong hand of the state to keep them in line" mindset. Why is it that the proponents of this viewpoint can never understand that if people are "no damned good", then it is lunacy to give them coercive control over other people's lives? That the state and its coercive powers attract the worst elements of society like shit attracts flies?

Anyway, thanks, Sunni, for an interesting interview.

On Friday, December 23rd, at approximately 11:25 a.m. Mountain time, Tom Ender said:

Hey Kevin, Season's Greetings. I agree with you. Polycentric law is very much in the realm of anarchism. A monopoly on law is what the State claims. Eliminating the State's monopoly doesn't eliminate law.

Whether F. Paul is willing to admit to it or not, his protagonist: Repairman Jack is a practitioner of counter economics. In fact, Jack may be the foremost fictional proponent of one of the key aspects of agorism, an increasingly popular form of anarchism. Jack directly competes with the State's "justice system."

Like you I enjoy F. Paul Wilson's fiction immensely, but I believe I disagree with him on more than one point covered in the interview.

On Saturday, December 24th, at approximately 6:38 a.m. Mountain time, Paul said:

"I was quite disappointed to encounter his "people are no damned good, therefore we need the strong hand of the state to keep them in line" mindset."

That's a good straw man, Kevin, now read that part again so you can get it right. All people aren't bad, but there are enough dirty players out there to cause major concern about the course of the game without a vigilant referee.

If this interview had gone down 10 years ago, you might have seen some different responses. I used to think I had answers -- not all of them, but a lot of them -- to the woes of the world. Now I'm much less sure. Maybe it's age, maybe it's experience, but my optimism that there's a solution beyond another revolution has waned to the vanishing point.

Jack keeps on keepin on, though. I try to keep my despair from infecting him.

FPW

On Monday, December 26th, at approximately 12:57 a.m. Mountain time, Kevin S. Van Horn said:

Sigh. I really wasn't trying to pick a fight with one of my favorite authors. Anyway, let me explain myself in more detail. The statements to which I was referring are these:

A. "PAUL: I've always been for legalized drugs... The only area that causes me concern is when kids are involved... When parents with no medical knowledge decide to prescribe for their children, it's no longer their own life they're playing Russian roulette with, it's the little guys' lives, and they trust them to do what's best.... the thought of cavalier parents who think they know it all prescribing for their little ones ... man, that makes me reeeeeal queasy.

"SUNNI: ...how many caring parents really would be cavalier? ...

"PAUL: Too many know-it-alls, yes, and certainly far too many time-squeezed. The kid's got a bellyache, forgot to make an appointment, got to get the brother to soccer practice, oh, hell, put some Donnatal into him and see what happens..."

I may be reading you wrong, Paul, but you seem to be advocating some form of governmental regulation of the medical treatment of children, because you think too many parents are irresponsible. Yet what makes you think the regulators, and the bureaucrats who carry out their orders, will be any more responsible, on the whole? After all, their incentive to do the right thing is much, much lower than it is for the children's own parents, and their actions are very often driven by politics.

B. "Humanity includes a large population of jackals -- mean, sneaky, cowardly creatures held in check only by fear of reprisal. Remove that fear and they run wild...."

This statement is true but misleading. There are 280 million people in America and 6 billion people in the world; even a tiny fraction of a percent of such large numbers can give large totals. So even if only a small fraction of a percent of the populace are jackals, and only a tiny fraction of the populace are ever victims of violent crime, the newspapers will still have no lack of horror stories to report.

What I've read of evolutionary psychology seems to suggest that the jackals should be a small (though inevitable) minority. My own experience in over 40 years of life, living in urban areas in four states, also points to "jackals" being relatively scarce -- I have met very, very few people I would describe that way. I have met a somewhat larger minority whom I would describe as great human beings, and the great majority I would describe as basically decent folk.

My main point is this: the decent folk outnumber the jackals by a large margin.

C. "Remove the big stick and you hand a bunch of little sticks to the worst of us."

The worst of us -- the most dangerous jackals -- already have the big stick; they run the government! All other criminals are two-bit crooks by comparison. The United States federal government robbed Americans of $3.7 trillion in 2004 -- far more than the sum total of all property crime committed in America that year, and probably larger than the total of all property crime committed in the world. Janet Reno tortured and killed 80 innocent American men, women, and children at Waco. Harry Truman snuffed out over 100,000 innocent lives at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. George Bush has murdered somewhere between 30,000 to well over 100,000 Iraqis with his invasion and conquest of Iraq. The Bushes and Clinton killed 1.5 million innocent Iraqis with their brutal economic sanctions (a form of war directed at civilians instead of military targets).

Even the body count of the man who may be the worst private-sector mass murder in history -- Osama bin Laden -- is dwarfed by these numbers. So forgive me for not worrying so much about penny-ante private-sector monsters when the government we suffer under is run by industrial-scale murderers.

On Monday, December 26th, at approximately 8:00 a.m. Mountain time, Sunni said:

Kevin and Paul, I appreciate your comments -- particularly that you've each been respectful to the other. After reading Paul's response, I've spent considerable time thinking about how best to enter the conversation myself.

First, I should apologize to Paul (and to my other interview victim , Garry) because I wasn't in top form for these interviews, and it shows. One of the places it's most obvious is in the exchange that gave you pause, Kevin. I failed to properly define anarchy, for starters, and to follow up that it seems to me that the reasons so many individuals today are soft and disarmed, as Paul put it, is precisely because of the state's actions. I remain firmly convinced that if there were no state -- and limited interference from outside states (which is the situation in Iraq, and it's compounding, not reducing, the problems there), individuals would quickly see that if the relatively few jackals are to be kept in check, they're the ones who'll need to do so. And most of them will choose to do so. As I've repeatedly said, I'm no student of history, but the little I have studied tells me that giving some people power over others has always led to problems. Hence, my interest in exploring options that don't follow that plan. And that's why I'm an anarchist: it's a solution to the problem that hasn't been fully tested in modern times. I'm willing to be part of that test. But, after considering something something Garry said in his interview, I realized it isn't the form that matters to me so much as the result. If there's some way to get the state out of people's lives that humans haven't yet considered, I'd be willing to give that a shot too.

Paul, your closing comment regarding your despair moved me deeply; I should have picked up on that in our conversation, and I didn't. If I had, I would have proceeded differently. I, too, battle similar demons from time to time; so far I've always found something that keeps me from sinking permanently. And, actually, it's always been several things that I've found, restoring my hope for today as well as tomorrow. To point to one example, the outpouring of support for Walter Bark, which I mentioned in December's column, Peripatetic. I think that next month's interview victim will have some things to contribute, as well. That shouldn't be taken to suggest that I'm trying to change your mind, Paul ... simply that I care about you and it saddens me to think that you've allowed man's institutionalized brutality to man to become what you seem to see as humanity's natural form of interaction.

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