Kieran Healy

Busy

Looks like blogging is going to be pretty light this week, and probably non-existent next week, for a mix of work and personal reasons. I’m sure you’ll all cope. All you need to remember are four things:

1 It’s a good cause, but the guys in charge are going to screw it up. Incidentally, although the U.S. state is the most powerful organization in the world, it’s not some kind of omnipotent godlike force. There is a word to describe the mistake of thinking that because one is most powerful, one is also all powerful. That word is ‘hubris’.

2 Torturing people to advance democracy is a really bad idea.

3 Jim Capozzola for senate. If I lived in Pennsylvania I’d vote for him, if I had a vote.

4 Always back up and write down your hardware info before installing Linux. Remember, Chris, Linux is only free if your time has no value. (Bear in mind that Windows actually makes you pay to waste your time trying to fix it, though.)

That word is ‘hubris’.

That’s kind, I think. When I read some war-for-democracy blogger say, all that’s left is to trust Bush and hope for the best, I was reminded how easy it is to run experiments on other people far, far way.

Like I said in a post below: democratic institutions are not like lizards. They don’t hide under rocks waiting to emerge. It’s interesting that political theorists like the OxBloggers are all in favor of war followed by the flowering of democracy in the Middle East, and that they really believe this will happen. I take it as a sign that they need to read more political sociology. In any event, I still don’t believe that the Bush Administration has anything like the democracy-growing intensions—let alone a detailed plan—that so many warbloggers are prepared to attribute to them.