Second Rock from the Sun

Princess Duare, supposedly So I discover (via surfing accident) that a movie adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pirates of Venus is in the works (perhaps as an attempt to cash in on the recent cinematic success of things piratical). Why didn’t I know about this? (And why didn’t Wally Conger know about it?)

The Venus books were my first introduction to Burroughs – before Barsoom, before Pellucidar, before Tarzan; so I’d really like this to be good. This looks to be a much lower-budget project than the projected John Carter of Mars movie, the synopsis doesn’t sound very faithful to the books, and I can’t say the concept art especially grabs me (Frazetta’s boots are a job to fill – and sorry, but the shrieking teenager in this pic just isn’t the imperious Princess Duare); but we’ll see.


Oxford Town, Oxford Town

Click here for some Golden Compass news, and here to see the first five minutes. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the movie this weekend! My initial reactions to the clip:

Asriel and Lyra 1. I’m not crazy about the opening narration – it reminds me a bit too much of Dune. I’d rather see this information conveyed indirectly (the way they manage to let us know, later in the clip, about Lyra’s orphan status and the taboo on touching another person’s dæmon) – especially since the narration doesn’t really explain the things it mentions anyway. (Is the audience really going to know, e.g., what the heck “dust” is from that opening?)

2. I like the way Lyra is presented; as I’ve mentioned before, I’d been afraid she’d be softened and made too sweet, but she seems to have kept her edge – though her just-kidding smile toward the end of the clip worrisomely undermines her earlier toughness. We’ll see.

3. The character I do worry that they’re going to over-sweeten is Asriel. Just because he’s the adversary of the villain doesn’t mean he’s a good guy, exactly; I don’t think he should look as avuncular as he does in the clip. We all know from Casino Royale that Daniel Craig can do chilly and ruthless; let him do it!


A Question for Critics of Ron Paul’s Critics

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Most of my libertarian comrades seem to think that Ron Paul is either a) the Second Coming, or b) the Apocalypse. (The former viewpoint dominates at LewRockwell.com, while the latter dominates, with some exceptions, at LeftLibertarian.org. See also, of course, the L & P exchange – 86 posts and counting – here.) I’m somewhere in between: I have a lot of serious problems with his candidacy, but I admit I’m also gratified every time I see his poll numbers rising.

But there’s one argument that the (a) group offers the (b) group that I find very puzzling. This is an argument directed primarily to those members of group B who oppose Paul’s candidacy because of his stands on some particular issues (e.g., immigration, abortion, gay rights, constitutionalism), as opposed to those who oppose his candidacy on the basis of a rejection of electoral politics in general – i.e., it’s directed toward those who would be open in principle to supporting a political candidate and just have problems with this one.

Paris Hilton wants you dead The argument goes like this: “Even if you think Paul is wrong on some particular issues, he’s still far, far more libertarian than any of the other candidates, so why not support him?”

The reason I find this argument puzzling is that those who make it would not, I suspect, find it plausible in most other contexts.

Imagine, for example, that instead of Ron Paul it’s Randy Barnett who’s running for President. Paul and Barnett have a lot in common; they’re both fairly thoroughgoing libertarians, they’re both enthusiasts for the Constitution, and they both take some positions that many libertarians regard as deviations.

I suspect that a Barnett candidacy would be far less popular among Group A folks than a Paul candidacy. Barnett’s two major deviations, from their point of view (and mine too, for that matter), would be his support for the war and his insufficiently decentralist approach to federalism. Yet the argument that they have offered on behalf of Paul would seem to apply equally well to Barnett: “Even if you think Barnett is wrong on some particular issues, he’s still far, far more libertarian than any of the other candidates, so why not support him?”

Now maybe that would be a good argument and maybe it would be a bad argument, but whichever it is, it seems like an exactly analogous argument. So if, as I bet, most members of Group A would resist the pro-Barnett argument (I base my guess on Group A’s furious reaction to Barnett’s Wall Street Journal article), why should they expect Group B folks to accept the analogous pro-Paul argument?

Perhaps the reply will be that Paul’s deviations, if such they be, are still consistent with libertarianism, while Barnett’s are not. But if “consistent with libertarianism” means “consistent with libertarian principle properly understood,” then to call something a deviation is precisely to say that it is not consistent with libertarianism. On the other hand, if “consistent with libertarianism” means “consistent with the proponent’s still counting as a libertarian,” then it seems to me that both Paul’s and Barnett’s deviations are consistent with libertarianism in that sense. (If Ludwig von Mises – advocate of conscription and the Cold War, and admirer of Abraham Lincoln – counts as a libertarian, how could Barnett fail to do so?)

Or perhaps the reply will be that Barnett’s deviations are important and fundamental, while Paul’s, if any, are minor and peripheral. But of course Group B folks are not likely to agree that Paul’s deviations are minor and peripheral. Consider the case of immigration (since that’s an area where Paul explicitly favours federal enforcement rather than merely turning things back to the states). Now libertarians disagree over immigration; some see a difference between keeping people inside one’s borders and keeping them out, while for others there’s no difference. I think the second position is the right one (if the party doing the enforcing doesn’t own the land on either side of the border, then it doesn’t make much moral difference whether the enforcing party itself is located on the territory being migrated to or the territory being migrated from); but whether it’s the right one or whether it isn’t, it at least seems clear that it’s no surprise that those who do find the two policies precisely analogous are going to find Paul’s immigration policy non-trivially objectionable, since they’ll see it as on a par with supporting the Berlin Wall. Now maybe there’s still a good case for supporting generally libertarian candidates whose stands on some particular issues you find horrifically anti-liberty; I can see arguments pro and con on that. But those in group A who would not support a Barnett candidacy owe Group B an explanation of why the two cases differ. (Of course any member of Group A who would support a Barnett candidacy is exempt from the charge of inconsistency.)


Expect a Miracle

Darkseid shows up at a Ron Paul rally If you’re collecting the Fourth World Omnibus, you may have noticed that the latest entry (vol. 3 of 4) lists one comic (Mister Miracle #10) in the table of contents that isn’t included in the volume.

Fear not, nothing is missing from your book – the mistake is just in the table of contents. Or so I infer from the fact that all the ads for vol. 4 mention Mister Miracle #10 as being in it, plus the afterword of vol. 3 itself says that vol. 4 will begin with Mister Miracle #10.

P. S. – In the pic at right, why does Darkseid’s shadow have eyes?


Quoth the Traven

As journalist John Chamberlain was a prominent figure on the libertarian right, and novelist B. Traven an important writer of the libertarian left, it’s of some interest to see what the former thought of the latter. Hence this excerpt from Chamberlain’s 1935 review of Traven’s novels The Death Ship and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre:

“The Death Ship,” a sea story that came not from a Conradian aristocrat of the deep but from the depths of the forecastle …. was shot through with the corrosive and bitter cynicism that is the surest sign of an underlying affection for a humanity which alternately betrays itself and permits itself to be betrayed. B. Traven is, at heart, a philosophical anarchist; he would approve of Professor Giddings’s definition of the origin of government, as quoted recently by Charles A. Beard: “Government originated with the first successful getaway.” One of the most wryly hilarious parts of “The Death Ship” was a comedy of the man who, after being shunted across border after border, began to doubt his own identity and even his existence. No more devastating arraignment of Red Tape and legal interference with the freedom of personality and movement has ever been written. …

Bogart in the movie version “The Treasure [of the Sierra Madre]” proves to be a philosophical anarchist’s commentary on greed for possessions. … Until they find the gold, Dobbs and Curtin have the cynical wisdom of the uncorrupted underdog, the straight vision of men who, having nothing to defend, no property, no traditional conception of themselves, are not bought by their own money. …

Unlike most thrillers, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” has its social and political inferences. … When the Indians and mestizos of the story turn bandit … Traven always manages to have a character on hand with a deep sense of poetic justice to point the moral …. that a man who has been taught to expect violence and injustice will not scruple to use his opponent’s choice of weapons.

Underneath it all there beats the outraged heart of a man who cannot believe the evidence of his senses that the human race is only human when it can afford to be. B. Traven’s sense of outrage, which is rigidly controlled in the interests of formal story-telling, is what gives “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” its fine moral power.
(John Chamberlain, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, 11 June 1935.)

Is Chamberlain making a pun on “betrays … betrayed … B. Traven” in the first paragraph?


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