Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Belmont Club: Barbour's Dilemma

The Belmont Club: Barbour's Dilemma
: "Barbour's Dilemma is the problem of reconciling the existence of oppressive regimes, genocide and mass slaughter in a world governed by a wholly benevolent, pacifistic, nonviolent and impotent United Nations."

6 comments:

truepeers said...

Thanks for the link Seneca,

I'll pass on the comment I made at Belmont (it should be Arbour's Dilemma):

I just reported on a panel of Canadian moonbats, one of whom, a law professor, voiced arguments the same as Arbour's. Basically, these people are part of an international media-academic economy that trades in figures of victimhood. And if their "solutions" create more victims, they don't ask why, resting assured that they will be there to wring hands and mediate the ongoing victimization of the weak by the strong for generations to come. They are, after all, "the progressives".

The fact that all real victims and all those who are simply represented as such, might well be better off in a world where the figure of victim was not so widely (ab)used, is the question they will never raise, and so we must find ways to do so.

I disagree with Wretchard that these are people who address the probem of evil without recourse to the transcendent. The figures of victimization they proffer are, in their religion, transcendent figures - at least when the likes of Louis Arbour are finished separating figures of victimhood from actual people, those people, now often dead, are remembered through some sense of a transcendent Being that the figure of the victim engenders in our imagination. In short, people like Arbour are prettified traders in human sacrifice.

Charlie Martin said...


Why on earth can't we just start slapping these dolts?


Never happen. Jimmy Carter would be beaten to death within a week; Andy Sullivan might make it ten days.

Ed onWestSlope said...

'... slapping these dolts'
This attitude is the reason my wife encourages me to stay home, not go to local government meetings, especially city council and planning commission. She is the only reason I have been able to be reasonably 'socially acceptable'

Charlie Martin said...

You know, Ed, sometimes I think it's a shame Colorado has eliminated the "he needed killin'" defense.

Ed onWestSlope said...

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list ...

It may be 120 years old but still appropriate.

Unknown said...

I would like to slap George Galloway, with a ten pound frying pan. My Aunt Paulene did that to my Uncle Fudge and knocked him cold. ahh yes. shut up him right there.