Harry Potter's "Sequels"

One of the Top 5 Foreign Policy Lessons Learnt from the Past 20 Years

No. 3: The only thing worse than a bad state is no state.

U.S. foreign-policy elites routinely blame foreign-policy problems on the supposedly evil or illegitimate nature of other governments. In this view, international politics isn't a clash of competing interests; it is a morality play between good states -- America and its allies -- and bad states, or anyone who disagrees with us. During the Cold War, the problem was revolutionary communism led by the evil Soviet empire. After the Cold War, the United States blamed trouble on various "rogue" states such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Serbia. These states were bad because they were dictatorships and had poor human rights records, revisionist aims, and, in most cases, an appetite for weapons of mass destruction. The obvious solution to the rogue-state problem, of course, was regime change: get rid of these very bad rulers and create governments that treat their own populations better and cooperate with the United States. 

But as the sorry results of regime change in Libya and Iraq suggest, getting rid of really awful leaders isn't an improvement if the result is anarchy or a weak, corrupt, and highly divisive regime. One might add Yemen and Somalia to the list as well, and that's where Afghanistan is likely to be once the international community stops propping it up. Creating effective governments in post-totalitarian societies turns out to be very, very hard, and especially after a violent overthrow. It is even harder when the society in question is divided and relatively poor, and the lack of any legitimate or effective authority creates power vacuums in which the worst sorts of extremism can flourish. What's the lesson for all you unrepentant regime-changers out there? Be careful what you wish for.

The rest at Foreign Policy 

Worldviews Are Like Cerebellums

"Worldviews are like cerebellums: everyone has one and we can't live without them, but not everyone knows that they have one."

- James Anderson

"We're still friends today" First 6 minutes of What We Do In The Shadows

Irrational Atheism (from a Rational Atheist)

From the Atlantic's Irrational Atheism

"...I'm an atheist because I think of the universe as a natural, material system. I think of it, on the basis of my own extremely limited experience, as an infinitely replete but morally indifferent thing. It isn't bent on saving me, or damning me: It just is. I find comfort in that, as well as pain; wonder as well as loathing. That's my experience, and my atheism is a reflection of that experience. But it's not an argument; it's an interpretation. 

I have taken a leap of atheist faith. 

Religious people sometimes try to give proofs of the truth of their faith—Saint Thomas Aquinas famously gave five in his Summa Theologica. But for many people, belief comes before arguments, originating in family, social and institutional context, in desire and need. The arguments are post-hoc rationalizations. This can be true of atheism as well. For me, it's what I grew up with. It gets by in my social world, where professions of religious faith would be considered out of place. My non-faith is fundamentally part of how I connect with others and the world. 

The idea that the atheist comes to her view of the world through rationality and argumentation, while the believer relies on arbitrary emotional commitments, is false. This accounts for the sense that atheists such as Christopher Hitchens or Dawkins are arrogant: Their line of thinking often takes the form of disqualifying others on the grounds that they are irrational. But the atheist too, is deciding to believe in conditions of irremediable uncertainty, not merely following out a proof. 

Religious people have often offloaded the burden of their choices on institutions and relied on the Church's authorities and dogmas. But some atheists are equally willing to offload their beliefs on "reason" or "science" without acknowledging that they are making a bold intellectual commitment about the nature of the universe, and making it with utterly insufficient data. Religion at its best treats belief as a resolution in the face of doubt. I want an atheism that does the same, that displays epistemological courage... 

...William James—himself an eminent scientist—pointed out that science rests on emotional commitment. "Our belief in truth itself," wrote James, "that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a … sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another—we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make." 

...By not believing in God, I keep faith with the world's indifference. I love its beauty. I hate its suffering. I think both are perfectly real, because I experience them both, all the time. I do not see any reason to suspend judgment: I'm here, and I commit. I'm perfectly sincere and definite in my belief that there is no God. I can see that there could be comfort in believing otherwise, believing that all the suffering and death makes sense, that everyone gets what they deserve, and that existence works out in the end. 

But to believe that would be to betray my actual experiences, and even without the aid of reasoned arguments, that’s reason enough not to believe."