Content by ConservativeMutant
Posted at 12:32am on Jan. 9, 2007 The Battle of New Orleans
By ConservativeMutant
January 1815. Two and one-half years ago, the United States had defied the exactions of the United Kingdom and sent her arms into Canada. That dream of the Revolutionary War, unsuccessful by the measure of a handful of grapeshot (Montgomery dying in the snow) would, it was hoped, be fulfilled, and all Eastern North America answer to the Congress and the President. It would not be.
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Posted at 1:03am on Nov. 21, 2006 The draft kerfuffle
By ConservativeMutant
So Charlie Rangel's plan to bring back the draft has already received the kiss of death from the Democratic leadership, but it's stirred up a considerable flurry of comment on RedState. While I daresay none of us here approves of Rangel's plan on the grounds he advances for it, there's been a certain approbative undercurrent on conservative grounds that I think ought to be addressed.
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Posted at 1:52am on Sep. 7, 2005 Preparedness, Individualism, and Community
By ConservativeMutant
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, much attention has been given to individual preparedness, or to the lack thereof, and its role in the outcome of the disaster. For many of us, this is a familiar topic. Read on.
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Posted at 4:09am on Jul. 6, 2005 The Two Cultures
By ConservativeMutant
Some of the recent foofaraw here, and personal experiences recently, have led me to thinking about the question of science again. I am not the only one to worry about the growing tension between the scientific community and the Republican Party. Scientists are important, not merely in and of themselves (well, ourselves), but because their opinions still carry with them a great deal of gravity and respect among the public at large. Nor, are they, I think, a "natural" constituency for either of the two major parties. On the Right, they face scorn as atheist materialists bent on dismantling faith and perverting life; on the Left, as Dr. Frankensteins, unleashing genetically engineered plagues upon the world, and purveyors of planet-wrecking technological excess. Nonetheless, I am optimistic that the Republican Party need not be repugnant to them. Read on.
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Posted at 1:57am on Apr. 9, 2005 Open Source
By ConservativeMutant
Having seen the topic of open source software get kicked around here a few months ago, I'd like to start a discussion on the subject. Having been involved (largely in a QA/non-programming capacity) with a major open source project, I'm fairly optimistic about the capacity of open source to produce useful, quality software. Unfortunately, there's a dark side to the open source culture these days. Regular readers of Slashdot will have noticed the increasing popularity of arguments against intellectual property, and a general drift towards conspiratorial and anti-corporate leftism. This is all the more ironic because the "Open Source" movement deliberately forsook the anti-IP arguments of its precursor, the "Free Software" movement, to advocate the distribution of source code on pragmatic grounds instead; and it was this embrace of pragmatism that carried it out of the fringe.
The capture of the libertarian "techno-elite" in the orbit of the Left distresses me. The Left has caricatured the Right to this elite as a herd of stodgy dinosaurs, intent on crushing their freedoms for the profit of big corporations. This alliance is not a natural one: witness, for instance, the outraged howls when the U.N. proposes to "regulate" the Internet, the vociferous defense of property rights in the battle against spam, or indeed the philosophical devotion to meritocracy in the creation of software. But an alliance it now is. How are we to disengage it? I invite your comment, and I'll share thoughts of my own there.