Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

A few tidbits to tide you over the Independence Day weekend:

• Dwight over at Whipped Cream Difficulties has a very interesting post up on Maywood, California closing their police department down. Summary: It has less to do with the budget crunch than with the entire department acting like corrupt, out-of-control thugs running roughshod over innocent people. Dwight and I both though of the similar situation in the (now thankfully dissolved) township of New Rome, Ohio.
• “I don’t know whether the Tea Party movement will die out. But I sure hope it hangs on long enough to take down Lindsey Graham.” (Yeah, this was already on Fark, with that exact headline, but since I was the submitter…)
• Former leftist, opponent of jihad, devout atheist and relapsed smoker Christopher Hitchens has suspended his book tour to be treated for esophageal cancer. Hitchens intellectual journey from being a (mostly) far-leftist to being a (mostly) neo-conservative has been deeply gratifying to those of us on the right, and as a voice sounding the alarm against radical Islam he’s probably only second (at least in the U.S.) to Mark Steyn. (So yes, the two most powerful voices against jihad in the U.S. are a Brit and a Canadian.) As an agnostic, I have no particular stance on the metaphysical certitude of Hitchens’ atheism, but I do believe he’s underestimated the vital role religion plays as a binding agent in a free society, as those societies which made atheism a central tenant (the Soviet Union and its ilk) don’t seem to have profited by it. (To paraphrase the late Octavia Butler, “I don’t believe in God, but the people growing up today don’t seem to believe in anything at all, and it’s scary.”) I always thought it would be interesting to debate Hitchens on the issue from the viewpoint of the social utility of religion rather than its metaphysical truth. BattleSwarm Blog wishes him a speedy recovery.

(Hat tips: Whipped Cream Difficulties, the Bookfinder Insider Mailing List)