The Worth of a Man Under Empire

In "Mark of the Brotherhood", Crixius (Manu Bennett) learns a harsh lesson of the value of a man under empire.

After he and Spartacus won their historic arena in the arena, Crixius struggles to recover from his wounds. Incapacitated by his injuries, Crixius is unable to compete while Spartacus loses himself in the life of a champion gladiator.

The former champion's full recovery is so uncertain that his Dominus, Quintus Lentulus Batiatus (John Hannah), begins to muse selling him.

This is the worth of people under Empire: they are only worth what they can produce. When they can no longer produce as accustomed, productivity is sought by other means.

Government as Referee

I'm going to comment one last time before I give up my new-found obsession with professional wrestling, lest it become permanent.

In a previous post, I questioned what, if anything, professional wrestling says about human nature. I then compared it to what I think Bum Fights says about human nature.

While the two aren't entirely dissimilar, there's one key difference between them.

At the very least, professional wrestling has a referee.

Sometimes, that referee is less active than at other times. For example, when one considers situations like in the following match -- the King of the Deathmatch final between Cactus Jack and Terry Funk -- sometimes the referee seems to exist only to declare a winner:





In more regular matches, however, the referee is much more active. The referee prevents combatants from doing things such as choking their opponent, or touching the ropes.

What emerges is a remarkable difference in the role of the referee. What better comparison than the role of government?

Depending on whatever country you might choose to examine, the government is active to varying degrees, depending on how active any one country may think it should be.

The difference can be stark. At one extreme, nearly any cut-throat business practice can be tolerated -- from dealing ruthlessly with one's competitors to carelessly polluting the environment in pursuit of a cheap profit. At the other, things are well-regulated by the government, and there is very little leeway for aggressive business practices.

Many conservatives seem to believe -- rather foolishly -- that government's only role is to stand back and let societal competitors destroy one another. This, they believe, is the route to wealth creation, but they neglect to pay attention to the destruction left in its wake.

Bum Fights represents an entirely different extreme. An anarchist alternative in which there is no government -- no referee. One wherein one can do almost anything they wish to anyone, and if you can do it with that person's consent, so much the better.

The minimalist view of government is one wherein might makes right. But in a world where might makes right, human rights have very little value. One's "human rights" are determined only by how strong one is, and how much they can take.

The only way that human rights can be ensured at all is to have rigorous and diligent referees -- this is where the government comes in -- to ensure fairness and justice in dealings.

The alternative is to allow our societies to be transformed into Japanese death matches -- or, worse yet, Bum Fights.

Islam is Not the Enemy

As a superhero, there is one thing you must learn quickly in order to survive:

Know who your enemy is.

This can be a difficult lesson to learn. I can't think of how many times an ill-advised hero-on-hero fight has given the bad guys key time and opportunity to advance their plans just a little further. Testosterone, ignorance and suspicion have rarely mixed well.

That's one of the reasons why it alarms me to see people who are otherwise dedicated to fighting the bad guys chase bogeymen in the dark while the bad guys advance their plans.

It's actually a credit to MariaS that she's dedicated herself to fighting Islamic extremism. The fight against Islamic extemists is a fight that the rest of us must all be together in, by one means or another.

And MariaS is chasing bogeymen in the dark.

Channelling Brigitte Gabriell, MariaS seems to think that Hezbollah terrorists taught the Mexican drug cartels how to make the carbomb that recently exploded in Juarez, Mexico.

Juarez borders El Paso, Texas.

The problem for Gabriell's suggestion is that it doesn't make sense. The only proof offered that Hezbollah taught the Mexican cartel how to make that bomb basically unfolds like this: the Mexican cartel used a car bomb, Hezbollah uses car bombs; ergo, Hezbollah taught them how to make the bomb.

The problem is that the far-more likely scenario is that the Mexican cartel learned how to make that bomb from remnants of the Medellin Cartel, for whom car bombs were a frequently-used tactic.

Most famously, on February 16, 1991, the Medelin cartel detonated a 440-pound car bomb outside a bullfighting ring in Medelin. On average, carbombs set off by the Medelin cartel killed approximately 20 people and wounded nearly a hundred -- each time they did so.

The Medelin cartel is believed to have been largely broken up by 1993, when the United States teamed with the Colombian government to eliminate them.

Whenever cartels like the Medellin are dismantled, it's inevitable that some members will escape. So when one weighs the odds of Hezbollah terrorists crossing half the world to each the Mexican cartels how to build these kinds of car bombs, when that kind of expertise is available much closer to home, it simply doesn't make sense.

Some serious, concrete, material evidence is necessary.

This logical error shouldn't surprise anyone coming from MariaS. When it comes to Muslim extremism, she can't tell the difference between moderate Muslims and Muslim extremists. So she evidently assumes that moderate Muslims don't exist.

Her assumption that all Muslims are the enemy leads her to fight even those who would fight alongside her against Islamic extremists.

Which brings one back to the issue of hero-on-hero fights. What is a hero who can't tell the good guys from the bad guys and so spends all their time fighting other heroes?

The answer is that such a hero may as well be a villain. She's doing far more to help than advance their plans than she is doing to stop them.