Well Qudaffi is Dead Eh?

"We were serious about giving him a fair trial." 

No.  You weren't.  Though I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, never mind. 

I don't have much to say about the way he ended, because details on that still seem to be fuzzy several hours later.  Only I would say that the way he did end was, well predictable, certainly more and more unavoidable for every day he continued fighting past the point of being hopelessly beaten. 

I have been meaning to make some note of how Qaddafi's Libya in some ways mirrored a Yankee libertarians idea of paradise.  You had a central government that, beyond the Great Man at it's center, was rather weak and poorly organized, highly aggressive and forceful towards internal criminals and outside enemies but otherwise doing next to nothing at all.  And of course we hear again and again about how 'tribal' and fragmented Libya is.  A poorly structured society is one where traditional power structures stay in place.  The father rules his house as the clan leader rules the fathers as the tribe elders rule the clan leaders.  And of course there's nothing like a government that is both authoritarian and inactive to promote social stagnation.  you get the best of both tyranny and anarchy.  A government that does nothing to promote industry, education, or infrastructure is one that provides no special reason for its people to move to cities, where social identities get all mish mashed and mingled and hierarchies invariably brake down.  Yet by still vigorously assuring its power to punish and make war such a state does help to maintain the sense that dominance of another is the only meaningful form of human self-expression. 

This, friends, is the world that the gun club conservative/libertarian wants.  And if it seems like I've gone off on a tangent here, yes.  But surely I'm not the only one who notices the parallels between Libya and Texas?