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Privatize the Postal Service: Protect Rights, Save Money, Improve Service

Privatize the Postal Service: Protect Rights, Save Money, Improve Service:
Thirty-four billion dollars. That’s the amount of taxpayer money proposed in a Senate-approved bailout of the US Postal Service. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, lauds this bailout as “saving an American institution.”
Why do Collins and company presume that we should save a government-run business that can’t compete in the marketplace even with massive taxpayer subsidies and gun-wielding guards keeping competitors at bay?
In addition to—and because of—the fact that the existence of the Postal Service violates the rights of Americans by forbidding them to act and contract in accordance with their judgment, the service provided by the Postal Service is pathetic. When private businesses such as UPS and FedEx have been permitted to compete with the monopoly for just a portion of services (package delivery), they have profitably provided more guaranteed delivery options and much better service at comparable rates.
Privatizing the US Postal Service would be good on multiple counts and bad on none. It would put an end to rights violations is this area of Americans’ lives; it would unleash a flood of entrepreneurs eager to bring innovative and cost-effective improvements to mail delivery; and it would not cost taxpayers a dollar, never mind thirty-four billion.
What’s not to like?
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Related:

• The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools
• The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty

Image: Creative Commons by Los Angeles

JPMorgan’s Big Loss Highlights the Virtue of Capitalism

JPMorgan’s Big Loss Highlights the Virtue of Capitalism:
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon announced last week that the bank had lost over $2 billion as a result of some bad investment decisions. Following the announcement, Dimon hit the airwaves apologizing for what he called “sloppy” and “stupid” behavior on the part of his company, and he told the company’s customers and shareholders, “we will fix it and move on.”
Like clockwork, pundits and politicians seized on this instance of a private company losing money based on its own decisions and claimed it as evidence that further regulation of the financial services industry is needed. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “It’s amazing given the events that we’ve seen in the last few days, that there are still those who are out there arguing that we should repeal Wall Street reform, that we should let Wall Street write its own rules again.”
Although many are spinning this event as proof that the government should increase regulations on the financial industry, the event is actually proof of the opposite. JPMorgan’s big loss—and those affected by it—highlight how capitalism ensures that only those invested in a given company suffer the consequences of that company’s mistakes.
Dimon disclosed this $2 billion loss as soon as regulators permitted (he would have been criminally liable had he disclosed it any sooner). He apologized to customers and shareholders and committed to fixing the problem quickly. And he did not try to dump the problem or the loss on anyone else.
So where is the problem that the government must fix? It does not exist.
Some have argued that the government must bolster regulations to guard against such losses in the future. Part of the rationale behind this argument is that, given the government’s commitment to “save” firms that are supposedly “too big to fail,” taxpayers are liable for such losses.
Subscribe to the Journal for People of ReasonTaxpayer bailouts of private companies are a problem, but the solution here is to let failing businesses fail. Yes, people invested in those businesses will suffer losses. That is a risk they voluntarily embraced when they chose to invest in or do business with the company. They have no right to foist their losses onto taxpayers, just as taxpayers have no right to expect private investors to hand them profits when the company succeeds.
And “saving” businesses from the consequences of their decisions not only costs taxpayers money; it also distorts the incentives and disincentives inherent in a free market and leads to worse decision-making and greater losses in the future.
Losses and failures are important parts of capitalism. Just as the free market rewards good decisions with success, so too it punishes bad decisions with failure. When the government tries to regulate failure out of existence, it effectively removes negative consequences from companies’ consideration. As a result, companies have less incentive to make sound decisions, and more incentive to take unwarranted risk. Companies’ and shareholders’ rights to produce and keep wealth is one side of the relevant coin; the other side is their corresponding responsibility to shoulder their own losses.
This big loss on the part of JPMorgan, far from exposing a need for regulation, is a perfect example of how the market deals equitably with losses when and to the extent that the government stays out of the way.
JPMorgan miscalculated its risks; it is now paying the penalty in terms of losses to both its balance sheet and its reputation. Most importantly, only JPMorgan (including its investors) are suffering the negative consequences.
This is as it should be. This is how a free market works.
Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.
Related:

• Capitalism and the Moral High Ground
• Chevy Volt Powers Down; Who Could Have Guessed?
• The Justice of Income Inequality Under Capitalism

Image: Creative Commons by Reagan Rothenberge

Drone Warfare in American

Drone Warfare in American:
How would Obama supporters feel if they learned that their beloved President was running far-to-the-authoritarian-right of arch-hawk Charles Krauthammer on one particular civil liberties issue?
Sadly, the answer is that the most Obama supporters probably wouldn’t feel very much at all, because support for Obama has always predominantly been emotion-driven (he promised change “you can believe in”, not “change that I can logically convince you will be beneficial“).
Read More - Link to full post

Where did all the stimulus go... (When will they ever learn?)

Where did all the stimulus go... (When will they ever learn?):

Funny Versus Offensive

Funny Versus Offensive:
As a follow-up to my recent webcast discussion on poking fun of friends’ ideas online, I’d say that this kind of image is objectively offensive:

It’s not just partisan tripe. It’s collectivist tripe. It’s totally unjustifiable tripe.
People deserve to be judged as individuals. Many liberals are thoughtful people, while many conservatives are flatly dishonest. Liberals tend to be better than conservatives on many important issues: separation of church and state, abortion rights, drug legalization, immigration, limiting police power, and so on. Most conservatives are utterly wrong on those issues, and many will not listen to reason.
When I saw that image in my Facebook feed, I reposted it with the following snippy remark:

I’m pretty sure that such partisan crowing and sniping never convinced anyone of anything. Also, I’m quite sure that people of every political persuasion are enamored of their own set of myths and dogmas. How about working on being more persuasive? It’s harder than you think.

More than anything else in politics, I loathe unprincipled partisan bickering. “My team is GREAT! Your team SUCKS!” is harmless enough in sports. But in politics, people’s rights — and hence, people’s lives and values — are at stake. Is it too much to ask for some concern for principle, i.e. individual rights? Alas, based on the 2012 election so far, we have every reason to expect nothing but unprincipled partisan bickering.

Thanks to a Bionic Suit, Paralyzed Mom Finishes Marathon

Thanks to a Bionic Suit, Paralyzed Mom Finishes Marathon:
Claire Lomas, a woman paralyzed from the chest down because of a horse riding accident, recently finished a marathon thanks to a bionic suit “designed by Israeli firm Argo Medical Technologies,” reports Time NewsFeed. Claire finished the marathon while being cheered on by her family—her husband, 13-month old daughter, and mother—and a crowd of supporters.
Happy Mother’s Day to Claire and hats off to her for such a difficult achievement despite the paralysis. And, of course, hats off to the brilliant men and women of Argo Medical Technologies for creating this wonderful, life-enhancing bionic suit.
Related:

• Could You be Flying Cars in a Few Years?
• Extraordinary Courage, Bionic Eyes, and Remarkable Manufacturing: Good News Abounds

Image: Vladimir Pandovski

Alias Marx and Alinsky

Alias Marx and Alinsky: Calling socialists liberals is as deceptive as calling goose gizzards foie gras. It fools no one but the epistemologically blinkered. The term liberal allows liberals to pose as concerned, generous and forward-thinking individuals and to act under what was once an honorable term for anyone who advocated or endorsed liberty. And as any well-read American knows, liberals do not advocate liberty. Quite the opposite.

The subject here is the devolution of the term liberal, not its evolution.

Even out-and-out communists are called liberals. President Barack Obama is called a "liberal." The late Senator Ted Kennedy was called a "liberal." Barney Frank is a liberal. Obama's cabinet is largely staffed by liberals (unless outed, as self-confessed communist Van Jones was). Communism and socialism still carry a bad reputation, so everyone, including the Main Stream Media, and even well-intentioned pundits and commentators friendly to liberty, use the term liberal. The MSM, however, does it to dodge the reputation. Others use it from habit or ignorance, or because calling liberals socialists or communists in drag might open a can of worms they couldn't handle. This is courtesy carried to a fault. Underlying the fault is a fear of the inevitable clash between those who advocate freedom, and those who do not.

Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward," is simply a Progressive marching order. "Forward" to what? To socialism. To communism. To a command economy and a slave state, one half governed by bureaucrats, the other half by an alliance of Islam and quivering religionists of various stripes, willing to pay jizya to Islam in order to be granted their "religious freedom."

The Washington Post trumpeted "Forward" with no reservations or even curiosity about its Communist and Nazi origins. But then the Washington Post has been in the Saul Alinsky camp for over a generation.

One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.

Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky's work in Chicago slums. Her series, called "The Orderly Revolution," made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.

In 1989, The New York Times waxed poetic about Alinsky's powerful friends, and also provided some important information in the course of a review of a biography of Alinsky by Sanford D. Horwitt:

By the end of World War II Alinsky had won a measure of national renown. His ''Reveille for Radicals'' (1945) hit the best-seller list, and he secured the fervent support of important liberals like Agnes E. Meyer of The Washington Post and the retail magnate Marshall Field 3d. Though it undercuts his larger portrait, Mr. Horwitt shows that much of Alinsky's acclaim rested upon his promise that social reform and a democratic revival could take place through what Meyer called an ''orderly revolution,'' which would bypass the new power of the unions and reject the growth of an intrusive New Deal state. Thus ''Reveille for Radicals,'' which ostensibly celebrated social conflict, was panned by most of the left but acclaimed by Time, The New York Times and other mass circulation publications.

Neither Time, nor the Washington Post, nor the New York Times has changed its tune. If anything, they have grown more shrill from the standpoint of endorsing not just Alinsky but socialism. But they repress that term socialism, and deny they are of the Left. They'll admit only that they're "progressive" because, you see, they're "humanitarians." Well, so were Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Hitler. So are Robert Mugabe, and Hugo Chavez, and Ahmadinejad, and all the Kings of Saudi Arabia.

But, what are uncountable millions of dead of humanitarianism, when "progress" has been made, and man has been nudged "forward" into impoverished, straight-jacketed societies?

Let's set the record straight. Liberals are fundamentally collectivists. Specifically, either socialists or communists. Their policies and programs are demonstrably socialist or communist, whether one is speaking of Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and innumerable regulatory and confiscatory programs and policies, practically every bit of legislation that has been entered into The Congressional Record and The Federal Register for the last one hundred years. The term liberal should be retired, put out to pasture, and substituted with the appropriate and correct terms.

Here is a sampling of definitions of the term liberal:

1. Having, expressing, or following political views or policies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of government power to promote social progress….3. Of, designating, or belonging to a political party that advocates liberal social or political views, esp. in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company) 1985. (This is the first definition. Root meanings connected with generosity, open-mindedness, tolerance, etc., follow it. This is a significant order.)

6a. Of, favoring, or based on the principles of liberalism. 6b. Of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; esp. of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideas of individual esp. economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reform designed to secure those objectives. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (G. & C. Merriam Company) 1967. (Meanings connected with generosity, tolerance, etc. precede the political meanings.)

II. 1. Any person who advocates liberty of thought, speech, or action; one who is opposed to conservatism: distinguished from radical. 2. Liberal Party, a party in English politics formed by the coalition of the Whigs and Radicals about 1830: opposed to Tory. The Practical Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Funk & Wagnalls Company) 1939. (Meanings connected with generosity, etc. precede the political ones.)

And finally:

3. (Polit.) Favorable to democratic reform and individual liberty, (moderately) progressive (the Liberal Party). The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 1976. (Here, too, meanings connected with generosity, etc., precede the political definition. This is an acceptable condensation of the term from the two-volume Compact edition of the OED, 1971, whose entry is about half a foot in length in very tiny print, most of whose information is not relevant to my purpose here.)

Notice that the older the dictionary, the more liberty-linked the definition is. The American Heritage definition marks the end of the road for the term liberal, stressing the use of government power to promote social progress. Social progress is a catch-all euphemism for the collectivization of society and the assumption of more and more power by the government. It does not mean the liberation of men from other men's alleged needs or claimed "rights," but the forced or legislated chaining of all men to each other's alleged needs or alleged, government sanctioned "entitlements." It is the devious and misleading byword for incremental socialism, or Progressivism.

You will never hear Brian Williams of NBC or Bob Schieffer of CBS counter George Will or Charles Krauthammer with a statement, "But, we the Left don't think that's a good policy…." You will never hear them admit that they are of and for the Left. That would be "telling," as a con artist's "tell" is a warning that he's about to scam you.

One could say that today's liberals are the true conservatives, that is, those who wish to preserve the status quo of the welfare state and government power over individuals and their property, and any and all socialist programs and policies now in force.

And what do the designated "conservatives," or the "right wing," stand for today, that is, those who identify themselves as Republicans? Nothing, except for a watered-down version of what Progressives, socialists and communists have created over the course of a century, most often accompanied by an appeal to "tradition" and religious faith. All Progressive legislation is altruist and collectivist in nature. Conservatives have never challenged the moral foundations of Progressivism. They can't, because they subscribe to the same morality. They will never confess that Progressives have elevated the state to take the place of a deity, and that men should live for the secular deity's moral code of self-sacrifice and obedience to the state's commands. Also known as The Ten Thousand Commandments.

Social progress implies there are social problems to be solved and overcome. What are the problems? In the beginning, it was a concern – and not an actual problem – of working conditions at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Reformers wailed over the fact that factories employed children and women, neglecting the fact that children and women would otherwise have perished in poverty and disease at the outset of the Revolution, and in fact did perish in the centuries preceding the Revolution. By the millions.

The Abolitionist Movement identified slavery as a major social problem. The result was the Civil War. But the "problems" were numerous, and continue to be numerous and otherwise fictive or imaginary. In search of the City on the Hill, or Utopia, or a "just and fair" society, problems are naturally endless. The sole alternatives as the means to correct or ameliorate them have been: voluntarism or force. Progressivism chose force, because too many people thought the problems were not problems at all. Force bypasses volition or voluntary action.

Successes were many, beginning with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), and the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890). Progressives never spoke with one mind and differed sharply over the most effective means to deal with the ills generated by the trusts; some favored an activist approach to trust-busting, others preferred a regulatory approach.

A vocal minority supported socialism with government ownership of the means of production. Other progressive reforms followed in the form of a conservation movement, railroad legislation, and food and drug laws.

More recent social "problems" led to the endless "war on poverty," and the "war on drugs." Having nearly exhausted the major "social problems," Progressives or socialists are reaching deeper into the bottomless pit of "problems" and coming up with concerns with "wars" on obesity, salt, sugar, smoking, gender inequality in the workplace, in insurance, in the military, on incandescent light bulbs, sexism, ageism, and so on. Name a norm established by men without government supervision or guidance, and Progressives are against it. They immediately wish to abolish the liberty, or subject it to controls, regulation, and licensing. All for the sake of one's "fellow men," in the name of that prettified version of mob rule, "democracy."

All this goes on, and has been going on, more obviously, since the late 19th century. But Progressivism, a.k.a. socialism, has been advanced by intellectuals and writers ever since, say, Rousseau and his contemporaries in the 18th century. It has been disparate in means and ends ever since, but during the 19th century coalesced into a behemoth of an ideology posing as a love for the poor and other alleged victims of freedom. It no longer asks men to "love their neighbors"; it commands that they fetter themselves to each other in the name of "social progress."

Progressivism inculcates in its minions an obsessive-compulsive psychology. Just as Muslim men are obsessed with sex because Islam, on the one hand, hates women, and on the other, targets them for unrestrained and permissible abuse in the way of ownership, rape, enslavement, beating, and "honor-killing," Progressivism requires that all men answer to and be accountable to the state. The state establishes criteria of what is good and what is bad when addressing men's actions and values. It is a prescription for ownership and enslavement, as well. The key to the success of Progressivism is to ensure that a habit of dependency on statism is bred in men.

As the narrator of "If I Wanted America to Fail" notes:

…I'd demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

But first, demonize individualism, independence, and living one's own life, so that men will not miss what they once had, because submission to government controls is so much easier.

This has been, briefly, an account of the devolution of "liberalism." Progressive, liberal or socialist rhetoric is tailored for public consumption, usually innocuous and goose-feather pillow soft, so as not to alarm the public. The title of this column is frankly a parody of that successful TV Western, "Alias Smith & Jones," about a couple of outlaws promised amnesty if they "reformed." I could just as well have parodied the films, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" or "Bonnie and Clyde," for all three "entertainments" portray outlaws as basically nice people who mean well and just happen to commit crimes and who otherwise might have been your next-door neighbors, ready for a barbeque and a round of poker.

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits, and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

So, the radicals cut their hair, donned suits, hunkered down to win those Ph.D's, and infiltrated academia, for one thing. And here's the tip-off about the altruist nature of Progressivism and socialism, and their link to government force:

In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti – Al Capone's second-in-command – gave Alinsky clout on the street.

Just as Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky have wielded clout in political thought and in "practical politics." They, too, "meant well" and were otherwise forgettable souls whom one might pass on a street.

It's time for liberals to "man up," drop the demure veil, or take off the smiley mask, or come out of the totalitarian closet. It's time for them to stop the charade and confess their collectivist allegiances, and for their opponents to call them what they are.

Then we'll see some sparks fly, instead of the dissembling back-and-forth rhetoric between the Republicans and Democrats.

Gunfights, anyone?

Europe Needs Real Liberty, Not Fake “Austerity”

Europe Needs Real Liberty, Not Fake “Austerity”:
To various leftist American pundits, France’s recent election of socialist François Hollande to the presidency proves the ineffectiveness of Europe’s alleged “austerity” measures. For example, after considering Hollande’s election and the upheavals in Greece, Time’s Bryan Walsh concludes:

Both are reactions to the increasingly discredited—or at the very least disliked—austerity policies that have been put in place to fix the euro-zone crisis. That hasn’t happened yet—countries like Italy and Spain are in recession and nations like Greece are in worse straits. In fact, the one thing we know austerity causes is the end of political careers. [France’s so-called conservative] Nicolas Sarkozy [who lost to Hollande] could tell you that.

Walsh’s remarks (and comparable commentaries by others) contain so many fallacies it’s difficult to know where to begin.
Even if some European nations slightly reduced their massive government spending in the name of “austerity,” such measures can hardly be expected to result in economic recoveries, let alone quick ones. By analogy, a man who goes on a “diet” by reducing his daily intake of Twinkies from 100 to 95 should not expect to transform into a model of health.
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Journal for People of ReasonBut the notion that any European nation significantly reduced government spending or controls over the economy is laughable. Responding to the anti-austerity rants of Paul Krugman and Eugene Robinson, the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner points out that, far from cutting spending, Portugal went on a “massive Keynesian spending” spree. Tanner notes that “the average EU government consumes more than half of a country’s GDP,” and in “France . . . the so-called austerity largely consisted of raising taxes.”
Writing for the Mercatus Center, Veronique de Rugy shows:

France and the U.K. have not cut spending. . . . [W]hen spending was actually reduced—between 2009-2011 in Greece, Italy, and Spain—the cuts were relatively small compared to the size of their bloated European budgets. While Italy reduced spending between 2009-2010, it also increased spending in the following year by an amount larger than the previous reduction. Most importantly, meaningful structural reforms were seldom implemented. Whenever cuts took place, they were always overwhelmed with large counterproductive tax increases.
This so-called balanced approach—some spending cuts for large tax increases—has been proven to be a recipe for disaster by economists. It fails to stabilize the debt, and it is more likely to cause economic contractions.

Dan Mitchell and Russ Roberts make the same basic case, and Mitchell points out that Sarkozy was no free-market advocate, but rather a tax-hiking statist. The Wall Street Journal makes a similar point about Sarkozy, though its writers predict that, under the likely worse policies of Hollande, there will be “another wave of French tax migrants to London.”
What Europe needs—and what America needs—is not fake “austerity” but radical cuts in government spending, radical reductions in regulations, a radical turn toward protection of property rights and the establishment of economic liberty.
Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.
Related:

• Capitalism and the Moral High Ground
• Marxism “Begins with Theft and Ends with Murder,” Shows C. Bradley Thompson

France’s Real Problem—TOS’s Week in Review for May 12

France’s Real Problem—TOS’s Week in Review for May 12:
Noteworthy news and views from the week ending May 12, 2012
France’s Real Problem
Yesterday I wrote about the so-called “austerity” measures of France and other European nations, measures that have failed to significantly reduce government spending or curb government intervention in the economy. But much more can be said about the French government’s destructive economic interference. For example, Gregory Viscusi and Mark Deen write for Businessweek:

[France] has 2.4 times as many companies with 49 employees as with 50. What difference does one employee make? Plenty, according to the French labor code. Once a company has at least 50 employees inside France, management must create three worker councils, introduce profit sharing, and submit restructuring plans to the councils if the company decides to fire workers for economic reasons.

France’s economic problems result not from nonexistent “austerity,” but from the government violating the rights of citizens, including their rights to act and do business in accordance with their own judgment.
Viscusi and Deen conclude with the understatement of the week: “With 2.9 million people out of work—the worst joblessness in 12 years—France may need to overhaul its rigid labor laws.”
France Embraces Evil
The Independent notes that François Hollande, France’s new Socialist president, “styles himself as a ‘social democrat’ and not as any kind of revolutionary.” Nevertheless,

The 57-year-old Socialist has openly admitted that he “does not like the rich” and declared that “my real enemy is the world of finance”. This means taxing the wealthy by up to 75 per cent, curtailing the activities of Paris as a centre for financial dealing, and ploughing millions into creating more civil service jobs.

Nothing revolutionary about that—unless one recalls the socialist revolutions throughout history that were motivated by that very same hatred of the rich and that committed mass slaughter to achieve their goals.
To review socialism’s horrifying history, listen to these talks by Alan Charles Kors and C. Bradley Thompson:

A Tipping Point for Gay Marriage?
Despite the fact that a majority of North Carolina voters banned gay marriage this past week, the nation may have reached a tipping point in favor of gay marriage. Consider some of the signs.
In the past three years, support for gay marriage has grown from 40 to 50 percent of the population, reports Gallup. Whereas most Colorado voters opposed gay marriage in 2006, this year many expressed outrage when the state’s Republican legislators killed a civil union bill. Consequently, Colorado’s governor has called a special legislative session to reconsider the measure.
And, of course, this week, President Obama made history as the first U.S. president ever to endorse gay marriage, saying, “I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”
Given who said this, why he says anything, and when he said it, thinking Americans are seeing Obama’s endorsement for exactly what it is: political expediency. As Radley Balko writes,

It’s a position he has allegedly held all along, but didn’t have the political spine to state publicly prior to this afternoon. Even then, he only made his statement after carefully strategizing with his aides to make sure it wouldn’t damage him politically.

Even so, the increased support for legalizing gay marriage is a positive development. As the editorial writers of the Denver Post argue in a spirited editorial, removing legal barriers to gay marriage is akin to removing similar barriers to interracial marriage just a few decades ago.
Unfortunately, many Republicans, now led by Mitt Romney, continue their Bible-thumping bigotry against homosexuals and seek to forbid them the right to marry.
Joss Whedon’s Avengers
Joss Whedon’s fabulous science-fiction television show Firefly was canceled after only fourteen episodes, and the follow-up feature film Serenity, while a critical success, didn’t earn much.
Now, however, Whedon is king of the box office. His superhero Avengers film broke opening-weekend records, earning more than $200 million in the domestic market.
While constrained by a preestablished premise and general storyline, Whedon crafted a moving (and often humorous) screenplay. In one particularly poignant scene, the villain demands than a crowd kneel before him. One elderly man refuses to kneel, saying he saw what happened last time a ruler demanded such submission.
Of Comic Book Heroes, Fracking, and Keynesian Economics
The release of the Avengers film generated a couple of interesting political discussions.
First, Mark Ruffalo, who played Bruce Banner (a.k.a. the Hulk) in the movie, wrongly suggested that hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in energy production poisons people’s wells. Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress responded with an open letter to Ruffalo that begins, “As an energy researcher I am disappointed that you are using the media attention over your new Avengers movie to attack ‘fracking.’” Epstein invites Ruffalo to an educational seminar so he could “be an avenger for fracking.”
Second, someone has calculated that the destruction of New York shown in the Avengers film would cost some $160 billion in real life. For Keynesian “economists,” this kind of destruction is just what we need to get the economy back on track. Sarcasm? Hyperbole? Hardly. Last year Paul Krugman suggested that an alien invasion would “stimulate” economic growth by necessitating spending on a military buildup.
Obama Administration Harasses Romney Donor
Thank goodness we don’t live in China, where government officials have detained family members of activist Chen Guangcheng. Here in America, the Obama administration and its allies merely conduct “opposition research” against those who contribute to Obama’s political opponents (specifically Mitt Romney), then lead public smear campaigns against them. The Wall Street Journal carries the latest developments on this front.
Maurice Sendak: “Live Your Life”
Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, died May 8. Far more notable than his death, however, is how he lived. Consider comments he made during an NPR interview last year (as transcribed by Poker Grump):

I’m not unhappy about becoming old. I’m not unhappy about what must be. . . . [T]here’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging: that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio, and I see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old. They’re beautiful, and I can see how beautiful they are. . . . Oh, God, there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die! But I’m ready. . . . I wish you all good things. Live your life. Live your life. Live your life.

The Call to End Occupational Licensing
This past week, the Institute for Justice released a new study, “License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing.” It “documents the license requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations—such as barber, massage therapist and preschool teacher—across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”

title="Subscribe to the Journal for People of Reason">Subscribe to the

Journal for People of ReasonThis is an important report that deserves the media spotlight, because, as Michael LaFerrara discusses in a recent TOS blog post, such licensing violates individual rights, increases the costs of doing business, restricts entry into targeted industries, and gives politicians more control over producers.
Another Producer Leaves U.S. Due to Tax Code that Punishes Success
“Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook . . . renounced his U.S. citizenship” to reduce his tax liability, Bloomberg reports. He is just the latest successful American entrepreneur to flee the oppressive and grossly unjust U.S. tax code, which penalizes producers for producing.
Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.
Related:

• Interview with Boaz Arad on the Israeli Freedom Movement
• Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice

NoodleCast: Please Rate and Review

NoodleCast: Please Rate and Review:
If you’re a fan of my podcasts, please help spread the word by rating and reviewing them in iTunes! Please do so for both the enhanced M4A feed and standard MP3 feed. (The content is the same: the only difference is the file type.)
That’s much appreciated!

It’s Time to End Occupational Licensure

It’s Time to End Occupational Licensure:
A virulent epidemic is violating American’s rights and sapping the U.S. economy: occupational licensure.
The statistics are astounding. According to Forbes’ Suzanne Hoppough, from 1960 to 2007 the percentage of U.S. workers belonging to a licensed profession rose from 4.5 percent to 28 percent. In all, writes Hoppough, occupations requiring a government license in at least one state—including dentists, plumbers, hairdressers, secretaries, librarians, wallpaper hangers, and florists—rose from 80 in 1980 to 1100 by 2008.
The economic cost is incalculable. Licensure restricts the supply of workers in the occupations affected, stifling innovation and entrepreneurship, suppressing competition, and driving up prices. And the violation of American’s rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are patent: We are forbidden to act or contract in accordance with our judgment, forbidden to pursue our happiness as we see fit, forbidden to earn a living in these areas unless we have permission, in the form of a license, from the state.
What drives the licensure epidemic? It is fueled, in large part, by the established members of the various occupations themselves, through myriad professional organizations such as the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, American Dental Association, and the Cleveland Bar Association. Writes Hoppough: “These modern-day guilds have replaced organized labor as the main vehicle for workers seeking to shield themselves from competition.” Institute for Justice President William Mellor observes that they are “monopolies created by the government.”
But by seeking government “protection,” the guilds have sold their souls to the devil. Statists are beginning to discover the extortive power that government licensure accords them, and they are using that power against those who have helped hand it to them. Consider a few examples:

• A Florida legislator threatens a doctor with loss of his medical license for exercising his First Amendment rights.
• A proposed Massachusetts law would force health care providers to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients as a condition of their medical licenses.
• Beginning next year, New York lawyers will be required to perform fifty hours of free legal services as a condition of their law licenses.

Licensure is anti-freedom, anti-American, and pro-statism—it violates our rights, squelches our liberties, and throttles the economy in myriad ways—and it is high time for Americans to call for its abolition.
Without licensure laws, how would we know whether a person or company is of sufficient credibility, quality, or safety to do business with? By reference to the various companies and institutions that fill the vital demand for information about credibility, quality, and safety.
Consumers want such information (hence the concern), so, in a free market, where people are free to act and to do business in accordance with their own judgment, profit-seeking businesses and nonprofit institutions arise to provide it. Indeed, such organizations already abound.
Consider, for instance, occupational accreditation that is voluntarily instituted in various professional and trade associations, such as the American Dental Association through its Commission on Dental Accreditation and the National Institute for Metalworking Skills. Consider also Zagat, which rates restaurants; Underwriters Laboratories (UL), which provides product safety testing for a wide range of industries; and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which provides a wide range of services including personnel certification and accreditation.
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Journal for People of ReasonIf Americans want information about the credibility, quality, and safety of the people and organizations with whom they do business, they do not need to get such information from the government (nor can the government competently provide such information). Rather, they need freedom—and the goods and services that flow from self-interested people operating under the principle of supply and demand in the marketplace.
It is time for Americans to call for an end to occupational licensure and to demand, instead, that the government protect and not violate our rights.
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Related:

• Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society
• The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty

Aporia: Is Physical Beauty Itself a Value?

Aporia: Is Physical Beauty Itself a Value?:

Objectivist Round Up - May 10, 2012

Objectivist Round Up - May 10, 2012: Welcome to the May 10, 2012 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up.
This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are
animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn
Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of
man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of
his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and
reason as his only absolute.



"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:

The Difference between Voluntary Exchange and Rationing in Healthcare

The Difference between Voluntary Exchange and Rationing in Healthcare:
In a recent post, a reader commented:

Even without a national healthcare plan the old person is taking a finite amount of time away from the possibility of the doctor working on a younger patient. Therefore rationing is inevitable in any system. Rationing has to take place. It is only fair to allow the rationing to take place through a democracy [government rationing] and not at the whim of a doctor or the pocket book of those who can pay [a free market].

If the term “rationing” (in the political/economic context) has any rational meaning, it refers to the activity of a government forcibly dictating who will receive which goods or services and when. If we were to refer to the activity of a doctor voluntarily treating a patient who is willing and able to pay for the service as “rationing,” then we would have to refer to every trade in every economic field as “rationing,” and the term would lose its purpose in the English language.
The distinguishing characteristic of rationing—the thing that separates it from voluntary market activities—is the fact that it is instituted by force and by a government. When a farmer voluntarily contracts to ship his corn to a distributor in New York, that’s a trade; when a government forbids a farmer to ship his corn to New York and forces him to ship it to a distributor in Idaho, that’s rationing. Likewise, when a doctor voluntarily contracts with a patient or an insurance company to provide a certain service for a certain fee, that’s a trade; when a government forbids a doctor to contract with some patients or insurers and orders him to serve others, that’s rationing.
A trade is a voluntary exchange. Rationing is a violation of individual rights.
That a doctor’s time is finite, or that someone is unable to afford his services, or that the doctor might refuse to treat someone for some voluntary reason, does not constitute rationing, because it does not involve force. The person is still free to pursue medical treatment by other means—whether by scheduling a later appointment, or offering the doctor more money, or seeking a doctor who has room in his schedule or works for less money, or seeking private charitable assistance.
Trade and rationing are antipodes, and anyone who cares about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness had better grasp and respect their actual meanings.
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Related:

• ObamaCare and the Statists’ False Alternative
• Moral Health Care vs. “Universal Health Care”

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Dan Savage Versus the Christians

Dan Savage Versus the Christians:

Savage’s speech, at a 3,000-student gathering of young journalists in Seattle, linked bullying of gay kids with biblical denunciations of homosexuality. Savage, noting the Bible also banned masturbation and the eating of shellfish, said, “We ignore the bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.”
In the speech, Savage, citing Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation,” said the Bible gave instructions about how to treat slaves. If the Bible erred “on the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced … What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent,” said Savage. (LINK)

North Carolina’s Despicable Amendment

North Carolina’s Despicable Amendment:
David Deerson writes an excellent blog post on North Carolina’s Despicable Amendment — a.k.a. Amendment 1. The amendment — up for a vote today (May 8th) — would declare that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”
David writes:

The amendment isn’t only a strike against gay marriage but also civil unions, regardless of the gender composition of the partners. Depending on the courts interpretation of the language of the amendment, it could:

• invalidate domestic violence protections for all unmarried partners;
• undercut existing child custody and visitation rights that are designed to protect the best interests of children;
• prevent the state from giving committed couples rights to allow them to order their relationships, including threatening their
• ability to determine the disposition of their deceased partner’s remains;
• make medical decisions if their partner is incapacitated
• allow second-parent adoptions in order to ensure that both partners have a legal tie to, and financial responsibilities for, the
• children they are raising.
• invalidate trusts, wills, and end-of-life directives by one partner in favor of the other.

Apparently, the people who will be voting for this amendment don’t even understand its legal implications. But based on recent polling numbers, it seems likely to pass by a wide margin. I’m hoping for an unexpected but stunning defeat.

Spin off the Colleges, too.

Spin off the Colleges, too.: If there seems to be a war against football, don't write it off as the latest fixation of the left: I see that The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial by sports author Buzz Bissinger to the effect that college football should be banned. (A blurb notes that Bissinger will be participating in a debate about banning college football on the same side as Malcolm Gladwell, whose arguments I blogged in the first link above.)

Bissinger's rationale for such a ban differs from Gladwell's, and strikes me as quite likely to appeal to fiscal conservatives.

If the vast majority of major college football programs made money, the argument to ban football might be a more precarious one. But too many of them don't--to the detriment of academic budgets at all too many schools. According to the NCAA, 43% of the 120 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision lost money on their programs. This is the tier of schools that includes such examples as that great titan of football excellence, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers, who went 3-and-9 last season. The athletic department in 2008-2009 took in over $13 million in university funds and student fees, largely because the football program cost so much, The Wall Street Journal reported. New Mexico State University's athletic department needed a 70% subsidy in 2009-2010, largely because Aggie football hasn't gotten to a bowl game in 51 years. Outside of Las Cruces, where New Mexico State is located, how many people even know that the school has a football program? None, except maybe for some savvy contestants on "Jeopardy." What purpose does it serve on a university campus? None.

Later on, Bissinger notes examples of colleges subsidizing money-losing football programs or making budget cuts that spared football programs, but hurt other sports or programs. Although Bissinger suggests making college football into a minor-league subsidiary of the NFL, he still fails to suggest a truly capitalistic solution to the problem: making colleges into independent businesses. This is because he never questions the propriety of the government forcibly taking the money of some people to hand over to others, and this is because such theft is justified, in his mind, by the "public good". For starters, note the last, rhetorical question in the above passage and his answer.

How does Bissinger know what the individuals at this small school want or need on campus? By what standard is some form of recreation (e.g., watching a football game on a weekend) of zero benefit to everyone? Such context-free, blanket assertions are part and parcel of the typical cost-benefit "analyses" of modern welfare statists that omit the many hidden costs (to individuals) of having the government run things that are properly private enterprises. They also cause us to miss an easy solution to the problem of universities wasting money on football.

A private university that wanted a football program would have many options as an independent business, none of which would forcibly deprive anyone (attending or not) of their money. Here are just a few that come to mind: subsidize the program (but answer to customers and shareholders, who may well think the subsidy is worthwhile), become an affiliate of a professional league, compete on a club level (as many schools do in soccer), or run such a program at a profit. (Failure to keep the cost of football within sustainable limits would harm only the school that failed to do so.) Likewise, such a solution would allow students who valued football as part of their college experience to have it, without our government improperly (and fascistically) banning it from all colleges.

-- CAV

The men who caused the Great Recession

The men who caused the Great Recession:

The Peril of "Hate Crimes"

The Peril of "Hate Crimes": A totalitarian anti-concept of "justice" has been gnawing away at objective law without correction or opposition, and making rapid progress in a judicial system that has steadily abandoned reason and the protection of individual rights: hate crime.

Hate crimes initially were violations of individual rights motivated by the perpetrators' hatred of a victim'srace, gender, religion, or political affiliation. Hatred is an emotion that can be traced to two fundamental evaluations: fear, and malice. One can justifiably hate what one fears, if what one fears jeopardizes a rational value or one's life. Or, one can hate what one fears because it threatens an irrational value, such as blind faith or one's purported racial or cultural superiority. Malice is simply a raw, unreasoning hatred of a good for being the good.

But the motivating, emotional element of a demonstrable or provable violation of an individual's right (murder, rape, physical assault) has been factored into the severity of a defendant's crime and in consequent punishment after his conviction and trial.

In short, the why of a crime is increasingly treated as though it were a weapon, such as a gun, a knife, or a club. In standard criminal cases, however, it has never been the instrument of crime that was on trial, but the defendant and his actions.

Proponents of hate crime have attempted to find a compromise between objectivity in criminal law and the notion that a felon should also be punished for what caused him to commit the crime. But no such compromise is feasible if objective law is to be preserved and justice served. The irrational element – that is, making thought, however irrational or ugly it may be, a crime – has suborned the rational. No compromise between good and evil is lasting or practical. Evil will always come out the victor.

It did not take long for the corrupting notion of hate crimes to degenerate into thought crime. This is what happens when reason is declared irrelevant or is abandoned or diluted by the irrational.

It used to be that a criminal was sentenced for his crime, and if the crime was committed from some form of prejudice, the court's and jury's afterthought was usually: And, by the way, your motives are contemptible and despicable.

Appended now to a guilty verdict for the murder of an individual because of his race, gender "orientation," religion, or political affiliation, is another verdict: You have no right to think that way, so we are adding five years to your sentence and adding X amount to your monetary penalty.

A salutary instance of the corruption of justice is the Rutgers University "hate crime" case. The New York Times, in September 2010, reported:

It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

That night, the authorities say, the Rutgers University student who sent the message used a camera in his dormitory room to stream the roommate’s intimate encounter live on the Internet.

And three days later, the roommate who had been surreptitiously broadcast — Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman and an accomplished violinist — jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River in an apparent suicide….

The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office said Mr. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, N.J., and another classmate, Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton Junction, N.J., had each been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy for using “the camera to view and transmit a live image” of Mr. Clementi. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.

In many states, invasion of privacy is a misdemeanor, not a capital crime. Dharun Ravi was originally charged with invasion of privacy. But the alleged "hate crime" against a gay metastasized into a de facto trial for committing a capital crime, because Clementi committed suicide. Ravi was not charged with Clementi's murder, but it was implied that he was responsible for his suicide.

Fast forward to March, 2012. The presiding judge in the case contributed to the confusion;

The Times reported:

The jury in the trial of a former Rutgers University student accused of invading his roommate’s privacy by using a webcam to watch him in an intimate encounter began deliberations on Wednesday and asked the judge to define two crucial terms.

Jurors asked Judge Glenn Berman of Superior Court in Middlesex County to restate the definition of “intimidate,” as well as of the word “purpose,” as it related to the bias intimidation count.

The judge ruled that the defendant, Dharun Ravi, could be found guilty of bias intimidation only if he was also found guilty of the first charge, invasion of privacy. And he told the jury that the roommate, Tyler Clementi, would have been the victim of bias intimidation if he had been made to feel fear. [Italics mine.]

“A person is guilty of the crime of bias intimidation,” Judge Berman said, “if he commits an offense with the purpose to intimidate an individual because of sexual orientation.”

Mr. Ravi is charged with 15 counts, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors say he encouraged friends to view a feed from his webcam that showed Mr. Clementi with another man. Mr. Clementi committed suicide shortly afterward, in September 2010.

There are several things wrong with this. First, Clementi learned of the webcam prank indirectly by reading Ravi's Twitter posts about him (thirty-eight times). Ravi was not attempting to "intimidate Clementi, or "bully" him. Hi-tech back-fence gossip and slander-mongering about another person are not "intimidation." Ravi invited his friends to watch the webcam, not Clementi. Secondly, no one knows why Clementi committed suicide. He left a brief, cryptic suicide note which shed no light on his motive. ABC News reported:

Former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi was told by police that his text message apology for spying on roommate Tyler Clementi was written within minutes of Clementi's suicide note.

In a taped interview with investigators the day after Clementi's suicide Ravi is seen struggling to understand as he is told that his apology to Clementi was received just minutes before Clementi posted a Facebook message saying, "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

"Did he get that text before?" Ravi asked investigators.

"That's the way it looks," an officer responded.

"So he got mine, and then sent his?" Ravi asked, to which the investigators responded yes.

The police, however, appear to have made a mistake. Time stamps on the two messages show that Clementi posted his suicide note at 8:42 p.m. on Sept. 22, 2010. Ravi's apology to Clementi was sent at 8:46 p.m. It's not clear if Clementi ever saw the apology.

But, because no one had or could have had access to the contents of the minds of Ravi and Clementi's minds, the jurors, per Judge Berman's instructions and "clarification," were left to resort to second-guessing. To wit:

What the jury had to decide…was what Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi were thinking.

Had Mr. Ravi set up the webcam because he had a pretty good idea that he would see Mr. Clementi in an intimate moment? Had he targeted Mr. Clementi and the man he was with because they were gay? And had Mr. Clementi been in fear?

Without Mr. Clementi to speak for himself, that last question was perhaps the most difficult to determine, and jurors struggled with it.

“That was the hardest because you really can’t get into someone’s head,” said one, Bruno Ferreira, as he left the court. The jury deliberated longest — for well more than an hour, he said — on the bias intimidation charge. [Italics mine]

Mr. Ferreira said he ultimately voted guilty on the bias intimidation charge because Mr. Ravi had sent multiple Twitter messages about Mr. Clementi.

So, Ferreira overrode his initial doubts about getting into someone's head by substituting a number and translating it into a motive, or "bias intimidation." No one knows why Ravi engaged in his admittedly malicious prank. No one knows if Clementi committed suicide over the webcam incidents or because he was embarrassed or shamed or just in a suicidal mood. Any one of those reasons is more credible than is the "intimidation" charge.

But Bruce J. Kaplan, the prosecutor in Middlesex County, applauded the jury for sending a strong message against bias. "They felt the pain of Tyler," he said.

No, they were not. The jurors were projecting what they imagined Clementi's emotional state might have been because they were persuaded by the prosecution that Ravi's webcam actions contributed to Clementi's decision to commit suicide. There were no photos of Clementi's anguished state for them to judge, and so no way to even deduce why he was feeling "pain."

I am not taking Ravi's side here. I am taking a stand against the whole notion of hate crimes. If you want to see how a jury properly treats a bigot, watch Twelve Angry Men (start here at 1.18.56).

In criminal law, and even in Perry Mason TV law, determining a motive is merely a means to determine the reason for a criminal action, whether it is murder or larceny or petty theft. It was never criminalized itself. Motives exist in men's minds and can not be taken out and paraded as evidence. Even if they could be, in the past they would not have counted. It was the criminal action that was actionable in law, not why a crime was committed. That is changing, for the worse. Motives can not hurt anyone; only an action spurred by a motive, just as guns don't (volitionally) kill people; it is people using guns that kill people. The same logic applies to butter knives, rubber bands, spit balls, or rocks. Guns, butter knives, rubber bands, spit balls and rocks are not imbued with magical powers that force people to commit crimes with them. But gun control advocates wish to pretend that guns have magical powers to turn people into criminals.

Emotions and motives alone are not physical objects that can harm anyone.

Emotions are evaluations, and evaluations are products of thought. To condemn and punish an emotion is to criminalize thought. It's as simple as that. Crime enters the picture only when one acts on the emotion. The action is demonstrable.

The guiltiest party in this affair is Judge Glenn Berman, who aided and abetted in the sanctioning of "hate crimes" and "bias intimidation," both of which are anti-reason and anti-rights. A judge ought to know the difference between an actual, proven crime in which action is the evidence of a crime, and the contents of an individual's mind. The contents of the mind are no government's or court's business.

A motive or an emotion may help authorities to find clues to a crime or even identify a felon. But it is not a chargeable offense; it is the action stemming from it.

The why of a crime is not the crime. It is the action that is the crime. One can deduce, or collect evidence that a person wanted to embezzle his employer's bank accounts, that was his purpose; that is the "why." The crime is the embezzlement, the action, not the motive. The why of a crime may deserve condemnation, but it is not the proper object of criminal justice.

But, what has spurred te spread of "hate crime" and "hate speech"? In a word: tribalism.

Hate crimes are a direct result of a nation's population scrambling to join tribes based on race, gender, religion, and political affiliation, and these in turn splinter into sub-tribes. Such tribalism is possible in a nation that has abandoned reason and objective law, and a contest ensues in which the various tribes jockey in politics and fiat power to become the dominant and ruling group at the expense of all others.

Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand about tribalism:

Tribalism (which is the best name to give to all the group manifestations of the anti-conceptual mentality) is a dominant element in Europe, as a reciprocally reinforcing cause and result of Europe’s long history of caste systems, of national and local (provincial) chauvinism, of rule by brute force and endless, bloody wars. As an example, observe the Balkan nations, which are perennially bent upon exterminating one another over minuscule differences of tradition or language. Tribalism had no place in the United States—until recent decades. It could not take root here, its imported seedlings were withering away and turning to slag in the melting pot whose fire was fed by two inexhaustible sources of energy: individual rights and objective law; these two were the only protection man needed.

As the scope of government power grows, so do the number of "tribes" grow to protect themselves from it or to demand a share of it or simply to clamor for a granting of special privileges and status. Today there innumerable tribes locked in constant warfare in response to government power: smokers vs. non- and anti-smokers, gays vs. heterosexuals, blacks vs. whites and/or Asians, Hispanics vs. whites and/or blacks, cyclists vs. motorists, developers vs. conservationists, Christians vs. atheists, and, most prominent of all, Muslims vs. all non-Muslims, and especially Jews.

The last category is particularly vicious because Islam is a totalitarian ideology naturally comfortable, in Sharia law, with the notions of "hate speech" and "hate crime," because the growing ubiquity of such notions in U.S. secular law helps to insulate Islam from Western norms while its activists follow an agenda of conquest or stealth jihad. And, the New Black Panthers offered a $10,000 bounty for the "capture" of George Zimmerman, which is in addition to race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson calling Zimmerman's shooting of a black teenager "racist" and fomenting racial strife.

(It is noteworthy that neither the government nor courts nor the MSM is willing to charge black activists with "hate speech" or "hate crimes." Vociferous black activists are now a "protected" tribe able to slander, libel, and promote malice with impunity.)

As "hate speech" focuses on the written or spoken word (or on "forbidden" images of Mohammad), "hate crime" focuses on thought, whether or not it is spoken or written. You can be sure that the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamic front groups will be looking for ways to exploit the Rutgers precedent. And is certain that ambitious censors in government, such as Cass Sunstein, the "Speech Czar," will also be on the alert for opportunities to silence critics of the current administration based on the Rutgers verdict.

The Rutgers verdict against Ravi does not auger well for the state of criminal justice. Together with the vile notion of "hate speech," "hate crime" is another assault on man's mind.

*"Tribalism," in Philosophy: Who Needs It," p. 42.

Extraordinary Courage, Bionic Eyes, and Remarkable Manufacturing: Good News Abounds

Extraordinary Courage, Bionic Eyes, and Remarkable Manufacturing: Good News Abounds:
A few items from the benevolent news front:

• Helen Collins, an “80-year-old woman with no flying experience,” safely landed a plane as it was running out of gas after the pilot died. An airport official said, “She was remarkable on the radio… She kept her composure and sounded like she had been a pilot for years.” Hats off to Helen for having the self-esteem and presence of mind to save her life.
• A British man, “who had been totally blind for more than 20 years,” now has rudimentary vision thanks to the men of the mind who created and implanted his bionic eye.
• Emerald Touch Inc., has created an “external spine” for the U.S. Military that enables soldiers to carry heavy equipment more easily. Imagine the potential applications for civilian life and industry.
• A penny has sold for $1.15 million. Hyperinflation? No. Rational elation. In addition to its rareness (“After 200 years, we can only account for 14 of these”), the front of the coin reads, “Liberty Parent of Science & Industry.”
• Here’s an article on beautiful efficiency in manufacturing, showing how Herman Miller’s employees and technology create an Aeron chair every 17 seconds. And here’s a video about the process:

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Related:

• Adventures in Flight and Science, Good News Abounds

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Cruising Uphill, Thanks to Big Oil

Cruising Uphill, Thanks to Big Oil:
Living in Colorado, out in the country, my route to civilization takes me up and over the shoulder of Dawson Butte. The road climbs steadily for about a mile and then descends on the other side into town. Because the road is beautifully scenic, bicyclists often ride the road, too. As I pass them climbing the hill with great effort, it occurs to me that while I can elect to exercise vigorously as they are doing, my frequent trips take no physical effort and get me up and over that hill with great comfort and amazing speed.
Since my car gets about 32 miles per gallon of gasoline, the climb up that hill uses about half a cup—which costs about 12¢. That’s 12¢ worth of easily gotten, safe, portable, efficient fuel, to give me the luxury of sitting and listening to music or contemplating my values and goals while I cruise uphill!
Thank you, Big Oil—or, more precisely: Thank you, producers of oil—producers who enable me to live in a pine forest yet have easy access to town and beyond, on my own terms, so quickly and inexpensively.
What do these great producers enable you to do? That’s something to think about the next time you hear someone railing against “Big Oil.”
Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.
Related:

• Extraordinary Courage, Bionic Eyes, and Remarkable Manufacturing: Good News Abounds
• Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company

Image by Hannah Krening

What Don't You Know?

What Don't You Know?: Writing for Lifehack, Alexandra Levit notes a common trait among the CEOs she has worked with over the years: self-awareness and a willingness to address personal shortcomings. She cites as an example a man who puzzled his employees by adding more accountants to his management team than they thought necessary:

The new leaders had other expertise besides accounting, but that's not my point. When I spoke to the CEO, I learned that he surrounded himself with financial prowess because he considered this to be his personal area of weakness.  "I don't have a strong accounting background, and yet finance plays a major role in every area of our business.   Issues are inevitably going to come up that I need solid and informed advice handling, even if I can't identify those issues yet," he told me. [bold added]

This is Levit's way of introducing her real point: We don't always know what our shortcomings are, and we can't fix what we don't know is broken. Levit goes on to suggest several intriguing ways to overcome the obstacles we all face when assessing our own weaknesses. I'll just list them here. Follow the link above for more elaboration.

• Inventory Sub-Optimal Situations
• Take an Assessment [Test]
• Ask Colleagues Anonymously
• Work with a Coach

The biggest surprise was the rather large list of online assessmentsLevit pointed to. I'm not sure how many of these would be useful (or how easy it would be to "take several", at least in some areas, as Levitt advises), but some of them look like they could offer a decent beginning for an objective self-assessment.

-- CAV

HistoryAtOurHouse Podcast #4: The “Thucydidean” Approach to History

HistoryAtOurHouse Podcast #4: The “Thucydidean” Approach to History:
HistoryAtOurHouse podcast #4 features a segment from the High School class on the topic of what I call the “Thucydidean” approach to history.
Thucydides is the first historian to explicitly identify that history should be pursued for the purpose of instruction, as I discussed recently here.  As a tribute to Thucydides, I thus refer to the objective pursuit of knowledge about the past–as opposed to the intrinsicist and subjective approaches–as “Thucydidean.”
http://historyatourhouse.podbean.com/2012/04/30/the-thucydidean-approach-to-history/