The Objectivism Online Meta-Blog

Fleeting Freedom: The Indecent Assault on Broadcasters

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Don Watkins, former NoodleFoodler, recently published an excellent op-ed via the Ayn Rand Center on prohibitions on indecent speech. Here it is:

Fleeting Freedom: The Indecent Assault on Broadcasters

The fleeting expletive case before the Supreme Court is about more than broadcasters' ability to air dirty words--it's about whether "community standards" should be allowed to override free speech.

By Don Watkins

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Nov. 4 in the so-called fleeting expletive case, Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, it's clear that much more hinges on its outcome than broadcasters' ability to air dirty words.

The FCC has had the power to fine broadcasters for "indecent" speech for decades. But following Janet Jackson's infamous Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction in 2004, the government declared all-out war on indecency. Congress increased the maximum penalty per infraction tenfold, from $32,500 to $325,000; the FCC started issuing fines left and right; and Congressman James Sensenbrenner went so far as to recommend jail time for broadcasters who violated "indecency" guidelines. At the same time, the FCC began issuing fines for fleeting expletives. Suddenly a star's offhand comment on live TV could cost broadcasters hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the midst of all this, one question never got answered: just what is "indecency"? The Supreme Court had defined it as speech that "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities and organs in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards." But which Americans count (and don't count) as part of the community? Why are they king? And how are broadcasters to divine their supposedly shared standards? In response to these unanswerable questions, the FCC issued a hodgepodge of rulings in specific cases and told broadcasters, in effect, "You figure it out."

Multiple uses of expletives in Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary The Blues? Indecent, said the FCC. Multiple uses of those same expletives in the movie Saving Private Ryan? Not indecent. Suggestion of teenage sexual activity on CBS's Without a Trace? Indecent. Graphic discussion of teen sexual practices on Oprah? Not indecent. Bono's use of the "F-word" during the 2003 Golden Globe awards? Even the FCC wasn't sure about that one. Initially it said the word was not indecent, but later changed its mind and started handing out the fleeting expletive fines at issue in FCC v. Fox Television.

So what is a broadcaster to do? Engage in self-censorship, cutting any material that regulators might declare indecent.

Defenders of the war on indecency admit that the FCC's regulations are murky. But without such restrictions, they say, Americans will be helpless against the stream of offensive programming pumped into their homes: either we allow the government to wield arbitrary power over broadcasters, or we give broadcasters arbitrary power to subject us to filth.

What this argument ignores is that broadcasters' power is not arbitrary. They must earn their market by offering programming Americans choose to consume. We choose to buy a TV (or not). We choose to pay for cable (or not). We choose which channels we and our children watch. Broadcasters can't force us to watch offensive programming any more than an author can force us to read an offensive book.

This is the meaning of free speech: people have the right to say whatever they want, no matter how offensive--and we remain free to listen or not. We don't have to abide by the opinions, prejudices, and errors of our neighbors, but can judge for ourselves whether something is true or false, art or trash, insightful or indecent.

But once the government becomes the enforcer of "community standards," no speech is safe. How long until, say, the Bible Belt declares that the theory of evolution is offensive, corrupts young minds, undermines community values, and must be suppressed? This question is not academic. Bolstered by the indecency precedent, efforts are already underway to regulate "excessively violent" broadcasts.

And if the government can suppress speech "the community" allegedly deems offensive, then why can't it force broadcasters to engage in speech "the community" allegedly regards as good? In fact, it already does so: Univision was recently fined $24 million for failing to air a sufficient amount of educational children's programming. On the anti-indecency movement's premises, judging the value of programming is not the prerogative of broadcasters, who decide what to air, or viewers, who decide what to watch--it's the prerogative of "the community" (and its self-appointed spokesmen).

This is what is at stake in FCC v. Fox Television. The question is not whether fleeting expletives are indecent, an issue that individuals have a First Amendment right to decide for themselves. It's whether the Constitution grants government the power to trample on freedom of speech, using non-objective laws to dictate what we can say and hear on the airwaves. The Supreme Court should take this opportunity to respond with an emphatic "No!" Anything less would be indecent.

Don Watkins is a writer and research specialist at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

The Anti-Mind Stench of myBO

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you're tired of having a full head of hair, mosey on over to this -- oh, how shall I refer to it? -- this youth mobilization page of the Barack Obama Campaign and watch the video. If there's anything more annoying than clueless, indoctrinated children sanctimoniously parroting bromides about "educating" their parents on politics, I don't know what that is.

But I am a little concerned that we'll find out soon enough if their Pied Piper has his way. Be that as it may, the kid threatening to withhold future help with text messaging from his grandparents if he doesn't get his way takes the cake, but I really had to gut it out to get that far.

This page, about what the Obama Campaign calls "The Talk", is worth taking a look at as an example of just how low Obama is willing to stoop to get elected, not to mention how little confidence he must have in the merits of his positions as seen by the eyes of well-educated adults with some life experience under their belts. It should tell you something that he has this much contempt for your opinion, and this much determination to get elected anyway.

(Having said that, one could just as well say the same thing about John McCain, given his contempt for freedom of speech.)

At the same time, the advice of the Obama Campaign on how children can help him get elected is actually rather clever. And there's more of that on yet another youth mobilization page, "Kids for Obama". The kid's kit practically invites ridicule by having children set up "myBO" pages. But I'm obviously mean-spirited for pointing that out. Maybe that's part of the point.

It also gives me pause to consider that this is likely yet another taste of how Obama intends to govern. There will be no debate, but we will be hounded day in and day out about how "important" his agenda is. And Obama will be manipulating the guilt-strings from afar, equating his left-wing agenda with what our kids (or the disadvantaged) need by means of the widespread acceptance of altruism in our culture.

It is amazing to me how quickly some people turn their rational minds off after the first hint that their considered disagreement might be selfish! Obama clearly knows this and intends to use it. Too bad that selfishness is virtuous. America will need lots of it to survive the next few years regardless of who wins the Presidency.

On that score, these little political reeducation ambushes remind me of the following passage from We the Living, in which Irina considers why the communists constantly call on ordinary people to attend political meeting after political meeting:

Do you know what I believe? I believe they're doing it deliberately. They don't want us to think. That's why we have to work as we do. And because there's still time left after we've worked all day and stood in a few lines, we have the social activities to attend, and then the newspapers. Do you know that I almost got fired from the Club, last week? I was asked about the new oil wells near Baku and I didn't know a damn thing about them. Why should I know about the oil wells near Baku if I want to earn my millet drawing rotten posters? Why do I have to memorize newspapers like poems? Sure, I need the kerosene for the Primus. But does it mean that in order to have kerosene in order to cook millet, I have to know the name of every stinking worker in every stinking well where the kerosene comes from? Two hours a day of reading news of state construction for fifteen minutes of cooking on the Primus? (313) [bold added]

Obama may or may not hope to reeducate America in the same way that the communists ran Russia, or, God forbid, that Bill Ayers' Weather Underground has discussed (HT: Andy Clarkson and HBL), but he shares the same fundamental contempt for rational debate. The only questions, should he be elected, will be whether he will follow the implications of his statist philosophy that far, and, if so, whether he thinks he can get away with it.

Those of us who don't need spine transplants will have to fight hard and constantly to keep our next President in check. This is true no matter who wins, but it is easier to grasp with Obama.

-- CAV

Abortion Is a Woman's Right

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Last week, I sent out the following op-ed on abortion -- particularly focusing on Colorado's Amendment 48 -- to the various Colorado papers:

Abortion Is a Woman's Right

Colorado voters face a stark moral choice in this election: vote yea or nay on Amendment 48. That ballot measure would grant fertilized eggs the legal standing of persons--including "inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law"--in the state constitution.

If fully implemented, almost all abortions would be outlawed in Colorado, including in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity. Any woman who terminated a pregnancy would be guilty of murder, subject to life in prison or the death penalty. To take the birth control pill, which might sometimes prevent the implantation of an embryo in the womb, would be a criminal act. Miscarriages might be investigated by zealous prosecutors.

Roe v. Wade would not necessarily protect women against these ominous legal controls. Rather, Amendment 48 might be used to challenge that landmark case--or to inspire a nationwide movement for a similar federal constitutional amendment.

Despite its draconian effects, this proposed amendment has gathered solid support from Colorado voters. A recent poll shows that 39% favor it, 50% oppose it, and 11% are undecided.

Why such strong support? Over the past two decades, the religious right has effectively waged a holy war on abortion. Abortion is the murder of an innocent human life, they say. It violates the God-given right to life of a "preborn child." It is part of a "culture of death." So most Americans regard abortion as morally wrong except when a pregnancy threatens the woman's mental or physical health.

Yet the religious right's attacks on abortion are completely and utterly wrong. They evade the true meaning of the biological facts of pregnancy.

Opponents of abortion claim that embryos and fetuses have the same right to life as babies because they are distinct, living human beings. Undoubtedly, an embryo or fetus is alive, not inert matter. It's also human--not canine or hippopotamus. Yet every distinct, living skin cell a person washes off in the shower also contains human DNA. A tumor is human tissue distinct from its host. The embryo or fetus is different: it might develop into a born baby. Yet the differences between an embryo or fetus and that born baby are vast.

In the early stages of pregnancy, the embryo has nothing in common with an infant except its DNA. Its form is similar to the embryos of other mammals; it cannot survive outside the womb; it lacks any kind of awareness. To call that clump of cells a "person" is sheer nonsense.

Even when more developed, the fetus is not a biologically separate entity capable of independent action, like a baby. It exists as part of the woman carrying it, wholly contained within and dependent on her. It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes. It lives as she lives, as an extension of her body. It is not yet an individual human life; it is not yet a person.

That situation changes radically at birth. A baby lives a life of its own. Although still very needy, he maintains his own biological functions. He breathes his own air, digests his own food, and moves on his own. He interacts with other people as a creature in his own right, not merely as a part of a pregnant woman. His life must be protected as a matter of right.

So a woman has every right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy--for any reason. If an abortion will protect and further her own life and happiness, then she ought to pursue that option with a clear conscience.

Amendment 48 would obliterate the moral right of every pregnant woman to control her own body. It is based on sectarian religious dogma, not objective facts. Please vote "No" on 48.

Diana Hsieh is the co-author of "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person," an issue paper available at http://www.seculargovernment.us.

I haven't checked the various papers to see where it has been published, but I do know that the Pagosa Daily Post published it on October 23rd. They then published a a lengthy reply on October 27th. (I won't reproduce it here; it's too long and too wrong.) On the 29th, they published a great letter in reply by Gideon Rich of Armchair Intellectual:

Van Horn Opinion Misses the Point
Gideon Reich

Steve Van Horn's rebuttal in the Post to Diana Hsieh's excellent article on abortion shows a complete lack of understanding of the one crucial concept in the abortion debate: Individual Rights. Far from being mythical supernatural endowments implanted at conception, or social conventions subject to popular vote, rights derive from a human being's nature as a rational being. His existence requires the free exercise of his rational faculty to sustain his own life.

A "right," as Ayn Rand pointed out, "is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context." Thus, the freedom of action that ought to be guaranteed to an individual is the freedom to think and act without interference from others in society for the achievement of his goals, as long as he respects the right of others do the same.

The very first requirement for such a freedom to apply is that the "individual" in question actually be a separate individual in a social context -- not a mere potential that is part of another actual individual. As Ms. Hsieh has eloquently shown, the unborn fetus, to say nothing of the embryo or zygote, has not met that requirement.

The pregnant woman, on the other hand, clearly has -- and has every moral right to act accordingly.

Thank you for writing such an excellent letter, Gideon!

Is the US adopting Islamic financial practices?

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Saudi cleric Abd Al-'Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan says so, according to an interview transcribed by MEMRI.

"America is Collapsing, According to the Same Scenario of the Russian Collapse"

Abd Al-'Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan: "A few years ago, the Socialist Communist system ended in a devastating collapse, and it was followed by the Soviet republics one after another. Russia gave up its competition against American hegemony, and the United States became the unipolar leader ruling the world.

"Now, Allah be praised, America is collapsing, according to the same scenario of the Russian collapse.

[...]

"This tremendous economic power, which is unparalleled in history, was bound to collapse one day because it is based on injustice.

[...]

"Will the West acknowledge the collapse of capitalism? I am convinced that they will not. We are used to their obstinacy and arrogance. They always turn the facts upside down...

Interviewer: "But they will have to admit..."

Abd Al-‘Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan: "Now they have begun to adopt the principles of Islamic economy – only they do not call it "Islamic." The prohibition on short selling, the prohibition on the expanding and the selling of debts – this is Islam!" [...] [Full interview here]

I think our Saudi cleric friend is on to something here. The prohibitions on certain market transactions do draw upon the history of faith-based bans on money-lending and the like. And while not explicitly religious, the ban on short selling is a stunning example of altruism in action (as well as a brazen assault on self-interest). I guess if America can't be an Islamic republic, it can be made to be as poor as one.

'GOV HOLDS HIS 'RAND' OUT IN $$ PLEA TO DC'

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Or so says the New York Post.

Invoking the novelist Ayn Rand, Gov. Paterson yesterday sounded a conservative message of tax cuts, business development, and fiscal restraint before Congress - even as he sought billions of federal dollars to help the state cope with its massive looming deficits.

. . . Paterson cited Rand, a libertarian icon, and her best-seller "The Fountainhead," noting the novel proclaimed that "our country, the greatest country in the world, was founded on the basis of individuals, where people were encouraged to adventure, not to be complacent; to be daring, not dormant; to prosper, not to plunder."

He went on to say that a failure to live by those principles, combined with a lack of transparency and governmental oversight, had "brought us to the point where our nation faces a downturn in its economy only rivaled by the Great Depression."

The aericle goes on to describe how Paterson then proceeded to ask for more federal money for New York.

I have to admit, I simply find it amusing that Ayn Rand's name got a mention in a New York Post headline. I don't know where Patterson is getting the idea that Rand advocated federal favors for the states, but hey, it's still a New York Post mention and as everybody knows, the Post is the world's greatest newspaper, ever. And there you have it.

End the FCC's War on Free Speech

By Don Watkins from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

End the FCC’s War on Free Speech
October 29, 2008

Washington, D.C.--On November 4 the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations. At issue is whether the FCC can declare “fleeting expletives” indecent and fine broadcasters for violations.

“The government should put an end to the non-objective ‘indecency’ laws that permit the FCC to dictate what Americans can say and hear on the airwaves,” said Don Watkins, a writer for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

“The Supreme Court has defined ‘indecency’ as speech that ‘depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities and organs in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards.’ But which Americans count--and don’t count--as part of the community? Why are they king? And how are broadcasters to divine the community’s supposedly shared standards?

“As the history of the government’s anti-indecency regime has shown, these questions are unanswerable. The only way for broadcasters to play it safe is to engage in self-censorship, cutting any material regulators might declare indecent.

“And once the government becomes the enforcer of ‘community standards,’ no speech is safe. How long until the courts start rubber-stamping the Bible Belt’s efforts to suppress the theory of evolution on the grounds that it is offensive, corrupts young minds, and undermines community values?

“It’s time for the government to stop telling Americans what we can say and hear on the airwaves, and to protect our constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.”

### ### ###

Don Watkins and other Ayn Rand Center experts are available for interviews on this topic.

Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrandcenter.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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William Blackstone (Part 1) - Laws come from Nature

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

William Blackstone (1723 - 80) was a eminent English jurist. In the introduction to his "Commentaries on the Laws of England", he briefly speaks of the philosophy underlying law. He appears to be influenced by John Locke. On reading his description of the philosophy of law, I imagine a man struggling toward the ideas later expressed in Rand's "The Objectivist Ethics" essay, but not getting there. Instead, he wanders back into conventional wisdom.

Here's a synopsis of these two pages.

Blackstone has a deist notion of God: He created the universe, and set things in motion; and, that's about it. This is not an interfering God. This is not a God who will change things to help us out. being perfect, He won't even change his own plans. To us humans, then, what is relevant is the will of this God as expressed in his design of the universe. Blackstone sums it up thus: "This will of his maker is called the law of nature". The best way to read the commentary is to keep that one statement in mind as the encapsulation of Blackstone's view. Whenever he speaks of God's will, he is talking about the laws of nature.

Blackstone traces natural law from inanimate objects, to animals, and then to the "noblest of all ... beings". Given the laws of nature, other laws are not arbitrary. Inanimate objects react within certain immutable laws of nature. Lower animals follow the laws of nature, too. They cannot think or choose in the way humans can. Yet, unlike inanimate objects, their actions are animated by an end: their own subsistence. " ..., such laws must be invariably obeyed, so long as the creature itself subsists, for its existence depends on that obedience." Reminds me of Rand identifying life as the end behind all goal-directed action.

I'll describe how Blackstone proceeds to humans, in another post. For now, here is the text that I have described above:

Introduction: Section 2

… when the Supreme being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, he impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. When he put that matter into motion, he established certain laws of motion, to which all movable bodies must conform, And, to descend from the greatest operation to the smallest, when a workman forms a clock, or other piece of mechanism, he establishes at his own pleasure certain arbitrary laws for its direction; as that the hand shall describe a certain space in a given time; to which law as long as the work conforms, so long it continues in perfection, and answers the end of its formation,

If we farther advance, from mere inactive matter to vegetable and animal life, we shall find them still governed by laws; more numerous indeed, but equally fixed and invariable. The whole progress of plants, from feed to the root, and from thence to the feed again; --- the method of animal nutrition, digestion, secretion, and other branches of vital economy; --- are not left to chance, or the will of the creature itself, but are performed in a wondrous involuntary manner, and guided by unerring rules laid down by the great author.

This then is the general signification of law, a rule of action dictated by some superior being; and in those creatures that have neither the power to think, nor the will, such laws must be invariably obeyed, so long as the creature itself subsists, for its existence depends on that obedience. But, laws, in their more confined sense, and in which it is our present business to consider them, denote the rules, not of action in general, but of human action of conduct: that is, the precepts by which man, the noblest of all sublunary beings, a creature endowed with both reason and freewill, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of behavior.

Original text via Posner Memorial Collection (CMU). Audio-recording at Librivox.

Rush Limbaugh Tells Pro-Choice Republicans To F*** Off

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In his October 24, 2008 radio show, Rush Limbaugh essentially told Republicans who believe in abortion rights that they should leave the Republican Party:

Good Riddance, GOP Moderates

...We flushed 'em out. We found out they're not really Republicans and they're by no means conservatives, and now they're gone. Now the trick is to keep 'em out.

...The minute you say that conservatism includes people who are pro-choice, you've destroyed conservatism because conservatism stands for "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness." Without life, there is nothing else here, and if we're going to sit around indiscriminately deciding who lives and who dies based on our own convenience, that's not conservative. Individual liberty. The essence of innocence is a child in the womb who has no choice over what happens to it. Sorry. If we don't stand up for that person, if the government doesn't, then nobody will. And if we allow ourselves to get watered down by a bunch of people who are embarrassed over that position, they're not conservatives.

No problem, Rush. I've already sent the following message to numerous Republicans at the local, state, and national level:

I used to support the Republican Party because I believe in individual rights, free markets, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms.

However, the Republican Party alliance with the religious right on "social issues" like stem cell research, abortion and gay marriage has turned off many former supporters such as myself.

Americans have a right to practice their religion as a purely private matter, and I defend everyone's right to do so.

But the government should not force one group's religious views on everyone. Hence, I no longer have a home in any political party. To paraphrase a quote from Ronald Reagan, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me."

Given that Rush Limbaugh has just confirmed that they don't want members like me, I'm happy to oblige him.

If the Republican Party wants to become the party of the Religious Right, then they will lose big in 2008. And they will deserve to do so.

Update:An Objectivist friend has also contacted us privately to point out that in another show, Limbaugh spoke out to defend individual rights, but as part of a pro-McCain plea. As our friend notes (quoted with his permission):

And let's not forget that his impassioned defense of individual freedom (which I heard part of, and which by itself was quite good) was made in defense of voting for JOHN MCCAIN... you know, the guy who blames the financial crisis on greedy Wall Street, who dismisses those who pursue profit instead of "service," who thinks the First Amendment deserves scare quotes, who supports cap and trade, who opposes drilling for oil in Alaska, whose hero is Teddy Roosevelt, who chose religious nut-job and anti-intellectual populist Sarah Palin as his running mate, etc., etc., etc. What a sin it would be to elect that kind of nightmare in the name of *capitalism*!

If McCain and Limbaugh were the only "defenders" of individual rights against the likes of Obama, then our country would be in sorry shape. Fortunately, there are better defenders out there...

Fleeting Freedom: The Indecent Assault on Broadcasters

By Don Watkins from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Fleeting Freedom: The Indecent Assault on Broadcasters

The fleeting expletive case before the Supreme Court is about more than broadcasters’ ability to air dirty words--it’s about whether “community standards” should be allowed to override free speech.

By Don Watkins

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Nov. 4 in the so-called fleeting expletive case, Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, it’s clear that much more hinges on its outcome than broadcasters’ ability to air dirty words.
  
The FCC has had the power to fine broadcasters for “indecent” speech for decades. But following Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction in 2004, the government declared all-out war on indecency. Congress increased the maximum penalty per infraction tenfold, from $32,500 to $325,000; the FCC started issuing fines left and right; and Congressman James Sensenbrenner went so far as to recommend jail time for broadcasters who violated “indecency” guidelines. At the same time, the FCC began issuing fines for fleeting expletives. Suddenly a star’s offhand comment on live TV could cost broadcasters hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  
In the midst of all this, one question never got answered: just what is “indecency”? The Supreme Court had defined it as speech that “depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities and organs in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards.” But which Americans count (and don’t count) as part of the community? Why are they king? And how are broadcasters to divine their supposedly shared standards? In response to these unanswerable questions, the FCC issued a hodgepodge of rulings in specific cases and told broadcasters, in effect, “You figure it out.”
  
Multiple uses of expletives in Martin Scorsese’s PBS documentary The Blues? Indecent, said the FCC. Multiple uses of those same expletives in the movie Saving Private Ryan? Not indecent. Suggestion of teenage sexual activity on CBS’s Without a Trace? Indecent. Graphic discussion of teen sexual practices on Oprah? Not indecent. Bono’s use of the “F-word” during the 2003 Golden Globe awards? Even the FCC wasn’t sure about that one. Initially it said the word was not indecent, but later changed its mind and started handing out the fleeting expletive fines at issue in FCC v. Fox Television.
  
So what is a broadcaster to do? Engage in self-censorship, cutting any material that regulators might declare indecent.
  
Defenders of the war on indecency admit that the FCC’s regulations are murky. But without such restrictions, they say, Americans will be helpless against the stream of offensive programming pumped into their homes: either we allow the government to wield arbitrary power over broadcasters, or we give broadcasters arbitrary power to subject us to filth.
  
What this argument ignores is that broadcasters’ power is not arbitrary. They must earn their market by offering programming Americans choose to consume. We choose to buy a TV (or not). We choose to pay for cable (or not). We choose which channels we and our children watch. Broadcasters can’t force us to watch offensive programming any more than an author can force us to read an offensive book.
  
This is the meaning of free speech: people have the right to say whatever they want, no matter how offensive--and we remain free to listen or not. We don’t have to abide by the opinions, prejudices, and errors of our neighbors, but can judge for ourselves whether something is true or false, art or trash, insightful or indecent.
  
But once the government becomes the enforcer of “community standards,” no speech is safe. How long until, say, the Bible Belt declares that the theory of evolution is offensive, corrupts young minds, undermines community values, and must be suppressed? This question is not academic. Bolstered by the indecency precedent, efforts are already underway to regulate “excessively violent” broadcasts.
  
And if the government can suppress speech “the community” allegedly deems offensive, then why can’t it force broadcasters to engage in speech “the community” allegedly regards as good? In fact, it already does so: Univision was recently fined $24 million for failing to air a sufficient amount of educational children’s programming. On the anti-indecency movement’s premises, judging the value of programming is not the prerogative of broadcasters, who decide what to air, or viewers, who decide what to watch--it’s the prerogative of “the community” (and its self-appointed spokesmen).
  
This is what is at stake in FCC v. Fox Television. The question is not whether fleeting expletives are indecent, an issue that individuals have a First Amendment right to decide for themselves. It’s whether the Constitution grants government the power to trample on freedom of speech, using non-objective laws to dictate what we can say and hear on the airwaves. The Supreme Court should take this opportunity to respond with an emphatic “No!” Anything less would be indecent.
  
Don Watkins is a writer and research specialist at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

 

Quick Roundup 374

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Visualizing Bureaucracy

HBLer David Hayes recently went to the Law Library of the Library of Congress to do some research on the scope of government regulations -- with ruler and camera in hand:

The Code of Federal Regulation (abbreviated CFR) is the collection of regulations passed by Federal agencies in the United States.

...

Viewers of a John Stossel television program on the ABC broadcast network on October 17, 2008, saw Stossel demonstrate that the pages in a single title, when removed from the binding and then attached end to end, rolled out the whole length of a football field and then halfway back again. (Read story, view video) The present web page demonstrates just how much shelf space the regulations occupy when the pages are in their binding and on shelves.

The CFR is spread across ten shelves at the Library of Congress. ...

Be sure to stop by for photos and measurements. Hayes then tackles the United States Code, the laws actually passed by Congress.

All told, the USC of year 2000 occupies 73 inches of shelf lineage. ... When the laws of the United States were codified as the United States Code in 1925, all of the titles combined occupied a single volume.

The next time someone tries to pull a Greenspan, remember these pictures. We are a far cry from capitalism.

More on This from Reisman

In a lengthy post, economist George Reisman provides even more evidence that we do not live under capitalism. As a recent commenter pointed out, he has one of the best quotes regarding the Walter Duranty Alan Greenspan Media's coverage of the financial crisis:

It seems that so long as anyone manages to move or even breathe without being under the control of the government, laissez faire allegedly continues to exist, which serves to make necessary yet still more government controls.

Indeed.

A Nation of Obama, Not Laws?


A friend recently told me about this 2001 video (edited transcript) of Obama, a law professor, denigrating our Constitution for not prescribing "what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."

Obama may soon be sworn to uphold the Constitution, but here he is -- through ignorance of the nature of individual rights or treachery -- decrying it as a "charter of negative liberties". Too bad that the only way for the government to help one man (aside from defending his individual rights) is to violate the individual rights -- that is, to harm -- another.

Meanwhile, Myrhaf gives us a preview of what life may be like under an Obama regime:

The most benevolent and revered One has been embarrassed recently by Joe the Plumber and the broadcast journalist Barbara West. Both people had the poor judgment to ask Obama or Biden tough questions. Now Joe the Plumber and Barbara West's husband are being investigated. This is what life under Obama will be -- anyone who does not toe the line will find himself subject to intimidation and character smears.

I would add only that past history has already shown us that his supporters had better hope it is convenient for him to pretend to be grateful.

-- CAV

Hosannas for Obama by The New York Times

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Granting that The New York Times is still the nation’s newspaper of record, in spite of its notorious left-liberal bias, its commitment to fabricating news when not reporting much news fit to print, and its abandonment of all pretence of objective journalism, it would be fair to claim that it speaks for presidential candidate Barack Obama, for the Democrats, for most Republicans, and for every collectivist and altruist who ever wished he was in charge of “running” the country so that he could pilot it in his own preferred direction.

For decades the paper has served as the unofficial house organ of Big Brother, vetting and approving in the best “democratic” tradition and with few reservations every federal program that answered the needs and demands of virtually every parasitical group that has voiced them. On October 24 it endorsed Obama and explicated the reasons why the South Side Chicago Messiah should govern the nation. What follows are rebuttals to some of the paper’s main editorial assertions, together with an explanation of each as a form of line-item veto:

 “The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership.” True, the U.S. is battered and drifting, but why is it battered and in which direction has it been drifting, and for how long has it been in that condition? The absence of a competent captain can be arguably plotted as far back as JFK and can include him and every president since him, including Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. The direction has been towards fascism, the “f” word no one dares let escape from his lips or onto the front or editorial page lest it send the electorate into a panic or at least alert its more discerning members to the means and ends of proposed policies (modern journalists consistently exercising the rule of thumb that if one refuses to identify a thing, it can’t exist or isn’t real). George W. Bush is merely the latest anti-intellectual, morally rudderless captain, one who has charted the course of his ship of state, not by calculating longitude and latitude by the position of the stars, but rather by consulting his political horoscope, a ghost, and a popularity poll.

 “After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.” Grueling? One supposes it must be grueling, flying around the country on someone else‘s dime and going hoarse repeating the same banalities to crowds of awestruck, dumbed-down Americans whom one is certain he secretly despises. Ugly? The campaign has been not so much ugly as enervating in the dishonesty of all the candidates and in the absence of any discussion of fundamental political and moral issues. And, as far as Senator Obama having proven that he is the right choice, that is because the Times agrees with his plans to reinvent America as a European-style welfare state, even though Obama’s rhetoric is deceptively vacuous -- deceptively, because Obama is a master of Orwellian double-speak. Ergo, he is the right choice.

 “Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong.” And the Times has apparently succumbed to that urge. The paper accuses McCain of “running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism.” Here the paper confesses that it is the one-eyed man leading the halt and the blind, because Obama’s campaign has been nothing but a theme of partisan division (those damned Republicans will just give you four more years of Bush!), class warfare (soak the rich, or anyone making more than $250,000 a year), and racism (I am posing as “black” even though I’m about 90% “Arab” or more or less Semite).

 John McCain, on the other hand, cannot be credibly accused of running an “ugly” campaign, which instead has been meek, mild and wall-flowerish. McCain has stubbornly refused to hammer Obama with the facts of his sordid record of service to the worst of the masses before he entered the Illinois senate and after that. If his advisors and speech writers had any imagination, McCain would have at some point said something like, “Senator Obama is William Ayers’ vengeance on a country they both hate and wish to destroy through ‘change.’ Barack Obama in the White House would be more destructive than any bomb assembled by Ayers and his fellow terrorists years ago.”

 McCain has not once insinuated that he actually shares Obama’s political philosophy, that America, not Washington, is in need of change, and that the best vehicle of change is Washington. He and Obama view themselves as modern versions of Plato’s guardians, ready to inform the ignorant minions below of the best course of action and the best direction to take, not as individuals, but en masse. McCain cannot hurl stones at Obama’s glass house in respect to corruption, being beholden to special interests, and his own brand of national socialism without inviting a barrage of stones hurled in reply. If the Times had any perceptive editors imbued with a smidgen of honesty, the paper would have pointed this out a year ago and endorsed neither man.

 However, the Times has an odd notion of what is “ugly.” “Ugly,” to the paper, is naming issues and engaging in ideological dispute. The few times McCain has ventured to broach Obama’s Marxist, socialist background, including Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist, and his association with ACORN and un-probed connections with some Islamists, he has been slapped down by the news media, and has backed off. If “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher had not spoken back to Obama outside Toledo, Ohio and questioned the meaning of his rhetoric, and if Obama had not committed the revealing gaffe of replying to Joe that he wants to “spread the wealth,” McCain would have had little else to say for the balance of the campaign. By the criteria of the Times, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and most of the Founders engaged in “ugly” campaigns for liberty and against tyranny.

 “The American financial system is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies.” No, it is a victim of regulatory and tax policies proposed, endorsed, and supported by Democrats and Republicans alike for decades -- nay, for nearly a century. The trouble began with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 with the power to “manage,” “fine tune,” and manipulate the economy according to the crisis of the moment, in conjunction with Treasury Department policies and the eclectic agenda of whoever occupied the White House or sat in Congress.

 “Both candidates talk about repairing America’s image in the world. But it seems clear to us that Mr. Obama is far more likely to do that -- and not just because the first black president would present a new face to the world…Mr. Obama wants to reform the United Nations, while Mr. McCain wants to create a new entity, the League of Democracies -- a move that would incite even fiercer anti-American furies around the world.” Like a high school ingénue, the Times obviously is concerned about whether or not the world likes America. There was a time when most of the world respected it, if not from admiration, then from a knowledge that America was not a country to be toyed with. That is not what the Times means. The Times means that America should aspire to be just another one of the guys, a socialist paradise that cares for its citizens and entertains no presumption of superiority because it is still freer and better off than other countries.

 It would be interesting to know how Obama would “reform” a club of tyrants, looters, medieval monarchies, dictatorships, slave states, and ninety-pound collectivist weaklings, when they are all living off the largesse of American productivity and tax revenues and so see no need for reform. The United Nations can be best reformed by America leaving it and evicting it from American soil to headquarter in friendlier climes, but doubtless Obama would simply offer it more money in exchange for more smiles. McCain’s League of Democracies idea is equally harebrained. Apparently neither he nor the Times has any acquaintance with the League of Nations and just how efficacious it was in putting the cuffs on Hitler, Mussolini, and other tyrants.

 “The next president will have the chance to appoint one or more justices to a Supreme Court that is on the brink of being dominated by a radical right wing. Mr. Obama may appoint less liberal judges than some of his followers might like, but Mr. McCain is certain to pick rigid ideologues.” The Times, of course, does not define what it means by a “radical right wing,” but implies that such a movement is scary and undesirable. It has eluded the paper’s editors all these decades that there is nothing “radical” about the right wing; it is religious and traditionalist, on a par with Ralph Kramden’s Raccoon Lodge or Groucho Marx’s Knights of Pythia. And, what are “liberal” judges if not left wing, and very rigid in their own ideology?

 “Under Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the justice system and the separation of powers have come under relentless attack. Mr. Bush chose to exploit the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, the moment in which he looked like the president of a unified nation, to try to place himself above the law.” This is all true, except that the “tragedy” of Sept. 11 was a declaration of war by Islamists, which Mr. Bush admitted but did nothing about except to commit the country’s blood and treasure to spreading “democracy” in places that were already practicing it in theocratic and secular tyrannies, and in the meantime laying the groundwork for a thorough-going police state in this country.

 But, to the Times, President Bush placing himself above the law somehow differs morally from Mr. Obama wishing to place himself above the law. It is not known what McCain thinks of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, except that he believes in violating the freedom of speech, but Obama has stated in public that he regrets that the Founders placed limitations on government power, and that these limitations are a fundamental flaw. Obama’s campaign has telegraphed how his administration would deal with any newspaper or radio station that questions his character, record, affiliations, or intentions. For the time being that action is limited to harassment, intimidation, and black-listing. With the cooperation of a Democratic Congress, Obama would employ not only a revived Fairness Doctrine, but other legislative and extra-legislative means as well, to silence free speech and make virtually every political utterance a “hate crime.“

 For the Times to express concern about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is laughable, since the paper would applaud their being finally torn up and the pieces tossed into its notion of the dust bin of history, and replaced with an Obama-style “social contract,” which would be indistinguishable from a McCain one.

 “This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership, and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all those qualities.” Well, John McCain has also shown that he has them. Woe to anyone who states that he doesn’t want leadership, but to be left alone to live his own life. The Times does not go into much detail -- just as neither Obama nor McCain has dared go into much detail, but they are on the same path -- about where that leadership would lead the country. But all indications, and all evidence, comprehended by cool observation not swayed by raw emotion but by a rigorous fealty to facts, make it certain that it would be to a place the Times would too late disapprove of: censorship and totalitarianism.

But perhaps the Times would not mind that at all. It would, after all, be the newspaper of record, serving for other newspapers and the news media as the touchstone of official and correct thinking, not to be questioned or deviated from, and taking its guidance from its imperious masters.

Just like Winston Smith’s Times in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Pragmatism vs. Cultural Change

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Glenn Reynolds pens a column in Forbes on the current presidential contest between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Its title will strike a familiar chord this election year: "Is This The Best We Can Do?" Fellow Objectivists who skim through it as I did on first encountering it will then see familiar-sounding words:

There have been a lot of structural suggestions: Term limits, a ban on senators running for president (which would probably do more for the Senate than for the White House, really) and various campaign-finance schemes that look pretty iffy in light of recent experience. Term limits might shake up our gerrymandered Congress a bit and bring in some new blood, but would they bring in the right kind of new blood? That's less clear.

Yes. These kinds of suggestions are, as I have often said, attempts to treat symptoms rather than the disease. This is starting to sound interesting! If you're on the same page with me, you might begin to perk up a little bit.

So while I remain open to suggestions for structural reform, I think that we may need a change in the culture.

Yes! Finally! Could it be that a prominent non-Objectivist out there has finally become hip to the ideas that (a) the broader culture drives supply in electoral politics via demand, (b) the problems we are having with pandering and vote-purchasing in politics will not go away until something about our culture changes for the better, and (c) it is time to challenge the dominant approach of blind pragmatism (with an unquestioning acceptance of altruism's guiding hand)?

Well, at least you didn't have to wait too long for the other shoe to drop!

It's no surprise that a lot of our best political leaders distinguished themselves outside of politics before they ran for office. Perhaps we need to be encouraging an ethic of public service among our most successful, in the hopes that we'll get more people with real-world experience and proven ability at doing something besides raising money and looking good on TV. Could we do better? We're unlikely to do worse. [bold added]

As he might put this himself: I mean no disrespect towards Professor Reynolds, but has he been paying any attention to this year's candidates or to the popular culture?

From sportscasts attempting to make "role models" of athletes not because of their discipline, but because they "give back" to the community, through calls by both presidential candidates for some form of mandatory national servitude, all the way to Alan Greenspan laying the blame of the financial crisis on capitalism, our culture is not just saturated with calls for an "ethic of public service". It's drowning in them.

We'll be lucky after four years of whichever flavor of statist wins not to have our best and brightest forced into politics. Reynolds will then have his wish answered, but our politics will still be a mess. Simply getting better people into government will not get us out of our current mess.

How do I know this? The clues come from several other points Reynolds makes earlier on to the effect that we ought to have better candidates running for office, perhaps even than we did at America's founding: We have a much larger talent pool from which to draw candidates. Our populace is better-educated, on the whole. (For the moment, let's accept this point for the sake of argument.) Politics is a low-paying, high-pressure job with huge time demands and, as such, it drives away the talented. It has become expensive to win office, and one has to be charismatic to do so.

It is certainly true that all these things would conspire to give us mediocrities running for office year in and year out, but what kind of person would want a career in politics anyway? And what kind of person would we want, instead?

To answer those questions, one must do something Reynolds never does in his piece: consider the nature of the job. Elected officials are serving in our government. Perhaps we should spend some time -- as did our Founders, who mysteriously had better officials and government -- considering the proper purpose and function of government.

What is government? What is it for? What does it do? How does it do it? Not one of these questions comes up, and yet we're carrying on a discussion of how to get a better field of candidates as if we were all on a corporate search committee. Except that the government doesn't pay too well. And for some reason, the United States hasn't restructured or spun off a few states to become more manageable. And it has a Constitution, at least for the moment. Why?

These unusual properties of the job of a government official all relate to the nature of the government as it is today, although one needs to know further whether we have a proper government in order to know whether any given aspect of the job would normally be a factor -- or whether there are other factors or qualifications we ought to consider, but haven't.

I am not going to discuss the proper nature of government at length here, today. (Ayn Rand has done that already, and far better than I could, anyway.) I will note that the government is the only social institution that can legally wield physical force -- the delegated retaliatory force of self-defense of the citizens -- and its only proper purpose is the protection of individual rights.

In contrast to the electorate at the time of America's founding, an astounding percentage of the population today does not grasp the nature or purpose of government. This means that, as voters, they will demand -- and get -- candidates committed to misusing government force for other purposes at the expense of the protection of our freedom. The Founders were aware that such a day could come and deliberately made it difficult for the government to actively do things beyond its proper function. They called it "checks and balances".

In that light, the very idea of calling for a more "competent" government officialdom should cause the spine of anyone who values his freedom to tingle. Competent? To do what? Make the trains run on time? Even if they can make you board those trains to somewhere you don't want to go? Our problems are not because our government is run by incompetents, but because it is frequently doing the wrong thing, although not, so far, to the degree of running trains to an Auschwitz.

In addition to calls for "better" officials putting the cart before the horse, it is worth noting that, due to government meddling in the economy, there is a vast misconception -- shared by Reynolds -- that our government officials need to be Renaissance men.

Why? Their proper job description is actually rather simple.

This argument has surface plausibility due to the unnecessary complexity of the mixed economy. (Thus, it is also related to the notion I elaborated on earlier that voters need to be near-omniscient to make good electoral choices) But this argument is wrong, and often reflects an inability by those who hold it to think in terms of principles. As I said before:

Heinlein has it half-right that figuring out how to vote requires an "enormous" amount of time. It does take time, it is true, to master the principles on which our nation was founded. However, once one does this, these principles greatly simplify how one approaches any subsequent election, even in today's context of massive government intrusion. Anyone who thinks that each election requires enormous amounts of study before one can vote intelligently does not understand the cognitive role of principles. [bold added]

"Protect my individual rights, and do not violate them," is the basic principle by which I would want a government official to act. Yes, he would have to have some idea of what individual rights are, but it would not matter one jot whether he were a Creationist, a global warming hysteric, an animist, a Moslem, or (usually) uncomfortable thinking about scientific concepts, so long as what he did in office was guided by that principle. And, under a proper government, his power to adversely affect my life would be greatly diminished compared to what it is today.

We do need cultural change, but what Reynolds calls cultural "change" is just more of the same. What needs to change about our culture is for more people to understand the nature of individual rights and the proper role of the government. Each, incidentally, entails a discovery of proper ethical principles -- which, incidentally, actually run counter to the altruism Reynolds prescribes.

Until that happens, we will remain in an inherently unstable mixed economy that will alternately drift and lurch towards totalitarianism. The government will increasingly attempt the impossible: replace the minds of millions of individuals with bureaucrats and inflexible rules in order to run an economy for 300 million plus. This will cause problems, which the government will expand to attempt to "fix" ad infinitum.

The government can not run the economy and should not try. There is no such thing as a government official competent for that job, and that is a job I frankly want to remain undone because I have work of my own to do and want politicians out of my way. And there is nothing wrong with me wanting to live my own life as I see fit. In fact, that is good.

-- CAV

PS: I highly recommend Tara Smith's "The Menace of Pragmatism" from the latest issue of The Objective Standard. You may read its first paragraphs for free here, with the option of purchasing the article. She discusses many issue I either briefly alluded to here or simply did not have time to discuss at all.

Detroit needs a bankruptcy

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In an attempt to bribe Michigan voters, both parties supported some government aid for the auto companies. Finally, a $25 billion package was approved. This is the last thing the auto companies need.

The U.S. auto companies are encumbered with costly union agreements and a complex dealer network. They cannot walk away from these obligations as long as they are regular, functioning companies. The U.S. auto industry needs a bankruptcy to clean house. If they are not viable, let them shut down. Let some of their assets disappear, let some of their employees move to other industries, let other car companies buy some of their factories and employ some of their people.

Ronald Reagan was stupid enough to bail Chrysler out many years ago; now, the government has repeated the mistake.

Now, GM wants to buy Chrysler but doesn't have the money. They say the cash they're getting from the government is not enough for such a purchase. So, GM is lobbying for the government to help them buy Chrysler. Sigh.

Free Speech Versus Campaign Finance

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ari and Linn Armstrong recently wrote an excellent column for the Grand Junction Free Press on the clash between campaign finance laws and freedom of speech. Ari was kind enough to give me permission to repost it here, and he also sent me a version with links added. Also, below the column, you'll find the full text of his interview with Eric Daniels.

Also, if you're not reading Ari's blogs -- AriArmstrong.com (on faith and politics) and FreeColorado.com (on politics and culture) -- you should be.

Time to speak out for free speech

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Free speech is under assault in America by state and federal governments, despite constitutional protections.

Both major presidential candidates are enemies of free speech. In 2002, John McCain rode the McCain-Feingold campaign censorship law through Congress. Among other things, the law prohibited select groups from running certain political ads before elections, though the Supreme Court struck down some of the worst parts of the law. Barack Obama wants federal controls on media ownership, his spokesperson told Broadcasting & Cable.

Some conservatives want more censorship over pornography. Many on the left call for censorship of the radio by forcing broadcasters to air certain views; supporters laughably call their scheme the "Fairness Doctrine."

Here in Colorado, various activists have faced legal threats for daring to exercise their rights of free speech. For example, in 2006 Becky Clark Cornwell put up yard signs and protested a plan to annex her community of Parker North into the city of Parker in Douglas County.

A supporter of annexation filed a legal complaint against Cornwell and others, claiming they had engaged in "illegal activities" under Colorado's campaign censorship laws.

Lisa Knepper of the Institute for Justice (IJ), a civil rights group that defended Cornwell and her neighbors, said that, while the U.S. District Court ruled the group could not be penalized, the court "failed to change the law to prevent such abuses of campaign finance law in the future, so we're appealing to the 10th Circuit."

ABC's 20/20 featured Cornwell in an October 17 story about the campaign finance laws. Cornwell said "the lawsuit was used in an effort to shut us up about the annexation, to scare us enough and clobber us with these laws so that we wouldn't talk about it any more."

20/20 paid people to try to fill out Colorado's campaign forms. Nobody did so successfully. One subject said, "A regular citizen cannot read this legalese." Another said, "I'd rather just not get involved in the political process if I have to go through the nonsense that I had to go through today."

Steve Simpson, the IJ lawyer defending the Parker North residents, said he's also defending the Independence Institute, which was sued over its criticisms of Referenda C and D in 2005. Simpson is awaiting a decision from the Colorado Court of Appeals. He said "it would be impossible" for the Independence Institute, a think tank, to comply with the reporting requirements as an issue committee, because the group gets funds for general purposes and spends them on a wide variety of issues.

Even though we've condemned Amendment 48, which would absurdly define a fertilized egg as a person in the state constitution, we were displeased to see that a fellow named John Erhardt sued the Amendment 48 campaign for petty violations of the campaign censorship laws. Erhardt gloats on his blog, "So, while the fine of $150 won't break their campaign, they did have to spin their wheels to defend this."

Diana Hsieh, co-author of the paper "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life" at SecularGovernment.us, said the advocates of 48 "should be free to advocate their views -- not bogged down in opportunistic legal action by opponents... I want opponents of Amendment 48 to be spending their time arguing against the substance and philosophy of it, not playing campaign finance dirty tricks."

Finally, Douglas Bruce has taken flak in the media [one and two] for mailing a flyer against Amendment 59 and Referendum O through a nonprofit group, Active Citizens Together, without filing the legal paperwork that some think applies.

It's past time to rethink the validity of the campaign censorship laws, along with all the other restrictions on free speech. We checked in with Eric Daniels of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, and he offered a refreshingly consistent defense of our rights.

Daniels said, "Free speech means the right (not privilege) of individuals to express their opinions without government censorship of any kind, whether by hindering speech through regulation or through restricting it through prosecutions after the fact."

We don't even like requirements to report contributions. People have a right to speak anonymously. There's no clear way to distinguish between advocacy and education. And, the voters can demand disclosure with their votes.

Daniels agrees: "If politicians wish to disclose the source of their financing to the public, they are free to do so... The electorate can indeed decide through voting whether to support candidates who do or do not disclose their financing. Contributing money to a political candidate or to supporters or opponents of a ballot measure should properly be a matter between the private parties themselves."

Government should not abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press." Politicians have gotten away with doing just that for far too long. If we wish to retain and restore our other liberties, we must above all fight for our rights of free speech.

Linn is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son Ari edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Full Interview with Eric Daniels

Note from Ari: My purpose in contacting Daniels was not to cover familiar ground, but to elicit responses about some of the most difficult implications of free speech. Until I thought more carefully about the matter on October 23, talked with another friend about it, and contacted Daniels, I wasn't sure about my position on the matters of campaign-finance disclosure and campaigns by foreigners. Now I am sure. I am for freedom, not controls.

Daniels's answers follow the questions in italics:

Briefly, why do you think free speech has come under attack by both right and left in recent decades?

Fundamentally, the reason free speech is under attack by both is because both fail to understand the nature of individual rights. The majority opinion in politics today holds that rights are gifts from the government that allow individuals to do some things as long as they do not upset certain vested interests. In the case of free speech, politicians believe that you should be allowed to say what you want as long as it does not, for example, offend religious or ethnic groups or as long as what you say is not backed by too much money, or as long as what you say meets some vague notion of community standards. But that is not free speech. Free speech means the right (not privilege) of individuals to express their opinions without government censorship of any kind, whether by hindering speech through regulation or through restricting it through prosecutions after the fact.

Should the law require disclosure of campaign-related expenses? I'm leaning no. People have a right to speak anonymously. There's no clear way to distinguish between advocacy and education. And, the voters can demand disclosure with their votes. Do you agree with this? Explain.

I do not think the law should require public disclosure of campaign- related financing. If politicians wish to disclose the source of their financing to the public, they are free to do so. Likewise, if they choose to keep their donors' identities to themselves, they should also be free to do so. The electorate can indeed decide through voting whether to support candidates who do or do not disclose their financing. Contributing money to a political candidate or to supporters or opponents of a ballot measure should properly be a matter between the private parties themselves. It does not matter how much a person gives or how much air time he buys, voters always remain free to take the message for which he has paid in the appropriate context. No one forces the voters to believe or discredit any given message, they do so of their own will.

Should the law prohibit campaign contributions from foreign entities and people? For instance (Diana Hsieh raised this example), if the U.S. were going impose a tariff on British goods, should British citizens be able to campaign against it in the U.S.?

Giving money to a political campaign is an issue of individual right -- that is, the donor who has earned his wealth has a right to give it to whatever candidate he chooses, and the candidate has a right to accept money from anyone he chooses. Foreign citizens or political action committees have just as much right to speak as do Americans. Again, if there is some belief on the part of voters that foreign influence is unduly affecting some candidate, the voters retain the right to demand that the candidate disclose the source of his funding or face losing their votes.

Is there anything else we should know about free speech in the modern era?

Even though much of the recent controversy about free speech is tied to speech about political issues, it is important to remember that we have the freedom of speech not just because it facilitates a robust discussion of public policy (which is the unfortunate modern interpretation), but because it is a right of each individual to express his ideas in the manner he chooses and to reach whatever size an audience his rightly-earned wealth will allow.

Conservative Media

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I suspect that many conservatives would regard this video interview of Joe Biden as an example of what journalism ought to be:



In fact, it's nothing of the sort. It's blatant partisanship, not objectivity.

I've never thought much about the proper standards of journalism -- until I began fighting Colorado's Amendment 48. So here are my preliminary thoughts: Journalists should ask difficult questions, particularly of politicians. However, those questions should be fair -- not loaded with presumption and innuendo. So a journalist should allow a person to state his basic views, then dig deeper by asking some tough questions. The goal should be to expose the person's views for what they are -- good, bad, or ugly.

Thoughts?

Gun Control Advocates Speak Out

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I feel their pain:

Around the World Wide Web 80

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

1. George Reisman on the notion that laissez-faire capitalism is responsible for the latest economic crisis.

2. Renee Katz of Adventures In Existence has a You Tube page of her own. Somehow she survived 12 years of lower education with her ability to think independently intact. Maybe there's hope.

3. This magician/comedian is hilarious.

4. The most benevolent and revered One has been embarrassed recently by Joe the Plumber and the broadcast journalist Barbara West. Both people had the poor judgment to ask Obama or Biden tough questions. Now Joe the Plumber and Barbara West's husband are being investigated. This is what life under Obama will be -- anyone who does not toe the line will find himself subject to intimidation and character smears.

5. Interesting insight into the mind of Bill Ayers by Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who infiltrated the Weathermen.

If you read the whole interview, it becomes apparent that, at least to Grathwohl, Ayers is an egoist — but one who placed others at risk, counting on them to do much of the dirty work. Grathwohl notes that oftentimes Ayers left the heavy lifting to the women in the movement, while he himself wanted nothing more than to be in charge.

Power at all cost. Attack by proxy. A sense of entitlement. The arrogant notion that of course he should be in charge of the revolution and the refiguration of the country and all its citizens. A cadre of sycophants willing to follow his lead, oftentimes without question. A complete and utter disregard for the bourgeois rules of the “Establishment” — be it the law, the courts, or the principles upon which this country was founded.

Sounds to me like he built Obama into a polished, improved (in the Alinsky sense), multicultural likeness of himself — and has taught him to play the system and build his own army of political golems.

It remains to be seen just how radical Obama is, but if the worst fears of the right turn out to be justified (and if Obama wins next week), then we'll be living through the most remarkable political story our our time: a leftist radical gains the ultimate power in America in order to destroy capitalism. That's pretty damned dramatic.

6. Michael S. Malone is embarrassed to call himself a journalist.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why is this happening?

Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country...

Journalists in the tank for Obama because of the self-interested desperation of a dying industry? Could be.

Quick Roundup 373

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Audacity, yes. Hope, no.

This article at Daily Kos tells us a lot more about its author's ignorance of economics and the requirements for human life than anything else.

In the midst of a long rant against a caricature of capitalism inspired by Alan Greenspan's final sell-out of Ayn Rand, "Devilstower" -- why would one stow a devil? -- reveals an understanding of Objectivism that rivals in sophistication the tank top pictured in the next section of this roundup:

Chief Disciple Greenspan carried this torch for the next half-century and beyond. Pro-business conservatives (not surprisingly) found great comfort in a philosophy that said squeezing every dime out of the system was not only fair, but the only moral solution. Not long after the publication of his essays in Rand's book, Greenspan was invited to become an advisor to the Nixon administration. When Ford replaced Nixon, Greenspan became the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. And when Reagan took power, Greenspan was no longer the voice crying in the wilderness, he was the very center of the establishment. Objectivism and Conservatism had united in Market Fundamentalism, and that force was on a jihad against regulation of any kind.

"Chief disciple": If you have any firm convictions -- Greenspan doesn't, but we'll get to that -- you must be a mindless religious zealot. Reason can't lead to certainty. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm rational and that I am certain about nothing!

"Squeezing every dime out of the system": If material wealth isn't a fixed quantity, its production does not require anything besides brute muscle, and businessmen are just useless parasites, even if customers keep voluntarily rewarding the most efficient ones by trading with them. What makes "the system" work? Orders from government bureaucrats!

"Jihad against regulation": Never mind the fact that Greenspan -- a government regulator -- was attempting to exercise some control over the economy, we need much more regulation than we had, even under him.

If any decent analogy between religion and Greenspan's actions deserves to be drawn, it is that Greenspan was a hypocrite and Devilstower a true believer. But even that analogy is flawed since altruism, the religious morality, basically requires its proponents to violate it in order to survive.

The most remarkable thing to me about this whole tawdry affair is that Greenspan was cheating on a moral code that actually promotes life when practiced because, apparently, the approval of the masses is more important to him even than his own life!

If ever there was a gift horse that needed looking in the mouth, Greenspan's betrayal of Rand to the left is that horse. But the left is committed to the code that Greenspan was actually following, so that won't happen.

Devilstower saves his most egregious blunder for the end: "John Galt is dead. We can only hope he stays buried." To bring up a point of Ayn Rand's philosophy Devilstower conveniently ignores, if he has heard of it at all: In order to live, one must be free to engage in productive work, actually do that work, and enjoy the fruits of that work. A major point Rand made in Atlas Shrugged (It's a book.) is precisely that man must have freedom to benefit from living in a society with other men. Government regulation -- even from an alleged proponent of this idea -- abridges that freedom.

But Devilstower hasn't time for books. "John Galt -- farmer, miller, baker, shopkeeper -- stay dead, while I step over your corpse. I smell that pie Alan told me about!"

The Left's jihad against economic freedom will deliver us to a world where their mistaken vision of economics will become true: There will be only a limited "pie" available for everyone to eat, and we will have to fight tooth and nail over it -- or beg for it from a government official, as long as he isn't Greenspan.

That's what they call "hope" over on the Left.

Redneck Fashion

Some kinds of "creativity" deserve ridicule. This is one of them.

If someone hasn't told this woman about Goodwill by now, it might be because of a fear of ending up with even fewer teeth in his head than she doubtless has! (HT: the older of my brothers)

Honesty from the Left!

Well, okay. I'm calling a cup with a drop in it half-full.

In a sarcasm-laden blurb, The Village Voice does at least note that Yaron Brook of The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights denounced Alan Greenspan, and even provides a link to the story.

However, among other things, the blurb accuses Brook and his fellow Objectivists of being cultists. Coming from the left, that's easy to discount as psychological projection. How many readers will actually click through, much less read, much less critically evaluate the denunciation? The author obviously didn't!

In fact, stripped of the insults, the blurb actually has a decent summary of why Greenspan's words weren't even worth the paper they were printed on. And yet, it still attacks Greenspan, Brook, and capitalism. Why?

This blurb is an inadvertent confession. Just as we saw a Kossack confess that he equates certainty with dogmatism above, we also see a major liberal media outlet admit that the left does not care about the truth, specifically about its implications. Most glaringly, we have a leftist outlet saying, "We know that there is reason to believe that Greenspan was not an advocate of laissez-faire since he has basically just been called "King of the Regulators". But we want more regulation anyway."

And what did that just get us?

Now that I think about it, this is honesty about a journalistic fact being used to distract from dishonesty on a much larger scale. I'm sure that even Alan Greenspan would tell you, when asked, that the sky is blue.

-- CAV

OList Mailing Lists

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A few days ago, I realized that I ought to occasionally post a reminder about my various OList mailing lists. So without further ado...

OList.com is the home of three specialized e-mail lists for Objectivists, all to help promote Objectivist ideas in the culture at large:

• OActivists: OActivists is an informal e-mail list for Objectivists committed to fostering positive cultural and political change. Its purpose is to facilitate and encourage effective advocacy of Objectivist ideas in non-Objectivist forums by facilitating communication with other Objectivist activists. Posts to the list alert subscribers to opportunities to speak out, recommend sources of information, discuss effective arguments and principled strategies, reproduce op-eds and letters written by subscribers, announce events, and more. Click here for a full description of this list and its membership requirements.
  
  
• OBloggers: OBloggers is an informal mailing list for Objectivist bloggers. Its basic purpose is to facilitate communication about matters of mutual interest, such as upcoming events, posts of interest, best blogging practices, and the like. Click here for a full description of this list and its membership requirements.
  
  
• OAcademics: OAcademics is a forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia. Click here for a full description of this list and its membership requirements.

Please feel free to join if you're interested, provided that you meet the criteria for membership.

Hsieh LTE in The Economist

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The October 23, 2008 edition of The Economist has printed another LTE of mine, this time on Massachusetts' health care "reform". This one is in the print edition (as opposed to my first LTE there which was online-only.)

They did minor editing, but kept the central meaning intact. The letter is the 4th one down:

Freedom to choose

SIR – The Massachusetts system of "universal" health care remains afloat only because of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal support ("In need of desperate remedies", October 18th). One reason costs are so high in Massachusetts is that individuals are forced to purchase benefits they neither need nor want. Under any system of mandatory insurance, the state must necessarily define what constitutes an acceptable insurance policy, meaning that individuals are buying insurance on terms influenced by lobbyists and bureaucrats, rather than based on a rational assessment of their needs. If the federal government adopts the Massachusetts system on a national scale, it would merely multiply those problems fifty-fold.

Dr Paul Hsieh
Co-founder Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine
Sedalia, Colorado

Flemming Rose at Duke University on Thursday

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Notice of a Special Event: A Lecture by Mr. Flemming Rose, editor of Jyllands-Posten, publisher of the Danish Muhhamad cartoons, on "Free Speech in a Globalized World."

When: Thursday, October 30, 2008, 7:00 PM

Where: Page Auditorium, Duke University (directions)

In September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons depicting the Islamic figure Muhammad with images of terrorism. The newspaper’s publishers stated that they wanted to bring issues of free speech and censorship forward into public awareness. The result was a firestorm of protest, ordered by clerics some weeks after the publication, that highlighted the seriousness of this issue. Over one hundred people were killed in the ensuing riots.

This event will be a unique opportunity to hear the cultural editor of this publication explain the decision to publish these cartoons, the issues at stake in the decision, and the meaning of the protests and the violence that followed. A Q&A will follow the talk.

Flemming Rose is a journalist with long experience in European, Russian, and American issues. He has been awarded the "Free Speech Award" from the Danish Free Press Society.

Web Site: www.committeeforfreespeech.com

Contact: John Lewis, Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science, Duke University, john.d.lewis@duke.edu

UCLA Health Care Debate

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The UCLA Objectivist Club will be sponsoring the following debate on October 30, 2008, "Universal Health Care: The Cure or the Disease?":

Universal Health Care: The Cure or the Disease?

Thursday, October 30, 2008 (7:00pm - 9:00pm)

UCLA Campus: Moore 100

Health care has been an important issue in politics, especially in the last several years. Amidst much specific policy analysis and political quibbling over superficial issues, the fundamentals have been ignored: What are the underlying philosophic and economic considerations? Is universal health care moral? Does it achieve its stated goal? Is there an ethical and practical alternative?

Come hear Professor Mark Kleiman (UCLA Department of Public Policy) and Dr. Peter LePort, M.D. (Ayn Rand Institute Board of Directors) answer your questions about the issue of universal health care.

7:00pm: Opening Statements
7:30pm: Q & A with the Audience

Transportation Information

Parking is available for $9, available for purchase at the Parking Information Kiosk at Westwood and Strathmore.

Parking Structure 6 is in close proximity to the event location.

Please allow 30 extra minutes to secure parking and walk to the venue. Doors open at 6:30pm.

Media should contact Arthur@ClubLogic.org to RSVP for parking and priority seating

Unfortunately, I live in Colorado and won't be able to make it. But I encourage anyone in the Southern California area with an interest in health care policy to attend!

Savoring Ayn Rand's "Red Pawn"

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Savoring Ayn Rand's "Red Pawn" by Dina Schein is an excellent literary analysis of a great story that is little known. It's one of the best stories I have ever read, which is remarkable because it is not a novel or a short story or a script, but a treatment Ayn Rand wrote to sell the story to Hollywood. It was her first sale.

The movie was never made because it takes place in Soviet Russia and, although politics is not the subject of the story, Rand portrays communism honestly. An honest movie about communism was not possible in the 1930's, Hollywood's "red decade." Almost 80 years later, the Soviet Union no longer exists, but the movie still has not been made. Now the problem is more likely to be that filmmakers in our present culture would not know what to do with a great romantic story. In the '30's MGM, with its stable of glamorous stars and great directors, might have done the story justice; one cringes at what today's Hollywood would do to this story.

It would be criminal to spoil the plot here, so I won't say a thing about it, except that it is great drama. Rand follows her own teaching in The Art of Fiction to create an intense value-conflict that builds to stunning climax. You can read the story in The Early Ayn Rand. Certainly, you should read it before you consider listening to Dina Schein's lectures.

Dr. Schein analyzes the plot, characters and theme of "Red Pawn." She looks at how to analyze fiction, so the listener learns not just about "Red Pawn," but also about how to think about fiction in general. The course is especially useful to fiction writers, as Dr. Schein looks at Ayn Rand's fiction writing process. There are also some excellent tips for screenwriters.

I sometimes think of Ayn Rand's teachings on fiction writing as my secret weapon that most writers know nothing about. After a century of naturalism, writers have forgotten how to use value-conflicts to build a suspenseful plot that culminates in a climax. They know about conflict, but they give it little thought beyond something like, "the bad guy wants to destroy the world and the good guy wants to stop him." And it would be the better ones, who want to write an exciting plot, who think that much. Without a conscious understanding of value-conflicts, it's easy for a plot writer to get bogged down in trivia or sidetracked by nonessential matters.

Bureaucratizing Wall Street

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I heard a radio morning show in which the DJ's and their callers were outraged over a Wall Street firm that received bailout money from the US government, then sent its executives to a posh spa for a retreat that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone was outraged over this irresponsible behavior. To the people on this show, here was evidence of the fundamental cause behind the financial crisis: corporate greed. The fat cats only care about themselves and that's why America is in trouble.

My reaction is different. Let's say you give a man $10, and he spends it irresponsibly. He buys cheap wine and cigarettes and spends the night in foggy dissipation. It seems to me you can reach one of two conclusions:

1. I should not give this man any more money.

2. In the future I must watch this man carefully to make sure he spends the money I give him well.

Private individuals should choose #1. Once you give someone money, it is his property. You have no power to force him to do what you want with the money. If you continue to give money to someone who wastes it, whose fault is that?

The government always chooses #2. Unlike private individuals, the government has the power to force people to act as it wishes. Not only will it watch how Wall Street spends the money the government "invests," but it will pass laws dictating what can and cannot be done with the money. With the money will come regulation.

As Ludwig von Mises explains in his brilliant little book, Bureaucracy, government has to use regulation because it is not driven by the pursuit of profit.

In the private sector, everyone pursues one goal: make a profit. A chain store does not need a bookshelf full of regulations directing store managers on how to pursue profit. Within a few simple rules such as employee uniforms and corporate image, the individual store manager is left alone to solve the problem of making a profit.

In the public sector, however, functions such as police, courts and military are not motivated by the pursuit of profit. Thus the government must write books of regulations telling employees in detail what they must do in every situation.

To the extent to which government subsidizes the financial sector, that sector becomes a government agency. Its function becomes part private and part state. Wall Street firms that take government money will have two purposes: to make a profit and to do what the government wants.

Supposedly, the government is spending a trillion dollars to keep firms from going bankrupt. In theory all this money should go toward the pursuit of profit. But watch how this government involvement grows in the coming years. The government is not driven by the pursuit of profit, but by other concerns, such as altruism, collectivism and the public good -- not to mention giving money to pressure groups in order to buy votes. Government will force Wall Street to cater to its concerns, not just to pursue a profit.

Look for a big push in the coming years to turn corporations into mini-welfare states. This trend goes back to the 1940's, when employers sought to get around confiscatory income taxes by giving employees "free" health insurance. Tying insurance to work was a disastrous unintended consequence of high taxes.

Making corporations do welfare state functions is the fascist way to socialism. Mises, writing in 1944 when the Nazis still existed, describes the totalitarian end of turning entrepreneurs into bureaucrats:

The Nazis have succeeded in entirely eliminating the profit motive from the conduct of business. In Nazi Germany there is no longer any question of free enterprise. There are no more entrepreneurs. The former entrepreneurs have been reduced to the status of Betriebsführer (shop manager). They are not free in their operation; they are bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the Central Board of Production Management, the Reichswirtschaftsministerium, and its subordinate district and branch offices. The government not only determines the prices and interest rates to be paid and to be asked, the height of wages and salaries, the amount to be produced and the methods to be applied in production; it allots a definite income to every shop manager, thus virtually transforming him into a salaried civil servant. This system has, but for the use of some terms, nothing in common with capitalism and a market economy. It is simply socialism of the German pattern, Zwangswirtschaft. It differs from the Russian pattern of socialism, the system of outright nationalization of all plants, only in technical matters. And it is, of course, like the Russian system, a mode of social organization that is purely authoritarian.

It's hard to imagine America getting this bad, but according to Mises it's just a matter of time before interventionism ends in totalitarian control of the economy. Intervention leads to crisis, which leads to further intervention, which leads to further crisis, which leads to... you get the idea.

"Socialism of the German pattern" has an added, irresistible benefit to politicians: they evade responsibility. They dictate to corporations what welfare state programs they must enact, but when things go wrong, the politicians blame the greedy corporations. As long as the corporations are driven in part by the profit motive, they are immoral to altruists. With each new crisis, the capitalists, "blinded by greed," will always be blamed, as noble altruists such as Hillary Clinton and John McCain preen about how they just want to help the little guy.

But there will be other unintended consequences of forcing entrepreneurs to behave like bureaucrats -- so many that it would take a book to be comprehensive. To look at just one more, Mises writes,

To say to the entrepreneur of an enterprise with limited profit chances, “Behave as the conscientious bureaucrats do,” is tantamount to telling him to shun any reform. Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator. Progress is precisely that which the rules and regulations did not foresee; it is necessarily outside the field of bureaucratic activities.

The virtue of the profit system is that it puts on improvements a premium high enough to act as an incentive to take high risks. If this premium is removed or seriously curtailed, there cannot be any question of progress.

The more capitalists are forced to follow regulations, the less progress and innovation we will have.

This trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street will prove to be more costly than just the money involved. The financiers should have declined the money, saying, "No thanks -- we can't afford it." The greatest cost will be our liberty.

Recap #15

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:

• Monday, October 20, 2008: The Individual and Rights by Diana Hsieh
  
• Tuesday, October 21, 2008: Amendment 48: Ritter's Faith-Based Strategy Backfires by Ari
  
• Wednesday, October 22, 2008: Rocky Recycles Burton's Evasions on Amendment 48 by Ari
  
• Thursday, October 23, 2008: Abortion Warning from South Dakota by Ari
  
• Friday, October 24, 2008: More Religious than the Religious Right: The Chalcedon Foundation by Gina Liggett
  

And this week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM: Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine:

• Monday, October 20, 2008: UK Physicians Paid To Not Send Patients to Hospitals by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, October 21, 2008: Hsieh LTE in The Economist by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, October 22, 2008: Physician Disempowerment in Canada by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Thursday, October 23, 2008: Business Week on HSAs by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Friday, October 24, 2008: Update on "Never Events" by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Saturday, October 25, 2008: Hsieh LTE on MA Plan in The Economist by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Sunday, October 26, 2008: UCLA Health Care Debate by Paul Hsieh, MD
  

Goodbye, GOP

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I listened to a lot of talk radio yesterday. Both Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt emphasized Obama's pro-choice in abortion stand in hopes of motivating the religious right to vote. Hewitt spent his entire show taking calls only from Catholics in battleground states, hoping to use Cardinal Rigali's message to Pennsylvia Catholics to get out the vote on the religious right. Limbaugh even expressed the wish that those who support abortion leave the party.

There was nothing from them about the creeping fascism that economic interventionism is bringing us. Clearly, both men see the Republican Party as a party of religious values first. Economic liberty, which they would both say they support (Limbaugh especially, as Hewitt views free market "extremism" as an electoral loser), is a secondary consideration.

It was a depressing experience. Here we are, nearing election day, and the Republican propagandists are getting serious. Time to motivate the troops! And so, both Hewitt and Limbaugh end up talking about how Obama wants to "kill children in the womb." Yes, we should never vote for Democrats because they want to kill children.

As a farcical ending to a disgusting day, I listened to as much of Michael Savage as I could take. The man is a conspiracy theorist. When you step back and analyze what Michael Savage says, he sounds remarkably stupid. He brought up the militia movement of the '90s, which he thinks was a good thing, and told his listeners in ominous tones that the movement was destroyed by the government. He thinks the bailout came because of a secret agreement between the politicians and their friends on Wall Street to give them hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from Main Street.

Savage also is hot on the foolish story about Obama's birth certificate. Because the certificate is not the original, but a copy, Savage thinks it is fake and that Obama was actually born in Kenya and is thus not eligible to be President of the USA.

So what if Obama's birth certificate is a copy? That's all I have. I had to pay money to the county in Kansas where I was born to get the copy. It's good enough to get me a drivers license, passport and social security card.

So here are three of the most influential propagandists of the right, with two of them telling their listeners Obama is "against life" and the lunatic third one screaming that Obama was born in Africa. Is it any wonder this country is going down the drain?

I intend to respect Rush Limbaugh's desire and leave the Republican Party. I will reregister as an Independent. It's not the party I joined 20 years ago. As Reagan once said about the Democrats, I didn't leave the party, the party left me.

Economic Freedom Is Threatened By Both Obama and McCain

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Nick Provenzo of Rule of Reason writes:

A short op-ed I wrote for Fox News' Fox Forum on the threat either a McCain or Obama presidency poses to freedom is the featured commentary for the weekend. I argued that both Obama and McCain are "equally dangerous for economic freedom in America" and that "on every question, both men share the same corrupt moral premise, differing only in degree and their particular focus."

I encourage you to leave a comment there adding your own thoughts. The URL is:

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/25/opposingviews_1024/

I also encourage you to write a comment! You can also give it a "thumbs up" via StumbleUpon. Here's Paul's comment:

Thank you, Nick, for a well-argued essay!

Dr. Malcom G refers to a superb lecture by Leonard Peikoff entitled, "Health Care Is Not A Right" from 1993.

There's an updated (2007) version of his talk available at the website for Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine at:

"Health Care Is Not A Right"
http://www.westandfirm.org/Peikoff-01.html

To add to Nick's point, the biggest problem in modern American politics is the failure to recognize what individual rights are.

Rights are freedoms of actions (such as the right to free speech), not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by others. Individuals are legitimately entitled to services such as health care that they purchase with their own money, are promised by prior contractual agreements, or are given to them via voluntary charity.

Otherwise, government programs to guarantee health care as a "right" must necessarily violate someone's actual rights - either the rights of those compelled to provide medical care or the rights of those compelled to pay for it. Such programs then become just another form of state-sanctioned slavery or theft.

Both McCain and Obama suffer from this faulty understanding of individual rights. Both would use the power of government to trample on legitimate rights (such as the right to free speech) as well as to attempt to guarantee false entitlement "rights".

Unless Americans reaffirm the proper conception of rights as freedoms of actions (and concomitant limitations on government powers), then we'll continue our current downhill slide. A civilization will collapse if citizens decide that they can vote each other goodies from the government trough, at the expense of those who produce such goods.

The Romans learned this lesson the hard way. The big question is whether Americans will also learn this lesson before it's too late.

Paul Hsieh, MD
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
http://www.WeStandFIRM.org

If you post a comment, you're welcome to repost it in the NoodleFood comments.

Greenspan Recants

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The headlines chortled around the world: "Greenspan at the Capitol: A hero no more" -- "Greenspan takes a hit" -- "Greenspan: I was wrong about the economy, sort of..." -- "Ex-Fed chairman concedes 'mistake'" -- "House panel heaps blame on Alan Greenspan for financial crisis" -- "Greenspan 'shocked that free markets are flawed."

Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, managed to sneer, drool and look sanctimonious at the same time. "My question for you is simple," he asked a subdued Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve. "Were you wrong?"

Greenspan answered meekly, "Well, partly."

Greenspan was interrogated by the House committee on October 24. He said he was wrong that deregulation and free markets were the most efficacious means of sustaining a viable economy.

"Badgered by lawmakers, the former Federal Reserve chairman found himself denying the nation's economic crisis was his fault on Thursday but conceding the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and had left him in a 'state of shocked disbelief.'"

The question is: How would he know that free markets and deregulation of them would be the most efficacious means of sustaining the economy? He abandoned the free market when he became head of the Federal Reserve. Perhaps when he chose to accept that job, he imagined he could save free enterprise from the depredations of the government. Now he knows the consequences of compromise.

"Greenspan, who stepped down [as Federal Reserve chief] in 2006, acknowledged under questioning that he had made a 'mistake' in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions....

"He said the boom in subprime lending occurred because of the huge demand for investment opportunities in a global economy, and he blamed the crash on a failure by investors to properly assess the risks from such mortgages, which went to borrowers with weak credit...On the billions of dollars of losses suffered by financial institutions because of their investments in subprime mortgages, Greenspan said he had been shocked by the failure of banking officials to protect their shareholders from bad loan decisions.

"'A critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down,' Greenspan said. 'I still do not understand why it happened.'"

Greenspan called the role of self-interest and rationality "a flaw in the model...that defines how the world works."

The true "flaw" in Greenspan's thinking is that it was not a "free market" he and Congressional policies were "managing" or "mismanaging," but one defined by government intervention. The government decided that individuals with weak credit should be able to borrow money to buy homes. The only way it could persuade banks and other private institutions to loan that money was with force or the fear of it. Reason and rationality flee when force becomes a factor in men's decisions, to be replaced with the pragmatism of punishment-avoidance or a risk-free shot at easy money.

The "critical pillar" that Greenspan claims broke down was missing from in foundation of the subprime lending orgy: the principle of the trader.

Writing about the dangers and mechanics of the welfare state, Ayn Rand, Greenspan's former protégé, noted in The Ayn Rand Letter, in her article, "A Preview," that

"...Altruism feeds the first need [in this instance, the need of the poor for subprime mortgages], statism feeds the second [in this instance, the need of power-seekers, such as Paulson, Bernanke, Waxman et al.]. Pragmatism blinds everyone -- including victims and profiteers -- not merely to the deadly nature of the process, but even to the fact that a process is going on."

Which would explain why Greenspan was so "shocked."

As Fed chairman, Greenspan defended subprime mortgages from regulation or oversight. He should have been the first to oppose the idea that the government should make them possible. Chickens are not coming home to roost on Greenspan's shoulder, but turkey buzzards gathering to pick at the corpse of free markets. And the most gleeful buzzard was Henry Waxman.

"You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime-mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others. And now our whole economy is paying its price. Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?"

Not a word was whispered by any of the Committee members on the possibility that perhaps the government should not have been encouraging and guaranteeing bad mortgages to any private financial institution, and that if any blame for irresponsibility is to be assigned to any quarter, it should be to the ideology subscribed to by a multitude of Congressmen, including Waxman, who endorsed the policy. Their statist ideology has "pushed" them to regulate the economy for the past century. While looking for a scapegoat or someone to blame, Congress, a succession of presidents, and innumerable bureaucrats and regulators will search everywhere but in their own houses and in their own ideologies.

Greenspan, in the past, and while being given the third degree by the House committee, forgot that ideologies that are "partly" right and "partly" wrong must be, in practice, entirely wrong, and that, in the long run, the "wrong" premises will become the leitmotif of that ideology.

During that interrogation, Greenspan recanted his belief in free markets:

"...[H]e defended the Fed's ability to detect economic trends, saying it was better than that of the private sector. 'If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem...I think we have to ask ourselves why is that?...And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see that far in advance.'"

That lack of omniscience is the practical reason why he should never have accepted the job of chairman of the Federal Reserve. And, apparently, all throughout his career, he either never made the connection between the moral and the practical, or he discarded the connection as mere "ideology" because it stood in the way of his "good intentions."

Thus, Greenspan handed the Democrats and sundry statists of all persuasions what they need to impose more government controls on an economy already crippled by their past policies. What Waxman asked was what Ayn Rand might have called a "package deal" question, which Greenspan failed either to detect, question or qualify in his answer. Waxman, a career statist and point man in the House for the total welfare state, got what he and others on the House committee sought: a putative repudiation of free markets, and, by necessity, of freedom.

No sympathy should be wasted on Greenspan. He did what John Galt in Atlas Shrugged refused to do even at the point of a gun and under physical torture: he agreed to become an economic dictator of the country. Nor was he threatened with torture or death as Galileo was when he was forced by the Church to recant his theory of the solar system. Of all the economists who have advised various administrations over the last century, Greenspan had the least excuse for advocating statist economics.

When he accepted the appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 to become Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan "legitimatized" or sanctioned the idea that the government should "manage" the economy with "rational" interventions. Now he may see the true "flaw" in his "good intentions" and what those intentions have inexorably wrought: a greater destruction of freedom and wealth than he admits he could have imagined.

Now he may understand how and why it could have happened.

My election commentary posted at Fox News

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A short op-ed I wrote for Fox News' Fox Forum on the threat either a McCain or Obama presidency poses to freedom is the featured commentary for the weekend. I argued that both Obama and McCain are "equally dangerous for economic freedom in America" and that "on every question, both men share the same corrupt moral premise, differing only in degree and their particular focus."

I encourage you to leave a comment there adding your own thoughts.

Alan Greenspan, Coward and Traitor

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yesterday, I got wind through several people, including a commenter here, of some testimony by Alan Greenspan, who once, decades ago, was an Objectivist, but has long since demonstrated through his words and deeds that he is not now and has not been for quite some time.

Regarding his status as an alleged advocate for capitalism: Most glaringly, the very acceptance of a job with the Federal Reserve years ago would cast doubt on the firmness of his grasp of the nature of capitalism or of his sincerity as an "advocate" of capitalism or Ayn Rand's ideas.

Consider what Ayn Rand herself said about capitalism:

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. ("What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 19.)

And now consider what Greenspan himself said of the importance of having a gold standard -- rather than the fiat money, the value of which he took charge of manipulating. As you read this, recall that he never advocated for a return to the gold standard while he was in office:

Gold and economic freedom are inseparable, . . . the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and . . . each implies and requires the other.

...

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold . . . .

The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. (Alan Greenspan, "Gold and Economic Freedom," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 96.) [bold added]

And yet, the news media portray Greenspan as an advocate of capitalism and a "disciple" of Rand every chance it gets, as the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, did yesterday even as Greenspan removed all doubt that he is anything but a capitalist:

Fed watchers said they were stunned by Greenspan's mea culpa. For his whole adult life, the former Fed chairman has been a devotee of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who celebrated free-market capitalism as the world's most moral economic order and advocated a strict laissez-faire approach to government regulation of the marketplace.

This is completely wrong. Let's rephrase it:

Fed watchers claimed to be stunned by Greenspan's mea culpa. For his whole adult life, the former central banker and one-time advocate of the gold standard has been regarded, largely due to his former association with Ayn Rand, as an advocate of capitalism. Although he never publicly broke with Rand, his career has benefited from the association even though it has required him to do things greatly at odds with his earlier published views from that period.

Or, not to put too fine a point on this: "Greenspan is a pragmatist coward who hides behind Ayn Rand's skirt when it suits his purposes, and sells her out when it suits his purposes." Obviously, he would rather the United States continue racing towards statism than admit that he played a big part, through keeping interest rates very low for many years, in precipitating the current financial crisis.

And the fact that he is getting away with it so easily -- where are the bloodhounds? -- was explained very eloquently by a remarkable J'accuse recently written against the media's coverage of the financial crisis by one of their own, Orson Scott Card (HT: Dismuke):

This [crisis] was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.) [bold added]

Incredibly, Card notes that Greenspan was among those who warned against the loose lending practices that helped cause the crisis. And yet now, he has changed his tune:

Asked by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, whether his free-market convictions pushed him to make wrong decisions, especially his failure to rein in unsafe mortgage lending practices, Greenspan replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" Waxman asked.

"Absolutely, precisely," replied Greenspan, who stepped down as Fed chief in 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman. "That's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence it was working exceptionally well." [bold added]

Perhaps Greenspan needs to be reminded of the title of the book in which his defense of the gold standard appeared: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Or perhaps Greenspan, realizing that most people are unaware that a central bank is incompatible with capitalism, took advantage of the convenient fact named by that title, while betraying the inconvenient one.

Re-read that last excerpt, and remember it the next time the media calls Greenspan a capitalist. He is not. And he has finally admitted it himself!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected typos.

Mr. Greenspan = Dr. Stadler

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Gun Van Horn gives Alan Greenspan a much-needed ass-kicking for his repudiation of free markets. And here's the Ayn Rand Institute's press release on it:

Greenspan Has No Free Market Philosophy
October 24, 2008

Washington, D.C. --Opponents of the free market are giddy at Alan Greenspan's declaration that the financial crisis has exposed a "flaw" in his "free market ideology." Greenspan says he is "in a state of shocked disbelief" because he "looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity"--and it didn't.

But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, "any belief Greenspan ever had in truly free markets was abandoned long ago. While Greenspan long ago wrote in favor of a truly free market in banking, including the gold standard that such markets always adopt, he then proceeded to work for two decades as leader and chief advocate of the Federal Reserve, which continually inflates the money supply and manipulates interest rates. Advocates of free banking understand that when the government inflates the currency, it artificially increases prices and causes booms in certain sectors of the economy, followed by inevitable busts. But not only did Greenspan lead the inflation behind the .com bubble and the real estate boom, he blamed the market for their treacherous collapses. Greenspan should have recognized that what he wrote in 1966 of the boom preceding the 1929 crash applied here: 'The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market--triggering a fantastic speculative boom.' Instead, he superficially blamed 'infectious greed.'

"Should it be any shock that Greenspan now blames the free market for today's meltdown--rather than the Fed's policies, which fueled an inflationary housing boom, which rewarded reckless lenders and borrowers from Wall Street to Main Street? Greenspan didn't mention the word 'inflation' once in his testimony.

"Whatever Greenspan's economic philosophy is, it is not anything resembling a free market."

I can't possibly express the depth of my disgust at Alan Greenspan. Well, let me try. By continuing to associate himself with the free market ideas of his former mentor, even while thoroughly contradicting them in word and deed as Fed Chairman, and then publicly repudiating them based on a government-created financial crisis, the man has done more damage to Objectivism than Barbara and Nathaniel Branden.

Way to go, Alan. You've done what I thought impossible. Dr. Stadler has nothing on you.

Hey, Did You Know Libertarians Run the Government?

By Paula Hall from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yes! It's true! Libertarians have been running the country for years. How do I know?

I know because Jacob Weisberg, the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Slate Group (which publishes the online magazine), has just penned an article describing for us immature Ayn Rand naifs how it is that the financial collapse killed libertarianism.

A source of mild entertainment amid the financial carnage has been watching libertarians scurrying to explain how the global financial crisis is the result of too much government intervention rather than too little...

Utopians of the right, libertarians are... convinced that their ideas have yet to be tried, and that they would work beautifully if we could only just have a do-over of human history. Like all true ideologues, they find a way to interpret mounting evidence of error as proof that they were right all along.

To which the rest of us can only respond, Haven't you people done enough harm already? We have narrowly avoided a global depression and are mercifully pointed toward merely the worst recession in a long while. This is thanks to a global economic meltdown made possible by libertarian ideas.

[Emphasis in original.]

That's all by way of introduction. He follows with a bunch of haphazard facts strung together in a string of non sequiturs that I've become bored with, they're so ubiquitously offered as proof the financial crisis was caused by the "free market." So forgive me if I don't quote here the "facts" the article supposedly marshals in support of its conclusions (check out the full article if you're not easily nauseated). Weisberg concludes with slap at, of all people, Ayn Rand:

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school.

This article is yet another gob-smacking exercise in tortured rationalization of the avoidance of uncomfortable facts by someone steeped in the rhetorical method not of thrust-and-parry, but avoid-and-slime. Weisberg first avoids the facts that 1) Libertarians have never run the American government, 2) it's a non sequitur to declare that financiers and corporate-welfare statists who run to the government for a bailout believe in the free market (!) and 3) Libertarianism has been rejected wholesale, outright, and damn near shrilly by Ayn Rand and the philosophy of Objectivism. Weisberg then slimes principled Objectivists as "immature" and "ideologues," and by playing on the flat ignorance of most of the public of the tenets of Objectivism. (Not to mention trotting out that tired when-are-you-going-to-grow-out-of-it smear.)

I would label this a serious example of the pot calling the kettle black except that there is no "kettle." There's definitely a "pot" -- Weisberg's beloved regulatory state has failed. There is no "kettle"; there has never been a free market upon which to blame the current financial crisis or any so-called "market failure," and I defy Weisberg and his ilk to identify when that state of affairs has subsisted.

I'm not up for reinventing the wheel this morning, so I'll just send everyone to the new Repeal The Bailout site for an excellent compilation of Objectivist thought leadership on the current economic situation and offer some closing thoughts on Weisberg's article.

Perhaps the biggest thing Weisberg evades is that we Objectivists who advocate for a truly free market are entirely principled on this: we hold that if you regulate any aspect of the economy, to any degree, it is not free. (I mean, really -- you'd think that someone calling Objectivists "ideologues" would jump at the chance to point out how just how "utopian" we are about what we're saying.) He seems to pay lip service to this fact but then proceeds brazenly to avoid even the most elementary logical implications of the principled consistency of Objectivism.

If she could, I'm sure Ayn Rand would be rolling over in her grave at the willful ignorance of those who persist in equating Libertarianism, which has rightly been repeatedly discredited, with a philosophy so diametrically opposed to it. But let's accept for a fleeting moment and for the sake of Weisberg's "argument" his nonsensical conflation of Objectivism and its true free market principles with Libertarianism. Weisberg must nevertheless be charged with his unapologetic evasion of the fact that he's celebrating the demise of a Libertarian hegemony that has never existed.

The man is deliriously dancing on an empty grave.

Totalitarian Islam and the Threat to Free Speech

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA 92606

October 15, 2008

Totalitarian Islam and the Threat to Free Speech
A panel discussion at American University

What: A panel discussion on the nature of totalitarian Islam and its threat to free speech, followed by a Q&A

Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute; Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; and Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten

Where: Ward One, Auditorium One, American University, Washington, D.C.

When: Thursday, October 23, 2008, at 6 pm

Admission is FREE and open to the public.

Description: What is the nature of totalitarian Islam--is it limited to terrorism or is it a broader movement? Are non-Muslims its only victims? Who precisely is the enemy? Does the West bear responsibility for creating this movement? What policies can defeat it?

Defenders of Islam around the world have striven to silence critics with threats, protests and acts of violence. How should the West respond to demands for censorship, as in the Danish cartoon controversy? 

Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.

Bios:

Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle East issues. Dr. Brook has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News, CNN, and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. Abroad, he appears weekly in Israel’s Jerusalem Post, Italy’s l’Opinione, Spain’s La Razón and monthly in Canada’s Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is one of the most accessed Internet sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, The O’Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al-Jazeera.

Flemming Rose is a Danish journalist, author and the cultural editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. In September 2005 Mr. Rose commissioned a series of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad. He was concerned about the tendency toward self-censorship in Europe and some Muslims’ insistence on special treatment of their religious sensitivities in the public domain, which he wanted to bring forward for debate. The backlash from Muslims around the world caused an international crisis and the Danish government experienced its worst foreign policy crisis since the Nazi occupation during WWII.

For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

 

Protect Citizens

By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Protect Citizens
By David Holcberg (USA Today, October 13, 2008)

No law should place the well-being of whales above that of humans. Even if, as environmentalists allege, the use of sonar threatens the lives and health of marine mammals, no law should prevent the Navy from using this crucial military technology.

The fundamental purpose of government in a free society is the protection of the individual rights of its citizens. If the Navy judges that sonar experiments off the coast of California are "critical to the nation's own security," and that they might increase its ability to detect such potential military threats as hostile submarines, it should do these experiments. Our national defense and our very lives may depend on it.

This attack on our Navy's ability to defend us from foreign threats is yet another example of environmental laws being used to sacrifice our interests for the alleged "rights" of animals. Once again, environmentalists are showing whose side they are on, and it is not humanity's.

Government Found Guilty of Assaulting the Economy

By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Government Found Guilty of Assaulting the Economy
By David Holcberg (International Herald Tribune, October 11, 2008)

You don’t have to be a professional detective to realize who the main culprit is in today’s financial crisis. The government’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene.

The government had the motive (the widely lauded goal of promoting "affordable housing"); it had the means (the Fed’s control of interest rates and the money supply, Fannie and Freddie, the federal Community Reinvestment Act, the "too big to fail" bailout policy); and it had the opportunity (courtesy of voters who think the government should have the power to regulate and interfere with the free market and manage our entire economy).

Of course, the government can’t be arrested or put in jail, no matter how damning the evidence against it. But we should not shy away from pronouncing the "Guilty" verdict.

The Road to Fascism

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Road to Fascism
October 16, 2008

Washington, D.C.--The government has announced that it plans to use $250 billion to buy ownership stakes in various U.S. financial institutions. According to the New York Times, nine major U.S. banks have already been forced into the program. “The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States . . . were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left. . . . ‘It was a take it or take it offer,’ said one person who was briefed on the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private. ‘Everyone knew there was only one answer’”--even though at least one institution, the relatively healthy Wells Fargo, wanted to say no.

According to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “In herding banking executives into a room and making them an offer they couldn’t refuse, the Paulson regime took its latest and most disturbing step yet on the path to state control of the economy.

“If fascism means coercive state control over nominally private property, then there is no more chilling sign of creeping fascism in America than government’s encroachment on the lifeblood of the U.S. economy--its financial institutions. While the government assures us it will be a ‘passive investor,’ merely funneling cash into the banking system rather than dictating how banks function, this is a lie. Not only does the money come with strings attached--such as restrictions on executive compensation, dividend payments, and the types of investments banks can make--but politicians are already promising a web of further controls. As John McCain recently noted, ‘We will not merely inject billions of dollars into companies and walk away hoping for the best. We will require that those companies be reformed and restructured until they are sound assets again, and can be sold at no loss--or perhaps even a profit--to the taxpayers of America.’

“The Paulson shakedown is the latest in a rapid-fire series of government bailouts and interventions over the last several months. Our leaders claim that this virtual takeover of markets is economically necessary. But it was government control of financial markets that spawned the financial meltdown in the first place: an inflationary boom brought on by the Fed’s easy-money policies, a campaign to promote home ownership that encouraged risky loans, regulations that pushed banks to become dangerously over-leveraged, etc., etc. The response to the crisis should be to restore freedom and to disentangle government from the economy. Instead, the same mentality and the same central planners that created the financial crisis are being given far wider reign to manipulate and distort markets. We must tell our government to reverse this fascist course--now.

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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McBama vs. America

By Craig Biddle from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND CENTER FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
555 12th Street NW, Suite 620 N, Washington, DC 20004

October 16, 2008

McBama vs. America

Who: Craig Biddle, editor and publisher of “The Objective Standard”

What: A talk examining the presidential candidates’ platforms and showing that their aims are at odds with the American ideal of individual rights. A Q&A will follow.

Where: Hilton Costa Mesa, 3050 Bristol Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626

When: Wednesday, October 29, 2008, at 7:30 pm

Admission is FREE.

Description: While John McCain and Barack Obama struggle to distinguish themselves in terms of particular promises, it is crucial for Americans to recognize that these candidates are indistinguishable in terms of fundamentals.

In this talk, Craig Biddle, editor of “The Objective Standard,” examines the candidates’ platforms, identifies essential similarities among their proposals, and shows their aims to be manifestly at odds with the American ideal of individual rights. Mr. Biddle then zeros in on the purpose of government presumed by the candidates’ goals, shows this purpose to be an expression of a particular moral philosophy shared by these men and by most Americans, and demonstrates that this morality is the root cause of the abysmal alternative we now face. Finally, Mr. Biddle specifies the moral principles that Americans must grasp if we want to generate future candidates who will return government to its proper purpose of protecting our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Bio: Craig Biddle is the editor and publisher of “The Objective Standard” and the author of “Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It.” In addition to writing, he lectures and teaches workshops on ethical and epistemological issues from an Objectivist perspective.

For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrand.org.

###  ### ###

Mr. Craig Biddle is available for interviews now and after his talk.

Contact: Larry Benson          
E-mail: media@aynrand.org          
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

The Ayn Rand Center (ARC) is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site.

Please note: ARC does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

Jail Time for Blasphemy Under Religious Constitution

By Tom Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Jail Time for Blasphemy Under Religious Constitution  
October 21, 2008

Washington, D.C. --“The 20-year jail sentence for blasphemy handed down to Sayad Kambakhsh in Afghanistan this week is the kind of outrage to be expected under any constitution that enshrines Islam as the state religion and the Koran as the supreme law of the land,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

A council of mullahs acting under court authority had originally decreed capital punishment for Kambakhsh, a 24-year-old journalism student charged with possessing anti-Islamic books, starting un-Islamic debates in class, and downloading and distributing Internet articles saying that Muhammad ignored women’s rights. That death sentence, which was endorsed by Afghanistan’s upper house of parliament, has now been overturned on appeal.

“In 2006, mobs of clerics were clamoring for the death of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan whose ‘crime’ was converting to Christianity,” Bowden said. “And now, Sayad Kambakhsh faces two decades in jail unless an international outcry embarrasses Afghanistan’s government into lifting the sentence.

“Criminal punishment of blasphemy is fundamentally unjust and outrageous, and ad hoc protests offer no long-term solution. If Islam’s stranglehold on Afghanistan’s government is to end, that nation must adopt an American-style constitution protecting individual rights, including freedom of speech and religion. The strict separation of church and state erects an institutional barrier to religious persecution, as American history shows.

“But a nation that exalts mystical dogma and tribal allegiances cannot be expected to think in such terms. ‘The guy should be hanged,’ said an 18-year-old student at the American University in Kabul, at the time of Kambakhsh’s death sentence. Added a Muslim cleric: ‘He should be punished so that others can learn from him.’ For such people, freedom is an intolerable obstacle to the overriding goal of enforcing Islam.

“When the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan, its stated policy was to promote ‘democracy.’ That policy has now achieved its exact aim. The Afghan government reflects the democratic will of the people. The people want to punish blasphemers, and their constitution allows them to do so lawfully.

“Bush’s policy was based on his delusional belief that Afghans are as freedom-loving as Americans. But what they truly value is religion. Sayad Kambakhsh is living--at least for now--proof that religion injected into government is hostile to freedom.”

########

Mr. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor, who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Thomas Bowden is available for interviews on this topic.

Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@AynRandCenter.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Frontline Heats Up Global Warming Alarmism

By Keith Lockitch from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Frontline Heats Up Global Warming Alarmism
October 22, 2008

Washington, DC --On Tuesday evening, PBS premiered Heat, a Frontline documentary exploring the economics and politics of climate change. After travelling the world interviewing corporate CEOs and political leaders, Frontline correspondent Martin Smith argues that a “huge and concerted push from government” is necessary to prevent a major catastrophe.

But according to Keith Lockitch, fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: “A huge push from government on climate change would be a major catastrophe.

“One thing the documentary shows pretty clearly is the repeated failure of government economic intervention--especially in the form of policies aimed at centrally planning energy production, such as government subsidies for corn ethanol. These have distorted world food markets by diverting billions of taxpayer dollars away from investments that market participants would have freely chosen and into the production of corn for burning up in our gas tanks, with the resulting distortions to world food prices causing food riots and starvation.

“Government policies aimed at severely restricting carbon emissions would inflict a major blow to the economy. Industrial-scale energy is an indispensable, life-saving value, and currently there is simply no practical way to produce abundant carbon-free energy. Nuclear power could generate substantial amounts of electricity, but environmentalists have consistently fought it tooth and nail. And even nuclear can’t fuel the internal combustion engines of the world’s 800 million oil-powered vehicles.

“The more important point is that there is no need whatsoever to restrict carbon emissions,” said Lockitch. “The scientific jury is still out on the extent of man’s contribution to global warming. But even if we are causing large-scale changes to the climate--this is not a planetary emergency. If individuals on the free market can smoothly absorb the major transitions that occurred in moving from the horse and buggy to the automobile or the rapid population growth that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, they can adapt to large-scale climate change. The freer we are from the burdens of government intervention, the more we can continue to produce wealth, economic growth, and the means of adapting to whatever changes occur, if any.

“The irony is that the very policies that people are pushing for in the name of fighting global warming--such as a massive expansion of government control over the production and consumption of energy--would severely reduce our ability to cope with nature. This would inflict upon us an economic catastrophe far worse than anything the climate could deliver.

“The real threat we face is not the possibility of large-scale changes to the climate, but the much more dangerous possibility of drastic government policies enacted in the name of climate change.”

### ### ###

Dr. Lockitch has a PhD in Physics from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. His writings have appeared in publications such as the Orange County Register and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Dr. Keith Lockitch is available for interviews. To book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson: E-mail: media@AynRandCenter.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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Greenspan Has No Free Market Philosophy

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Greenspan Has No Free Market Philosophy October 24, 2008 Washington, D.C.

--Opponents of the free market are giddy at Alan Greenspan's declaration that the financial crisis has exposed a "flaw" in his "free market ideology." Greenspan says he is "in a state of shocked disbelief" because he "looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity"--and it didn't.

But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “any belief Greenspan ever had in truly free markets was abandoned long ago. While Greenspan long ago wrote in favor of a truly free market in banking, including the gold standard that such markets always adopt, he then proceeded to work for two decades as leader and chief advocate of the Federal Reserve, which continually inflates the money supply and manipulates interest rates. Advocates of free banking understand that when the government inflates the currency, it artificially increases prices and causes booms in certain sectors of the economy, followed by inevitable busts. But not only did Greenspan lead the inflation behind the  dot-com bubble and the real estate boom, he blamed the market for their treacherous collapses. Greenspan should have recognized that what he wrote in 1966 of the boom preceding the 1929 crash applied here: ‘The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market--triggering a fantastic speculative boom.’ Instead, he superficially blamed ‘infectious greed.’

“Should it be any shock that Greenspan now blames the free market for today's meltdown--rather than the Fed's policies, which fueled an inflationary housing boom, which rewarded reckless lenders and borrowers from Wall Street to Main Street? Greenspan didn't mention the word ‘inflation’ once in his testimony.

“Whatever Greenspan's economic philosophy is, it is not anything resembling a free market.”

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared on the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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Some Pre-Election Humor

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

No matter which candidate floats to the top on or after Election Day, we're inaugurating a real stinker in January.

Anyone who cares about America and understands the danger each candidate presents knows that there is a herculean task of cultural activism ahead. Before we will see an election cycle that includes candidates offering real progress towards greater freedom, many, many Americans will have to be taught or reminded of the nature and importance of individual rights. I won't belabor this point further today.

The bright side is that we know what the baseline is and what needs to be done. We also aren't, like so many Republicans in the (septic?) tank for McCain -- or kids deluded by the O-bomb -- emotionally invested in any way whatsoever in the fortunes of either political candidate. This means that, as a small fringe benefit, we can enjoy all of the political humor out there, excepting the two jokes that have somehow made it onto the top of the ballot, of course.

A couple of items came to my attention this morning. One of them is a column over at RealClear Politics by Steven Stark titled, "Long National Nightmare", but bylined by RCP as, "What If All the Pundits Are (Gasp!) Wrong?.

There was Wilson over Hughes. And, of course, Truman over Dewey. But there's never been a surprise in presidential politics like the one that awaited Americans this morning, who woke up to discover that, somehow, John McCain had been elected president over Barack Obama.

...

Meanwhile, the tsunami of youth support for Obama never materialized. Instead, it was the over-65 crowd who turned out as if the election were a five-o'clock dinner special, and who voted in record numbers for their fellow senior citizen.

"It was fear of the known versus fear of the unknown -- and fear won out," quipped one McCain aide.

Be sure to read all the way to the punchline, and remember it if truth turns out to be stranger than fiction come the day after Election Day!

And then we have a short video at YouTube that I learned about through HBL.


Look! It's two Democrats on an Escalator!

The challenge I pose to my readers today is this: Can you top these?

-- CAV

The Blogging Experience

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic monthly (and his blog The Daily Dish) has a wonderful article in this month's issue on the ephemeral experience of being a blogger. This vibrant article captures some of the emotion and the experience of this unique occupation. Some of my favorite snips:

On the dialogue between blogger and commenter,

Readers tell me of breaking stories, new perspectives, and counterarguments to prevailing assumptions. And this is what blogging, in turn, does to reporting. The traditional method involves a journalist searching for key sources, nurturing them, and sequestering them from his rivals. A blogger splashes gamely into a subject and dares the sources to come to him.

...

Not all of it is mere information. Much of it is also opinion and scholarship, a knowledge base that exceeds the research department of any newspaper. A good blog is your own private Wikipedia. Indeed, the most pleasant surprise of blogging has been the number of people working in law or government or academia or rearing kids at home who have real literary talent and real knowledge, and who had no outlet—until now.

and on the unique improvisational "vibe" of blogging,

To use an obvious analogy, jazz entered our civilization much later than composed, formal music. But it hasn’t replaced it; and no jazz musician would ever claim that it could. Jazz merely demands a different way of playing and listening, just as blogging requires a different mode of writing and reading. Jazz and blogging are intimate, improvisational, and individual—but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both.

The reason they talk while listening, and comment or link while reading, is that they understand that this is a kind of music that needs to be engaged rather than merely absorbed. To listen to jazz as one would listen to an aria is to miss the point. Reading at a monitor, at a desk, or on an iPhone provokes a querulous, impatient, distracted attitude, a demand for instant, usable information, that is simply not conducive to opening a novel or a favorite magazine on the couch. Reading on paper evokes a more relaxed and meditative response. The message dictates the medium. And each medium has its place—as long as one is not mistaken for the other.

I try to explain blogging to my friends and colleagues who are not aware of the medium and they usually don't get it. Andrew captures the feeling wonderfully!

Thou Shalt not Lie

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Michigan's "Proposal 2" that will allow some stem-cell research. I've noticed "No on 2" lawn-signs at some catholic churchs and schools. Both sides are running TV ads.

Strikingly, the religious side has not organized their ad-campaign around their moral argument. Instead, it's full of blatant lies and smears. The thrust of their campaign is that the state will spend tax-dolalrs on this research. This is completely untrue, except in the sense that the state probably spends tax-dollars on various types of research. Why the lies? I assume the Christians know they have their own votes wrapped up; so the campaign is aimed at the independent voter.

Today, I read about the Christians in Colorado doing the same thing on a proposition there.

I suppose it is good news that the Christians think they need to lie and evade in order to get their way. I suppose it also makes them more vulnerable to attack.

Objectivist Round Up #67

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Welcome to the October 23rd, 2008 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:

Kevin McAllister presents Network Neutrality posted at Logical Disconnect, saying, "Having built networks for years nothing makes my blood boil more than the clamoring for "freedom" through government oversight."

Paul McKeever presents Banking and Morality: 100% Reserve versus “Fractional” Reserves posted at Paul McKeever, saying, "the issue of the ethics of reserve requirements in bank lending has been largely neglected in the Objectivist literature. This is a response to a YouTube advocate of libertarian/anarcho-capitalist "free banking" who thinks Objectivists ought not to condemn the fractional reserve system, and who thinks that everything would be fine if we just got rid of central banks."

Guy Barnett presents Give Peace a Chance? posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Are Jewish-Arab rock bands the key to peace in the Middle East?"

Rob Abiera presents My latest LTE posted at The Morality War, saying, "My effort to take advantage of an opportunity to counter the message that the economic crisis was caused by selfish greed comes to naught when my letter to my local paper is returned unread because it's over the word limit!"

Noah Stahl presents The Latest Diplomatic Tactic: Make-Believe posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "The U.S. has just taken North Korea off its list of state sponsors of terrorism. What is the reason for this significant change in policy?"

Adam Edwards presents No Lament for Libertarians posted at Monopoly On Reason.

Adam Edwards presents Do Not Vote posted at Monopoly On Reason.

Dan Edge presents Is Barak Obama a Socialist? posted at The Edge of Reason, saying, "In this blog post I address the question of whether or not Obama can properly be labeled a socialist, as is the common charge."

Ari Armstrong presents Amendment 48: Burton's Equivocation posted at AriArmstrong.com, saying, "Kristi Burton, sponsor of the measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person in Colorado's constitution, continues to ignore the relevant biological facts and the legal implications of the measure."

Myrhaf presents The Myrhaf Endorsement: Abstain posted at Myrhaf, saying, "Here is an explanation of how I will vote."

Paul Hsieh presents Force That Isn't Force posted at NoodleFood, saying, "A prime example of conceptual "package dealing"."

Brandon Byrd presents Getting Rand Wrong posted at NoodleFood.

Diana Hsieh presents Diana Hsieh in the New York Times posted at NoodleFood, saying, "The Coalition for Secular Government makes a brief appearance in a a New York Times "On Religion" column about Colorado's Amendment 48."

C. August presents Goodbye Gridlock posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "With a looming supermajority from the Left, are we about to see a new New Deal play out with Obama as the 'new and improved' FDR?"

C. August presents Obama's Greenmail and Growing Glaciers posted at Titanic Deck Chairs, saying, "While a President Obama has plans to use the threat of disastrous EPA regulations to blackmail Congress into passing cap-and-trade, there is growing physical evidence that the globe isn't about melt. Would anyone care to lay odds on whether that will have any impact?"

Peter Cresswell presents Nasty, brutish - and as stupid as a political journalist posted at Not PC, saying, "When alleged economist Paul Krugman Paul Krugman got a Nobel award for earlier more rational work, most of us knew the prestige of the Nobel would be used to promote his current theme: the alleged horrors of economic freedom; and his favourite prescription: the need for bigger, more interventionist government. Who would have thought the leaders of bigger, more interventionist governments would embrace his prescription so quickly!"

Edward Cline presents Ayn Rand Avenged posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "Answering the engineered takeover of the economy by the federal government is an unprecedented cultural phenomenon: People who read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged years ago and dismissed it but now see the parallels are filled with trepidation. All are now realizing that “the end is near.” But, the end of what?"

Nicholas Provenzo presents CAC dukes it out at Opposing Views posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "It is my pleasure to announce that the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism has been enrolled as an expert at Opposing Views."

Doug presents Book Review: The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care by David Gratzer posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care is an excellent resource on health care economics and the history of health care policy."

Rational Jenn presents The AJC Gets It Dead Right posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "I think I'm finally figuring out that most politicians don't use words to express actual ideas. I know--I'm a little slow on the uptake here."

Kendall Justiniano presents My Hero Anna Schwartz posted at The Crucible & Column, saying, "Milton Friedman's co-author of the influential "A Monetary History of the United States" weighs in on the financial crisis and makes so many good points that she hits not a double or a triple, but knocks it out of the park for a... a... what do you call it when you get to fifth base? I love you Anna!"

Tom Stelene presents If Prager Knew What He Was Writing About: A Reply to "If There Is No God" posted at Al-Kafir Akbar!.

That concludes this edition of the Objectivist Round-Up. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.


Technorati tags: objectivist round up, blog carnival.

Immigration Flowchart

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This interesting flowchart of US immigration procedure has been making the blog rounds lately.



When I sent it to one of my physician friends who was born in Canada but is now a US citizen, he replied (quoted with his permission):

Thank you for sending this. The entire process took me nine years and about $15k. The time, energy and money spent on becoming an American citizen was the best investment by far that I ever made. I have far more freedom to pursue my intellectual and career goals in the USA compared to any other country.

Also our [child] would likely not have survived if [my wife and I] had not had access to the home fetal monitoring technology developed by Michael Katz in San Francisco. The home fetal monitoring picked up premature labor several times including the preterm labor before delivery. The doctors were able to give steroids to improve lung maturity and delay the Caesarian section. This technology would never have available in Canada.

I shudder at how our life might have turned out if we stayed in Canada.

I think the USA has a moral obligation to liberalize immigration. If someone wants to work and someone wants to hire him and they are not shmucks or scoundrels we should allow them to make their own choice.

I completely agree.

For those who are interested in a more detailed discussion of this topic, I highly recommend Craig Biddle's article in the Spring 2008 issue of The Objective Standard entitled, "Immigration and Individual Rights".

Quick Roundup 372

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Can I Abstain from Endorsing?

Myrhaf recently endorsed abstaining during the next presidential election. Diana Hsieh and Craig Biddle also recommend abstention.

My position was probably closest to Diana's until a few days ago. As she put it, "McCain is particularly revolting. So if I vote for anyone, I'll vote for Obama. He's beyond awful, but I have some reason to hope that he'll be ineffectual."

But the more I learn about Obama, particularly with the prospect of his party gaining an iron grip on Congress, the more frightening that prospect looks to me. In particular, I'm hearing more and more about the possibility that the "Fairness" Doctrine will be reimposed.

Now we have two candidates who have demonstrated hostility to freedom of speech, the original reason I said I could not vote for McCain. There remains the matter of it being better to have an actual socialist (rather than a professed or assumed pro-capitalist) being the one to impose such laws, so I can see there being an argument to vote for Obama, but it increasingly looks like my freedom will be at the tender mercies of chance no matter who wins. I am losing sleep over what the next few years might bring. Everything I love is going to be under active attack after Bush, who has started things early with his "bailout", leaves office.

The prospect of voting for either man is extremely revolting to me.

I walked past a line full of ne'er-do-wells the other day at the grocery store and noticed that they were there for early voting. (And I just now recall several odd encounters with people trying to strike up conversations with me out of the blue over high food prices during previous trips to the same store. Suddenly, all this makes sense to me now.) Leftists whine all the time about people too lazy to show up to vote being "disenfranchised". At the risk of sounding like one of them, it is I who have been disenfranchised this time around.

Thus the struggle to restore individual rights begins against the ironic backdrop of a line that includes many black voters who will be casting ballots for a black Presidential candidate -- who wants to impose slavery on everyone.

I am beginning to wonder whether the very act of voting in this election risks lending moral sanction to an obscene pretense.

The Problem with Licensing

Brian Phillips has posted an interesting piece against state-mandated licensing over at Houston Property Rights Live Oaks:

[L]icensing is nothing more than legalized thuggery. Coercion is used to prevent entry into a profession and impose higher costs on consumers. If a contractor beat up a competitor at the paint store he would be charged with battery. If he took money from a customer he would be charged with theft. The nature of his actions do not change simply because he uses government coercion in the form of licensing as his proxy.

This is in addition to the fact that it fails to achieve its alleged purpose, the protection of consumers from incompetents.

Licensing may have affected me personally, as the spouse of a physician. Because my wife, a medical resident, spent time performing basic research between licensing exams, she would have faced review due to the amount of time between her exams by a board for one of the residencies she had been looking at.

There was no way to have this decision made before she started her residency. Since an unfavorable decision could have potentially ended up causing her to be arbitrarily kicked out of her residency, she had to take this threat to her career into account when she ranked the schools she interviewed. One could argue that in our case, (assuming she would have ranked this program higher than her current one) licensing caused our cost of living to be dramatically higher for the next several years than it might otherwise have been.

A Viral Phenomenon

Some time ago, after several fruitless hunts at airports for wireless Internet connections, I googled "free public wi-fi" and found the following very interesting article:

While on vacation last month, I kept spotting "Free Public WiFi" ad-hoc nodes wherever I went, particularly in airports.

Finally, my wife mentioned that she was in her office building the other, opened her notebook looking for connectivity and saw "Free Public WiFi". She connected to it, but was unable to get anywhere.

So what are these things? In doing a search, I found some references in security-related discussion groups to the phenomenon, and lots of instances of people spotting these, even on airplanes. But didn't see what I was afraid I'd find -- that this is some kind of virus or spyware that sets up an ad hoc network as a trap.

It appears to be a manifestation of a feature of Windows that I wrote about earlier this year. When Windows connects to a network, it retains that network's name, or SSID, then broadcasts its as an ad hoc network, essentially inviting a connection. You can find more details here. Microsoft has said it will fix this in the next XP service pack; it's unclear if Windows Vista behaves this way.

So why do you see so many of these? My theory: It's viral, but not a virus!

I once even spotted one of these nodes during a flight....

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected name of Brian Phillips' blog, which he renamed today. (It will remain Houston Property Rights in the sidebar until the next time I do a batch of template edits.)

The Long View of the US Economy

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Despite all of the recent economic turmoil, it's important to keep a long-term perspective. If the currently semi-free US economy is allowed to function, we will still be in pretty good shape. The following graph of GDP per capital over the past 200 years shows how the US economy has done. Even the Great Depression and WWII can be seen as fairly minor blips in the overall upward trend.



However, the one thing that we can do to screw things up is to impose massive new regulations. This sort of self-inflicted damage could harm the long-term future economy far more than any particular stock market crash. Hence, it's important to continue to defend and advocate for the free market.

(Graph via Center for Global Development and Will Wilkinson.)

Mackerel Economics

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

According to the October 2, 2008 Wall Street Journal, the unofficial prison currency in the US is no longer the cigarette, but rather the mackerel:

There's been a mackerel economy in federal prisons since about 2004, former inmates and some prison consultants say. That's when federal prisons prohibited smoking and, by default, the cigarette pack, which was the earlier gold standard.

Prisoners need a proxy for the dollar because they're not allowed to possess cash. Money they get from prison jobs (which pay a maximum of 40 cents an hour, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons) or family members goes into commissary accounts that let them buy things such as food and toiletries. After the smokes disappeared, inmates turned to other items on the commissary menu to use as currency.

...[T]he mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few -- other than weight-lifters craving protein -- want to eat it.

It's interesting that these prisoners understand the need for a stable objective medium of economic exchange far better than the US government which is incarcerating them, even though few of those prisoners have studied articles such as, "Gold and Economic Freedom" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal which explain the importance of a gold standard.

In light of the recent Wall Street bailout inflicted on us by government officials based on bad economic theories, here are a couple of conclusions one might draw:

1) Perhaps it's the US economy that is based "fishy" premises, not the prison economy.

2) Perhaps more US government officials need to spend some time in a federal penitentiary -- they may learn an important lesson about sound money (as well as some well-deserved lessons on other subjects.)

(Via Marginal Revolution.)

The Legend of the Seeker

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

My friend Bill Perry (officially known as William E. Perry) sent me the following bit of news about "The Legend of the Seeker," an upcoming miniseries based on Terry Goodkind's first novel. I've not read any of Goodkind's work, but Bill tells me that he's an Objectivist.

Terry Goodkind's first novel Wizard's First Rule is the basis for the mini-series "The Legend of the Seeker." The Sam Raimi of Spiderman fame is the executive producer. The series is syndicated so times and stations vary, but it is on WGN, so most cable systems will have it.

The series starts the weekend of November 1, but an introduction with footage from the first episode starts October 18. It is called "The Making of a Legend" and is hosted by Lucy Lawless. Local listings for the introduction and the series are available here.

While Goodkind was not an Objectivist when he wrote the novel he has been closely involved in the production and I'd anticipate that the non-Objectivist portions have been fixed. I have read all of the novels and have followed the publicity about the making of the mini-series and am extremely excited about watching the upcoming series. Even if you haven't followed the series I'd recommend watching for anyone who likes fantasy shows, or even Objectivists who aren't really fans of the genre. I wasn't before I discovered the series.

I'm definitely planning to watch it!

Rate this Blog

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you like NoodleFood, rate it for Blogged.com:

A Message to Young People

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you're not like totally into politics? I mean, if you can't like name both the Vice-Presidential candidates, or if you can't name even the Presidential candidates, or if you're uncertain as to what I'm talking about here, don't worry about it. It's totally cool. Only geeks keep track of that stuff anyway. But here's the really cool part: you should not worry about it. Forget about it, man. Play video games and watch TV. And when the voting day comes -- I won't bother you with the date, because it's better you remain vague about it -- just stay in bed. Don't worry about voting. It's cool. You can leave that to other people. Who cares?

Don't listen to those self-righteous poseurs who tell you that you have a responsibility to vote. You don't have to vote if you don't want to. It's called freedom. And forget that stuff about how you won't have the right to speak out for the next two years if you don't vote today. You can say whatever you want, but mostly you have better things to talk about anyway, so blow off those idiots.

Don't let any of those clowns make you feel guilty for not voting. The opposite of what they say is true: if you don't vote, you are serving your country. You are helping America if you don't vote, because only informed citizens should vote. You don't want all that hassle of learning about the candidates and the issues. There's nothing wrong with that. Really. Just stay home, put on some tunes and fire up the bong. Fuck voting.

This has been a public service announcement.

My Hero Anna Schwartz

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Anna Schwartz co-authored "A Monetary History of the United States" with Milton Friedman. While the monetarists have their own issues, she gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal this week on the financial crisis, "Bernanke is Fighting the Last War, and it is superb. She made five key points that echoed themes I've been discussing in the past weeks.

First, the current Federal policies are not addressing the fundamental cause of the confidence problem. That cause is distressed balance sheets which can only be fixed by write down and recapitalization.

This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, Ms. Schwartz says, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. "The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."

So even though the Fed has flooded the credit markets with cash, spreads haven't budged because banks don't know who is still solvent and who is not. This uncertainty, says Ms. Schwartz, is "the basic problem in the credit market. Lending freezes up when lenders are uncertain that would-be borrowers have the resources to repay them. So to assume that the whole problem is inadequate liquidity bypasses the real issue."

Second, bank failures are not the end of the world, and in fact are part of the restructuring process that is needed.

In fact, by keeping otherwise insolvent banks afloat, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have actually prolonged the crisis. "They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down."

Rather, "firms that made wrong decisions should fail," she says bluntly. "You shouldn't rescue them. And once that's established as a principle, I think the market recognizes that it makes sense. Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich." The trouble is, "that's not the way the world has been going in recent years."

Third, the idea of "systemic risk" as a Doomsday scenario is bogus, and only propagates the "too big to fail" mindset.

Instead, we've been hearing for most of the past year about "systemic risk" -- the notion that allowing one firm to fail will cause a cascade that will take down otherwise healthy companies in its wake.

Ms. Schwartz doesn't buy it. "It's very easy when you're a market participant," she notes with a smile, "to claim that you shouldn't shut down a firm that's in really bad straits because everybody else who has lent to it will be injured. Well, if they lent to a firm that they knew was pretty rocky, that's their responsibility. And if they have to be denied repayment of their loans, well, they wished it on themselves. The [government] doesn't have to save them, just as it didn't save the stockholders and the employees of Bear Stearns. Why should they be worried about the creditors? Creditors are no more worthy of being rescued than ordinary people, who are really innocent of what's been going on."

Fourth, regardless of market forces that reacted during the buildup, one of the underlying causes was loose money policy at the FED. Anna, as a monetarist obviously focuses on this as a primary cause, but I can forgive that. I like this development, not so much for it's errors, but because of the fundamental idea that seemingly unexplainable phenomena are explainable. That mysterious "booms" are not so mysterious.

How did we get into this mess in the first place? As in the 1920s, the current "disturbance" started with a "mania." But manias always have a cause. "If you investigate individually the manias that the market has so dubbed over the years, in every case, it was expansive monetary policy that generated the boom in an asset.

"The particular asset varied from one boom to another. But the basic underlying propagator was too-easy monetary policy and too-low interest rates that induced ordinary people to say, well, it's so cheap to acquire whatever is the object of desire in an asset boom, and go ahead and acquire that object. And then of course if monetary policy tightens, the boom collapses."

And finally, on Alan Greenspan's role in the mess,

The house-price boom began with the very low interest rates in the early years of this decade under former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

"Now, Alan Greenspan has issued an epilogue to his memoir, 'Time of Turbulence,' and it's about what's going on in the credit market," Ms. Schwartz says. "And he says, 'Well, it's true that monetary policy was expansive. But there was nothing that a central bank could do in those circumstances. The market would have been very much displeased, if the Fed had tightened and crushed the boom. They would have felt that it wasn't just the boom in the assets that was being terminated.'" In other words, Mr. Greenspan "absolves himself. There was no way you could really terminate the boom because you'd be doing collateral damage to areas of the economy that you don't really want to damage."

I have an entire post on the revisionist perspective that Alan Greenspan has himself put to his decisions and actions. However, every time I sit to write it, I get too infuriated to finish it. This particular account made my blood boil as it shows in his own thinking the pragmatist and sell-out he has become. And in the end in doing so he's become capitalism's worst detractor.

Thanks Anna for saying what had to be said!

CAC dukes it out at Opposing Views

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

It is my pleasure to announce that the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism has been enrolled as an expert at Opposing Views. According to their website:

Opposing Views helps you uncover all sides of the issues you care about most. Here at http://www.opposingviews.com/, experts go head-to-head on real-life concerns, debating news and events, addressing the questions that keep you up at night. We introduce the questions, the experts present their cases (and disagree with each other), and you leave ready to make well-informed decisions and take action.

Each section of http://www.opposingviews.com/ is a channel, including politics, society, health, money, and religion. Our point/counter-point format gives each expert a chance to state their information and opinions on an issue. Meanwhile, the other side objects by calling out the flaws in that information, and then states their own side. Opposing Views brings together the information on the issue, the evidence on each side and their counter-points.

The hundreds of known and credible experts, opinion leaders and advocate groups include: the Obama Campaign, the McCain campaign, the National Rifle Association (NRA), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), The Sierra Club and Amnesty International, as well as individuals who are authorities on issues of current consumer interest. Collectively, these partner organizations already have been cited as authorities on their topics.

I am excited because this allows us to present Objectivist arguments before our opponents in a respectful and well-run forum visited by thousands of readers every day. Our first debate on the question of a nuclear Iran is already live and can be seen here.

Book Review: The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care by David Gratzer

By noreply@blogger.com (Doug) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care is an excellent resource on health care economics and the history of health care policy. The author is a free market economist, a physician and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This book has been endorsed by Milton Friedman so should be of appeal to free market advocates. Like much of Friedman's works, Gratzer's arguments sometimes come off as pragmatic and lack the sound moral arguments for laissez-faire capitalism that only Objectivism can provide. However, like Friedman, Gratzer provides many compelling economic arguments and offers a wealth of useful facts.

Dr. Gratzer persuasively argues that the fundamental problem with U.S. health care is too much government regulation. To argue this, Dr. Gratzer first notes how the employer-based health coverage arose as an unintended side effect of a tax law, which allowed employers to write off health care expenditures for their employees. Moreover, Dr. Gratzer argues that both Democrats and Republicans have both essentially offered more government regulation as the solution to health care, which has not worked. The Democrats, such as the LBJ Administration, promoted enormously inefficient programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans, have promoted bureaucratic HMOs, which have led to similar large-scale inefficiencies.

Driving this point further, Dr. Gratzer greatly details the harmful economic consequences of government regulations in health care. For example, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) forbids hospitals from denying any patient for emergency care. The economic reality is that this leads to hospitals suffering economic losses by being forced to treat patients, regardless of if they can pay for the care, which ultimately leads to the closing of hospitals. Furthermore, insurance mandates, such as benefit mandates, rating mandates and bans on out-of-state insurance, restrict competition and lead to higher insurance premiums. Dr. Gratzer also thorough analyzes the harmful economic consequences of the FDA, Medicare, Medicaid and much more.

This book also dispels many common myths about the quality of U.S. health care. For example, statistics are often cited to argue that Canadians and/or Europeans have higher life expectancies than U.S. citizens. Dr. Gratzer argues that such studies mistakenly compare statistics on *health* when they should be on *health care*. There numerous lifestyle habits that differ between cultures, such as frequency of exercise and diet, which effect health. Dr. Gratzer proposes examining statistics on cardiac arrest patients, to see which country offers better treatment. In these respects, Dr. Gratzer argues that the U.S. system is clearly superior to its universal health care counterparts.

As one can infer, Dr. Gratzer proposes free market solutions to fix American health care. Specifically, he proposes drastically reducing the various regulatory excesses that he delineates throughout his book as well as embracing Health Savings Accounts. As always, Dr. Gratzer corroborates his arguments with real-world success stories, such as the success of Whole Foods' adoption of HSAs for its employees.

I highly recommend this book to all Objectivists with an interest in economics, health care policy or general intellectual activism on matters of politics.

If you enjoyed the above review, please rate it as helpful on Amazon.com. My Amazon version of this review can be found here. The more helpful ratings I receive, the higher my visibility is on Amazon.com. You can access all of my reviews on Amazon.com here.

Is Barack Obama a Socialist?

By noreply@blogger.com (Dan Edge) from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The charge that Barack Obama is a socialist comes from several different sources: journalists, politicians, and many Objectivists among them. "Socialist" is used as a negative pejorative term, meant to associate Obama with bloodthirsty savages like Josef Stalin and Chairman Mao. Most who make the charge do so in an attempt to differentiate Obama from John McCain, ostensibly to advocate a McCain presidency. McCain may be a Big Government Republican with a Neo-Con running mate, the argument goes, but at least he's not an outright socialist like Obama.

But does the term apply?

Before one can answer that question, he must first determine what socialism is. (Note that this process is very different from determining what the meaning of the word "is" is.) So what is socialism? The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines socialism this way:

"1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done"

Socialism is a political-economic system in which the government owns and controls all property. This theory is based primarily on the work of Karl Marx, an influential German philosopher who has achieved iconic status in communist countries. Marx believed that capitalism was part of a historically inevitable series of political-economic systems that would eventually result in a classless, stateless society of communes. Socialism, he thought, was a transitionary system between capitalism and communism in which the working classes (the proletariat) would violently revolt against the wealthy (the bourgeoisie), and establish a dictatorship in which the government owned and distributed all property.

So in asking whether Obama is a socialist, one is really asking: Does Obama believe that the government should own and distribute all means of production? Does he believe that rule by the proletariat is historically inevitable? Is he planning for a violent overthrow of the incumbent capitalist system?

One could argue that the answer to the first of these questions is "yes." Obama is pushing for higher taxes and more government controls. He wants to take money from the bourgois to give it to the proletariat. But a desire for bigger government does not make one a socialist. There are many different belief systems which advocate government control over property: Facism, Sharia Law, and other forms of theology, just to name a few. All these political systems are collectivist and statist, but they are not all socialist. Socialism is something very specific, as outlined above.

My conclusion is that Obama is not a socialist, any more than McCain is a socialist. Though their rhetoric differs (in non-essential ways), they both advocate some mixture of statism and capitalism. Both will increase the size of the federal government. Both support government intervention in the banking system, as we saw a few weeks ago. Both support welfare, Medicare, and Social Security. Both support reducing "emissions" to save Mother Earth. On nearly every major policy issue, Obama and McCain are indistinguishable.

Why do I make this point so strongly? Well for one, because it makes no sense to base one's vote on misapplied terminology. The term "socialism" is being tossed around as if it's synonymous with statism. Socialism is an emotionally charged word which incites visions of the dictatorships in U.S.S.R., North Korea, and China. If you are planning to vote against Obama simply because you think him a "socialist" while McCain is not, then I advise you to reconsider.

Also, as rational men we should be specific in our identifications of ideologies and their adherents. If Ayn Rand was right, and I believe she was, then it is ideology (philosophy) which moves the world. Properly identifying ideological movements is critically important to determining in what direction a nation is moving. In my opinion, socialism is dead, and has been dead for decades. No one believes in the historical inevitability of communism any more. No one believes that the proletariat will initiate a violent overthrow of government all over the world. These ideas have been so thoroughly discredited (and even demonized in the U.S.), that no one in the Western World takes them seriously any more.

But that does not mean that statism is dead. Statism is alive and well, but in the U.S., it still lacks an integrated, organized ideological movement to serve as its vehicle. Some have argued that the Neo-cons, with their "compassionate conservatism," now qualify as the most integrated movement advocating statism. I don't know if this is true or not, but it is definitely something we should be thinking about. Throwing the "socialism" charge around only muddies the issue further.

--Dan Edge

Individualist at Last?

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Via Arts and Letters Daily is a remarkable article by economist Glenn C. Loury in which he recounts a failure from an earlier episode of his life that has caused him much anguish over the decades since. In the midst of fighting for civil rights, he betrayed a friend at a meeting of the Black Panther Party.

So there we were, at this boisterous, angry political rally. A critical moment came when Woody, seized by some idea, enthusiastically raised his voice above the murmur to be heard. He was cut short in mid-sentence by one of the dashiki-clad brothers-in-charge, who demanded to know how a white boy got the authority to have an opinion on what black people should be doing. A silence then fell over the room. "Who can vouch for this white boy?" asked the brother indignantly. More excruciating silence ensued. Now was my time to act. Woody turned plaintively toward me, but I would not meet his eyes. To my eternal shame, I failed to speak up for my friend, and he was forced to leave the meeting without a word having been uttered in his defense.

Loury's friend had grown up with him in his neighborhood, and was of fractional black African descent, but did not have dark skin or African features. He had, however, like many such people at the time, decided to openly declare himself as black.

As with many other attempts to break free from tyranny, the struggle by American blacks to achieve equality under the law has been a mixed bag, as I have discussed at some length here before. Many things blurred the essential nature of this struggle, but I think a major factor was the fact that it was a war fought on two fronts:

At the beginning of the Civil Rights Era, blacks in America faced two major problems. One problem was moral in scope, and that was racism on the part of most whites, particularly in the South. The other problem was legal: Poor treatment of blacks was legally codified into what are known as Jim Crow Laws.

And, on top of that, American society at large has always been massively confused if not wrong outright about what constitutes a proper morality, and increasingly confused about the proper role of government. It is one thing to fight for the legal protection of the individual rights of blacks. It is quite another to impose a sort of retaliatory Jim Crow on everyone else to "make up for" past injustice.

This article gives a snapshot of how rife with ethical confusion the civil rights movement has been and remains. Are we individuals or parts of racial collectives? I have long thought that an underappreciated hangover of white racism has been that blacks never got to become accustomed to being treated as, or thinking of themselves as individuals at all times.

This lingering effect, along with common misconceptions about ethics and politics was already making this just rebellion a blind one. Loury now sees the irony of that moment, when, in the name of civil rights, his friend was being subjected to a race test:

The indignant brother who challenged Woody's right to speak was not merely imposing a racial test (only blacks are welcome here), he was mainly applying a loyalty test (you are either with us or against us), and this was a test that anyone present could fail through a lack of conformity with the collectively enforced political norm. I now know that denying one's genuine convictions for the sake of social acceptance is a price society often demands of the individual, and all too often we willingly pay it.

Given Loury's context then, he should have vouched for his friend, but the proper response would have been for both to leave. There were many legitimate reasons the for people like Woody to openly identify as black then, but promoting supremacy of a different color was not one of them.

I don't agree with everything Loury says as he grapples with his past failure, but he makes some very good points that desperately need to become common in any discussion of civil rights today:

Growing into intellectual maturity has been, for me, largely a process of becoming free of the need to have my choices validated by the brothers. After many years I have come to understand that, until I became willing to risk the derision of the crowd, I had no chance to discover the most important truths about myself or about life -- to know my calling, to perceive my deepest value commitments, and to recognize the goals most worth striving toward.

The most important challenges and opportunities that confront any of us derive not from our cultural or sexual identities, not from our ethnic or racial conditions, but from our common human condition. I am a husband, a father, a son, a teacher, an intellectual, a citizen. In none of these roles is my race irrelevant, but neither can identity alone provide much guidance for my quest to adequately discharge these responsibilities. The particular features of one’s social condition, the external givens, merely set the stage of one's life. They do not provide a script. That script must be internally generated; it must be a product of a reflective deliberation about the meaning of this existence for which no political program or ethnic category could ever substitute. [bold added]

Or, as Ayn Rand once put it so perfectly: "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

In writing this article, which I am sure will draw him some flak, Dr. Loury is finally doing what I submit he really should have done at the time. He has left that meeting of bigots and joined America as an individual man. As a fellow individual, I thank him and welcome him.

-- CAV

The Power of the Fourth Branch of Government

By Gina Liggett from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Imagine this: Your yoga instructor will no longer be doing as many Chataranga Dandasanas in yoga class because the EPA has determined that allowable C02 emissions would be exceeded due to proper yoga breathing.

Imagine this: Your household will be restricted in their consumption of pinto beans due to the potential over-production of intestinal gases with a corresponding excessive release of colonic C02 into the atmosphere, exceeding EPA standards.

We haven't even considered the potential impact of feeding cheese to your dog, or those statistically-higher ambulance runs made from nursing homes. We're talking C02 excesses in the...in the....parts per something!

Front Range Objectivism hosted a fascinating supper talk on October 18 by John Lewis, PhD, visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University and research scholar and writer in history and classics. His talk was entitled, "A Call to Action: Understanding and Defeating the EPA's Plan for Environmental Dictatorship." From his talk I drew several disturbing conclusions concerning the sweeping powers delegated to the Enviromental Protection Agency as a result of a recent Supreme Court ruling.

As background, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, in Massachusetts et al. v the EPA, ruled in favor of a consortium of environmentalist-friendly plaintiffs, delegating to the Environmental Protection Agency the responsibility of regulating C02 emissions under the Clean Air Act. The plaintiffs argued that man-made C02 emissions (and other greenhouse gases) are the primary cause of "global climate change," and that to avoid worldwide disaster action must be taken. The EPA established an "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" to allow public comment, advising the public of the widespread impacts this would cause to our society and economy. Dr. Lewis argued that, even as lay persons, we can judge and reject the claims of imminent worldwide catastrophe raised by the plaintiffs in this case. (I'm including the link to the comments to the EPA made by Dr. Lewis and scientist Paul Saunders.)

From the talk, three issues struck me as particularly important about this case: the scientific, the political and the constitutional.

First the scientific. The Supreme Court ruling used the widely-reported conclusions of the United Nations-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the scientific basis for regulating C02. The panel's basic conclusion: "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

What's concerning about this conclusion from a lay person's observation is the fact that global climate over the eons has changed not just dramatically, but extremely: ice ages, deserts that used to be jungles, plains once covered by oceans, gigantic shifts in northern ice patterns but the opposite occurring in the southern hemisphere, etc.

As far as the validity of the science, the IPCC conclusions were based primarily on computer modeling involving many variables. And much of the data is bad, as in faulty measurements of ground temperature. Then then there's Al Gore's infamous inversion of the C02-temperature relationship: Ice core data actually indicates that over the millennia global temperature increase comes before C02 rise by several hundred years. Finally, as every lay person knows from experience, the best of climatologists can't even predict the local weather very well, let alone weather change on a global scale projected decades into the future.

On to the political. The IPCC is essentially a governmental entity that works by political consensus, like most U.N. endeavors. In fact, as Dr. Lewis pointed out (and as I have learned elsewhere), the conclusions were haggled out first, line-by-line, by bureaucrats. This is not at all proper to the standard method of producing a scientific paper.

There are many respected scientists from such fields as oceanography, climatology and astronomy that study the impact of the oceans and the sun and other factors in global temperature change and C02. Many claim that their input was either dismissed, suppressed or ignored by the IPCC, even when they were initially involved as expert reviewers. And there are many other scientists who simply claim that nobody can get a handle on something as vastly complex as global climate change at our present state of knowledge. But this input is exed-out in the IPCC and the Supreme Court ruling because of politics, not good science.

Finally, Dr. Lewis responded to a question concerning the Constitution and the very disturbing and ever-growing power of the emerging "fourth" branch of government: those rule-making regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services. These are composed of unelected civil employees who have been delegated the power to write detailed rules and regulations impacting rights of property, contract, privacy, and more. Operating behind the scenes, they have enormous power to control our businesses and lives.

And with the new Supreme Court ruling, the EPA will have no choice but to somehow figure out--despite the fact that climate science is really in its infancy--how to regulate all of the C02 emissions we put out. Just imagine the onerous responsibility, tremendous power and grave consequences involved...

And remember, don't sigh too deeply, just grunt.

Quick Roundup 371

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Blogworthy things seem to have come in pairs today....

Two Roundups

Last week, Rational Jenn posted the 66th Objectivist Roundup and Mike N posted a weekend roundup of his own.

Two from Amit Ghate

Amit Ghate has recently posted a couple of the kinds of short, sweet examples that can come in handy during conversations about politics.

First, he links to "Barstool Economics", which very nicely demonstrates all at once: (1) the disproportionate burden our progressive tax code places on the rich, (2) the degree of dependence the welfare state has on this demonized demographic , and (3) how much of the population is freeloading on the rich through income redistribution. Although this doesn't directly address the fundamental problem of taxation -- that it violates individual rights -- the enterprising interlocutor should have no trouble steering things that way! (Also, through his link, I was reminded of the existence of Doug Reich's blog, The Rational Capitalist, which is now listed in the sidebar.)

Second, he does his best imitation of Virgil in Dante's Inferno, showing us a nearly perfect example straight from the the hell of Lew Rockwell of Libertarians being merely anti-government, rather than pro-individual rights. The title says it all: "The Enemy is Always the State". Too bad we need the state -- a proper government, to be precise -- to protect the individual rights on which our lives in a society depend.

Two Issues Sites

I have mentioned Diana Hsieh's Coalition for Secular Government here before and I link to its blog, Politics without God, on the sidebar, but until today, I hadn't listed the main site on my resources page. Now it's there, under "National Organizations" on the right hand side.

Also, thanks to her blog, I have learned about Tony Donadio's micro-site, Repeal the Bailout, and have also added it to the resources page.

Two Veterans Come in off the Bench

Martin Lindeskog, whose blog loads a little more quickly these days, reports that Cox and Forkum recently posted a cartoon about the bailout on their web site. Quoth Allen Forkum:

In defense of this socialist expansion, Bush gives us a classic A-is-non-A denial of reality: "These measures are not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it." Clearly the man doesn't even know what the "free" in "free market" means. And unfortunately neither do McCain and Obama.

After seeing a headline this weekend in which Bush reportedly urged something to the effect that we should keep our economies free, my initial reaction was, "Too late!" This was followed swiftly by, "This man clearly doesn't know what the hell he is talking about."

Two Blegs

1. I remain swamped by the Eternal Cross-Country Relocation from Hell, but want to do some blog upkeep soon. If anyone has noticed any hyperlinks that no longer work or whose sites are no longer being maintained, particularly on the Resources page, I'd be grateful for the time a heads-up would save me.

2. Are there any Kung Fu movie aficionados out there? I'm not really the action movie type, but I have the urge to watch one, and I don't know diddly about this genre. Fortunately, I've had pretty good luck soliciting advice here before....

Being There II?

And speaking of movies, the following recent comment about Barack Obama by Myrhaf caused me to become curious enough about the Peter Sellers movie, Being There to rent it.

It becomes theatre of the absurd when you consider what Obama did during the bailout. He did what always does: nothing. The guy is like the Peter Sellers character in Being There.

He certainly hit that one on the head! The movie, at least, was hilarious. Its real-life sequel, if the election gives us one in an Obama Presidency, will, like most sequels, disappoint.

-- CAV

The Myrhaf Endorsement: Abstain

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Interventionism (or the mixed economy or the welfare state), with bipartisan support, has America in bad shape right now. The government just voted a $1 trillion bailout of Wall Street, money to be handed out per Treasury Secretary Paulson's discretion, making him in effect America's economic dictator. Social Security is heading toward a crisis.

Look for the government to inflate the hell out of the dollar in an attempt to manage this crisis without cutting spending or raising taxes. Inflation is a hidden tax, the politicians' favorite tax. Due to widespread ignorance of economics, Americans don't understand that inflation is created by the government printing more dollars. People feel the pinch of rising prices in their wallets and they blame those greedy capitalists who keep raising prices because they are unpatriotic and just in business for their own good. This popular anger at capitalists is music to the socialists' ears.

We are very much in the position of the Weimar Republic right now. Government intervention is causing crises, yet Democrats such as Barney Frank are saying, "The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it." The crises will expand and intensify as the government pours gasoline on the fire. America is setting itself up for that which followed the Weimar Republic: a fascist dictatorship.

Since America is the richest and most powerful nation in the world, it would likely drag the rest of the world into dark times with it. If you think depression would devastate America, a nation in which poor children's number one health problem is obesity, imagine how hard times would hit poor countries. We could be on the edge of worldwide starvation, war and the other horsemen of the apocalypse. Parts of Africa could go medieval.

This is the context as we Americans ponder how we should vote. Here is my explanation of how I will vote.

Recently, John Lewis sent an email to the Obloggers group containing this information:

In July the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which details their plan to force Americans to reduce emissions of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases.” This follows on an Executive Order signed by President Bush, which was made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court decisions ruling that CO2 is a “pollutant.” (!)

This plan will strip the American people of their freedom, and place them under the control of a single, all-powerful, federal agency. Industrial permits, furnace regulations, auto emissions testing, building permits, transportation, and food production—all will fall under the boot of the EPA. Environmentalists will use lawsuits to pressure the EPA to tighten an ever-shrinking noose around the neck of every American.

This is the first and only time I have heard about this Executive Order signed by the Republican Bush. The statutory framework now exists for the EPA to dictate to every American how much CO2 he can emit. Such a broad Executive Order gives the EPA the power to control virtually every aspect of our lives, from how much we produce to how much we travel to our heating and air conditioning to our very exhalations of breath. The limits on the EPA's power will be determined by what they think they can get away with before people revolt. Using the time-tested frog-cooking method, they will start modestly and ratchet up the controls a notch at a time.

I submit that if Bush were a Democrat president, we would have heard about this totalitarian Executive Order from right-wing radio talk shows, right-wing bloggers and Fox News. The Republicans would be screaming that leftists want to destroy our freedom -- and they would be right. But Bush is a Republican, so we hear nothing. The Democrats have no reason to publicize this Executive Order because they support it; government control of every aspect of every citizen's life is The Way Things Ought To Be. Republicans have no interest in attacking Bush because it weakens their party. Talkers such as Limbaugh and Hewitt focus like a laser beam on the Democrats and, with occasional exceptions designed to counter criticism like this, they ignore Republican folly.

Gus Van Horn has detailed Bush's Statist Legacy. The first two items alone would be enough to vilify him among Republicans, were Bush a Democrat:

• Sixty-eight per cent. That is how much total federal spending rose under Bush. That is more than double the growth in federal spending over the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency.
• Bush was aided and abetted by a Congress dominated by Republicans until 2006. Juicy spending bills were passed on everything from farm subsidies to health (up 44 per cent) and education (up 47 per cent). After all, Bush had run as a "compassionate conservative"; he introduced the largest new entitlement since the Great Society programs of the 1960s: a prescription drug benefit for seniors that will add a US$1.2-trillion liability over 10 years.

And don't forget that Bush, a Republican, outlawed the incandescent light bulb, a dictatorial law that is richly symbolic. I like to think that 100 years from now Bush will be remembered as the man who outlawed the light bulb.

The Ayn Rand Institute calls the recent bailout of Wall Street The Road to Fascism:

The government has announced that it plans to use $250 billion to buy ownership stakes in various U.S. financial institutions. According to the New York Times, nine major U.S. banks have already been forced into the program....

According to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “In herding banking executives into a room and making them an offer they couldn’t refuse, the Paulson regime took its latest and most disturbing step yet on the path to state control of the economy.

“If fascism means coercive state control over nominally private property, then there is no more chilling sign of creeping fascism in America than government’s encroachment on the lifeblood of the U.S. economy—its financial institutions. While the government assures us it will be a ‘passive investor,’ merely funneling cash into the banking system rather than dictating how banks function, this is a lie. Not only does the money come with strings attached--such as restrictions on executive compensation, dividend payments, and the types of investments banks can make—but politicians are already promising a web of further controls. As John McCain recently noted, ‘We will not merely inject billions of dollars into companies and walk away hoping for the best. We will require that those companies be reformed and restructured until they are sound assets again, and can be sold at no loss—or perhaps even a profit—to the taxpayers of America.’

Note that Paulson, Bush and McCain are all Republicans. Republicans, not Democrats, are driving this fascist power grab of America's financial institutions.

This is the most important reason we should not vote for a Republican for president: When Republicans expand state intervention in the economy, no one cares. Poor, hapless Democrats! When they try to get away with a fraction of what Republicans can get away with, those same Republicans scream bloody murder. Yes, the Republicans are laughable hypocrites -- but their hypocrisy is the only thing that stops Democrats from erecting a socialist tyranny. That's the way partisan politics works in America.

Republican presidents do more damage than Democrat presidents. Among the last four presidents, the only one that did not expand government spending was the Democrat, Bill Clinton. The Republicans all spent money like drunken sailors in a Texan whore house.

This year the Republican candidate is John McCain. He gives us even more reasons not to vote Republican. Craig Biddle writes,

On the domestic front, McCain promises to “take on” the drug companies, as if those who produce and market the medicines that improve and save human lives must be fought; he promises to ration energy by means of a cap-and-trade scheme, as if the government has a moral or constitutional right to dictate how much energy a company may purchase or use; he promises to “battle” big oil, as if those who produce and deliver the lifeblood of civilization need to be defeated; he promises to “reform” Wall Street, as if those who finance the businesses that produce the goods and services on which our lives depend are thereby degenerate; he seeks to uphold the ban on drilling in ANWR, as if the government has a moral or constitutional right to prevent Americans from reshaping nature to suit their needs; and so on.

And on foreign policy,

McCain promises to “respect the collective will of our democratic allies,” as if America has no moral right to defend her citizens according to her own best judgment; and he promises to finish the “mission” of making Iraq “a functioning democracy” even if it takes “one hundred years,” as if the U.S. government has a moral or constitutional right to sacrifice American soldiers to spread democracy abroad.

Ryan Calhoun at The Dirty Kuffar reminds us that McCain is willing to reinstate the draft.

McCain has stated time and again that the only time he would support a draft would be "if World War III broke out".

As bad as Republicans are these days, McCain is even worse. He is an ideological nationalist and collectivist. He disdains the free market. He sneers at the pursuit of profit. He believes the essence of morality lies in the individual sacrificing for something greater than himself.

Another reason it would be preferable to have a Democrat president is clarity. When Republicans like Bush expand government, we do not get clarity. Instead, Democrats blame the free market rhetoric of the Republicans for the latest crisis. Thus we get talk about Reagan's "trickle down econonmics" as the cause of the meltdown in September. Under a Democrat president, the destructive policies of government intervention become clear.

By the logic of my argument I should be endorsing Obama here because Democrats are not as effective at destroying liberty in America as Republicans. I can't do it. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life, and I'll be damned if the first one I vote for is a far left radical who has allied himself with anti-Americans and then lied about it when his alliances became politically inconvenient.

Obama, a social metaphysician who prides himself on being a "blank screen" on which others can project what they want to see, is not a fringe character in the Democrat Party. He is the party. He represents most of the base. The entire party leadership has been as radicalized as Obama. If the "Reagan Democrats" understood how far left the party is (if they did not depend on the MSM for their news), they would run from the party.

It is possible that Obama, like McCain, is worse than the average politician in his party. There is the possibility that Obama is an ideological radical who -- with full, explicit consciousness -- is hiding his true intentions in order to gain power and then use the presidency to advance socialism in America. I don't think he can get far without a mandate, but I can't entirely dismiss this suspicion. But if this is true, it makes Obama only a more exaggerated version of all Democrat candidates, for every one of them since the landslide defeat of McGovern in 1972 has lied about how far left he is.

But even if we go just by what he has promised, which would add another trillion dollars to the federal budget, that alone makes him unworthy of our vote.

In voting for the lesser of two evils, there is only so much evil a voter should be asked to swallow. I will feel better about myself not voting for either Obama or McCain. Whichever one is elected, things will get worse. There are arguments for and against both men; they come out to a wash. Who knows which candidate would end up marginally worse than the other?

More important than the presidential vote is your Senate and House vote. It is important that we get Republicans in the legislature. They're the only ones that would slow down an Obama presidency. Perhaps they would moderate McCain's worst statist excesses.

I realize there is risk in my thinking. It depends on the Republicans maintaining their role as a vigorous opposition party. Fewer Republicans have the stomach for fighting every year. At some point, the party might conclude, "We're all socialists now." If so, we'll get to dictatorship a little faster than otherwise. Right now their opposition to Democrat presidents is our last hope.

Go to the polls on November 4th. Vote Republican in everything but president. Don't vote for president. Perhaps a large bloc of abstaining voters will send a message that our two major parties need to give us better candidates for whom to vote.

Getting Rand Wrong

By Brandon Byrd from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As someone who takes ideas seriously, I've always found it frustrating when philosophers take it upon themselves to offer judgments on subjects they haven't bothered to devote serious time and attention to studying. The charge that philosophers (academic or otherwise) sometimes judge where the epistemically virtuous would fear to comment isn't new. (For instance, it isn't rare to hear someone claim that speculation from the philosophical armchair is a poor method of settling some contentious issue.) What makes this phenomenon -- the venturing of unwarranted opinions -- especially pernicious in the case of philosophers is that philosophers are supposed to be the guardians of rationality, revering the mind by sacrificing hasty conclusions at the altar of the well-formed argument. Philosophers are supposed to love wisdom and shun mere belief; when they make assertions that betray culpable ignorance, they sin against their profession as well as the truth.

I don't know what it is about Ayn Rand that makes many philosophers think they can get away with saying whatever they damn well please about her without having studied her work carefully and honestly. I suspect that the real explanation has less to do with Rand and more to do with personal biases on the part of her critics. But whatever the cause, the phenomenon is nevertheless real. It isn't just that many philosophers dislike Rand. We philosophers are an opinionated bunch; we dislike all sorts of things. Rather it's that many philosophers will attribute all sorts of nonsense to Rand without actually considering what she has to say.

To offer an example, below is a passage from Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. This work, published relatively recently by Oxford University Press, is intended to be used as a textbook on, unsurprisingly, virtue ethics.

"We can interpret Thrasymachus, and more obviously Nietzsche and Rand, as saying that, rather like hive bees, human beings fall, by nature, into two distinct groups, the weak and the strong (or the especially clever or talented or 'chosen by destiny'), whose members must be evaluated differently, as worker bees and the drones or queens are."

Um... what? Anyone with even a cursory familiarity with Rand's ideas will realize that she believes no such thing. Rand's philosophical anthropology -- her theory of human nature -- does not recognize a distinction between types of human beings. Her ethical theory evaluates individuals on the basis of their choices, not their unchosen attributes, and she appeals to a univocal standard of moral evaluation -- not to distinct standards for distinct types.

Hursthouse does not provide any sources that might justify her 'obvious' interpretation of Rand's philosophy. But this totally wrongheaded interpretation of Rand was good enough for her editors and peer reviewers at OUP (as well as the numerous philosophers who gave her editorial comments on the final manuscript). Apparently that group of distinguished professors found nothing objectionable in Hursthouse's characterization of Rand. Of course, realizing Hursthouse's error would have required reading Rand.

(On a grimly ironic note, the above passage comes from chapter 11 of On Virtue Ethics. The chapter title? "Objectivity.")

Hursthouse isn't the only person who presents Rand's views incorrectly in a way that betrays ignorance. Chandran Kukathas's entry on Rand in the otherwise excellent Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is another example. No, Kukathas... Rand didn't think that integrity was "at the root of the idea of freedom," her "real concerns" were not "the defence of the value of integrity (to the point of self-sacrifice) in the face of evil and moral despair," and The Virtue of Selfishness was not a novel.

So far, we've seen a philosopher attribute views to Rand that she 'obviously' didn't hold, and we've seen another philosopher misunderstand the fundamentals of Rand's politics and misconstrue her central concerns. But Gerald Dworkin, a professor of philosophy at UC Davis, has recently exemplified yet another way of getting Rand wrong: saying that her ideas lead to catastrophe.

The forum in which Dworkin makes this charge is Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog -- a blog featuring "news and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture... and a bit of poetry." The blog is run by Brian Leiter, currently John Wilson Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values. Leiter is also the editor of The Philosophical Gourmet, which ranks the top philosophy departments in the English-speaking world. I read Leiter Reports semi-regularly, as it is a good source of professional news related to academic philosophy (faculty hires, moves, deaths, retirements and whatnot). In addition to this valuable material, the blog also features occasional leftist cultural commentary of more dubious value. Of extremely dubious value is Dworkin's post "Blame it on Ayn Rand" in which he claims Rand is a cause of our economic troubles. Dworkin doesn't really provide much of an argument for this claim, so I'll attempt to provide him with a charitable reconstruction (a courtesy I'm not so sure he deserves... but for the sake of argument...).

Dworkin quotes a recent New York Times article on Greenspan's involvement in the current financial crisis. (That article seems to get Rand wrong too; Rand didn't have "a resolute faith that those participating in financial markets would act responsibly" but that's beside the point.) The article implies that Greenspan's positions on regulation -- specifically the regulation of derivatives markets -- were causally relevant factors in producing the recent financial crisis. Why did Greenspan hold his positions on regulation? Here, Dworkin invokes Keynes:

"...the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

(I can't resist noting that Rand held a similar view to Keynes about the importance of philosophy in history, though her insight was deeper than Keynes. Rather than viewing history as being primarily driven by political philosophy, Rand viewed metaphysics and epistemology as being much more influential. For more on Rand's insights here, consult the title essay of For the New Intellectual, as well as the title essay of Philosophy: Who Needs It. Peikoff develops Rand's insights on the philosophical motor of history in Ominous Parallels, the epilogue to Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and in his forthcoming book on how epistemology shapes society.)

Greenspan was a student of Rand, and Rand argued for the principled separation of the state and economics, and thus for an absence of government interference in voluntary economic exchanges. She was a categorical opponent of governmental regulation in financial markets. Greenspan opposed regulation of derivatives markets. The current financial crisis was supposedly brought on by an absence of regulation in these markets. Thus Dworkin claims that Rand is "an important cause of the catastrophe we are in."

Let us examine this argument.

This argument gets its force from the claim that Greenspan was practicing what Rand preached. In an update to Dworkin's post, Leiter snarkily remarks that "Greenspan was not only a friend of Rand's, but a lifelong devotee of her ideas and her 'philosophy,' such as it is." While it is true that Rand and Greenspan were friendly toward one another, it is demonstrably false that Greenspan was "a lifelong devotee of her ideas." It doesn't take a hell of a lot of legwork to discover this; thanks to Google, I didn't even have to leave my armchair.

In The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan's recent autobiography, Greenspan discusses the important formative influence Rand had on his intellectual development. In his discussion, he talks about how Rand encouraged him to look beyond mere economic data and more deeply into the values and ideas that move history and influence human action (including economic action). She was credited with broadening his perspective on the world and helping him reject logical positivism. He even describes himself as "writing spirited commentary for [Rand's] newsletter with the fervor of a young acolyte...". But this enthusiasm was not to last; Greenspan's autobiography claims that Rand's philosophy has inherent contradictions, and that his "fervor receded."

So Greenspan isn't an Objectivist. His policies, as we shall see, reflect this fact.

We're in the midst of a recession, teetering (some might say) on the precipice of a depression. What were Rand's views about recessions and depressions? Well, Dworkin doesn't say. His blog post doesn't even bother to discuss which of Rand's ideas were supposed to get us into this mess. He doesn't explicitly discuss her ideas at all. If one consults Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal to discover her views on the causes of recessions and depressions, one is directed to the works of Ludwig von Mises. It is important (for getting Rand right) to recognize that while Rand found Mises's economic analyses convincing, she had substantial philosophical and methodological disagreements with him. Mises was a Kantian who viewed economics as a primarily deductive enterprise (and thus was inclined toward epistemological rationalism). He also attempted to do economics in an ethical vacuum, divorcing economic analysis from any underlying normative framework. Rand, of course, rejected Kantianism, rationalism, and a strict division between morality and economics. But despite his errors, Rand thought that Mises's economic theories represented a significant achievement.

At this point, I don't want to provide a lengthy, detailed summary of Mises's views on the business cycle. I may write something in the near future about the causes of our current economic woes, but I'll hold off for now. The following short summary should provide a general indication of the economic views Rand found most convincing.

The most salient aspect of the Austrian theory of the business cycle is that implicates central banks as the fundamental cause of depressions and recessions. Ah! The plot thickens! Wasn't Greenspan the head of our central bank? He was indeed. How do central banks cause recessions?

In a free market, the interest rate (the price of money) is determined by the law of supply and demand. Roughly, the supply of loanable funds that banks have (our savings) determines the interest rate, when taken in conjunction with the overall demand for money and the riskiness of potential debtors. Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, distort this market mechanism by setting artificially low interest rates (interest rates below the market rate). What happens next? I defer to Wikipedia:

Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the supply of money, through the money creation process in a fractional reserve banking system. This in turn leads to an unsustainable "monetary boom" during which the "artificially stimulated" borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. This boom results in widespread malinvestments, causing capital resources to be misallocated into areas which would not attract investment if the money supply remained stable. A correction or "credit crunch" -- commonly called a "recession" or "bust" -- occurs when credit creation cannot be sustained.

Loose monetary policy by central banks leads to people taking on more debt than they otherwise would. Artificially low interest rates allow more credit to be extended to risky borrowers. In our current case this lead to skyrocketing real estate values, since there was an increased demand for houses (made possible by banks extending credit to more and riskier debtors). This effect is obvious enough in the case of commercial banks, which more than doubled the amount of real estate loans they made (thus allocating large amounts of resources into the real estate market -- allocations that wouldn't have occurred in a free market for money and credit.

And then there's the welfare state. Don't let's forget about Fannie and Freddy. The former is a holdover from the New Deal; the latter is a "government sponsored enterprise" created by the Emergency Home Finance Act of 1976, and designed to increase home ownership. Both of which did their part to screw us all by spurring on the housing bubble... and they were able to borrow money at a (de facto, if not de jure) subsidized rate in the marketplace because the public viewed them as being low risk (since the state would presumably bail them out, should the need arise).

All of a sudden, everyone's in debt and no one wants to lend. Small wonder. Small wonder that risky investors are defaulting on their mortgage payments. Small wonder that the derivatives markets are screwing up (I'd argue that we can only make sense of the kerfuffle in the derivatives market in light of monetary policy). Small wonders that major financial institutions are losing their credit rating because they took on too many risky debtors.

We frequently hear that that the market got drunk. What was it drunk on? Cheap credit. Who was the man behind the bar? You can probably guess.

In May of 2000, the Fed Funds rate was 6.5%. By June of 2003, Greenspan had slashed it to 1%, and it stayed there for more than a year (and remained ridiculously low for much longer). Would Rand have found this type of monetary policy commendable (or even tolerable)? Of course not. She'd read her Mises. Moreover, she regarded central banking as morally repugnant and politically unnecessary.

There's much more to be said about our current credit crunch and how to evaluate it in light of Rand's moral and political philosophy. But it should now be evident that Dworkin (and Leiter) are wrong on all counts. They were wrong about Greenspan; they were wrong about Rand. Their errors on these subjects betray a culpable ignorance. One needn't do much research to figure out Greenspan's real views on Rand, or Rand's views on economics. Twenty minutes with Google and Wikipedia would probably have gotten the job done. If a philosopher is going to assert, in a public forum, that another philosopher's ideas lead to disaster, then they have an obligation to carefully consider that thinker's ideas, to understand them, and to show how (in practice) they would result in catastrophe. When a philosopher fails to do that, they do a disservice not only to the thinker they criticize, but also to the truth, to their profession, and to themselves.

Academic philosophers often get Rand wrong. They often have only themselves to blame.

Social Security's Trust Fund

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Social Security's Trust Fund is a fiction. Basic problem: it is not a fund in the first place.

Joe Sixpack (or is it Joe Plumber?) might create a "home down-payment fund". He does this by putting aside some money and not spending it. The bank is his "lock-box". Imagine that he did something else: he loaned the money to himself and treated the IOUs written to himself as if they were a fund! For all his protestations that he owes money to himself, we would have to tell him that he has spent it, and the fund is fiction. The same with social security.

So, it really irritates me when newspapers who ought to know better, gloss over this, and pretend that this fiction is real. For instance, this New York Times story says:

If no changes are made, the Social Security trust fund is projected to deplete its reserves in 2041 and will begin paying out more than it collects in benefits even sooner, starting in 2017.

Both these dates are bogus. Firstly, there is no fund. Secondly, Social Security has already reached the point where collections are much neared payout levels than "fund" accounting would show. That second fiction is maintained through another ruse: over the original IOUs that Joe Sixpack wrote to himself, each year he write brand new IOUs to pay himself interest! The New York Times adds this fictional interest to the fictional inflows, to calculate a total collection that is significantly larger than it really is.

Summary: The first step toward reforming social-security is to be honest about what it is, and not to use terms like "fund" and "interest" that only obfuscate.

Appendix: Detailed numbers:

The Social Security administration (see page 2 on this PDF), shows the following for 2007:

• "Fund" Income $ 772 billion
• Outflows $ 624 billion
• Surplus = $ 158 billion

However, about $95 billion of the inflows were fictional "interest" on the fictional "fund". Subtract that, and one gets an inflow of about $677 billion and the surplus comes down to $53 billion. (Aside: Out of these non-government receipts, $18 billion comes from "taxation of benefits". This is money that is taken from retirees who had the wsdom to get rich enough not to depend totally on social security.)

Goodbye Gridlock

By noreply@blogger.com (C. August) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In the current political and ideological climate, where increasing statism is the major trend, the ideal situation in Washington is gridlock. Because nearly every action taken by the government makes things worse and further attacks our freedoms, a gridlocked Congress and Executive is the best we can hope for.

We have consistently had some amount of gridlock since the mid-60s, with either a mixed majority in Congress, a president of a different party than the Congressional majority, or at least, as in the Clinton era, a Senate capable of filibustering.

It seems that's about to change.

Democrats are poised to take the presidency, and make major gains in both houses of Congress. It now appears that a liberal supermajority -- making even a Senate filibuster impossible -- is not only possible but likely.

A frightening editorial in the Wall Street Journal details what we might expect from such a supermajority:

A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.

...Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley.

A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority.... Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.

A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. ...the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.

This is just a sampling of the terrible possibilities our country will face if the Democrats become filibuster- and veto-proof. I find it necessary to state here that I would be equally concerned if a religious conservative president was elected when Republicans were poised on grabbing a supermajority. Neither party is a friend of liberty. But we have historical precedent to show us what happens when the Left takes over completely.

The WSJ article ends with the following chilling paragraph:

In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today's left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined. [bold added]

As I mentioned elsewhere, it is possible that Obama could play FDR to Bush's Hoover, and we could see a New New Deal in the coming years. Laws that were passed in the 1930s are still hurting us today, and helped lay the groundwork for the current financial crisis. Hopefully America will retain enough of its sense of life and core respect for individual rights -- its very American-ness -- through the next 4 or 8 years to come out on the other side, ready to rebuild.

Key to the rebuilding effort will be laying the ideological foundation now, by loudly and consistently making the case for capitalism as the only moral and practical political system.

As Ed Cline's Sparrowhawk series demonstrated, it was the revolution in men's minds, decades before any shots were fired, that made the American Revolution possible. As the drumbeat of statist attacks on liberty grows louder and louder, nothing short of that type of philosophical revolution will be enough to combat it.

Law Promotes Discrimination

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yesterday morning, I spotted a story on complaints and legal actions taken by various Moslems for the sake of ending "discrimination" by employers who do not accommodate their frequent (and constantly changing) schedule of five daily prayers.

Requests by Muslims to pray at work have led to clashes with employers who say they cannot accommodate the strictly scheduled prayers.

The conflicts raise questions about religious rights on the job. Muslims say they are being discriminated against and are taking their complaints to the courts and the federal government. Employers say the time out for prayer can burden other workers and disrupt operations. [bold added]

Except for a badly-titled comparison of the number of such complaints by religious group, the article is even-handed in tone. It presents what an average person would see as both sides of the issue, that of the offended Moslems and that of the businessmen. The second excerpted paragraph is a good example. Few would read the article and complain of media bias, or at least that the reporting was compromised by any kind of political agenda.

Unfortunately, in spite of what appears to be an honest effort to tell the story, this article completely fails to cover the story correctly because it accepts an old, widespread, and gravely mistaken premise in modern American politcs: Namely that the violation of property rights is justifiable for the purpose of ending racial, ethic, or religious bigotry on the part of some individuals.

This is nothing new. I have written about this problem at length before, and will not belabor it again now, although my main point bears repeating:

I abhor racism, but I must respectfully disagree. Forbidding behavior that is immoral, but does not violate the rights of someone else, is far from being "a good idea". The purpose of government is to protect the rights of individuals from being violated by the initiation of force (or the threat thereof) from other individuals. Nothing more. Nothing less.

To apply this to the topic at hand, whether an employer allows religious considerations to affect his personnel decisions is of no concern to a proper government. His business is his property, and if he wants to not employ someone just because he is Moslem (or just because he isn't), that's his right -- and his problem, if that employee is best for the job.

And no one is entitled to employment under a proper government. One striking thing about the kinds of cases in this story is that one can easily imagine how having an employee who drops everything to pray at multiple times a day (that vary over the year) can render that employee (and others) less productive. News bulletin: Employers hire people to do things. Praying is usually not one of them.

But there's something else here that I find interesting. The law under which these incidents are being brought to court will have the paradoxical effect of making it even harder to decide to hire Moslem employees! Consider the combative attitude of entitlement expresseed by one attorney:

"They shouldn't be forced to choose between their job and their religion," says Rima Kapitan, an attorney who represents Muslim workers in Grand Island.

Pardon me, but nobody "forced" anyone to make such a choice here. A Moslem who can't pray at Company A is perfectly free to seek employment at Company B. What is really happening here is that some Moslems are working to force employers, through nonobjecive law, to make hiring decisions that conflict with their very livelihoods!

Moslems already make the largest number of complaints about religious discrimination in the workplace. The increased likelihood that employers of Moslems will be sued or have to make who knows what accommodations any time a follower of that religion claims to be "offended" (which the cartoon riots show can be over almost anything), will make any employer with a grain of sense not want to touch a Moslem, no matter how qualified, with a ten foot pole.

If Moslems were truly concerned about their employability, they would support the full government protection of property rights. But some clearly do not, and place other considerations above the requirements for their life on earth (which include the protection of individual rights), as a famous series of atrocities in September 2001 eloquently illustrated.

If a Moslem wants to damage or end his life by appeasing Allah, that is his right -- and his problem. We should repeal all laws that violate individual rights -- such as federal anti-discrimination law -- that are harmful enough to begin with, and that can be commandeered through legal jihad to force us to obey Allah's alleged commands.

-- CAV

Ayn Rand Avenged

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Answering the engineered takeover of the economy by the federal government is an unprecedented cultural phenomenon: People who read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged years ago and dismissed it but now see the parallels are filled with trepidation. The people who read Granville Hicks’ review of it in The New York Times in October 1957 and agreed with his estimate of the novel, a work whose literary value he also denied, can no longer think that it was a “parable of buried talents.” People who read the novel decades ago and never questioned its truth are issuing warnings about the parallels between the novel and current events. And people who have read the novel only recently are seeing its plot unfold before their very eyes. All are now realizing that “the end is near.” But, the end of what?

For the time being, the end of freedom. Hopefully, that time will be short. But if Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson can demand that bankers sign a “gift certificate” under the threat of blackmail or extortion -- like the one industrialist Henry Rearden in the novel was compelled to sign -- then the real world plot is advancing chapter by chapter to a climax whose timetable and resolution will depend on how much freedom Americans are willing to surrender and how much they are willing to endure servitude and impoverishment in the name of “stability,” “community” or “patriotism.”

In editorials, columns, and letters to the editor, Rand is suddenly being remembered as a philosophical soothsayer. The occasion? Chickens coming home to roost. Justice rearing its awful head. The bankruptcy of not only government-regulated economies and government policies, but of their altruist and collectivist foundations. Everything Rand ever said and wrote about the perils of statism is coming to pass.

Is it the Erinyes or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping over the earth, wreaking carnage and tribulation among the wicked and innocent alike, leaving a trail of conquest, famine, slaughter, and death?

What unleashed them? The irrational. The quest for the unearned. A murderous envy for man the free, volitional being. A hatred of existence.

What can defeat the Four Horsemen? What can satisfy the Furies to send them back to the underworld? Objective reality, reason, self-interest, and capitalism (also known as: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics). Anyone who has subscribed to Objectivism and remained consistent with its tenets is now in the place of the novel’s hero, John Galt, watching the chaos engulf the earth. That person and many others like him will not be much touched or harmed by the Horsemen. It is not their Apocalypse, but that of those who conducted their lives by denying objective reality, denigrating reason, damning self-interest, and condemning capitalism; that of anyone who did not concern himself with cause and effect, or with thinking in principles, or who complained about selfishness, and accepted the second-hand mantra that free minds and free markets were unfair, unconnected, or unnecessary to his existence.

The instances of the letters and articles that say “I told you so” are too numerous to cite here. Two, however, are noteworthy. One letter, by Iwan Price-Evans, appeared in the Daily Telegraph (London).

“…[I]t is startling how prescient was her novel Atlas Shrugged. There is the socially responsible banker who went bust because he gave loans to those who needed them, rather than to those who could afford them. There’s the government regulation and takeovers to ensure that failed businesses keep going. There’s the unthinking desire to cling to ‘stability,’ and the consensus that it is a global problem and everyone must pull together for the common good.

“All is in denial of reality, a rejection of reason. Result: the rational is distrusted; men are guilty of being ‘unfair’ if they value competence and ‘unfeeling’ if they refuse to indulge failure. The individual is subordinated to the national, and the national to the international. If Rand is right thus far, what of the years ahead? Perhaps the motor of the world is stopping.”

The second instance was a startling essay on the bailout in the October 2nd edition of The Virginia Gazette, “We should all go on strike,” by a local entrepreneur, Matthew Webb. Obviously influenced by Atlas Shrugged, Webb opens with:

“We should not have passed the bailout. Why? First, the sky clearly was not falling, at least until they did pass it, and the market has since plunged.

“Second, the market would have taken care of itself. We needed to correct this the real way, which was to let anything that really doesn’t have value be valued as such….

“Third, the government is the last entity qualified to run something as complicated as this bailout package. Name one department of government that is well run. You can’t!”

This argument would not fly with Paulson and Company. They would reply that they are trying to “do good,” and so must operate on a “higher plane” of money management -- the higher plane being the ether of nothingness, impenetrable by the likes of Mr. Webb and Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher of Ohio -- because there is nothing to penetrate. The Webbs and the Wurzelbachers of the world do not count in the Paulson and Company calculations for power, nor are they even visible.

Attached to the revised bailout bill sent by the Senate back to the House were numerous pork barrel appropriations. The more notorious ones included money for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s constituent, Star-Kist, subsidies for Puerto Rican rum producers, and subsidies for racetracks. Mr. Webb reveals another one:

“…[B]uried in the bill is the Bicycle Commuter Act (H.R. 807, S. 2635). The bill provides a tax benefit to employers who offer cash reimbursements to employees to defray costs of riding to work. Bike commuters can use the money to pay for bicycles, accessories, safety equipment, insurance, and locker or shower fees….It’s a green initiative….”

Environmentalism, of course, is now a religion questioned by neither Democrat nor Republican. It is primarily an ideology. And for all the anti-intellectualism displayed by Congress, it and the Bush administration clung to the “green” ideology. “The goal,” said Nancy Koehn, a historian at the Harvard Business School, “is to get the engine of capitalism going as productively as possible. Ideology is a luxury good in times of crisis.”

Of course, the best way to get the engine of capitalism going again is for the government to vacate the economy and swear off any and all intervention, instead of pouring molasses into its fuel tank.

Among his suggestions for “going on strike” Webb has three important ones:

“Abolish the withholding tax, where they take your money before you even see it, so you don’t think it’s actually yours….Abolish the Federal Reserve….We now see what happens when the fox rules the henhouse….Amend the Constitution so that bailouts of any private entity or industry are forbidden.”

None of that is possible today, except through a major revolution by the American people. The original Revolution was, after all, a kind of strike by the American colonists, and it was answered by the Crown with force.

My sole reservation with Mr. Webb’s essay is that the “stakeholding” device, by which Paulson demanded that the nine largest American banks sell the government “shares” in their assets, is not, as he claims, an instance of communism. It is actually fascism, by which a government goes into “partnership” with nominally private businesses, with those businesses or banks, however, taking their marching orders from the government. This is what was practiced in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

And which is now practiced in the United States, Britain, and most of Europe.

And, of course, Henry Paulson and Bernard Bernanke of the Federal Reserve are not alone in promoting fascism. There is Nancy Pelosi, who on the day that Congress passed the bailout, announced her own suggested contribution to the regimentation of Americans to lock-step them in a march in Obama’s or McCain’s “new direction.” Just as Hitler “stimulated” a moribund German economy by pouring money into government sponsored projects and buying off the “lower” classes with special benefits, Pelosi, according to the Associated Press on October 8, wants to create a $150 billion economic stimulus plan.

“….Pelosi said Wednesday that a $150 billion economic stimulus plan is needed now because of the faltering economy and she may call the House into session after the election to pass it….Pelosi said a stimulus package would create jobs by investing in public works, increasing food stamp benefits and extending unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless.”

All that is needed now for Pelosi, Obama, Paulson, Bernanke et al. to consolidate their power grab and scrap the Constitution completely is the equivalent of a Reichstag Fire.

The motor of the world is sputtering to a stop. There is no “perhaps” about it.

On Vitamin D

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Wowee, via Free the Animal, I found a fascinating story on Vitamin D in Canada's Globe and Mail: Vitamin D casts cancer prevention in new light. Here's the first section:

For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries -- and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.

But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are "looking for a bogeyman that doesn't exist," argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world's top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor "is more likely a lack of vitamin D."

What's more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

Not everyone is willing to jump on the vitamin D bandwagon just yet. Smoking and some pollutants, such as benzene and asbestos, irrefutably cause many cancers.

But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D's effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.

A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large -- twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking -- it almost looks like a typographical error.

While that doesn't sound like a randomized, controlled study, it's still highly suggestive. For more on the importance of Vitamin D, you can check out the
the relevant posts from the Heart Scan blog.

I've been taking supplemental Vitamin D for a few months. My physician recommended that I increase my dose at my last visit, based on some new research on its importance to bone health. Given what I've read about its wide-ranging effects on health, I think that I might want to get my levels tested. Plus, according to the Heart Scan Doc, unpredictable variation between individuals makes testing a necessity:

It's probably the number one most common question I get today:

"How much vitamin D should I take?"

Like asking for investing advice, there are no shortage of people willing to provide answers, most of them plain wrong.

The media are quick to offer advice like "Take the recommended daily allowance of 400 units per day," or "Some experts say that intake of vitamin D should be higher, as high as 2000 units per day." Or "Be sure to get your 15 minutes of midday sun."

Utter nonsense. ...

[V]itamin D requirements can range widely. I have used anywhere from 1000 units per day, all the way up to 16,000 units per day before desirable blood levels were achieved.

Vitamin D dose needs to be individualized. Factors that influence vitamin D need include body size and percent body fat (both of which increase need substantially); sex (males require, on average, 1000 units per day more than females); age (older need more); skin color (darker-skinned races require more, fairer-skinned races less); and other factors that remain ill-defined.

But these are "rules" often broken. My office experience with vitamin D now numbers nearly 1000 patients. The average female dose is 4000-5000 units per day, average male dose 6000 units per day to achieve a blood level of 60-70 ng/ml, though there are frequent exceptions. I've had 98 lb women who require 12,000 units, 300 lb men who require 1000 units, 21-year olds who require 10,000 units. (Of course, this is a Wisconsin experience. However, regional differences in dosing needs diminish as we age, since less and less vitamin D activation occurs.)

Let me reiterate: Steroid hormone-vitamin D dose needs to be individualized.

There's only one way to individualize your need for vitamin D and thereby determine your dose: Measure a blood level.

Nobody can gauge your vitamin D need by looking at you, by your skin color, size, or other simple measurement like weight or body fat. A vitamin D blood level needs to be measured specifically -- period.

I've also just begun taking high quality cod liver oil and butter oil, based on the recommendation of Weston A. Price and others. (I got my supply here.) Given the cost of the butter oil, I'm definitely looking for noticeable results -- as I've heard other people report. I'm particularly hoping for an improvement to my dental health, as I'm very prone to cavities and inflamed gums. That would be huge for me.

Israel and Hezbollah

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

StrategyPage reports this little news tidbit regarding Israel and Hezbollah (look at the October 4, 2008 entry, towards the end of the webpage):

Israel has announced that, if there is another round of Hezbollah rocket attacks from southern Lebanon, all the villages that the attacks come from will be destroyed. Hezbollah is ignoring the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and again installing rocket storage areas in the basements of homes, or nearby. The locals are threatened with violence or death by Hezbollah if they resist, so Israel is now playing by the same rules and letting the villagers know that, yes, they are in the crossfire if the rockets go off again

Now I don't know whether Israel's political leadership will actually follow through with their promise. But at least they are articulating the right principle. If Israel is attacked again by Hezbollah, then they have the moral right to strike back and end the threat even if it involves the deaths of Lebanese civilians in those villages where the rockets are coming from.

If those civilians were coerced by Hezbollah into storing those rockets in their homes, then the moral fault for their deaths lies with Hezbollah, not with Israel. If those civilians were willing, then they are active participants and cannot claim to be "innocent civilians".

And it also means that if Lebanese civilians genuinely don't want Hezbollah forcing them to act against their own self-interest, then they will have to stand up and oppose Hezbollah and fight instead for a better Lebanese government that protects their rights (rather than violates those rights and puts them in harm's way).

Of course, if another conflict were to break out between Israel and Hezbollah, I expect the usual unjust condemnation of Israel by the Western press decrying those "innocent civilian casualties" in Lebanon. And American politicians (of both political parties) will put intense diplomatic pressure on Israel to stand down. And Israel will eventually knuckle under, bringing them one step closer to national suicide.

America does not have to fight Israel's wars -- that's not our job. But the one thing we can do is to give Israel our moral support -- in particular affirming with words and deeds that it has a right to defend itself. That more than anything else could reshape Middle East politics in a positive direction and put America's enemies on notice that there will no longer be "business as usual".

Unfortunately, I don't expect this sort of leadership from either McCain or Obama. And if Israel does eventually go under, it won't be long before we're next...

Two Cheers for Divided Government

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

There's been a lot of buzz on the blogosphere lately regarding this chart in the October 14, 2008 New York Times showing that since 1929, the stock market has done far better under a Democratic President than a Republican President (even if you exclude the Herbert Hoover years).

The annualized rate of return under Democrats was 8.9% where as under Republicans was 4.7% (excluding Hoover) and 0.4% (including Hoover).



However, this article in the Wall Street Journal shows that although the figures are true, the stock market has actually done best under a divided government -- and specifically when the President is a Democrat and the Congress is Republican.

This makes sense to me. Under a divided government, each party tends to moderate some (although not all) of the worst excesses of the other party. Furthermore, a divided system seems to work better with a Republican Congress restraining a Democratic President, rather than the other way around. For a variety of reasons, Republicans are better in the opposition than in power and will then sometimes even fight for fiscal responsibility. On the other hand, when we've had a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, the President often tries to be "more altruist than thou" in outspending the Democrats, so as to avoid looking mean and selfish.

Yaron Brook once said that we've seen the least growth in government when we've had this pattern of divided government with a Democratic President and Republican Congress. It's good to know that this also is the best combination for the stock market and economic growth.

Unfortunately, it seems pretty unlikely that we'll have that particular combination in 2008. But depending on how the next 2 years turns out, we could easily see this relatively desirable combination in 2010 (just as Democratic control of both branches in 1992 turned into the "better" divided government in 1994.)

Who Is Barack Obama?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

We know that young Barack Obama came under the influence of the ideas of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was a communist who taught, as I understand it, that socialists should become part of the capitalist power structure in order to destroy it from within.

(I have my doubts as to how effective this theory is. Once you become part of the power structure, and your livelihood, your mortgage payments, your future and your children's future all depend on that structure, would you want to destroy it? The system changes radicals before they can change it. Gaining power in our mixed economy would turn communists into fascists. At worst, socialists would work to destroy everything but their power and their 401k's.)

The still unanswered question about Obama is: what does he want? Does he secretly intend to destroy capitalism from within? Or does he want power to further the welfare state like your garden variety Democrat? How radical is he?

We know one disturbing thing about Obama. He is willing to lie in order to gain power. He said Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood. That was a lie. He said he did not know Jeremiah Wright was an anti-American radical. Larry Elder writes,

In "Dreams from My Father," Obama talks of attending the "Audacity of Hope Sermon" (pages 292-293). There is an audio book in Obama's own voice reading this passage. Obama hears Wright speak of Hiroshima and Sharpeville as examples of acts of injustice....

What is Sharpeville? In 1960, the South African apartheid government shot down unarmed protestors, killing 69 black men, women and children. Most of the dead were shot in the back, and nearly 200 more were wounded.

Obama felt no sense of outrage to hear Hiroshima and Sharpeville mentioned in the same breath. Indeed, he was so inspired by the sermon that he uses the sermon's title -- "Audacity of Hope" -- for his second book, and as the theme of his campaign!

I would have run from Wright. Only an anti-American radical would liken Hiroshima to Sharpeville. Obama forged an alliance with the man, then lied about it when Wright became politically inconvenient.

Rush Limbaugh made an interesting observation of Obama yesterday. Obama is being praised for keeping his cool in the debates. Rush said Obama is not cool, he is cold. This is true. He keeps his emotions so controlled that he comes off passionless and reserved. It makes him hard to read. He seems to have made a conscious decision to create a persona of "presidential temperament," which is a front intended to reassure voters that he is no wild-eyed radical. It makes me more suspicious that he is hiding his true intentions -- which brings us back to my original question. What does he want?

I've linked to this several times, but we would do well to remember it:

His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality.

One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser.

Another thing worries me. We have seen in Obama's campaign a brazen new approach to political success that seems to be working (Obama's election as President will be the fruit of this new approach). Here's how it works. Obama will lie and depend on the MSM to let the lie rest uncontested. Then he will accuse his opponents of lying, which is taken up by the MSM and the left side of the blogosphere. Finally, Obama's opponents are smeared as racists or full of hatred if they stand in the Messiah's way.

The lies and smears are part of the totalitarian contempt for reason on the left that has been around a long time, but never before have we seen a candidate so willing to lie (and so good at it) coupled with a media so willing to make his lies the accepted "narrative." The left believes that the truth is irrevelant; politics is the conflict to establish your narrative over your opponent's narrative. The next step will be shutting up conservative talk radio and developing a brown shirt force to use force and intimidation against all those capitalists too blinded by greed to understand that they exist as sheep to be sacrificed to the state.

(The foolish George W. Bush has given statist Presidents a new tool to use in any ginned up "crisis":

On October 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. The new law allows the President to declare a “public emergency” at his own discretion, and place federal troops anywhere throughout the United States. Under this law, the President also now has the authority to federalize National Guard troops without the consent of Governors, in order to restore “public order.” The President can now deploy federal troops to U.S. cities, which eliminates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. In short, Bush can now declare Martial Law anytime he pleases.)

Another troubling trend has been the collapse of the conservatives. As altruists they are intellectually helpless against any expansion of state power framed as helping the needy among us. Every year fewer conservatives bother to oppose big government. The more voters depend on government handouts, the harder it is for politicians to advocate any cut in spending.

The trends on the left and the right indicate that we are entering a new period in America. This new period will see the spread of state power and the death of our freedoms, one by one.

Whether or not Obama consciously wants to destroy freedom in America -- and I think that as a "blank screen" he has become more a mixed economy Democrat than any communist -- the welfare state is doing it anyway, crisis by crisis.

Diana Hsieh in the New York Times

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm pleased to report that I make a small appearance in the just-published New York Times column "On Religion," written by Samuel Freedman: For Atheists, Politics Proves to Be a Lonely Endeavor.

The column focuses on Colorado's Amendment 48, particularly on the difficulty of mobilizing secular voters in opposition to this faith-based measure. I appear toward the end, as part of a gentle criticism:

With their trust in the power of reason, atheists might also be ill-equipped for the gritty work of retail politics -- the phone banks, the door-knocking, the car pools to the polls. If nothing else, they are coming late to the craft.

As founder and leader of a Colorado-based coalition for secular government, Diana Hsieh has written a detailed position paper attacking Amendment 48. Other atheist activists have written letters to the editor and participated in online forums about the ballot measure. Relatively few, however, have thrown themselves into the get-out-the-vote operations that conservative Christians, for instance, have excelled at.

"We need to get more of our people out," said Ms. Hsieh, 33, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado. "It's just not the strategy I've taken. I'm a policy-wonk type. Going to talk to people outside the grocery store is just not going to be my strong suit."

It's true: my battle is philosophical. Support for Amendment 48 is rooted in the deeply-held but false belief that "life begins at conception." (By that, people mean that a new person, with the right to life, is created at conception.) Recent polls show that, of likely Colorado voters, 41% believe that "life begins at conception" and 39% support Amendment 48. The overlap is not coincidental. So as I said in a recent press release for the Coalition for Secular Government:

To effectively combat measures like Amendment 48, the whole 'pro-life' ideology must be challenged at its root... Reproductive rights must be defended on principle, based on the objective facts of human nature. With regard to abortion, the fact is that a fetus or embryo is only a potential person so long as encased within and dependent on the woman. Once born, the infant is a new individual person with the right to life. That view ought to be the basis for the laws of a free society. Any alternative -- any attempt to grant rights to the embryo or fetus -- would violate the rights of pregnant women.

While I don't dispute with the importance of "retail politics" for winning elections, the defeat of the religious right in Colorado will require sustained philosophic arguments about the nature, source, and scope of rights. I'm pleased with what I've been able to do on that score so far. And once I finish my Ph.D at Boulder this spring, I'll be able to do far more than I can now. Nonetheless, I hope to never stand outside a grocery store arguing abortion with random passersby!

Finally, I must mention that it was a pleasure to discuss these issues with Samuel Freedman. He was sharp, fair, and interested in my views. His column reflects that -- and I am very appreciative.

Right-to-Work Laws, Again

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

On FRODO (the discussion list of Front Range Objectivism), someone objected to my opposition to Colorado's Amendment 47 -- a "right-to-work" measure that would forbid private businesses from requiring union membership as a condition of employment -- on the grounds of "freedom of choice" and "natural rights."

My reply is of general interest, as I think the legitimacy of "right-to-work" laws can be confusing. I wrote:

The idea that people have some kind of natural right to work for another person -- without regard for their employer's terms -- is completely ridiculous.

If my employer says that he's only willing to hire me if I cut my hair short, put in 10 hour days, donate money to ARI, or join a union, that's his right. And it's my right -- precisely because I'm a free person, not a slave -- to refuse employment under those terms.

To say that he is obliged to hire me, even though I don't meet his terms, would make him my slave.

That's why "right-to-work" laws are wrong. They are yet another violation of the right to contract -- in a misguided, typically conservative attempt to make existing pro-union laws more "fair." But in fact, freedom requires the repeal of those unjust pro-union laws -- not passing even more unjust regulations to "level the playing field" or "protect choice."

My view here is the definitive Objectivist position. In the June 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter, Barbara Branden addressed the issue of "right-to-work" laws:

What is the Objectivist stand on "right-to-work" laws?

As advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, Objectivists are opposed to any legislation that abridges the freedom of production and trade. We are, therefore, opposed to the "right-to-work" laws.

The "right-to-work" laws prohibit employers and unions from contractually agreeing to and stipulating a closed and/or union shop. As such, these laws clearly represent an infringement of the rights of the parties involved; these laws rest on the principle that the government has the right to prescribe the terms of contractual agreements-which is a Statist concept. In a free society, an employer who voluntarily negotiates with a voluntary union, may sign any agreement with the union that he wishes. Although it is doubtful whether a closed and/or union shop agreement would ever be economically wise, that choice is the employer's to make. No one's rights are infringed by such an agreement; a worker does not have a "right" to a job with a given employer; if he does not or cannot meet the employer's terms, he is free to seek employment elsewhere.

Many "conservatives" champion "right-to-work" laws on the ground that today unions are so powerful they can virtually compel an employer's agreement to a closed and/or union shop. It is true that unions have such power. But they acquired it only by virtue of legislation, which had the effect of forcing men into unions whether they wished to join or not and of forcing employers to deal with these unions. Unions did not and could not achieve, in a free society, the monopolistic, destructive power they possess in today's "mixed economy." The guilty party is not unionism as such, but government controls.

The solution lies, not in passing new laws, but in repealing the laws that caused the disaster in the first place.

The defenders of freedom do not serve their own cause by trying to fight their battle on the enemy's terms, that is, by deciding that the solution to the evil of government intervention in the economy is more government intervention.

Ari Armstrong has more on his blog.

New Web Site: Repeal the Bailout

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A most welcome message from Tony Donadio, posted to OActivists last week:

In response to last week's passage of the financial bailout legislation, I've taken the liberty of acquiring the domain name repealthebailout.net and creating a rudimentary website. It can be found here:

www.repealthebailout.net

Right now, it's more or less just a skeleton, consisting mainly of links to various articles on the subject. However, I have a strong suspicion that last week's bailout isn't the last one we're going to be facing, and that the website may continue to be relevant for some time to come. I plan to try to update it steadily as my (unfortunately limited) time allows, both with original material and with new and timely links.

I'm interested in feedback and thoughts on what I've (hastily) thrown together so far, so please feel free to respond to me (preferably directly, so as not to clutter the list) if you have any. I'm also interested in new and useful links as well as original contributions if you have any to offer or suggest.

Thanks -- Tony Donadio

Tony has done a fantastic job with Repeal the Bailout. Kudos to him! Please do point people to it in any writing you do about the financial crisis, e.g. in e-mail discussions, comments on news stories, comments on blogs, and the like.

Such small sites focused on some current issue -- like my even smaller Vote No on 59 -- are relatively easy to create, maintain, and promote. They can get a steady stream of search traffic, as shown by the stats of No on 59. (See the visits and referrals.) They're an effective and enduring form of activism for just a few hours of your time.

Notably, because of Vote No on 59, Ari Armstrong was interviewed by the local news for a segment on Amendment 59 on Tuesday. It was shown at 5:30 and again at 9:00; you can watch it here. (The reporter called me due to the web site, and I pointed her to Ari, as he's more knowledgeable than me.) That's an unusually good result, but certainly possible in a busy election season! In the meantime, over 100 interested Colorado voters each day are reading why they should vote "No" on this permanent tax hike.

You can make a difference -- if you speak out!

Pro-Life Feminist?

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Today, the Christian Science Monitor published an excellent letter to the editor by William Stoddard, a much-valued NoodleFood commenter. As published, it reads:

Regarding the Oct. 14 Opinion piece, "Amid Palin hype, a pro-life feminist's dilemma": "Pro-life feminism" is a contradiction in terms. A woman who would deprive other women of control over their own bodies, by legally compelling them to carry pregnancies to term against their will, is not a credible advocate of women's rights.

Abortion is not an easy choice for any woman, and it would be a good thing if the need for it were minimized through conscientious use of contraception. But the claim that a fetus is a person under the law has intolerable implications. A fetal "right to life" would define doctors who perform abortions, and women who undergo them, as murderers. This would be the case even for women who became pregnant through rape, or who were carrying profoundly defective children.

The law should protect the pregnant woman's right to decide what to do. Any other policy is opposed both to feminism and to the broader concept of individual rights.

William H. Stoddard
San Diego

Unfortunately, it's not available online yet. (It was definitely printed today, as I have a hard copy in front of me. Paul subscribes, as it's a great little newspaper.)

Typical American Voters?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ben Smith received this email from a Republican consultant who ran a focus group that watched an ad attacking Obama:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills.  I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

If these people are at all representative of the thinking among the American electorate at large...

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Faith-based Politics Costs Colorado Republicans

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The following op-ed by Ari Armstrong was released by the Coalition for Secular Government as a non-exclusive op-ed yesterday. It has a similar theme as his earlier CSG op-ed, With Palin, McCain Ignores Colorado Warning. This version includes some additional links for reference, added by Ari.

Faith-based politics costs Colorado Republicans
by Ari Armstrong

Colorado is known for its Western values of independence and economic liberty. So why do Republicans, the supposed champions of those values, keep getting trounced?

Republicans can blame wealthy Democratic donors, but in large part Republicans have beaten themselves by pushing a faith-based agenda of banning abortion and stem-cell research, discriminating against homosexuals, and directing welfare dollars to religious groups. They have subverted the law to religious doctrine and weakened the wall between church and state.

Republicans also have alienated freedom-minded independents and Republicans. Polls released by Pew show most Americans, and half of conservatives, now oppose church involvement in politics. As Ryan Sager shows in his review of 2005 Pew data, the Interior West holds a "live and let live" philosophy, with 53 percent of residents saying homosexuality "should be accepted by society" and 59 percent saying "the government is getting too involved in the issue of morality." [See the appendix of Sager's The Elephant In the Room.]

Yet the GOP panders to its evangelical base at the expense of political victory.

This year, Republicans passed a resolution at their state convention calling for the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Eighteen Republican candidates signed the Colorado Right to Life survey, saying they want to ban abortion as the will of God and outlaw stem-cell medical research.

The same candidates also endorsed Amendment 48, which would define a fertilized egg as a person in Colorado's constitution. This would lay the ground to ban all abortion except perhaps to save the mother's life, ban the birth control pill and other forms of contraception that may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, and ban most fertility treatments. Women would be forced to bring a pregnancy to term, even in cases of rape, incest, fetal deformity, and health risks.

True, some of these candidates, such as Congressman Doug Lamborn and congressional candidate Mike Coffman, live in safe districts for Republicans. But Libby Szabo, a candidate for state senate in District 19, does not. Her opponents have hammered her over her answers to the survey, making sure to link her views to the GOP.

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, the incumbent in a Republican district, has managed to fall behind challenger Betsy Markey in some polls [one and two]. Musgrave wants to outlaw abortion, and she is most well known for sponsoring a constitutional gay marriage ban.

Republican Bob Schaffer is trailing Mark Udall in the polls in the U.S. Senate race in part because of Schaffer's faith-based politics. Udall has written, "I fully support the continued separation of church and state in this country." He opposes bans on abortion and stem-cell research. Schaffer, evoking God's will, said abortion is "always wrong."

Republicans should have learned their lesson when they lost the governership to the Democrats in 2006, when Bob Beauprez touted his faith-based politics and selected a running mate of the same cloth, Janet Rowland. Like Beauprez, Rowland wanted to outlaw abortion and maintain faith-based welfare.

Yet the GOP continues to actively push its anti-abortion agenda. A recent flyer "Paid for by Colorado Republican Committee" urged recipients to vote for a presidential candidate who opposes abortion and who will appoint Supreme Court justices to outlaw it.

But some who are pro-choice across the board are fighting back. Diana Hsieh founded the Coalition for Secular Government, which issued a paper that she and I wrote titled, "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life." Diana's husband Paul wrote to Dick Wadhams, head of the state GOP, "Although I'm pro-free market, pro-strong national defense, and pro- gun, the position that the CO GOP has taken against abortion is a clear breach of the principle of separation of church and state." Doug Krening wrote to Republican officials, "I have been a Republican for my entire voting life, but cannot endorse the GOP currently because of it's explicit endorsement of religion in government."

On September 11, Amanda Mountjoy, chair of the Colorado Republican Majority for Choice, hosted a banquet with 240 participants to oppose Amendment 48. Former Senator Hank Brown told the crowd, "At the point that we give up supporting and defending individual freedom and choice, we give up the very core of this great party."

Colorado Republicans have two options. They can respect the separation of church and state and defend individual freedom and choice, or they can continue to lose and deserve to do so.

Ari Armstrong is a writer for the Coalition for Secular Government and the editor of FreeColorado.com.

Vote No on Amendment 48, Colorado!

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I've just overhauled the Coalition for Secular Government's web site on Amendment 48: Vote NO on Amendment 48. Please feel free to forward the announcement below to anyone you think might be interested in it.

Announcing the Coalition for Secular Government's new web site on Colorado's Amendment 48:

http://ColoradoVoteNo48.com

Amendment 48 is the ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the Colorado constitution. (Read the full text.) If passed and implemented, it would pose a grave threat to the life, liberty, health, and happiness of the women and men of Colorado.

• Amendment 48 would make abortion first-degree murder, except perhaps to save the woman's life. First-degree murder is defined in Colorado law as deliberately causing the death of a "person," a crime punished by life in prison or the death penalty. So women and their doctors would be punished with the severest possible penalty under law for terminating a pregnancy -- even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity.
  
  

• Amendment 48 would ban any form of birth control that might sometimes prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus -- including the birth control pill, morning-after pill, and IUD. The result would be many more unintended pregnancies and unwanted children in Colorado.
  
  

• Amendment 48 would ban in vitro fertilization because the process usually creates more fertilized eggs than can be safely implanted in the womb. So every year, hundreds of Colorado couples would be denied the joy of a child of their own.

Amendment 48 would have severe legal consequences for Colorado. Men and women would be legally bound to sacrifice themselves for the sake of a zygote -- even before it implants in the womb, even before it develops any recognizable human form, even before it has any capacity for awareness. The people of Colorado would be forced to sacrifice themselves based on the faith-based fiction that zygote is the equal of a born baby.

The common claim that "life begins at conception" cannot justify Amendment 48. The fact that something is human and alive does not make it a person. Every cell in our body is both human and alive, yet we don't worry about giving blood for testing or scraping off a few skin cells in a fall. A fertilized egg is distinctive because, in addition to being alive and human, it might develop into a born baby given the right conditions. What supporters of Amendment 48 cannot show, however, is that a potential baby has the moral status of an actual baby. The difference between them is enormous.

An embryo or fetus is wholly dependent on the woman for its basic life-functions. It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes. It lives as an extension of her body, contained within and dependent on her for its survival. It is only a potential person, not an actual person. That situation changes radically at birth. The newborn baby exists as a distinct organism, separate from his mother. Although still very needy, he lives his own life. He is a person -- and individual. His life must be protected as a matter of right.

Consequently, when a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy she does not violate the rights of any person. Instead, she is exercising her own rights over her own body -- likely in pursuit of her own health, well-being, and happiness. Amendment 48 would destroy those rights in Colorado.

For a detailed analysis of Amendment 48, download and read the Coalition for Secular Government's issue paper by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh: "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person."

Amendment 48 is based on sectarian religious dogma, not objective science or philosophy. It is a blatant attempt to impose theocracy in Colorado. Please vote NO on 48!

For more information, visit Vote NO on Amendment 48.

The Coalition for Secular Government advocates government solely based on secular principles of individual rights. The protection of a person's basic rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness -- including freedom of religion and conscience -- requires a strict separation of church and state.

What We Need Now is Some Good Old-fashioned "Collusion"

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The last debate starts in an hour or so. I can't do it. Really. I'll be ill if I try. After watching the last several weeks of incredible resurgence of statism with government intervention in the economy, it really doesn't matter what the candidates say.

I was tempted for a while to vote McCain, just because the economic crisis is so bad, and potentially will be so devastating if mishandled. My hope was that there was some semblance of basic economics somewhere in his camp. However, after reading about what Roosevelt promised regarding monetary policy and what he actually did after elected (which you can find in this publication: The Great Myths of the Great Depression) it's clear to me that a vote for a pragmatist who says he's for the free market, and consistently bashes it in word and deed is no vote at all. The Republicans are slaves to religion and a pragmatist like McCain will go wherever his handler lead him, and a Democratic Legislative and Executive can only do no good. There is no choice this year. I'm sitting this one out. I'll use the time to pen a few letters to my congressman, and maybe some Letters to the Editor.

Today I read of the heavy handed tactics used by Treasury on our nine largest banks. I read of force used to take ownership rights in banks in exchange for capital. Forced used on both good banks and bad banks alike, and capital thrust upon good banks that didn't need or want it. You should read some of the account here. It is chilling.

The only difference between Hank Paulson and Hugo Chavez is that Paulson "feels badly" about what he's done. Our uniquely American statism takes the form of a seemingly, concerned, reluctant paternalism.  Here, instead of the stern dictator, we have the "reluctant father." Never mind that both have to punish their misbehaving children, in exactly the same fashion.

But I digress. On to the topic at hand.

Megan McCardle almost had me last week, but not this week. She's all concerned about something in the market called "systemic risk," and thinks that this is cause for some form of government regulation of the financial markets. For those of you who don't know finance, systemic risk is risk that an entire financial system is subject to. It is said to be the risk that you cannot eliminate through diversification. This concept however has become the basis for similar thinking as it's cousin in the environmental movement, namely The Doomsday Scenario. Last week this senario was posited for the commercial paper and money markets.

The thinking is that these systemic risks threaten the very existence of the financial markets, and because the markets move so fast that it is possible the once they near this point, that it will be impossible to stop the financial system from imploding. Therefore one needs to regulate the markets in such a way that they stay away from these systemic "cliffs." While markets do move quickly, and can get themselves into trouble, it is fallacious to then posit that the outcome is catastrophic, and that it even can be mitigated by government action.

I'm not suggesting that such risk doesn't exist, but I am seriously questioning that idea that one can mitigate it by regulation. Forgetting for a second that governments themselves are subject to systemic risks, that their meddling can in and of itself be a systemic risk through their unintended consequences (as is the case in this crisis), and that systemic risks are in part unmitigatable because the are unforseeable (which makes one wonder how one regulates against them). The argument that caught me off guard was her thoughts on why governments are uniquely qualified to do the damage control when a crisis hits.

In her discussion on the crisis with Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism (whose blog I have come to rely on for its up to the minute detailed information on this crisis, and who is "gobsmacked" at the Paulson bailout. For her take on why the bailout won't work see her BloggingHeads with McCardle - 18:00. It's quite good.) Megan posits (bold mine),

One of the core issues here, I think what the government is really good at in doing this kind of regulation is first of all it's great at transparency and it's really good at coordination. And so some of the things that people are suggesting, like Luigi Zengales is saying 'look just force people to do an equity transfer' and the reason you want the government to do this is that anyone who does it by themselves sends a bad signal to the market, but if you force everyone to recapitalize at once, then there's no signaling of [balance sheet problems].... But the government is really good at that stuff, when you have a collective action problem in the financial markets which you often do. (passage starts at 38:30, the whole discussion of systemic risk starts at 28:00)

My first response to this was "hmm, ok, yes government can generate broad, unified action." It is of course telling that she uses the word "force" since that is the mechanism by which government accomplishes "unified" action. And it is true that this crisis needs such action. I spent a day noodling on that problem, until one of my favorite capitalists, J.P. Morgan, gave me the answer. Back to my post of last week, Morgan's answer to the crisis of 1907 was to bring all bankers together, turn out balance sheets, and restructure them with capital infusions and write-downs.

In a sense the action required here is the same, a unified action, involving all main banks, restructuring through write-downs and capital infusions. A free market could do this on it's own. Treasury might be able to do it, but it inherently requires nationalization. So why isn't the free market acting? Why is government supposedly better at such action? Because if bank heads do this today, it goes by the term collusion, and it is patently illegal, but it should not be! Government is better at it because it has made the act of doing it illegal for all but itself. Also, for the CEO who has managed his bank poorly, the free market option means he will lose his firm. Such a person, acting pragmatically, would rather hold out for a government bail-out, even if he risks bankruptcy. Implied government action creates that moral hazard that prevents these free market led negotiations!

A "collective action" problem is better handled by the free market, but today, such action is illegal. It should not be. The truth is that instead of Henry Paulson forcing good banks to accept nationalization, it is the good banks who should be presiding over the recapitalization of their more poorly-run brethren.

Lasseiz faire!

Gathering Storm Clouds

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If Obama is President, with a Democratic house, what economic damage would be added to our woes? I think such a government would focus on changes that do not increase the deficit too much. Within that theme, there are lots of bad possibilites:


Social security: Obama wants to raise the tax. This will fund the system, which recently slipped into deficit. On paper, this will also show the so-called "fund" increasing, thus appearing to push social security problems further into the future. With the recent stock-market collapse, alternatives like privatization would be laughed at. So, politically, there's a good chance this will pass. Also, the Dems might claim this is friendly to retirees. Florida is going to be important in 2012.


Unions: Democrats have been trying to push through a "card-check" system that would make it much easier for unions to move into companies like Walmart. In addition, there may be some subtle moves toward protectionism. These would likely be selective, seeking to protect unions in Ohio and perhaps in Michigan. With the dollar already low, U.S. exports are looking more attractive around the world; chance are the government will make some small protectionist moves and claim that the growing exports are their doing! Instead of restrictions on imports, expect hidden subsidies for U.S. companies -- something that will not be too cut-and-dried if other countries protest to the WTO. Expect things like the recent $25 billion guarantee to auto-companies.

Carbon Cap and Trade: Some scheme seems almost certain, since both candidates are pushing for it. The government might try to combine this with giving special offsetting favors to industries in Ohio (and maybe Michigan). Carbon caps can be structured to give existing companies a monopoly advantage. So, expect ertain businesses and unions, to be supporting the environmentalists.


Health Care: The government is going to try to push something through. They probably won't mess with the current employer-sponsored scheme for a while, but we can expect at least some tax on businesses that do not provide health-care. Perhaps they might come up with some rules that raise costs on places like Walmart, by claiming that Walmart let's the government subsidize their health-care costs. I don't think Obama will push to take over private insurance. The country is not ready, and he won;t want those costs on the budget in his first term.

Summary: Those are the most obvious moves that I could think of. The theme will be: important changes, but nothing that requires a tough political fight; only things where today's left-tilting electorate has been well-prepared.

I figure one might as well prepare one's activism and one's portfolio for these things today!

PajamasMedia Discussion of Atlas Shrugged

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The widely-read group blog Pajamas Media has reposted the Dr. Helen Smith essay on Atlas Shrugged and "going John Galt".

It's also been linked to by Instapundit, so it's going to get lots of traffic.

Here's your chance to comment!

The Power of Fiat Money

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Once again, all I need do is head to the main page of the New York Times to find a headline that reads like the punchline of a bad joke. This time it's, "U.S. Investing $250 Billion in Banks". Unfortunately, this is no joke, this is where it starts, and things quickly go even further downhill from there.

Before we take a look at this travesty, let's briefly consider how loans and investments are supposed to work. Jim has what he thinks is a great idea. It could be that he feels financially secure enough to buy a house. It could be that he has an invention he'd like to mass produce and sell. Whatever. Jim's problem is that in order to put this plan into action, he needs more money now than he actually has.

Ned, on the other hand, has lots of extra money sitting around that he has no immediate need for. Ideally, Jim and Ned are free men. Jim can dream and invent to his heart's delight, and Ned can wallow in his pile of money all he wants, so long as neither threatens, robs, or harms the other. Jim can't just take Ned's money, and Ned can't compel Jim to come up with something useful to do with his capital, the extra cash.

But they can trade to mutual benefit. Jim can offer to pay Ned a portion of his later profits in exchange for borrowing his capital now and paying it back later. That's interest. If Ned lends Jim the money, both will be richer at the end of the day because Jim will now own something he did not have the means to obtain on his own and Ned will have even more money sitting around.

But remember: Both men are free. Ned can decide that Jim isn't yet financially secure enough to own a house -- or that his idea for a new whirligig won't sell very well. Ned can turn him down, causing him to seek another lender or delay or abandon his plan. Or Ned can agree with Jim that he's ready for that house, or that there is a vast, untapped demand out there for whirligigs. If both are wrong, Ned loses his money.

That last sentence encapsulates the visible downside to lending, and it is this easily graspable fact that, like Frederic Bastiat's broken window, is getting all the attention. The invisible upside that is being ignored is that the only person losing his shirt here is Ned. Tom, Dick, and Harry all saw what Ned didn't, turned Jim down, and still have their cash. And that's the way it should be. In a free society, that's also the way it is. Whether they decide to lend Ned a hand after he makes a mistake is their decision to make.

In a free society, the consequences for one man's failure are his, and his alone to bear. That's not the way it is now.

Now, we have Slow George and Payola Hank who -- after encouraging countless Neds to make loans for houses to countless Jims and predictably causing more bad loans to be made than there would have otherwise -- coming onto the scene promising to bail everyone out!

This money will ultimately either be taken from Tom, Dick, and Harry through taxation or inflation. And all the Neds and Jims out there who made bad decisions will have learned nothing but that they have a "backstop". Now, when someone makes a bad investment decision, everyone loses! That's bad enough.

Now, let's look at the story. It's worse.

"The needs of our economy require that our financial institutions not take this new capital to hoard it, but to deploy it," Mr. Paulson said, who offered some details of the plan along with the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, and the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila C. Bair.[links dropped]

This is bad, but nothing new yet.

But the power of fiat currency to remove rational judgement from the economy is apparently boundless. Look at what happens when all the nations in a global economy can screw around with monetary units!

After ticking off a list of new government measures to "stabilize" the economy, the article informs us that the government is going to start buying shares of major banks who will, naturally, accept greater government control as part of the "bargain" and that we are in a race with Europe to see whose government will start attempting to manage the whole financial sector first!

On Monday, big banks agreed to take investments totaling about $125 billion. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase will receive $25 billion each. Bank of America, which is acquiring Merrill Lynch, and Wells Fargo, which is acquiring the Wachovia Corporation, will receive $25 billion. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will receive $10 billion each. And Bank of New York Mellon and State Street will get $2 billion to $3 billion.

Another $125 billion is allocated for thousands of small and midsize banks. They will be eligible for government investments reflecting a similar proportion of their assets.

On Tuesday, Mr. Paulson said that in return for the investment, the government would receive preferred shares and warrants for common stock. In addition, he said, the government would expect a reasonable return.

And he said, "Institutions that sell shares to the government will accept restrictions on executive compensation, including a clawback provision and a ban on golden parachutes during the period that Treasury holds equity issued through this program." [links droped, bold added]

How paying top executives less will attract or keep good personnel Paulson never explains. Later on, Paulson admits that he will tell banks to stay away from "exotic" financial activities. Great: We'll have less private brainpower and more central planning in our banking system!

But this is what really grabs me:

The Treasury's plan would help the United States catch up to Europe in what has become a footrace between countries to reassure investors that their banks will not default or that other countries will not one-up their rescue plans and, in so doing, siphon off bank deposits or investment capital. [bold added]

Note the irony. Fiat currency was originally adopted because governments wanted to be able to evade the fact that that you can neither make something out of nothing nor avoid redistributing wealth in order to have loot -- like apparent guarantees for bank deposits -- to pass around. So instead of dealing effectively with knowable, predictable, metaphysical facts, we get to flounder about in a sea of unpredictable man-made crises and their unforeseeable consequences.

Words cannot trump reality. Our government's attempt to repeal reality has deprived it of power to such an extent that we're now aping socialist Europe, and not because we feel like it.

-- CAV

Scenes from the Decline of Freedom in America

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

1. In the November 1968 issue of The Objectivist, Joan Blumenthal writes in "Art For Power's Sake" that the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1942:

"It is hardly lack of due process for the Government to regulate that which it subsidizes."

I bring this up to note that the government "investing" $750 billion -- and that's just the starting figure -- will likely bring a disastrous increase of government power over Wall Street. The state regulated through the SEC and laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley before they were invested. Imagine what they will do now that the government is subsidizing Wall Street. For instance, until now they have "jawboned" CEO's about "golden parachutes," huge bonuses, etc. Do you think lawmakers will still be content from now on with just complaining?

2. Whichever candidate is elected, we will likely see a vast welfare state program in which young people do "service" to the government in exchange for a college education. This will be the beginning of a program that eventually forces every young person to serve the state for two years, either in the military or some make-work program. It will be spirit crushing drudgery that will be hardest to bear by the best, most independent thinking young minds.

3. Barack Obama is the first presidential nominee to use legal and mob intimidation to shut up his opponents. Obama said,

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face."

Look for a big push for a return to the Fairness Doctrine if he is elected. If his coattails bring along a lot of Democrat Senators and Congressmen, watch out. We could be heading for Canada-like laws against "hate speech" -- that is, politically incorrect speech, or speech that is inegalitarian. Statists the people have the right to say what they want -- as long as they say what the state approves.

Obama's disdain for the right to free speech is troubling because we desperately need to spread a rational philosophy in order to change the culture. It is freedom's last hope.

4. In his latest TIA Daily Robert Tracinski reminds us of a stunning speech by Al Gore in September in which he called for mob violence, though he did not use those words, of course.

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.

Tracinski observes that civil disobedience is supposed to be aimed at government. Against private industries, it is mob violence. He also observes that there are no commercial-level businesses that use "capture and sequestration" because costs would increase by 50%. In other words, Gore is calling for mob action against just about every business with a smoke stack.

Here are two of the most prominent Democrats, the present presidential nominee and a former one, urging people to use force. These calls are the beginning of what will develop into a brown shirt force on the left. Already people know not to put Republican stickers on a car in certain neighborhoods, such as college towns. This climate of fear is what the left wants throughout America, and the nascent brown shirt force implicit in Obama's and Gore's calls for intimidation and mob violence will be the agents of force. People will learn to think twice before they speak out against the left. The left wants people living in fear.

We are heading into the most dangerous and challenging period in American history. Yes, Americans have faced huge challenges before -- wars, depressions and riots, among others -- but never before has America been so philosophically and culturally rotten; never before has state power been so advanced. We are likely to lose a lot of freedom in the time of evil we are entering. How we respond to the next 10-20 years should tell us if the rest of the 21st century will further the decline.

Force That Isn't Force

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has written an interesting post about a recent survey which purports to show that, "Approximately 18% of women aged 18-24 report having experienced forced sexual intercourse at least once in their lives".

He notes that the types of "force" reported include "Told Relationship Would End" and "Pressured by Words/Actions Without Threats". Of the women who said they were subject to force, 12% said they experienced the first and 61% said they experienced the second. (Respondents could select more than one category of force in the survey.)

As Professor Volokh notes:

This is just ridiculous. It's true that the word "force" has many possible meanings: Some people, for instance, feel they're "forced" "against [their] will" to work in certain jobs -- or are doing those jobs not "of their own free will" -- because that's the only way they can enjoy the standard of living they want. But these are radically different kinds of force from being forced to do something by physical force, or threat of physical injury. And mixing the two yields results that are useless at best and misleading and dangerous at worst.

The survey did note that some women reported being subjected to genuine force, such as "Physically Hurt Or Injured" or "Threatened With Physical Hurt". And of course, these sort of forced sexual intercourse should be condemned and/or prosecuted as criminal violation of individual rights.

But to lump into the same conceptual category of "Force" both "Pressured by Words/Actions Without Threats" and "Physically Hurt Or Injured" is a prime example of what Ayn Rand called the fallacy of package dealing:

"Package-dealing" is the fallacy of failing to discriminate crucial differences. It consists of treating together, as parts of a single conceptual whole or "package," elements which differ essentially in nature, truth-status, importance or value.

This sort of intellectual package dealing destroys actual concepts (in this case of "force") in people's minds and makes rational analysis of the ideas impossible.

Fortunately, there are still people like Professor Volokh who recognize this as a dangerous fallacy and are willing to point it out.

LTE about Ayn Rand in The Telegraph

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The October 14, 2008 edition of the UK paper The Telegraph printed the following letter on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged (towards the bottom of the page):

Sir - Ayn Rand has been mentioned several times in your pages of late, but it is startling how prescient was her novel Atlas Shrugged.

There is the socially responsible banker who went bust because he gave loans to those who needed them, rather than to those who could afford them. There's the government regulation and takeovers to ensure that failed businesses keep going.

There's the unthinking desire to cling on to "stability", and the consensus that it is a global problem and everyone must pull together for the common good.

All is in denial of reality, a rejection of reason. Result: the rational is distrusted; men are guilty of being "unfair" if they value competence and "unfeeling" if they refuse to indulge failure. The individual is subordinated to the national, and the national to the international.

If Rand was right thus far, what of the years ahead? Perhaps the motor of the world is stopping.

Iwan Price-Evans, Enfield, Middlesex

The big question is whether our version will have the same happy ending or not...

A Slender Silver Lining to the Bailout?

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Although the economic crisis and subsequent bailout are going to be painful for our country, there may be a very slender silver lining -- namely that the loss of money will likely derail some plans for more big government programs.

Here are a two recent examples, one in health care and the other in "green" legislation:

"After Bailout, What Will Health Reform Look Like?"

A growing number of experts have abandoned all hopes of major health reform. "The bailout makes it that much tougher, because health care will be crowded out by other issues," said Drew Altman, president and CEO of Kaiser Family Foundation...

And,

"Efforts on global warming chilled by economic woes"

The economic free fall gripping the nation may bring down one of the main environmental objectives: capping the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming. ...[T]he focus on stabilizing the economy probably will make it more difficult to pass a law to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At the very least, it will push back when the reductions would have to start.

These stories suggest that even if a President Obama and a Democratic-controlled Congress wanted to implement these bad ideas, they probably wouldn't be able to do so immediately, purely because of cost.

(It was similar economic constraints that stopped California from imposing "universal health care" at the state level last year, even though the Democratic state legislature and Republican Governor Schwarzenegger were both strongly in favor of it.)

Obviously, this would just be a temporary reprieve -- the liberals' underlying bad ideology has not changed. And I fully recognize that there are plenty of other bad laws that both the Left and the Right could propose (such as restrictions on free speech) that wouldn't require much money to implement.

But the economic downturn could buy us a little more time to continue the fight for good ideas. Let's not waste it...

Update: This New York Times column by David Brooks argues the opposite -- that an Obama admininistration would use the financial crisis as the pretext for massively increased government spending, despite the fact that the country will not be able to afford it.

Either way, I think we'll have our work cut out for us...

Lurch to Religion?

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Rob Tarr recently posted the following warning on HBL about people turning to religion en masse in times of crisis. (He also sent it to me, as I don't subscribe to that list. He gave me permission to post it here.)

From Rob Tarr

What about a turn to religion as a test?

I expressed in a Sep 18th post my fear that the coming severe recession/depression would cause a strong turn to religion:

"Tens of thousands of people working for Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns saw their jobs, careers, and life-savings wiped out this year. There will be millions more throughout the economy as we head into a very deep recession in the next 6 months. Times of crisis always lead people to reassess their lives and turn to whatever version of philosophy is at hand to explain the "true meaning of life". Often this has been religion, and with the energized state of religion today, this will be true more than ever. The religious message will resonate more deeply than ever as many people watch their material wealth evaporate (wealth that in many cases they have worked decades to accumulate). Doesn't this prove that pursuing material wealth is a "false god", a "mirage"? That you shouldn't be wasting time piling up "treasure on earth"; instead you should be piling up "treasure in heaven"?"

This week, the Pope stole my talking points, and started his "p.r. campaign" to take advantage of the crisis, in a widely reported story:

"Opening a Synod of Bishops in the Vatican the Pope referred to a passage from St Matthew's Gospel on false prophets, saying ''He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand''.

''We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God's words are a solid reality''

Expect to see this times 100 over the next few years. I see this as the biggest danger by far. People will turn away from rational, this-worldly, long-term values en masse. Why work for decades long goals when you can lose it all in a few months? People will become *much* more short-term focused in their plans and values over the next few years, due to the crisis and the uncertainty; and much less interested in long-term material production as a goal. But that is a difficult place to be, psychologically. Religion will step in to fill the void.

This warning is important to my -- and hopefully your -- effects to advocate good principles in the culture. It underscores the urgency of the task, as well as the importance of advocating Objectivism as an alternative to the mysticism of the right and the nihilism of the left.

Personally, I'd thought about the possibility of a major economic crisis making people ripe for major lurch toward statism. In contrast, during good times, most people aren't willing to knock over the apple cart of prosperity and comfort for the sake of ideology. However, in such times of crisis, a mass lurch to religion seems just as likely -- and even more dangerous in the long run.

Imagine the Moment! (Columbus’s Discovery of America)

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Numerology of Nose-Counting

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I place no importance on “national” polls on any subject, and certainly none on “local” polls or polls conducted within certain groups, such as scientists or parents or garage mechanics, not even when a poll is “positive” on a position I think is rational or proper. They are a hybrid creature of the art of statistics. Like statistics, they can be as skewed and weighted as loaded dice or marked cards. They are as trustworthy as a roulette wheel governed by a discreetly employed, out-of-sight foot pedal. Percentages generated by polls are basically meaningless, even when they are not manipulated or tilted towards an a priori conclusion. Polls and statistics ought to be put in the same retirement home for pseudo-sciences in the company of numerology, tarot cards, horoscopes, and phrenology.

In all the years I have been writing about political campaigns, not once have I been asked for my opinion by a pollster. Not on the street, not through the mail or by phone. Nor would I participate in a poll if ever asked to participate in one.

At its very best, a poll can only indicate a prevalence, prejudice or bias in a handful of individuals for or against something. A consensus held by a minuscule number of people should not be mistaken for truth or proof or for the consensus of a far larger group of people. Yet, because so many place grave, illogical importance on the significance of polls, polls are used as tools of persuasion or dissuasion. How often has one heard during the presidential campaign that Obama has an x-point lead over McCain? What is the true significance of that statement? In fact, there is none, especially when one knows that the individuals polled represent an infinitesimal fraction of the total population.

But, then, as Ayn Rand once aptly remarked, fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one. Nose-counting cannot establish metaphysical or even moral truths.

Most news anchors and other teleprompter readers know this (while reading off-screen copy written by their left-liberal news writers; the papers one sees them marking up or shuffling around are meaningless props), yet they continue to cite polls in their reportage and attach to them metaphysical authority. It allows these photogenic icons to subtly promote their own favorite candidates or positions by discouraging viewers they suspect might vote for candidates the anchors dislike.

This is not journalism; it is the art of insinuation. “Don’t bother hoping for a McCain win, because according to the latest Flugelhorn and Flummery poll Obama has a 15-point lead, and is a shoo-in come November. Unless you switch your vote to Obama, you shouldn’t even bother casting a ballot.” I say this without voicing any preference for McCain or Obama, both of whom of despicable statists who have demonstrated as much understanding of America and the principles on which it was founded as George the Third. Or George W. Bush.

I would discourage people from voting at all (as a friend once remarked to me, voting only encourages the politicians), in order to give the winner the least possible mandate to govern and intrude into one’s life. Of course, political mandates any more mean little or nothing to our elective aristocracy. I noted in “The Congressional Betrayal of America” and “America vs. Congress” that Congressmen’s phones and computers were overheating from communiqués from their constituents expressing opposition to the proposed bailout. The phenomenon was noteworthy even in the news media.

For example, it prompted Fox News on October 10 to report the results of a national telephone poll conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corp. between October 8 and 9, in which over 50% of the 900 polled registered voters of mixed political affiliations opposed further government action on the bailout or did not think the bailout would accomplish anything more than a continuance of government screw-ups. Well, that was sorta-kinda good news, although the poll did not suggest the thinking behind the opposition. The poll also indicated that some in the news media suspected that the “necessity” of a bailout or the nationalization of the economy was not thought to be a good idea among some of the electorate.

Our elective aristocracy disagreed. It voted for the bailout.

Knowing the reasoning of the 50+% would have given Fox and me more valuable information, although it would still have remained a matter of 50 million Frenchmen vs. 900 registered voters vs.500 orangutans vs. 263 Congressmen.

That’s “democracy” in action. And you thought this was a rights-protecting republic. The last of it died on October 3, when Congress betrayed America.

No such thing as a free lunch

By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlog

When arguing against the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act last year, I wrote

If discrimination based on comprehensive genetic screening is legal, we can expect health providers to tailor plans according to our individual risk factors. That might be to the disadvantage of a minority of high-risk individuals, but greater information about risk factors will lower uncertainty, and thus lower rates overall. Furthermore, insurers will offer incentives to people who take proactive steps to discover health risks and take steps to alleviate them. Expensive procedures such as frequent biopsies or preemptive removal of organs might be fully covered for individuals whose genetic profiles uncover a high cancer risk.

Unfortunately, Congress did not heed my arguments, and banned genetic discrimination anyway.  It is now illegal for health insurers to take genetic factors into consideration when setting premiums.  What effect do you think the law had on the incentive of insurance companies to pay for their customer’s genetic screening? 

If the goal of the law was to encourage genetic screening, it clearly had the opposite effect.  In response, celebrities are now “fighting for women to have access to MRIs and genetic testing.”  Having forced insurance companies to ignore the results of genetic testing, people now want to force them to pay for it.

Do you think that people who find out that they have a higher probability of having an illness with genetic factors would be more likely to purchase more health insurance than individuals with a low probability of genetic illness?  As I wrote last year,

It does not take an economist to predict that rates would immediately rise, as healthy people, refusing to pay for their neighbor’s health risks, stopped using insurance altogether. As the young and healthy jump ship, insurance companies would have to increase rates, accelerating the trend. Without further government interference, the health insurance business would disappear completely, shortly after millionaires on their deathbeds became the only people able to afford policies.

Are you still wondering why healthcare is so expensive in the U.S.?

Fairness Doctrine for Blogs?

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A few hours ago, Stephen Green of VodkaPundit sent out a mass e-mail to over 100 notable bloggers (and others) with this post on the threat of Obama attempting to apply the Fairness Doctrine to blogs, if elected. What the hell, I thought. So I replied to all with the following:

Stephen (and others) --

Like you, I'm seriously worried about free speech under Obama. But damned if I'd feel any more secure with McCain. The man has absolutely no respect whatsoever for the First Amendment -- and he showed that by sponsoring and passing the most severe restrictions on political speech in recent decades.

When asked whether McCain-Feingold violates freedom of speech, McCain said, "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote 'First Amendment rights' are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

Campaign finance laws are strangling political debate in America. In recent months, I've been forced to spend hours of my time filling out campaign finance forms -- just to spend a whopping $200 of my own money fighting Amendment 48. (That's the Colorado ballot measure that would grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs.) The money was used to print and mail copies of an issue paper I co-authored, i.e. simply to advocate my views. After that, I realized that spending money to defeat the measure just wasn't worth my cost in time. Galt help me if I was actually taking donations -- or spending serious money. I would have had to hire an army of accountants!

For more on Colorado's Amendment 48, see:

http://www.seculargovernment.us/a48.shtml

For more on the injustice of campaign finance, see Yaron Brook's article in Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/...0321yaro n.html

The next four years will be very bad for freedom of speech, regardless of the name of the man in the Oval Office. Blogs will likely be on the chopping block, and we'll have to fight for our most basic right to speak our mind.

-- DMH

* Diana Hsieh: diana@dianahsieh.com
* NoodleFood: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
* Coalition for Secular Government: http://www.seculargovernment.us

"Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized
Egg Is Not a Person" by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh:
http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf

A few notes:

(1) I'm familiar with the basics of the Fairness Doctrine, but it's not clear to me how it might be applied to online media (in general) and blogs (in particular). Does anyone know?

(2) I'm not sure that I agree with my last sentence: "Blogs will likely be on the chopping block." The fact is that blogs are substantially dependent on mainstream media. If the government effectively controls those sources of information, then it might not need to enact any controls particular to blogs to effectively silence them.

(3) For more on the kind of campaign finance laws that I've dealt with in my fight against Amendment 48 in Colorado, see this post by Ari Armstrong.

HOW DO YOU CELEBRATE COLUMBUS DAY?

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

How do you celebrate Columbus Day? Here is an excerpt from the article, Columbus was a hero by Dimitri Vassilaros. [Via Randex.]

Columbus essentially was an explorer and discoverer bringing Western civilization's cures, science and technology, he says. The philosophical legal process was another gift the Europeans gave to the Indians, he says. "Indians got all that for free."

Columbus' critics should fall down on their knees and thank the Founding Fathers for creating a nation based on the moral principle of the individual's right to life, liberty and, Bowden stresses, the selfish pursuit of happiness. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 10, 2008)

Related: My post, COLUMBUS AND LEIF ERIKSON DAY.

YUJA WANG

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Have you heard about classical pianist Yuja Wang? Here is an excerpt from Lawrence A. Johnson's article, The restless, intellectual life of 21-year-old Wang. [Via Randex.]

In addition to a voracious appetite for music, the depth of Wang's taste in reading is impressive in an age when The Da Vinci Code is considered classic literature. ''Right now I'm reading The Idiot by Dostoyevsky,'' she says. ''And I read Nietzsche's Thus Sprach Zarathustra and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. And I love Victor Hugo. I read no trash,'' she laughs. (The Miami Herald, October 10, 2008.)

Quick Roundup 369

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Why the Right to Property Keeps Popping Up

Brian Phillips, who specializes in issues relating to property rights, makes the following interesting observation about blogging:

I sometimes struggle when choosing a topic for this blog. The problem is the lack of topics, the problem is the absolutely overwhelming number of potential topics. Any political or economic issue in the news is worthy of comment, because all of them involve a property rights issue in one form or another.

He then provides numerous supporting examples, and concludes with a quote from Ayn Rand explaining why this is the case.

Property rights must be protected so that each individual can effectively tie together thought and action.

No less interesting than the centrality of property rights as a political issue are its implications. I have noted numerous times here that government infringements on property rights result not just in more of the same (often as a "corrective"), but also in infringements on other rights, and vice versa.

The nature of rights is not generally understood, but most people seem to appreciate them on some level, although if I had to pick the least-appreciated one, it would be the right to property. It is no coincidence that this is perhaps the right most routinely and grossly infringed upon by our government today, and the problem feeds upon itself. People are used to the government claiming large amounts of their money through taxation and telling them how to dispose of their property. This in turn leads to people having less and less of a gut feel that they are entitled to their own property and that causes them to feel (wrongly) like the issue isn't really a big deal.

Other rights will inevitably follow unless more people in the public are made aware of what a right is (and why rights are important) generally and what the right to property is in particular.

Read the whole thing. Also, in the comments is a succinct reply to someone who attempted to equate the "pro-life" position on abortion with support for property rights.

A Few New Links

Despite being so busy I barely have time to follow blogs (let alone write one!), I have somehow managed to learn about four more of them over the past few weeks.

Of the four, I have recently noted comments by two of their authors at locations other than their blogs, which in both cases, I was unaware of. The first of these is Sylvia Bokor, whose recent comments on a "hearing" about socialized medicine I attended were spot-on. The second is Mark V. Kormes, who recently appeared at Principles in Practice. They blog at Sylvia Bokor Comments and Rational Passion, respectively.

The two remaining bloggers are Eric Clayton, who hosts Atlantis is Real, and Renee Katz, whose comics and commentary can be found at Adventures in Existence.

You can now visit them any time from the sidebar.

The Cost of Ignorance ...

... for everyone includes the fact that savages can manage to look reasonable to the ignorant:

Muslims should take advantage of the global financial crisis to build an economic system compatible with Islamic principles, influential Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said on Sunday.

"The collapse of the capitalist system based on usury and paper and not on goods traded on the market is proof that it is in crisis and shows that Islamic economic philosophy is holding up," said the Egyptian-born, Qatar-based cleric.

Notice how the financial turmoil caused by fiat currency and government intervention in a mixed economy is dishonestly and intentionally equated by this witch doctor with capitalism. This permits him to look reasonable while he indiscriminately attacks both virtues (e.g., charging interest on loans) and flaws (e.g., fiat currency) of the current economy and proposes his medieval philosophy as the only alternative.

Oh yeah, and if, as Sheik what's-his-name asserts, "riches are ours", it is only because the West has foolishly handed them over to Islamic kleptocrats after producing them.

In better days of the past and in better days that can come, this man would be a a laughingstock, if anyone knew who he was at all. He would not be able to get away with damning the system that makes oil valuable, makes it possible for millions to live in the desert, and makes me able to hear of his silly utterances within hours. (Hell, even the mixed economy of the West as it is now, has, thanks to its free-market elements, managed to do all this!)

People in the past at least appreciated the ample evidence that filled their daily lives that a free economy can produce great wealth. And, if I have anything to say about it, more will learn what capitalism is:

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. ("What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 19.) [bold added]

In a society where this is understood, there will be no media market for foolishness like the sheik's, no paper money, no economy-wide collapses, and probably no need to concern ourselves much with what the flea-bitten tribesmen outside the fences of our oil facilities think their imaginary friend wants them to do. That would be their funeral, and theirs alone, as it should be.

Government Causing (Even More) Panic

This article is very flawed, but it names just a few concrete ways that the government's massive bailout effort can very quickly cause new market distortions. This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I spoke of this the other day, but it still illustrates my point.

-- CAV

A Tribute to Columbus

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Activism with Sock Puppets

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In my voting guide below, I linked to a video on Amendment 49 by Jon Caldera of the Independence Institute. Even if you don't live in Colorado, the video is worth watching, simply because it's so damn fun -- nothing like the usual blah blah blah from policy wonks. So here it is:



Seriously, I'm going to need to get myself a video camera and some sock puppets if I really want to make a difference in Colorado politics.

Fight for Rights, Not Deregulation?

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ari Armstrong recently posted some thought-provoking comments on how to effectively argue for free markets. His reflections were prompted by the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. He writes:

Palin called for "government strict oversight," implying that the problem was caused by a lack of such oversight, rather than the presence of foolish federal controls. ...

Biden's message is that the free market doesn't work, deregulation equals the free market, deregulation has failed, and government controls are the alternative to deregulation.

Unfortunately, Republicans often have used the term "deregulation" because they don't want to talk about the fundamental issue: individual rights. Because they don't favor individual rights. As Bush II has proved, Republicans (in general, not in every particular) are enthusiastic about government controls and political power.

The problem is that the term "regulation" is a package deal. "Regulation" means to make regular. Well, we want things to be regular, don't we, as opposed to irregular? For example, the Constitution grants to Congress the power "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states..." Those of us of the individual-rights persuasion like to think of that clause as granting to Congress the ability to "make regular" trade; that is, to free it of state interference.

Government plays a crucial regulatory role. The proper role of government is to protect individual rights. In the sphere of economics, that means protecting property rights and the right to contract. It means fighting fraud. It means eliminating the initiation of force. In those functions, the government regulates -- makes regular -- the economy. Protecting individual rights is regulation.

But what Biden means by "regulation" is a host of federal controls that violate, rather than protect, individual rights. These rights-violating controls do not make the economy "regular;" they make it irregular and chaotic. For example, the federal controls that forced lenders to make risky loans are "regulations" of this sort. The mortgage crisis is a crisis not of the free market, not of the regulation of protecting individual rights, but of the "regulations" of government controls that violate rights of property and contract.

What we need is not some out-of-context "deregulation" or "regulation." What we need is a government that protects individual rights rather than violates them. That is the very definition of the free market. That is what Joe Biden condemns, and what Sarah Palin cannot even conceive.

Thoughts?

Diana Hsieh’s 2008 Voting Recommendations

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Note: You also can download a two-page PDF version of this voting guide.

The Presidential Race

With respect to the presidential election, I'll likely abstain for the reasons similar to those given in Craig Biddle's essay McBama vs. America. Given the Republican Party's dangerous entanglement with fundamentalist Christianity, I will not vote for Republican candidates. (For my detailed reasons, see my 2006 essay Why I'm Voting for the Democrats.) However, McCain is particularly revolting. So if I vote for anyone, I'll vote for Obama. He's beyond awful, but I have some reason to hope that he'll be ineffectual. Plus, the Republicans might grow some cajones as the opposition party.

Colorado's Senate Race

With respect to Colorado's Senate race between Republican Bob Schaffer and Democrat Mark Udall, I plan to vote for Udall. Again, part of my reason is my unwillingness to vote for any Republican. To do so is to hasten the transformation of America into a "Christian nation," and I do not wish to live in such a place. In particular, Republican Bob Schaffer is an ardent opponent of all abortion because it's contrary to God's will. In contrast, Udall has offered a wonderfully strong statement in support of the separation of church and state.

Of course, many of Udall's views are downright awful. Although he voted against the bailout twice, he's no advocate of free markets or limited government. However, Republicans are no better on that score: federal spending rose a whopping 68% under President Bush. Also, Bob Schaffer advocates a "refereed private sector" -- i.e. an economy controlled and managed by politicians and bureaucrats. He even supports antitrust lawsuits against health insurance companies. Despite the vocal claims of his advocates, he is no friend of capitalism.

Colorado's Ballot Measures

Colorado has an insane number of measures on the ballot this year. In my view, the two most important are Amendment 48 -- which would grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs -- and Amendment 59 -- which would permanently raise taxes. Please, vote NO on both measures.

Here are my recommendations on all the measures:

Amendment 46: Colorado Civil Rights Initiative: A46 would prohibit the government from discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, education, or contracting.

Diana says: Yes. Governments ought not discriminate on the basis of irrelevant factors like race and sex.

Amendment 47: Right to Work initiative: A47 would prohibit requiring an employee to join and pay any dues or fees to a labor union as a condition of employment.

Diana says: No. It is a violation of contract and property rights to prohibit businesses from voluntarily agreeing with unions to only hire only union employees.

Amendment 48: Definition of Personhood: A48 would define the term "person" to "include any human being from the moment of fertilization," thereby granting all the rights of persons to embryos and fetuses.

Diana says: NO NO NO NO! A person is not created at conception but rather born. This measure would outlaw nearly all abortion, ban the birth control pill, morning-after pill, and IUD, and impose police controls on pregnant women. For more, see the Coalition for Secular Government's information on Amendment 48.

Amendment 49: Limitation on Public Payroll Deductions Initiative: A49 would prohibit union dues from being automatically deducted from the paychecks of public employees by limiting the allowed deductions.

Diana says: Yes. Although this measure should not be a constitutional amendment, taxpayers are within their rights to manage the terms of government employment. Currently, union withholdings often go strait to pro-union political campaigns seeking to violate our rights. Government employees will retain their right and ability to fund any group through their own bank account. For more, see John Caldera's damn funny video.

Amendment 50: Limited Gaming Initiative: A50 would allow residents of gaming towns to vote to extend casino hours, add games, and increase the bet limit to $100--with most of the resulting tax revenue going to community colleges.

Diana says: Yes. Limitations on gambling are a paternalistic violation of rights, and this measure would loosen some of them. While gaming regulations shouldn't be part of our constitution, A50 only amends existing constitutional provisions. Also, the additional tax revenue will be used for government education, but that seems inevitable in our current political climate.

Amendment 51: Sales Tax for Developmentally Disabled Initiative: A51 would increase the state sales and use tax from 2.9% to 3.0% in 2009 then to 3.1% in 2010 to fund services for disabled people. It would prohibit any reduction in funding for such programs.

Diana says: NO! This tax hike is not just welfare-statist but downright altruistic. Moreover, the constitution should not limit the legislature in its budget allocations.

Amendment 52: Severance Tax & Transportation Initiative: A52 would require the legislature to spend a portion of state severance taxes on highway projects.

Diana says: No. The use of tax revenue should be determined by the legislature, not by the constitution.

Amendment 54: Clean Government Initiative: A54 would limit the campaign contributions of certain government contractors and labor groups.

Diana says: No. Campaign finance laws are unjust restrictions on freedom of speech. They ought to be repealed, not extended.

Amendment 58: Severance Tax Initiative: A58 would increase the amount of state severance taxes paid by oil and natural gas companies, primarily by eliminating an existing tax credit. The additional revenue would fund college scholarships, wildlife habitat, renewable energy projects, etc.

Diana says: NO! This measure is populism at its worst. It is a tax hike against an unpopular but vital industry for the sake of illegitimate government funding of schooling.

Amendment 59: Savings Account for Education Initiative: A59 would eliminate TABOR rebates, spending the that tax revenue on P-12 education, eliminating the required inflationary increase for P-12 education spending, and setting aside money in a new savings account for P-12 education.

Diana says: NO NO NO! This measure would be a permanent tax hike to enable more irresponsible spending by politicians. See the web site of Vote No on 59.

Referendum L: Candidate requirements: Ref L would lower the age of a candidate for the Colorado House and Senate from 25 to 21.

Diana says: Yes. Adults should be able to serve in the legislature.

Referendum M: Obsolete constitutional provisions: Ref M would eliminate obsolete provisions in the constitution about land value increases.

Diana says: Yes. Obsolete provisions should be repealed.

Referendum N: Obsolete constitutional provisions: Ref N would eliminate obsolete provisions in the constitution about intoxicating liquor.

Diana says: Yes. Obsolete provisions should be repealed.

Referendum O: Initiative Process: Ref O would increase the requirements for placing a constitutional amendment on the ballot by requiring more total signatures, with 8% to be gathered from each congressional district. The requirements for statutory initiatives would be lessened.

Diana says: Yes. Amending the Colorado constitution should not be the state sport. Those attempting to do so should have to show that their measure has substantial and broad support from across the state.

That's all folks!

Repeal McCain-Feingold Now

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Awhile back, I blogged about a lawsuit made possible in no small part by the efforts of John McCain to "clean up" political campaigns. And earlier this week, I pointed to an article in which he stated his position on the issue, which is immoral and dangerous to individual rights. His position? "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote 'First Amendment rights' are being respected that has become corrupt."

In case you are curious about what this sense of priorities would mean in your daily life, I direct you to the blog of Becky Clark. Clark is one of a group of individuals I mentioned who opposed the annexation of their neighborhood by a nearby town and thus did what anyone else would do: Express that opposition by the means at their disposal.

Clark, who is scheduled to appear on 20/20 next week, provides a blow-by-blow account of her travails, from when she first learned she was being sued under the "private enforcement provisions" of campaign finance law, to her (partial) legal victory two years and mountains of difficult paperwork later.

Before I go on, let me say that if you think the excerpts I am about to provide are harrowing, read her whole account! This could be you later on today.

First, campaign finance reform empowers exactly the kind of people one would hope to geld in any attempt at genuine government reform: "little dictators".

These people live within a block or two of everyone they sued. I was baffled as to why they couldn't just ring my doorbell, send me an email, pick up the phone, tape a note to my front door -- whatever -- to tell me they think we're not in compliance with the laws. They could even send us a letter. After all, they'd sent letters to the entire neighborhood about the annexation -- why not send one about campaign finance rules?

And then it hit me. They wanted to shut us up. The litigation was clearly an attempt to intimidate us.

We had no choice but to file as an issue committee despite the fact we didn't think we were a committee, nor did we think this qualified as a "ballot issue" since it wasn't on any ballot. [bold added]

Clark's having to file as an issue committee -- which she had to do in addition to facing a lawsuit -- was hardly a picnic, nor even a mere trip to the DMV. It was, according to over two hundred adults who tried it, worse than filing taxes, and guess what it will discourage in the name of providing "clean government"!

A recent study by campaign finance expert Dr. Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Kansas School of Business asked 255 people to fill out the required registration and reporting forms, and not one participant managed to do so correctly. Each person would have been subject to fines and penalties in real life, just like I was. Like me, participants found the required forms "Worse than the IRS!" and said it would make them less likely to get involved in politics." [bold added]

The effect of this law is plainly to make criminals of anyone it doesn't silence outright. In her famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, through the words of villain Floyd Ferris, explains what such laws mean to power-lusters. This is something that Clark's neighbors seem to intuit -- and John McCain (like his opponent) is either too dim-witted to grasp or too dishonest to admit:

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." (406) [bold added]

How can a government even be "of the people, by the people, for the people" when the very people are hindered from participating in it?

Sadly, our judiciary seems in this case to have not gone far enough in its ruling in favor of the anti-annexation residents of the neighborhood in Colorado (or been able to -- see Note below):

The federal judge said we should not have been sued for our speech opposing the annexation, BUT the ruling did nothing to stop future abuses of campaign finance laws in Colorado or elsewhere. The decision also lets stand the burdensome red tape required under Colorado law for grassroots groups that simply want to speak out about issues on the ballot.

The judge recognized that the two vindictive neighbors who sued us used Colorado's campaign finance laws to intimidate us: "There can be no doubt that they used the private enforcement provisions to attempt to silence the plaintiffs by the filing of the complaint." [bold added]

Regardless of why the private enforcement provision was allowed to stand, two things are clear:

First, campaign finance reform laws must be repealed as the threat to the rights of freedom of speech and property that they are.

Second, if this story grows legs, the very real danger is that those who favor campaign finance reform -- be it out of ignorance, naivete, antipathy to freedom, or whatever other reason -- will be able to look at this fiasco and say something like, "See! Those people in Colorado didn't get into any trouble," and lull the American public back to sleep -- if it ever starts to stir.

(Remember: You could be next.)

I am happy for these good people that they did not get into more trouble than they did, but they have only dodged a bullet. The gun-toting madman is alive and well. He remains on the loose. His gun is still loaded. He is from the government and says he is here to help us.

The only way to begin to stop him is for Americans to demand incessantly for the government to repeal McCain-Feingold as soon as possible. The only proper purpose of government is to protect individual rights. McCain-Feingold makes this objective impossible to attain, and delivers us into the hands of dictators. This law is inherently broken. Do not try to "fix" it. Scrap it. Now.

What good does wiping down the blade of the guillotine do for the average citizen if his head is about to be placed there for the crime of living his life by his own best judgement? A "clean" government is not necessarily a proper government. Let's work on getting the latter.

-- CAV

Note: It would appear that the case hinged on what amounted to a technicality:

The judge said these rules cannot kick in for annexation elections until the issue is put on the ballot. We had been sued and forced to become an issue committee several months before that. The judge held that to turn groups of citizens into "issue committees" before the ballot is set violates our First Amendment rights to free speech and association. [bold added]

The danger posed by campaign finance reform remains. [back]

Sunday Open Thread: 'Fired Up for Art' Edition

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Travel Channel just posted a clip from Lee Sandstead's upcomming show on art at YouTube and you can see it here:




Good stuff! I am absolutely psyched about Sandstead's show, but what I am really looking forward to is seeing Lee discuss more representational art rather than the modern stuff like the work featured in this clip. No one does a better job highlighting the lost treasures of art than Lee and I can't wait to see him share some real works of beauty.

Columbus Week Returns to Powell History!

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Are We All Socialists Now?

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Are We All Socialists Now?
October 10, 2008

Washington, D.C. --The Treasury Department, as part of its ongoing assumption of control over the financial industry, is preparing to inject cash into U.S. banks in exchange for preferred shares of bank stock.

“Are we all socialists now?” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Have we learned nothing from the devastation that socialist policies wrought worldwide in the twentieth century? Government intervention distorts markets and causes economic dislocations, no matter whether Uncle Sam controls private companies by regulation or assumes public ownership outright.

“A crisis doesn’t transform poison into medicine. Over decades, government manipulation of money, credit, and mortgages poisoned this economy and left it dangerously weak. Now Hank Paulson and his comrades are hooking up IV tubes filled with more of the same poison--bailouts, loan guarantees, cheap money, and more burdensome regulations--and hoping we will lie still and trust in their cure.

“But the real cure is capitalism, not more doses of socialism. We should act quickly to put government in its place, by rolling back the interventionist measures that caused the present emergency. Government’s proper role is to punish fraud and enforce contracts, not to own and manage the economy. We cannot achieve financial health unless we are willing to free the markets.”

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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Republican Anger

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here's the latest silliness among the reality based community. From Devilstower at Daily Kos:

There's something happening here, and what it is, is all too clear. McCain - Palin rallies over the last few days have disintegrated into festivals of hate, and the two candidates at the center of this are encouraging it.

...

McCain and Palin are soaking in the crowd's anger, amplifying it, and feeding it back.

...

The language McCain and Palin are using: "radical," "palling around with terrorists," "willing co-conspirators" is growing more heated by the day. It's language that's compounded by the "dangerous" commercials McCain is running across the country. It's the kind of language that you use in describing an enemy in wartime. It's the kind of language that not only excuses violence, but encourages it. More and more it sounds as if McCain has inhaled the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and is exhaling the fevered rancor of Charles Coughlin.

...

Whatever it is, it's ugly. And getting uglier. Any decent candidate -- any decent human being -- would be working now to tamp down that ire, not raise it.

Hunter at Daily Kos then takes up the theme, speculating that McCain is losing his sanity.

I'm honestly beginning to think that McCain is... unhinged. Not by a lot, but by enough. ...I can't help but look at the McCain/Palin campaign's sudden, apparently random focus on Obama and Ayers -- in the middle of a complete economic meltdown, no less -- and think, what the hell?

...

I also think you have to be more than a little nuts -- or at least very, very bitter -- to be egging on crowds to the extent that both Palin and McCain have been. The last week has seen Republican rallies turn into screaming hate-fests, celebrations of the notion that the other candidate is a terrorist, or is anti-American, or is a danger to the nation or the like: stuff that the Secret Service really, really dislikes, and would generally put a stop to if it wasn't their own damn charges leading the rhetoric. From Palin, I'd expect it. She's proven herself at this point to be dumb as a f--king rock, and has a history of being bitterly, viciously mean in service of whatever it is she wants. She probably thinks the rallies are a hoot.

By the time Kagro X throws in his (or her) two cents, the Kossacks are hallucinating "incitements to domestic terrorism."

It's clearly the right thing to do to demand that John McCain and Sarah Palin's sick incitements to domestic terrorism must stop.

But it's not going to. This is how they do things. When Republicans are in power, as they are now, they use the mechanisms of government to do their political violence to the constitutional order, as they've done by "normalizing" the existence of the surveillance state, of secret government, and even of nationalization of entire economic sectors.

It's when Republicans fall out of power, or fear falling out of power, that the violence they do to what used to be our system of government threatens to turn physical. And it's the fear of being overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box that's bringing it out in them now.

It's no coincidence that the traditional media is noticing a disturbing uptick in violent rhetoric at McCain/Palin events, both inside and out, and from both the candidates and the crowds. It had to happen. Sarah Palin's entire political career is steeped in the same wingnut "black helicopter" militia insanity that manifested itself in the Oklahoma City massacre and other infamous explosions of blood-spattered, far-right paranoia like Ruby Ridge and Waco. Wading in up to their hips right at the peak of it all, though admittedly at the far-flung fringes of it all, were Sarah Palin and the man whose bizarre personal vendettas she lives to prosecute: Todd Palin.

The madness inspires Andrew Sullivan to a stirring post that needs to be set to music by Wagner.

The McCain-Rove fusion ticket has spent seven days spewing 100 percent negative advertizing, roiling angry mobs, deploying Palin to call Obama a traitor and a terrorist, pushing Fox News propaganda - and they have indeed succeeded in capping Obama's national rise at just under 50 percent. But McCain's numbers keep sliding and are lower on Friday than they were on Monday: 41.8 percent on Pollster; 42.9 on RCP; and a projection of 347 electoral votes on 538. Can you lose an election and your soul? McCain is testing the premise. It's a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions - because McCain did it to himself.

Angry Republicans! Is it the end of freedom in America?

Leftists have antennae finely attuned to catch any whiff of negative emotion on the right. It sets them apondering strenuously, as we saw above. But to the constant barrage of anger, hatred and fear from the left for Chimpy McBushnazi, they can't be bothered even to yawn.

Need I remind the reader what we have seen on the left for the last eight years? Calls for Bush and Cheney to be tried as war criminals? Accusations of genocide? Calling Republicans Nazis? The hatred and anger on the left has been unrelenting. Michelle Malkin wrote a book about it called Unhinged. Unlike the angry Republicans, when leftists get angry, some of them do commit violence.

I'm angry myself because I have a lot of questions about Barack Obama that I would like answered, but the MSM have decided not to press Obama to answer any questions that might embarrass him. It's outrageous how the media are coddling and boosting Obama.

I'm not sure if the Kossacks (and the very strange Andrew Sullivan) honestly fear that the angry Republicans are a danger to become violent mobs. I picture in my imagination a bunch of country club Republicans throwing trash cans through the window of a Starbucks, then texting their broker to see if their Starbucks stock is still okay. Yes, a Republican mob is something to fear.

I suspect that what they really fear is that McCain will use this emotion to motivate Republicans to vote. And fear this they should, for attacking the other party is all that either major party has in our time. Fear, anger and hatred of the other party is the way both parties rouse their base because neither party has anything positive to offer America. We live in a welfare state in which two gangs -- Democrats and Republicans -- fight over power so that they can control who gets to dole out the loot to pressure groups in hopes that the money will buy more votes in the future.

Every two years we see this spectacle of these two gangs reviling one another, hoping to make voters fear and loathe the other side more than they fear their side. Sometimes the attacks are true, sometimes they are not. Sometimes the emotions are rational, sometimes they are not. Each party's base buys into the attacks from their gang; the independents, who have no emotional attachment to either party, tend to be disgusted by the negativity.

If a party stood for liberty and individual rights, then perhaps it could motivate voters to vote for them out of admiration for their values, not just fear and loathing of the other gang. Such a party does not exist in America.

"It's earlier than you think." --Ayn Rand, 1964

Letter on the Bailout

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

On September 27th, I sent the following letter on the bailout to various papers in Colorado. I don't think it was printed -- although I haven't checked. In any case, I thought I should post it here:

Are politicians in Washington trying to sink the country into a depression? It seems so. The current financial crisis was created by government controls and subsidies. Now politicians want to inject more of that poison into the markets.

Financial meltdowns are the inevitable product of bureaucratic meddling. The health of the economy requires the opposite: freedom. The government should not bail out any Wall Street firms -- or anyone else. The ban on shorting financial stocks should be lifted immediately. The Community Reinvestment Act must be repealed. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be privatized.

The only proper role of the government in the financial markets is the protection of the inalienable rights to property and contract. Only then will every person be free to act on his own rational judgment in pursuit of his own wealth, security, and happiness. That's what America should be all about.

Diana Hsieh
Sedalia, Colorado

Public Retirement Deficit -- another $700 billion?

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Once the housing-related crisis is history, what other un-budgeted government payouts loom ahead? The big ones are Social Security and Medicare; but people know about those. One that is not as much on the radar is the shortfall in state government pension funds.

According to a PEW study "Promises with a Price" , "states’ retiree ... benefits ... due over the next [three] decades that can be conservatively estimated at $2.73 trillion. That includes about $2.35 trillion for a wide range of employee pensions, including those for teachers, and an additional $381 billion for retiree health care and other non-pension benefits for state employees only, excluding those for teachers and a handful of other groups. ... ... To their credit, states have socked away enough to cover about 85 percent of the pension bill. But there is very little put aside for non-pension benefits. All told, states face about $731 billion in unfunded bills coming due. "

Assumed Rate of Return: One major assumption is: how much will pension funds earn on their investments. Today, the plans assume a return of a little over 8% p.a. This is far from conservative for a pension-fund. As Berkshire's Charlie Munger's remarked (Wesco shareholder's meeting, 2008) pension funds rather take on more risk, than admit they cannot make 8% over the long term, which would mean an adjustment (requirement for new "top-up" funding) today.

A news-story about San Deigo shows some of the short-sightedness that goes on. The city was assuming an 8% return. Obviously this means that some years will be higher and others will be lower. The wise folk who run the city decided that in any year that they make more than the average 8%, they would use the "surplus" to re-calculate a more generous retirement package!
Similarly, during the late 1990's, when the stock-market boomed, some states skipped their funding, declaring a pension-funding "holiday".

If the recession we're currently in, and the government's shenanigans that promise big structural impediments to the markets, leads to a 6%-7% stock-market growth over the next decade or two (some would say I'm being optimistic), pension fund deficits will be significantly higher than $360 billion.

Assumed COLA: It appears that public pensions do get cost-of-living adjustments (COLA). Fortunately (for the government budgets) these seem to be decided by ad-hoc union bargaining, rather than by a strict formula linked to CPI. Nevertheless, if inflation ratchets up in the 2010's, we can expect calls for more COLA, and a higher bill.

Summary: $360 billion pension shortfall, and $370 billion) retiree health-care shortfall. If the stock-markets grows more slowly, the pension shortfall could be higher. If inflation grows faster, both the pension and healthcare shortfalls could be higher. A trillion might be a nice, round, conservative figure.

Ban on short selling hurt investors

By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlog

What is the difference between the U.S. and the Russian economy? Answer: In Russia, they do not pretend to be capitalists. Seriously though, it appears that we are getting closer to nationalizing many of the broken industries that still remain in the U.S. such as automobiles, airlines, financials and who knows what else.

read more | digg story

Despicable?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Sports broadcaster Tim McCarver called Manny Ramirez "despicable" for some of the things he did in Boston.

I have a lot of respect for McCarver. Having grown up in Southern California, I was spoiled by the dulcet tones of Vin Scully, the smoothest baseball announcer ever. When I moved to New York in the '80s I was surprised to hear Phil Rizzuto (Yankees TV color commentator), Bob Murphy (Mets radio play by play) and Ralph Kiner (Mets TV play by play). All three were strange. Rizzuto was the ultimate homer who would start rambling about cannolis in the middle of a comment, then ask his partner what he should have been talking about and end by screaming "home run!" when a Yankee hit a pop-up to shallow left; Murphy had the weirdest sing-song cadence you'll ever hear; and Kiner would make my night trying to say "sponsored by Mitsubishi." Sponsored by Mitsubishi, Ralph, sponsored by Mitsubishi. Come on, you can say it tonight! After listening to Scully all my life, I felt I had moved to some cowtown in Nebraska, not New York City.

McCarver (Mets TV color commentator), however, was always interesting. He had insights into the game of baseball that others missed. Sitting behind the plate for 21 years as a catcher, he had studied the game from an excellent vantage point. Moreover, his passion for the game made viewers love the game more. That is a rare talent for a broadcaster.

Now, I don't know a thing about what Ramirez did in Boston. I'm glad he's on the Dodgers, because without him the boys in blue would not have made the playoffs. (As I write they are down 0-2 to the Phillies, so they might not be in the playoffs for long.) I gather he was unhappy at Boston and stopped playing hard. This forced Boston to trade him.

Despicable doesn't seem like the right word to use in this case. The word carries with it a moral judgment. You could call a liar, a vicious criminal or a child molester despicable.

It sounds to me like Ramirez lost his motivation in Boston. When that happens, it is easy not to work hard. You might call it unfortunate, regrettable or wrong, but despicable?

(Also, Andrew Sullivan has used the word lately to describe John McCain. In his case it just makes me think of Sylvester the Cat. DithPICKable!)

Tim McCarver cares about the integrity of the game of baseball. As I noted above, his love of the game makes watching it more fascinating. He gets angry when he sees modern players phone it in, and I can see his point. When a man puts on the uniform, he should play hard. When a player becomes unhappy with an organization or thinks he has not been treated fairly, the reality is that he might deliver less than 100% effort. The word despicable in this context sounds hysterical.

I'm not disputing McCarver's judgment. I just wonder if despicable is le mot juste.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Reading Recommendations

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm so exhausted from my week -- with much more dissertation work to do today -- so I can't possibly write a substantial post of any kind on health issues. So instead, I'm just going to refer you to some good readings, enough to keep you well-occupied for a few hours, if you like. Let's start with some delights from Gary Taubes:

• What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? by Gary Taubes, New York Times Magazine, July 2002. The controversial article that started it all. (For the story behind the story, see Inside the Story.)
  
  
• Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy? by Gary Taubes, New York Times Magazine, September 2007. A detailed examination of why medical studies often yield conflicting results -- and how you can sort through the mess.
  
  
• We can't work it out by Gary Taubes, The Observer, October 2007. Will exercise help you lose weight? Likely not. (My own experience supports this view: I've only been able to lose weight in periods when I cut down my exercise to mere "maintenance" mode.)
  
  
• "Big Fat Lies" by Gary Taubes, Lecture to the Stevens Institute of Technolocy, February 2008. (I've not watched this video yet.)
  
  
• All of the above sources are merely a teaser for Gary Taubes' excellent book Good Calories, Bad Calories. If you're interested in the science of nutrition, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

And now for some goodies from Stephan of Whole Health Source:

• Stephan recently ran a good series of posts on the few tests of paleolithic diets: Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials, Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials Part II, and One Last Thought.
  
  
• Last month, Stephan did a mind-blowing series on omega-3 and omega-6 fats: Vegetable Oil and Homicide, The Omega Ratio, Omega-3 Fats and Brain Development, Omega Fats and Cardiovascular Disease, and A Practical Approach to Omega Fats.

And finally, some good posts from Dr. Eades of "ProteinPower":

• Changing dietary trends and the obesity epidemic explains why people can often eat dessert, even after stuffing themselves to the brim with their meal.
  
  
• Thermodynamics and weight loss explains why the second law of thermodynamics doesn't support the view that all calories are the same.
  
  
• Metabolism and ketosis explains what ketones are. Ketosis cleans our cells explains how keytones de-junk your cells.
  
  
• Carbohydrates are addictive discusses the research suggesting that a low-carb diet might stop the growth of cancerous tumors.

That's all for today. Happy reading!

When B is A

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The real news is all bad this morning, with the headline, "Plan B: Flood Banks with Cash" taking the cake.

Nice. The government, which has precipitated this crisis by meddling with the financial markets -- in the form of vast infusions of capital -- will now attempt to solve it by doing the same thing more quickly and with even less thought! And the clueless media will fixate on the inconsequential details rather than reporting the real story.

The reporting routinely calls this a "panic", which it is, but fails to notice who is panicking or why.For this mess, we can thank two cultural causes: (1) a widespread disdain for abstract principles, helped along with positive feedback from a common inability to use them properly (and thus appreciate their survival value), and (2) the fact that what few principles many people have managed to absorb are often completely wrong.

A few paragraphs from the second page of "Plan B" ought to illustrate this point nicely.

Ideologically, this is not what either Republicans or Democrats would have proposed a few months ago. But desperate times produce desperate tactics.

"The central bankers all learned the lesson of the 1930s," said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, a Wall Street firm. That lesson was that if the choice is between allowing the system to collapse and writing a lot of checks, you write the checks and forget about ideology.

Unfortunately, none of them learned the lesson of the 1920s, which is that when asset prices soar, it is not a good idea to sit around doing nothing, as the Fed did for most of the housing boom. Cheerleading, which it sometimes did, is even worse.

The first paragraph is pure pragmatism. Abandon your "convictions" when in trouble. Do what seems expedient at the moment. Determining whether your convictions were wrong and, if so, in what way, is a waste of time. Never mind the fact that doing so would quickly reveal that you are about to make essentially the same mistake all over again! So much for the alleged practicality of Pragmatism. And for the notion that blowing off abstract thinking can save time.

The second and third paragraphs illustrate my second point, which Amity Shlaes (paraphrased by Nicole Gelinas of City Journal) backs up with a historic example drawn from both decades referenced above:

Shlaes argues that the 1929 stock-market crash wasn't a well-deserved punishment for Roaring '20s greed. Many profits that drove up the market in those days were real - the result of private-sector managers' ingenious exploitation of new technologies.

Nor did the crash guarantee that a decade of depression would follow. Decision-makers, beginning with Herbert Hoover, helped to make it so.

Hoover wasn't unfeeling or incompetent. Before he was president, he'd been a successful businessman, and had won praise as commerce secretary for his compassion and management expertise when he aided the victims of the 1927 Mississippi flood.

After the market crashed, President Hoover immediately applied this same can-do attitude to the economy. To protect workers, he called upon big businesses not to cut jobs or wages. And to protect big business, he gave in to protectionist sentiment and signed into a law a huge tariff on imported goods.

Hoover wanted to help, but instead, he hurt. The tariff ignited a trade war that harmed companies and consumers. Encouraging employers to keep wages and employment up when the economy couldn't support such measures ensured stock prices' continued fall.

After Hoover, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his own wave of economic experiments, detailed by Shlaes, ranging from ambitious public-works programs to fiddling with the dollar's value.

Shlaes makes a good case that Roosevelt didn't do any one thing that protracted the Depression. Instead, with his bold and oft-changing ideas, he created an air of economic uncertainty that was deadly to private-sector recovery. Investors had no idea what might come next, so they were afraid to move on. [bold added]

Our leaders are already acting like FDR, and many economists have obviously never learned the lessons they should have from what history ought to call the "Great, Avoidable Depression". And they never will, until they question whether the government ought to attempt to run the economy at all, be it directly by means of the explicit ordering-around of regulations; or indirectly by the encouragement of poor decision-making of endless, doomed bailouts.

When the government attempts to replace the reasoning of countless individuals by issuing orders to all of them, it attempts the impossible task of performing better than they with a comparatively minuscule number of central planners. Central planners are human beings, and, like you and me, not omniscient. This approach will fail.

And when the government blinds countless individuals to the differences between levels of investment risk by saving some people from the consequences of poor decisions, it also removes (although in another way) what is most needed from the market right now: The careful long-range planning of those in the market who do know what they are doing, all the way from holding the correct conceptions of how to function in business, to intimate "on the ground" knowledge of their areas of expertise.

The government needs to stop second-guessing everyone, and it needs to stop preempting their decisions.

I have often heard some people described as "having more money than sense". That phrase aptly describes our entire economy right now -- thanks to the government forcing it to be that way for everyone, rather than letting things play out naturally!

To end our financial crisis, we (meaning as countless individual free to make our own best decisions) need to throw less money and more sense at the problem, and the only way to do that is for the government to get out of our way.

-- CAV

Is It Socialism?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House argues that Obama is not a a socialist. (Right Wing Nut House is meant to be an ironic name, as Moran is actually a pragmatist Republican, the type that has plagued the party at least since WWII. In the 1960's, Moran would have been a Rockefeller Republican calling Goldwater an "extremist.")

Calling Obama a “socialist” simply isn’t logical. He doesn’t share the belief that industries should be nationalized by the government or even taken over by the workers as many American Marxists espouse. He may not be as wedded to the free market as a conservative but he doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to regulate it. He wants “capitalism with a human face.” He wants to mitigate some of the effects of the market when people lose. This is boilerplate Democratic party liberalism not radical socialism.

I detest conservatives throwing around the words “socialism” and “Marxism” when it comes to Obama as much as I get angry when idiot liberals toss around the word “fascist” when describing conservatives. I’m sorry but this is ignorant. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge of what socialism and communism represent as well as an ignorance of simple definitions. Obama will not set up a government agency to plan the economy. He will not as president, require businesses to meet targets for production. He will not outlaw profit. He will not put workers in charge of companies (unless it is negotiated between unions and management. It is not unheard of in this country and the practice may become more common in these perilous economic times.).

An Obama presidency will have more regulation, more “oversight,” more interference from government agencies, more paperwork for business, less business creation, fewer jobs, fewer opportunities. It will be friendlier to unions, more protectionist, and will require higher taxes from corporations (who then will simply pass the tax bill on to us, their customers). But government won’t run the economy. And calling Obama a “socialist” simply ignores all of the above and substitutes irrationalism (or ignorance) for the reality of what an Obama presidency actually represents; a lurch to the left that will be detrimental to the economy, bad for business, but basically allow market forces to continue to dominate our economy.

Moran makes one mistake. He equates socialism with socialism on the communist plan. He forgets the fascist plan, which is what America is on. In the fascist plan of socialism, the means of production is left in the nominal ownership of private individuals. All government does is regulate it, along with all the other things Moran says Obama will do above.

The fascist plan is attractive to American politicians because it is deceptive. They can get away with dictating the economy without actually seizing ownership. Moreover, they avoid responsibility and blame when things go wrong -- as they are doing in the current crisis, which was caused by government intervention, but is blamed on deregulation. When things go bad, socialists on the fascist plan depend on pragmatists like Moran to assure the "extremists" that everything is fine and all we're in for is a little more regulation. We can live with a little more regulation, right?

Ultimately, the mixed economy is unstable. Government intervention creates crises which lead to greater government intervention, which creates new crises which lead to further government intervention until the economy is controlled by the government in a de facto, if not de jure dictatorship.

As the welfare state grows, we become more and more accustomed to the loss of liberty. A man 100 years ago would certainly think the level of government intervention in the economy today is dictatorship. Benjamin Franklin said, "It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part." Things have changed since the Enlightenment. We would now perceive a government that only taxed 10% of wages as almost laissez-faire.

As a piece in the UK's Telegraph, pointed out by Harry Binswanger on HBL, writes,

The maxim of the American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand came close to fulfilment before the denouement of Old Labour on May 3 1979: that the difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.

Bailout Crack

By noreply@blogger.com (Dan Edge) from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This article was posted on The Undercurrent blog. Please visit The Undercurrent for other articles on the financial crisis.

In a knee-jerk reaction to panic and fear over the current financial crisis, the government issued a $700 billion dollar bailout bill last week. Rather than considering the cause of the “toxic loans” at the heart of this crisis, Congress decided that it had to immediately do something—anything.

What politicians fail to realize, however, is that they are the ones that got us into this mess, and this bailout will only further exacerbate the problem. It is government meddling in the economy that caused the mortgage meltdown. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Community Reinvestment Act, and the Fed’s ability to manipulate interest rates each have contributed handsomely to the disaster. These government policies are the primary cause of the financial crisis, yet our president and both houses of Congress agree that still more government intervention is the only solution.

It is as if a man went to the hospital with low blood pressure and a low heart rate, and the doctor prescribed crack cocaine to treat his symptoms. After all, crack will raise the patient’s heart rate and blood pressure for a while, and even give him a temporary feeling of euphoria. But over the long term, using crack will severely weaken his heart and mind, making him an easy target for any infectious disease that comes along.

This is exactly what the Bailout Bill will do: temporarily treat the symptoms while allowing the disease (government intervention in the economy) to metastasize further. The only way to preserve long-term economic health in America is to attack the disease at its source. End Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, neuter the U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development, repeal the Community Reinvestment Act, and take away the Fed’s power to tamper with naturally functioning markets.

--Dan Edge

Abortion and Abolition

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Boulder Weekly published the following op-ed on Amendment 48 by Ari Armstrong and myself yesterday:

Abortion and Abolition
by Diana Hsieh and Ari Armstrong

Colorado is ground zero in a national battle over the morality of abortion, and the defenders of abortion rights are ceding ground.

The opponents of abortion declare that every human life is endowed by God with an inalienable right to life. To terminate a pregnancy, whatever the circumstances, is murder.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade, then "end abortion at the state level." His running mate Sarah Palin says she's as "pro-life as any candidate can be." She thinks "abortion [should] only be allowed if the life of the mother is endangered."

Colorado's Amendment 48 inaugurates a new strategy for ending abortion. Instead of restricting abortion via piecemeal government controls, the measure would usher in a near-total ban on abortion by defining a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the state constitution.

The opponents of abortion claim the sanction of divine morality, based on the premise that "life begins at conception." Many anti-abortionists now openly seek to ban not only abortion and most fertility treatments, but also the birth control pill, morning after pill, and IUD because they may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. Amendment 48 would help them do that.

Given this all-out assault on reproductive rights, traditional defenders of abortion might be expected to launch a vigorous counter-attack. Instead, they've dodged tough questions and conceded basic principles, leaving reproductive rights with a flimsy defense.

When Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked when a baby gets "human rights," he famously declared the question to be "above [his] pay grade." Yet he will be called on to judge such matters if elected. His running mate Joe Biden accepts the teachings of his Catholic Church: the fertilized egg is a human person. Yet he regards abortion as "a personal and private issue" -- as if the state should allow every person to decide for himself whether or not to recognize the rights of others, so long as any killings happen behind closed doors. That's clearly wrong: if an embryo or fetus is a person, then abortion is murder. If not, then it's a woman's right.

In response to the threat posed by Amendment 48, the traditional defenders of abortion rights -- such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL -- organized a broad coalition to fight the measure. They persuasively argue that Amendment 48 would have disastrous legal consequences for abortion, birth control and in-vitro fertilization.

Yet their oft-repeated slogan of "it simply goes too far" is a whopping concession to their opponents. It implies that abortion, birth control and in-vitro fertilization could be and perhaps ought to be restricted -- just not as severely as Amendment 48 would do. Instead of upholding reproductive rights, the slogan implicitly welcomes further incremental controls on abortion.

Just imagine if the abolitionists of the 19th century had attempted to defend the inalienable rights of slaves based on the slogan, "slavery: it simply goes too far." Imagine Lincoln declaring the morality of slavery to be "above [his] pay grade." The monstrous evil of slavery would still exist today. The recognition and protection of the rights of slaves required an uncompromising defense of those rights based on the facts of human nature.

Similarly, the recognition and protection of abortion rights requires an uncompromising defense of those rights based on the all-important differences between a fetus and a baby.

Neither an embryo nor a fetus is a human person with a right to life. While still in the womb, it exists as part of the woman, wholly contained within and dependent on her. It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes. It lives as she lives, as an extension of her body. A fetus is only a potential person without a right to life.

That situation changes radically at birth. A baby lives his own life, outside his mother. Although very needy, he maintains his own biological functions. He breathes his own air, digests his own food and moves on his own. He can leave his mother to be cared for by someone else. He has a life of his own that must be protected as a matter of right, just the same as every other person.

During a pregnancy, the only person with rights is the pregnant woman. She has a right to liberty, including a right to use her body as she pleases. So she has every right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy -- for any reason. If an abortion will further her own life and happiness, then she ought to pursue that option with a clear conscience.

The growing faith-based opposition to abortion cannot be countered by vague appeals to choice and privacy. Roe v. Wade will be overturned and Amendment 48 (or its like) will be passed without a clear, consistent and positive defense of abortion rights. We must be as principled in our defense of a woman's right to her own body as were the abolitionists in defending the rights of slaves. Liberty cannot be won by any other means.

Diana Hsieh is the founder of the Coalition for Secular Government. Ari Armstrong is the editor of FreeColorado.com. They co-authored "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life," available through SecularGovernment.us.

Quick Roundup 368

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

It's the Culture, Stupid!

Before I go on, I must note that I really hate the James Carville formulation ("It's the economy, stupid!") to which the above sentence alludes. It's dishonest, self-righteous, and wrong all at the same time. It's both an argument from intimidation and a package deal (of concern for a problem and a particular political agenda that purports to solve it). Its main purpose is to club anyone who hears it over the head with a sound bite before he can respond, said sound bite being catchy enough that it will likely be all anyone remembers of such an exchange.

That said, I found the Quin Hillyer piece of the same name in The American Spectator thought-provoking in two ways. First, it makes a suggestion to John McCain on how he ought to counter Obama's political advantage on the economy. Second, in doing so, it makes an interesting error in calculation precisely because its author, being a conservative, fails to fully grasp the nature of American culture and so fails to realize that McCain is ill-suited to follow what would otherwise be excellent political advice!

Hillyer does a great job of indicating Obama's far-left contempt for American culture -- while unfortunately also package-dealing the virtues of said culture with Christianity. But he is giving this advice to someone who does not understand the importance of freedom of speech and actively endangers it, wants to enact a program of national service, and -- like Obama -- blames capitalism for the current government-induced financial meltdown.

McCain's own convictions are contrary to freedom and individualism! Even if he attempts to follow this advice by pretending to uphold them at the last minute, he risks sounding insincere, as he already has to the extent that he may have realized on his own that he may need to stop being the Media's Favorite Republican long enough to campaign against his ideological twin. His lack of fire in the belly and the dullness of the debates are symptoms of the fact that McCain and Obama are similar under the skin and of the fact that McCain does not sincerely oppose Obama's premises.

But there is another angle to the formulation, "It's the culture, stupid!" that is worth considering, and that pertains to how we came to this situation in the first place. Americans overall still, in a confused, sense-of-life way, value their freedom, but many do not have at their disposal a clear, intellectual grasp of what freedom is, or what it depends upon. If more of us did, neither candidate would have even gotten very far in the primaries. For more on that, I refer the interested reader to Mark V. Kormes's latest post, "America's Anti-America Candidates", at Principles in Practice.

In sum: Forget McCain. We'll get a terrible president no matter who wins in November. This whole damned predicament -- our predicament -- is due to the culture. It's not obvious. You're not stupid, and I hope you consider what Ayn Rand has to say about the nature of freedom and its importance.

Setting Terms

An ongoing discussion I have been skimming through has reminded me of a couple of things...

In intellectual debate, one must be very careful to define terms because people often use the same word to mean different things. This can lead to disastrous results, because intellectual ideas have real-world consequences when they are put into practice. Just consider the so-called Libertarian Party, home to hoards of people who feel that it is not necessary to know what the term "freedom" means in order to fight for it -- and all manner of people (e.g., anarchists) whose "pro-freedom" positions would actually destroy freedom were they to be implemented.

For that reason, there is an interesting discussion going on at HBL about whether Objectivists ought to use the term "greed" as a description of virtue, much like Ayn Rand did "selfishness". I do not intend to hold that debate here, but I do note an interesting aspect of intellectual debate that came up in that discussion.

A problem with almost any abstract term -- like selfishness -- is that there can be multiple meanings that are widely-enough accepted to occur in dictionaries. In fact, as the first two entries here show, a given dictionary can even fail to define the term in the sense one intends at all. (The first definition is fine until the end, where it appends, "regardless of others". Only a fool would attempt to pretend that one can ignore a fact of reality such as the existence of other human beings!)

I note here that we can set aside the word "greed" completely here. "Selfishness" offers plenty of challenges on its own!

One participant in the HBL thread noted this problem and added something to the effect that to fail to define one's terms is more than a semantic issue: it is to concede ground without a fight! Just considering "selfishness". Suppose I thought something like, "Well, everyone thinks I'm a baby eater the moment I say I'm selfish, so I'll pick (or invent) an new term to sidestep that problem."

What would happen? The correctness of an idea will not determine anyone who happens to bump into it to accept it. There are plenty of people who both oppose selfishness and realize that a great way to prevent its wider acceptance as a virtue is to cause people to confound it with such things as self-centeredness, envy, and criminality. The new word would quickly become just as misunderstood. (Of course, there are also some who, being in positions of power, will simply try to stop you from even getting to make your point. (Paul Hsieh recently blogged about such an occurrence at Noodlefood, but I can't seem to locate the post!)

All of this reminds me of political correctness, which was all the rage when I was in graduate school (and remains so in some quarters), so much so that intellectual thugs would seize upon even common words as excuses to put meanings you clearly did not intend into your mouth and start a fight.

Quote of the Day

The article is depressing, outlining in gory detail what Obama wants to do if he is elected, but the writer in me enjoyed this line, which comes from the book Peter Ferrara is reviewing:

The political class seems to be almost intentionally steering the United States economy into the abyss -- and, to borrow a phrase from P.J. O'Rourke, the American electorate, alas, seems ready and willing to hand them the keys and the bottle of whiskey to do it. [italics added]

I'd initially written "depression" for "depressing" above. Freudian slip....

Roundups

This week's Objectivist Roundup is hosted at Titanic Deck Chairs, and Martin Lindeskog recently hosted Carnival of the Recipes.

Exceptional Post

Strangely absent from the Objectivist Roundup is a very insightful post about self-centeredness versus selfishness that I read yesterday. It ends in this way:

The selfishness vs. self-centeredness misunderstanding is fairly common among Objectivists. Its an easy error to make, but it can be a difficult one to rectify. If you value relationships, make sure you take the selfish approach. And get over yourself already! :)

I thought that the following observation was particularly good:

Since many aspects of one's personality become automatized, the self-centered man may get the feeling that he is socially awkward, but he doesn't know why. Social ineptness due to self-centeredness can build on itself, as one automatizes the impression that new people do not value him properly. [bold added]

Notice the vicious circle that failing to appreciate the value of other people that can result, and consider that it can eventually significantly hinder the attainment of other important goals besides friendship! How are the odds of getting married or finding a good job or achieving greatness in a career affected by the premise that others do not generally evaluate one properly? All of these goals also depend on the opposite happening and on someone being confident that it will eventually occur!

Very thought-provoking!

More Beautiful Pictures!

To end today's roundup on a positive note, I direct my readers to Dianne Durante's blog, where, I belatedly note, she has posted some stunning photos of the Manhattan skyline.

-- CAV

The End is Near

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

About two weeks ago, I received an "action alert" from the fanatical Christian group American Family Association. It asked me to send my pastor to the following letter and pledge, with emphasis added:

Dear Pastor,

The upcoming election is the most critical in the history of our nation. The very future of our nation's foundation is at stake. Every person will be affected. If the liberals win, then our foundation will no longer be based on the traditional Judeo-Christian morality. It will gradually but assuredly be based on an ever shifting, ever moving foundation.

In case you may think I'm a "the sky is falling" type of person, you should know: I am a graduate of Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. I am an ordained United Methodist minister and have been for 44 years. I founded AFA more than 30 years ago and see the upcoming election as the most critical ever. Yes, if the liberals win you will lose some of your religious freedom and free speech rights. You will not be allowed to say certain things about a particular group. Homosexual marriage will be approved.

I cannot overemphasize the importance the Nov. 4 election. That is why I hope you will sign the Pastor's Pledge, and forward it to fellow pastors and encourage them to sign the Pastor's Pledge.

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

The Pastor's Pledge

I pledge to:

1. Encourage my members to register to vote.
2. Encourage my members to study the issues.
3. Encourage my members to vote.

I've seen plenty of gushing praise for Sarah Palin and nasty criticism for Barack Obama from various e-mail lists of evangelical political organizations, but these alarm bells are pretty shrill. Obama is not an opponent of Christianity, nor even a real defender of the separation of church and state. So just imagine how these folks would react to a politician with a genuine understanding of and commitment to individual rights, including an absolute wall of separation between church and state. They'd go ballistic, to put it mildly.

Misclassifying Terrorists

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The October 7, 2008 Washington Post reports that:

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects...

The article also notes:

Both [former state Police Superintendent Thomas] Hutchins and [current Police Superintendent Terrence] Sheridan said the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries.

I guess that the old 1940's excuse of "I was just following orders!" has now apparently now been upgraded into "The software left me with no other choices!"

On a more serious note, this sort of misclassification is wrong in two ways.

First, it's obviously unjust to any peaceful protestors who are exercising their legitimate rights to free speech and to oppose government policies. Second, it clutters up the terrorist database with non-terrorist names, thus hampering law enforcment operations against genuinely violent terrorists and criminals.

Of course, violent protestors should be dealt by the police with an appropriately forceful response, in order to protect individual rights. But the conflation of "protestor = terrorist" in the minds of the police is a dangerous one.

Unless this mindset is challenged, the semi-joking attitude expressed today on this t-shirt from the Denver Police Union may become the norm in tomorrow's real-life police state:



(Via IPList.)

Capitalism Without Guilt: The Moral Case for Freedom

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND CENTER FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
555 12th Street NW, Suite 620 N, Washington, DC 20004

October 9, 2008

Capitalism Without Guilt: The Moral Case for Freedom

Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

What: A talk defending the profit motive and presenting the moral case for laissez-faire capitalism. A Q&A will follow.

Where: National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

When: Wednesday, October 22, 2008, at 6:30 PM

The public and media are invited. Admission is FREE.

Description: Capitalism has an undisputed record of wealth generation, yet it has always functioned under a cloud of moral suspicion. In a culture that venerates Mother Teresa as a paragon of virtue, businessmen sit in stoic silence while their pursuit of profits is denounced as selfish greed.

Society tells businessmen to sacrifice, to serve others, to “give back”--counting on their acceptance of self-interest as a moral crime, with chronic guilt its penance. Is it any wonder that productive giants from John D. Rockefeller to Bill Gates have behaved as if profit-making leaves a moral stain that only tireless philanthropy can launder but never fully remove?

It is time America heard the moral case for laissez-faire capitalism.

Two centuries ago the Founding Fathers established a nation based on the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property--and the selfish pursuit of his own happiness. But neither the Founders nor their successors could properly defend self-interest and the profit motive in the face of moral denunciation. The result has been a slow destruction of freedom in America, leading us to today’s economic mess.

In this inaugural lecture celebrating the launch of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights (ARC), in Washington, D.C., executive director Yaron Brook will demonstrate how Ayn Rand’s revolutionary ethics of rational self-interest supplies the moral foundation that previous proponents of capitalism lacked. Dr. Brook will explain why individual rights are crucial for capitalism’s survival--why productivity and profit, the “selfish greed” that conservatives abhor, are not vices but cardinal virtues, and he will explain why Americans must reject McCain/Obama-style “national service” and instead proudly embrace the radical individualism their lives and happiness require.

Bio: Dr. Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. A former finance professor, he has been published in academic as well as popular publications, and his opinion-editorials appear in major newspapers. He is frequently interviewed on national TV and radio. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

###  ### ###

Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after his talk.

Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrandcenter.org          
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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America's Soldiers Deserve Better

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

America’s Soldiers Deserve Better
October 9, 2008

Washington, D.C. --Asked when American combat forces should be used to quell humanitarian crises that pose no threat to U.S. security, Barack Obama pointed to Darfur and Rwanda, saying, “When genocide is happening…and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.” McCain agreed: “We must do whatever we can to prevent genocide.”

But according to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “Vowing to send U.S. troops on selfless missions is a travesty.

“What Obama dismisses as standing ‘idly by’ really means: to protect the irreplaceable lives of American soldiers by refusing to ship them off on sundry ‘peacekeeping’ missions that do nothing to make us safe. That is not some cold-hearted gesture, but the government’s moral obligation. Nothing but a threat to American lives or freedom can justify putting our soldiers in harm’s way. Demanding they spill their blood in order to stop warring tribes from slaughtering each other is an obscene violation of their rights--regardless of how noble McCain or Obama thinks the cause is.

“Our soldiers deserve better. Instead of sacrificing U.S. treasure and lives for the alleged welfare of foreigners, we should demand a foreign policy that treats American security as its exclusive concern.”

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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Ayn Rand Saw This Coming

By Tom Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Saw This Coming
October 9, 2008

Washington, D.C. --“Despite overwhelming evidence that government policies caused the current financial crisis, Congress is blaming businessmen,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “What’s worse, the capitalists who have been shackled with unprecedented regulatory burdens are unable to defend themselves morally. Though the events are different, this pattern of abuse and submission is straight out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

“The cycle starts with government intervening into the economy and imposing regulations and controls on business. This distorts the free market, leading to economic dislocations. When the problems caused by these distortions inevitably follow, everyone blames the free market and its greedy capitalists. The proposed solution? More government controls. Over the years, conservative critics of creeping government have repeatedly exposed this illogic but have always been helpless to explain why the cycle keeps repeating, decade after decade.

“The pattern keeps recurring because businessmen are willing to take the blame. From capitalism’s inception, its defenders have been morally disarmed by the widespread view that self-interest is morally suspect, and disinterested service to others is a moral ideal. So each new spate of controls has been grudgingly accepted as a fair price to pay for society’s toleration of the selfish pursuit of profit.

“Atlas Shrugged depicted a society in economic collapse due to this recurring cycle, and today’s parallels are obvious. Government manipulation of money, credit, and lending standards over several decades caused the mess we’re in. Now, the offered solution is more of the poison that sickened the economy--more bailouts, more cheap money, more government-guaranteed loans, and above all, more regulations.

“This chronic cycle will not end until businessmen accept that their production of profit is neither immoral nor amoral--it is the capstone of moral virtue. Once they shrug off the role of scapegoat, businessmen can demand with moral certitude that government punish fraud and enforce contracts but refrain from interfering with voluntary trades among consenting adults.

“When America’s markets are finally free of all coercion--in other words, when laissez-faire is achieved--financial crises such as the one we’re experiencing will never happen again.”

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel (The O’Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN (Talkback Live and the Glenn Beck Program), CNBC (Closing Bell and On the Money), and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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CAC's Edward Cline to appear on the Barry Farber Show

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ed is slated to appear on the Barry Farber Show (http://www.crntalk.com/) at 8:35 PM ET to talk about his article "The Congressional Betrayal of America."

To listen in, please visit http://www.crntalk.com and click on the speaker icon on the right of the web page at the appointed hour. Please note that you must convert the show times to your time zone – i.e., on the east coast the show time is 8:00 pm.

CRN 1 & 6 MONDAY - FRIDAY 5:00pm - 6:00pm PT (Live)
CRN 1 & 6 MONDAY - FRIDAY 11:00pm - 12:00am PT (Encore)
CRN 2 SATURDAY'S 11:00am - 12:00pm PT (Encore)

On the Debate I Did Not Watch

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I missed the debate last night. The Lakers had their first pre-season game. I'd rather watch the Lakers play a meaningless game than watch two idiots argue over how they plan to spend the money I make.

The Lakers look good. Their 20-year old center Andrew Bynum nailed his first three shots, several of which were 10-foot jump shots; he's not just a dunker like Shaq. Bynum is being tutored by the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and it shows.

But you don't come to this blog to read about sports.

Reaction to the debate on the right ranges from not enough to change things to disaster.

Not only does McCain approve of the bailout, but he wants to expand it by $300 billion! On a purely political level, setting aside whether or not bigger government is a good idea, this strikes me as a loser. It's not the way a Republican wins an election. Those who think bigger government is a good idea will vote for the Democrat. The rest will vote for McCain for other reasons, hoping he doesn't go too far in the pursuit of socialism. Some Republicans who might have voted for McCain will be demoralized by his socialism and stay home on November 4th.

I'm beginning to wonder if McCain believed his PR a bit too much during all those years when he was the media's pet Republican. He concluded that the way to success is to oppose the Republican base and court independents. This is looking like a loser strategy. October 8, 2008 is a hell of a time to figure this out. It might be too late for McCain to give himself up completely to his conservative advisers and follow Sarah Palin's lead to the White House.

I predict that if McCain loses in November he will instantly become the MSM's favorite Republican again. But he will also become the Republican most reviled by the right. Conservatives had to swallow a lot to support McCain. They did it because they want power. If McCain can't deliver power, he is useless. If a lot of Republicans are like me, they will want McCain to go away and never be heard from again.

UPDATE: Boortz complains about McCain's performance in last night's debate:

So many lost opportunities last night ... how in the world does someone light
a fire under this guy? There's not all that much time left.

It's too late. McCain is who he is -- and that is someone who is ignorant and contemptuous of free market economics. We are now seeing why he never should have won the nomination. It is not just that he is wrong, but he can't win. Statist Republicans can't beat Democrats at their own game.

Religulous: One Cheer out of Three

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Bill Maher has a new documentary slamming religion, Religulous, which opened Friday night around the nation. Short review: Sure, go see it. It will make you snort and laugh and shake your head at the endless nuttiness of religion. And it will make you think -- but not that much. Unfortunately, there is a fundamental flaw that keeps it from being great.

The movie had the working title of "A Spiritual Journey," and it begins that way with homey early photos of Maher up to his adolescence, and some sit-down exchanges with his mother about their family's religion (raised Catholic, though half Jewish). But the movie isn't really about him and his spiritual journey; it is mainly spent in interviews with an array of religious figures representing various big and some not-so-big religions and sects. We get to gawk at their goofiness, and Maher gives them plenty of opportunities to show their plumage. Interspersed are passages of him talking while driving around the nation. (Maybe that's the sort of "journey" he's really referring to.)

Maher is a comedian who's made religion a target for years, so he's got lots of funny, biting material to toss off. And sometimes his boldness and quick wit really pay off in his interactions with the religious loonies he's rounded up for inspection. That is where the film shines. He wraps the film up with a speech about the dangers of faith and religion, and generally encourages people to grow up.

It is refreshing to see a film here in one of the reddest of the red states taking a huge swing at the endless goofiness and insanity of religion. But as with 'New Atheists' like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, its effect will be necessarily shallow and likely counterproductive in improving the culture. Consider: Maher wants to ding the destructiveness of faith and expose religionists' obvious nuttiness -- yet he works from the weak platform of a Skeptic who Just Doesn't Know, and who explicitly touts Doubt as his big epistemological tool. Well, the faithful will simply see him as ultimately expressing just another kind of faith, and they'll rightly think him a bullying hypocrite for baselessly attacking theirs. If he wants to be effective, he has to gain enough of the correct philosophical grounding to be able to explain just how one knows with valid certainty that faith and reason, science and religion, are fundamentally different and utterly irreconcilable.

And believers will see the gray kind of Relativism that flows from such skepticism and rightly dismiss his approach as a dangerous prospect -- after all, humans' need for morality is real. Lost in this sadly-partial exchange is the fact that both the religious and the subjectivist approaches to morality are dead wrong.  Values have an objective basis here in reality -- they aren't subjective constructs or edicts from another realm -- and moral principles to guide us in pursuing the values required to live happy lives are just as open to discovery, dissemination, and proper use as the principles of engineering and economics.

While Maher's movie has a lot of humorous red meat for the god-free, all that believers will find is a journey out of the frying pan and into the fire.  That is a shame, if the goal is to help humanity get over religion.

CSG Media Release: Nearly 40% of Colorado Voters Seek to Destroy Reproductive Rights

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

MEDIA RELEASE: COALITION FOR SECULAR GOVERNMENT

Nearly 40% of Colorado Voters Seek to Destroy Reproductive Rights

Sedalia, Colorado / October 7, 2008

Contact: Diana Hsieh, co-author of "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life" and founder of the Coalition for Secular Government, Diana@SecularGovernment.us or 303.304.0689

A poll of likely voters shows strong support for Amendment 48, the ballot measure that would grant the full legal rights of persons to fertilized eggs. The survey, conducted on September 28th by Rasmussen Reports with 500 likely voters, shows that 39% plan to vote for the measure, 50% to vote against it, while 11% are unsure. (See .)

Such strong support for Amendment 48 should surprise anyone familiar with the barrage of criticism published in Colorado media in recent weeks. Critics of the measure have warned voters of its destructive effects on Colorado's laws if passed and enforced. They have shown that it would usher in a near-total ban on abortion, outlaw the birth control pill and in vitro fertilization, and subject pregnant women to police controls. Yet these latest poll results are basically unchanged from a June poll, also by Rasmussen. (See .)

Diana Hsieh, founder of the Coalition for Secular Government and co-author of "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life," argues that the broad support for Amendment 48 is driven by a deeply-held faith pretending to be "pro-life."

The most recent Rasmussen poll showed that 41% of Colorado voters believe that "life begins at conception." That number explains the strong support for Amendment 48, despite the media barrage against it. "People who endorse that slogan regard a fertilized egg as a new, whole person with a right to life," Hsieh said. "They regard the enormous sacrifices forced on real men and women by the measure as insignificant -- or even ennobling. Their vote is based on faith, without regard to the real-world requirements of human life and happiness. It's not 'pro-life' at all."

"To effectively combat measures like Amendment 48, the whole 'pro-life' ideology must be challenged at its root," Hsieh said. "A mushy slogan like 'it simply goes too far' is unconvincing, even misleading. It doesn't speak to the fundamental dispute. Worse, it suggests that some compromise -- like banning most abortions -- would be acceptable."

"Instead, reproductive rights must be defended on principle, based on the objective facts of human nature. With regard to abortion, the fact is that a fetus or embryo is only a potential person so long as encased within and dependent on the woman. Once born, the infant is a new individual person with the right to life. That view ought to be the basis for the laws of a free society. Any alternative -- any attempt to grant rights to the embryo or fetus -- would violate the rights of pregnant women."

For a principled defense of reproductive rights, see the Coalition for Secular Government's issue paper, "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person," available at http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf, particularly the section "Personhood and the Right to Abortion," pages 10-13.

Vote No on Colorado's Amendment 59

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Announcing... http://www.VoteNo59.com!

Amendment 59 (or "SAFE") is the proposed amendment to Colorado's constitution that would increase your taxes by forever funneling your TABOR rebate back to the government, ostensibly to fund P-12 education.

Colorado voters should say NO to 59. Why? Because:

• It is a permanent tax increase.
  
  
• It isn't about increasing funding for Colorado's government schools.
  
  
• It violates property rights.
  
  
• It increases government interference in our economy and our lives.
  
  
• It will be bad for Colorado's economy.
  
  
• It will be another boondoggle.
  
  
• It is deceptive.

Find out more at Vote No on Amendment 59.

Do you want to help defeat Amendment 59, even if you don't live in Colorado? You can:

• Forward the announcement to people you know in Colorado.
  
  
• Link to http://www.VoteNo59.com from your own web site.

Thanks!

Around the World Wide Web 79

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I understand it is against military policy for our troops to call the enemy insensitive names such as camel jockey.

Imagine a Marine fighting in intense, hand to hand combat. He screams, "Die, you raghead son of a bitch!" Is this Marine now subject to military discipline because in the process of killing the enemy he called him a bad name?

And I ask again, is this any way seriously to fight a war?

1. Bernard Chapin has an excellent look at Obama's smear tactics.

Barack Obama’s tactics are totalitarian and un-American. They illustrate that, while we should reject him for a thousand reasons this November, none is more convincing than the palpable contempt he has shown for free speech.

Indeed, free speech is our most valuable right, if rights can be more valuable than one another. Spreading reason is our only chance of changing this culture, which is marching in ignorance toward the abyss of socialism. We desperately need to maintain free speech or all is lost. This is one area in which, so far, the left is clearly worse than the right.

2. The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has set up a web page regarding the economic crisis.

3. Obama's plans to destroy freedom in America.

4. McCain is said to be grumpy about having to attack a Democrat.

After his first debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), both spectators in the hall and commentators on TV noted that McCain had deliberately avoided looking at his rival.

A close McCain friend said the reason is clear: McCain is miserable about having to run a campaign that’s antithetical to his persona.

“He is basically having to be somebody that he isn’t,” said the friend, who remains strongly supportive. “He is just not a guy that goes on the attack in public. For him to be on the attack constantly, attacking Obama’s character … McCain is uncomfortable with that, and it’s made him grumpy.”

How sad that Senator McCain is inconvenienced in this election, and must attack his ideological soulmate, a Democrat.

We should not be surprised by this. McCain achieved prominence by attacking Republicans and allying with Democrats. This is how he became the MSM's favorite Republican.

If McCain goes on to lose, it will be because, in a contest between a Democrat and a me too Republican, voters went with the real Democrat.

5.  Bolivia is on the brink of crisis.

Bolivia is synonymous with political and social strife. Long known for its deep social inequities and political turmoil, this country of 9 million people has increasingly been divided geographically, economically, and even culturally. Two groups now fight for control of the state: those in the lowlands, mostly capitalist mestizos (people of mixed European ancestry) who support globalization and benefit from Brazil's booming economy, versus the indigenous groups in the Andes, the anti-American Aymara and Quechua, who prefer state control of the economy.

This reminds me that if Obama is elected, every anti-American force in the world will think, "Now is the time to test America's strength."

6. Who is Obama? I have struggled with this question on this blog. I find it astonishing that on October 8, 2008, we still do not know. The man is a cipher. The big question: is he hiding radical leftist, anti-American plans?

A.M. Siriano asks the question the MSM are afraid to ask: What if Obama doesn't have America's best interest at heart?

Moral Evaluations of Evil People

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A reader -- Thomas -- recently asked me the following question:

A question occured to me as I was mulling Dani's abortion position in my head: is it MORE evil to hold a position like hers, when you actually do see its full meaning and consequences (i.e., women who have abortions shall be put to death), than if you are a more moderate conservative who opposes abortion but doesn't really think about the logical implications of that view, either through evasion or lack of intellectual energy?

Yes, a person who openly embraces and welcomes the destructive effects of his ideas is more evil than his more "moderate" counterpart. Such a person is ready and willing to commit the most heinous acts for the sake of his ideology -- without reservations. He will be fully convinced that what he's doing is right. When he has the opportunity to put his ideology into action, he will push others into participating in his crimes by force of will. He will leverage their partial agreement with him, and he will relieve their feelings of guilt by assuming responsibility.

His evasive counterpart would recoil in horror from the prospect of performing such vile deeds. He would attempt some more moderate course -- and so do less harm. He could not greatly others to adopt and implement his views. The great danger of such a person is that he represents a transition point on the way to fully embracing evil. He gives a civilized veneer to his ideas, thereby making them more attractive to people who would be totally repulsed by the openly evil position. After people have adopted the moderate view, fully evil person can press those people to adopt his more consistent position. However, that doesn't make the moderate person more evil: it just means that he's very dangerous too: he's a helpmate of the fully evil person, even if unintentionally so.

Here's how I came to that opinion. Consider an academic utilitarian -- someone who believes and promulgates the idea that each person ought to pursue the greatest happiness for the greatest number. That person's view is subject to some very nasty counter-examples. If a town of white people would get greater pleasure from lynching a black man (minus his pain) than from not doing so, then they ought to lynch him. It would not merely be permissible to do so, but obligatory.

Some utilitarians have various arguments against such scenarios. They say: "Of course, that would be morally repugnant, but utilitarianism would require us to take into account the sadness felt by the black man's family, etc."

That's not an adequate answer: the numbers might not always line up, precisely because people can take pleasure in morally repugnant acts. No causal connection can be made between maximizing the greatest pleasure for the greatest number and refraining from violating rights, for example. (That's not true of AR's egoism, in contrast, because the requirements of life are set by facts, not desires.) These utilitarians are evading, I'm sure: their rationalizations are just too thin to be honest mistakes. Yet they do retain some respect for the rights of persons.

Alternatively, some utilitarians embrace such scenarios. They say: "If that's how the numbers go, then lynching is what we are obliged to do." These people are more consistent in their embrace of utilitarianism. Yet they are not more honest; they are completely untethered from reality. No cost to the lives of individual persons would ever dissuade them acting to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

So who is more evil? I'd say the second person, without a doubt. If given power, the second person would wield it without any concern for the lives of individuals. His only concern would be to fulfill the abstract command of utilitarianism, and no evidence of its evils could dissuade him from doing so. The first person would attempt to retain some respect for the rights of individuals. He could not bring himself to be so brutal as the second. Ultimately, of course, he'd likely have to give up utilitarianism or respect for rights, but until then, he could be pushed toward respect for rights.

Now, the consistent utilitarian is useful in a certain way: he shows others the ultimate end of the utilitarian position, while the mixed utilitarian conceals it. Yet that's not relevant to evaluating them morally, because that's just an accidental consequence of their moral commitments, not a part of their actual moral psychology. In other words, it's not a trait that they've cultivated deliberately; it's just a by-product.

That being said, it's certainly true that -- in some contexts -- the person embracing evil in part is more dangerous than the person embracing evil in full. Yet that's only because the partial-evil person serves as a stepping stone to the greater evil of the full-evil person. In other words, even that danger presupposes that the fully evil is is morally worse.

Get Over Yourself!

By noreply@blogger.com (Dan Edge) from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Or: Selfishness vs. Self-Centeredness in Meeting New People

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For Objectivists, selfishness is a moral ideal. It is proper for man to act in his own self-interest, and his own happiness ought to be his highest moral purpose. But when it comes to interpersonal relationships, some Objectivists misconstrue the meaning of “selfishness” to mean “self-centeredness.” When meeting new people, or in building relationships, they tend to ignore the values of others. This misinterpretation of the Objectivist ethics implies a failure to recognize the great potential value of other rational beings. One who commits this error can develop and reinforce a social ineptness that cripples his ability to develop relationships.

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To illustrate my point, I will take a simple example that everyone can relate to: meeting new people. How does the (rational) selfish man get to know a new person? How about the self-centered man?

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[Before one can get to know new people, he must be around them. One will not meet many people by sitting around his apartment all day, every day. Some self-centered men never get to the point of meeting new people because they believe that they ought to be entirely “self-sufficient,” with no need of friendships or romantic love. But I will leave this issue aside for now, and focus on the method that a selfish vs. self-centered man uses to get to know new people.]

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The self-centered man (implicitly) believes that his own thoughts, interests, and values ought to be the focus of any effort to develop a new relationship. When he meets a new person, his objective is to tell that person all about himself. “This is what I do for a living, this is what I’m passionate about, these are my interests, etc.” Of course, he will listen to what the new person has to say, but that is not his primary objective. For the self-centered man, the natural course of conversation is: I tell you as much as possible about myself, and you tell me as much as possible about yourself. The self-centered man evaluates new people, not on the basis of their values, but on how they respond to his values. For him, that is what getting to know people means.

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As anyone who has met this kind of person will attest, the self-centered approach can come across as aloof, snobby, rude, or disinterested. One gets the impression: “This person is not at all interested in getting to know me, only in telling me about himself.” The self-centered man does not treat new people as potential values. Potential values are to be probed, investigated, and evaluated. How can one evaluate a new person if he makes no effort to discover that which he is evaluating? Though he may not intend it, the self-centered man sends the message that he does not see new people as a value (except as receptacles for information about himself). Not surprisingly, this turns people off.

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Since many aspects of one’s personality become automatized, the self-centered man may get the feeling that he is socially awkward, but he doesn’t know why. Social ineptness due to self-centeredness can build on itself, as one automatizes the impression that new people do not value him properly. If the above example describes how you get to know new people, then I advise you to reevaluate your methodology. If one takes the self-centered approach in meeting new people, then he is more likely to be a self-centered friend and a self-centered lover. A friend who doesn’t take stake in your values is not a friend. The lover who is uninterested in your interests is a shitty boyfriend.

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How then does the (properly) selfish man approach meeting new people? Because he views other human beings as potential values, he aims to explore the nature of those values. His objective is not to talk about himself, but to explore the values of others. He tries to make the new person comfortable, asks questions, and strives to relate the new person’s values to his own. Of course the selfish man will talk about himself, but that is not his primary focus. Assuming that the new person is also selfish, the probing questions will go both ways: “So what do you do when you’re not working?” “I enjoy reading adventure books like The Three Musketeers. How about you, what are you into? Etc, etc.”

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If it turns out that the new person is a dud, then the selfish man has lost nothing. But if the new person is a potential friend (or lover), then he has taken the first step toward treating this person properly as a value. Such an attitude is obvious to others, and is most often greatly appreciated. If you have ever met a man who tried his best to make you comfortable, showed interest in your interests, and strived to relate your values to his -- then you know what I’m talking about. These selfish men are the very definition of social aptitude. They are the men who make friends, influence people, nail the interview, and get the girl. The selfish approach also can become automatized in the subconscious, giving one a feeling of confidence in his social interactions.

<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 <![endif]-->The selfishness vs. self-centeredness misunderstanding is fairly common among Objectivists. It’s an easy error to make, but it can be a difficult one to rectify. If you value relationships, make sure you take the selfish approach. And get over yourself already! :)

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--Dan Edge

SNL Parody of Biden-Palin Debate

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Having suffered through the real thing, I liked the Saturday Night Live version a lot better:

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It's Funny That They Just Don't Get It

By noreply@blogger.com (EC) from Atlantis,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This is more of a short commentary on the reaction to the market crash yesterday than anything else. It was sort of funny, in an ironic sort of way, watching the talking heads on Fox and elsewhere completely baffled when the the market took a dump yesterday rather than rising like they expected in the wake of the "bailout" legislation.

While what happened is exactly what I expected, since it is really the only thing that can happen when the government interferes with the economy on a nearly trillion dollar level, all they could talk about was why the "bailout" wasn't doing what they expected it to do--fix the "markets". It was just amusing watching people who claimed to be both "economic experts" and "fiscal conservatives" baffled that the plan wasn't working as they expected it should. It just shows how little even the so-called "experts" really understand how Capitalism actually works, and also why such a large intrusion into the economy can only cause the disastrous result that it has actually caused. It's also kind of funny, also in an ironic sort of way, that they now think that it will just "take time" for "positive" effects from the "bailout" to be seen.

It's funny, but it is also an extremely serious situation, because nobody seems to see that what is actually being created is a Depression not an economic recovery as they expect will occur. We need to use this disaster as an opportunity to advocate the right ideas--now. This is how we will eventually win this war of ideas and eventually stop this nonsense from ever happening again.

Quick Roundup 367

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

What a morning! A thunderstorm has popped up out of nowhere, knocked the desktop off line (destroying what I had done in the process), and is forcing me to go on a half-depleted laptop battery. (It has caused the lights to momentarily go out or flicker at least six times in the past fifteen minutes.)

Pardon the rush job, but I'll have to see what I can slap together in about thirty minutes...

SNL Spoof Video

Reader Dismuke emailed about a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit that lampoons various figures in the "bailout" debacle, including Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, the Georges Bush and Soros, and Soros's pals, Herbert and Marion Sandler:

NBC keeps yanking it off the Internet every time it gets posted ... presumably under pressure from Soros or his friends .... NBC is also apparently deleting all mentions of the skit from its online message boards.

It is HILARIOUS. It also parodies Bush and Pelosi and they have both of their personalities down pat -- including just how utterly pathetic Bush has become. [minor edits, bold added]

I agree with that last paragraph!

The video, at least for now, is posted here. Michelle Malkin has also preemptively posted a transcript illustrated with stills from the skit.

Ship above Water

One of the funniest family photographs there is from my childhood is one of the older of my brothers and myself as toddlers making complete pills of ourselves on a family trip to Ship Island, off the Mississippi coast.

Mom and Dad took us to this neat island with an old fort on it and what did we do? We cried the whole time! The photo has us standing in an entrance to the fort looking hilariously pathetic!

My brother has been back several times since, but I never have, although I'd like to. So it was with some wistfulness and regret that I read an article in the New York Times about the destruction of the island -- which Hurricane Camille sawed in half decades ago -- by Gustav and Ike:

"I don't see Ship anywhere," said Asbury H. Sallenger, a [sic] oceanographer at the Geological Survey who was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and had the best view. "On the map we see it, but all I see is breakers. There is just zip left of this thing."

Eventually, the scientists spotted the western part of Ship, but its eastern half had all but disappeared. A small patch of land and whitecaps breaking on underwater shoals were all that remained.

After I emailed him with the news, my brother replied by pointing to photos to the contrary, commenting, "I don't know what Asbury H. Sallenger's motive was ... probably wanted some of my money for his research."

Indeed. As the Times article states later:

Storms and climate change are partly to blame. But the region as a whole is subsiding. And in some areas, some critics contend, federal dredging projects are robbing islands of sand. [bold added]

Encouraged by my brother's good news, but bothered that the pictures were still taken before Ike, I found this article from a Biloxi paper which reports that the obituary for Ship Island was premature, and cites a scientist who politely, but pointedly noted that the flyovers cited by the Times were performed less than 48 hours after Ike made landfall -- while its massive storm surge, I surmise, still covered the islands.

Looks like my brother was right on both counts.

Gorgeous Photographs

Leading up to Hurricane Ike, I frequently went to the blog of the Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger (aka, "SciGuy") for information on storm developments and how they could affect the Houston area.

I enjoy his blog, and still drop by from time to time. A recent visit treated me to the photograph at right, which Berger obtained from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day web site.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Made a correction and added a clarification to section on Ship Island.

Prediction on North Korea

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

StrategyPage has an interesting (and plausible) prediction about the near future of North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il apparently fell ill last April, and months of treatment left him unable to continue nuclear disarmament negotiations. It's unclear if he is back at work, but no one else seems to be able to make decisions.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have better connections inside North Korea, but apparently do not share a lot of information with anyone else. Defectors from North Korea believe that the Chinese will take over if it appears that the North Korean government is about to fall apart. The Chinese plan to install pro-Chinese North Koreans as head of a new "North Korean" government, and institute the kind of economic reforms they have been urging the North Korean to undertake for over a decade. The Chinese do not want North Korea to merge with South Korea, nor do they want North Korea to collapse (and send millions of starving refugees into northern China.

China and South Korea both want North Korea to stay independent, and harmless. Thus China is willing to unofficially annex North Korea, knowing that the South Koreans would go along with this as long as the fiction of North Korean independence were maintained.

South Korea won't admit this, but most South Koreans know that absorbing North Korea would put a big dent in South Korean living standards. That is more unpopular than any other outcome.

As Diana says, it's pathetic when China has to come into a country and be the agent of free market reforms...

Islamic Totalitarianism's Threat to Civilization

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA 92606

October 07, 2008

Islamic Totalitarianism’s Threat to Civilization

What: A panel discussion about the nature of Islamic totalitarianism and how to defeat it. A Q&A will follow.

Who: Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Dr. Wafa Sultan, outspoken critic of Islam

Where: HIB (Humanities Instructional Building), Room 100, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697

When: Monday, October, 13, 2008, at 7 pm

This event is open to the public. Admission is FREE.

Description: From the Iranian hostage crisis to September 11 to the London subway attacks to the Iraqi insurgency--it is clear the West faces a grave threat from a committed enemy. Conventional wisdom holds that the enemy is a rogue group of fanatics, who have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their crimes. It tells us there is no way to permanently eliminate these violent groups, that we have entered an “age of terror” and that we must give up the desire for a decisive victory . . . but is the conventional wisdom right?

Bios:

--Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle East issues. Dr. Brook has served in the Israeli Army and has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on numerous radio and TV programs, including FOX News, CNN and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.

--Dr. Wafa Sultan is a secular Syrian-American writer and thinker, best known for her participation in Middle East political debates, widely circulated Arabic essays and television appearances on CNN, FOX News and Al-Jazeera. She named the Islamic threat to the West as “a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose.” Her outspokenness has brought her both threats and praise. Dr. Sultan is currently working on a book to be titled “The God that Hates.”

For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org

###  ### ###

Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after this event.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org          
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

 

Swiss government supports granting plants rights

By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you thought the animal rights movement could not get any more insane after the Spanish government granted apes rights, here is a new low:

The Federal Ethics Committee of the Swiss government has unanimously concluded that the right of plants should be recognized. Their conclusions (PDF) of their statement on the “moral consideration of plants for their own sake” includes the following:

 

• “Harm caused to plants”, including the “decapitation of wild flowers” is “morally impermissible”
• Plants should be “excluded for moral reasons from absolute ownership”
• Genetic engineering is acceptable only as long as their “reproductive ability and adaptive ability are ensured” and “always involve[s] consideration of conserving and safeguarding the natural, i.e. not man-made, network of relationships”
• The “patenting of plants as such is morally impermissible and contradicts the dignity of living beings” [minority opinion]
• “the complete instrumentalisation [i.e. domestrication] of plants – as a collective, as a species, or as individuals – requires moral justification”

 

You can laugh now, but not so long ago, the vast majority of people of people would have laughed at the idea of “animal rights.” To the extent that governments recognize the rights of any animals, plants, or rocks to exist for their own sake, they equally restrict the rights of human beings, since human civilization is only possible by the manipulation, exploitation, and appropriation of nature to suit the selfish interests of human beings. The call to recognize animal or plant rights is ultimately nothing less than a call for the xenocide of the entire human race.  For more see the ARI mini-site Environmentalism and Animal Rights

Tomorrow's Sub-Prime Losers

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Many have stopped giving mortgages to poor, high-risk borrowers. No surprise there. Indeed, in the current climate of fear and searching for new capital, the pendulum has swung to being extra-cautious.

Does this mean that poorer borrowers who might have otherwise been able to convince good lenders to give them a mortgage will have to wait a few years? No... it might have... in a free-market, but the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has ridden to the rescue.

According to Bloomberg, over the next three years, the FHA will underwrite $300 billion worth of high-risk mortgages. How good are these mortgages, according to the Congressional Budget Office (not some free-market think tank, skewing the numbers): "The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 400,000 households will get FHA- insured loans and about one-third of those will fall behind again on their new loans."

Once more, fact trumps fiction!

Why aren't millions writing angry letters to Congress, protesting this bailout of Main Street?

The Obama Youth

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Via Matt Drudge is a video that must be seen to be believed. (There is some additional information and commentary at Newsbusters.)

The clip opens with a group of camouflage-clad adolescents from a charter school repeatedly chanting "Alpha! Omega!" as they march into a room. (A lefty commentator somewhere said that the order was reversed. Whatever.) The kids stop, and each in turn stands aside and, with his arms held almost genie-like, aloft, says, "Because of Obama, I am inspired to be the next [fill in an occupation here]."


Next, they chant through a litany of things (e.g., "take responsibility for our own lives") in between refrains of "Yes we can!"

In their grand finale, the kids tick off the alleged virtues of the Obama plan for physician enslavement -- only they call it the "Obama Health Care Plan".

Their "education", if the above terminology and this absurd exercise are representative of it, has consisted primarily of memorizing political slogans instead of developing mental acuity, and in acquiring muscle memory for bizarre poses in between Twinkies instead of achieving actual physical fitness.

Yes they can! But not for much longer under that kind of tutelage.

Or under a regime that threatens to be as hostile, if not more so, to freedom of speech than John McCain's:

When an outside group ran TV ads pointing out links between Obama and the former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, the Obama campaign asked the Bush Justice Department -- yes, that Bush Justice Department, the fount of all evil -- to open a criminal investigation.

The Obama campaign's effort dovetails with the work of an outfit called Accountable America, run by a former MoveOn.org operative. It is devoted to threatening conservative donors with legal action and exposure of any embarrassing details of their private lives if they give money to groups running ads against Obama. The New York Times account says the group hopes to create "a chilling effect," but the phrase is used non-pejoratively. [bold and some formatting added]

The apparently thoroughly-forgotten Founders of our nation took pride in "a government of laws, not men" for good reason: They understood the advantages of living under laws that not only protected individual rights, but were understood by the people in advance -- rather than the whims of an absolute ruler.

They also understood the value of freedom of speech, which such a government protects. What will become of these unfortunate boys if their minds somehow survive a childhood of indoctrination, only to find themselves threatened for expressing an opinion that might endanger the grip on power of some politician? What kind of nation uses speech as a means of enforcing conformity rather than as a means of uncovering the truth through debate?

Man must be able to think and act on his judgement to survive. A nation that destroys the minds of its children and forbids intelligent discussion among any remaining adults is doomed because man, having no instincts, cannot function on the animal level.

And yet, before this election and, if we are lucky, over the next four years, the exercise of freedom of speech is all we are going to have to beat back the advance of tyranny. The behavior in this video is shocking and pitiable, but at least there is no coordinated effort on the part of the state to foster it as there eventually could be under the national "service" initiative that Obama's "opponent" favors.

In one month, the United States of America is almost certain to elect the worst President in its history.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Reposted video, which had been taken down (HT: Andrew Dalton). Also, the "teacher" who produced it has been suspended, according to Fox News.

Ignorance of History

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I was watching TV once with a young woman in her 20's. The show, on the History Channel, I think, mentioned the war in the Pacific in WWII. The girl asked me who won the war in the Pacific.

How does an American reach voting age still so ignorant of American history as not to know who won WWII?

Here are other examples of American ignorance of history.

When the state runs schools, its primary goal is not education but indoctrination. The communists wanted to create citizens loyal to communism. The Nazis wanted to create little Nazis. In America, the New Leftist welfare state wants to create New Leftist welfare statists.

Knowledge of American history does not advance the New Left's goal. In fact, knowledge of America's individualist heritage and history of freedom can only get in the way of their goal of creating little statists.

Moreover, a citizenry that is educated at all, not just in history, is not in the interest of the teachers unions and government run schools. Intelligent, independent thinkers might question the premise of socialized education. Why would teachers whose jobs and pensions are dependent on the perpetuation of the current system want to create independent thinkers who might take it all away from them? Better to create Americans who can be lied to and controlled. An ignorant populace is an obedient populace. Obedience is the ultimate goal of state indoctrination.

Americans will continue to be dumbed down as long as that is in the interest of those in charge of young minds.

Is It Over?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Robert Stacy McCain argues that the presidential race is over.

John McCain lost the election Sept. 24 and Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Nothing that is likely to happen between now and Nov. 4 can change this outcome.

Since Sept. 24, polls have increasingly pointed toward a Democratic landslide. Obama not only has an outside-the-margin advantage in nearly every national poll, but leads strongly in enough battleground states that if the election were held today, the Electoral College vote would be 353 for the Democrat, 185 for the Republican. Even Karl Rove's electoral map now shows Obama winning.

R.C. McCain blames the bailout bill. McCain took a leadership role in passing a bill that most Americans did not like. In doing so he sided with Bush and cemented the impression Obama has been trying to sell that a McCain presidency would be Bush's third term.

If this argument is true, then there is some poetic justice to McCain losing because of his economic ignorance. This is precisely why he should lose. What kind of Republican can't even muster an attack against the Democrats for causing the mortgage crisis with their social engineering of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The irony is that McCain will lose because he is too much of a liberal on economics. This is a lesson Republicans would do well to learn.

But there is also an exasperating side to all this. Why should Obama benefit? Do voters think Obama understands economics any more than McCain? Don't they know that he represents more of the big government policies that created the mess we're in?

It becomes theatre of the absurd when you consider what Obama did during the bailout. He did what always does: nothing. The guy is like the Peter Sellers character in Being There.

Apparently, being the emptiest suit is the path to victory in 2008. When you take a bold stand, you can get blamed for it when things go wrong. When you do nothing and remain a "blank screen" for voters to project their ideals upon, you can ride their fantasies all the way to the White House.

I am worried most right now about Obama's coattails. More important than the presidential vote this year is the Senate and House vote. We must elect Republicans in the legislative branch to oppose Obama. If Obama gets 60 Democrats in the Senate and more Democrats in the House, and the MSM inform us that the age of Reagan is over and that Obama has a mandate for socialism... watch out. I would say the sky's the limit for Obama, but he will be taking us down, not up. Hell's the limit.

UPDATE: I see that yesterday McCain did begin attacking Obama about the mortgage crisis. It's a good line of attack, if it does come a week late. By the way, with all the crazy twists and surprises we've seen this election year, it might be too soon to call this race over.

Paul Hsieh Article on Massachusetts Health Care Reform

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Fall 2008 issue of The Objective Standard will be carrying my article on mandatory insurance and the Massachusetts health plan entitled, "Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America".

The full text is only available to subscribers, but nonsubscribers can purchase copies of the PDF file here for only $4.95. (I don't get any money from these purchases.) The print edition of the journal will also be available for purchase in many Barnes & Noble bookstores.

For those who are interested, here is the free preview of the opening section:

"Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America"

Paul Hsieh

The Plan and Its Popularity

In April 2006, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to require that all of its residents purchase health insurance. This mandatory insurance was the centerpiece of a "universal" health care law hailed by analysts as an "innovative bipartisan plan."[1] Republican governor (and former presidential candidate) Mitt Romney proclaimed that "every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance," that costs would be reduced through "market reforms" encouraging "personal responsibility," and that the plan would require "no new taxes... and no government takeover."[2] The plan had support from organizations and individuals across the political spectrum, including the conservative Heritage Foundation, the liberal group Health Care for All, and Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy.[3]

The Massachusetts plan was, in part, a response to today's health care costs, which are rising twice as fast as inflation, making insurance increasingly unaffordable for many employers and individuals.[4] Currently, approximately 47 million Americans have no health insurance.[5] In an effort to solve the problem in their corner of the country, Governor Romney and the Massachusetts state legislature enacted this plan with the twin goals of reducing the cost of health care and guaranteeing coverage for all Massachusetts residents.

The Massachusetts plan consisted of the following major elements: The state would establish a quasi-governmental authority known as the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector (or "Connector") to serve as a clearinghouse through which individuals would be able to purchase state-approved insurance plans. Every resident would be required to purchase a health insurance plan, either from a private insurer or though the Connector, with stiff financial penalties for those who failed to comply.[6] Residents who could not afford insurance would have their expenses subsidized by the state in part or in full, depending on their income. Employers with more than ten employees would be required to provide health insurance for their workers or pay a special fee to subsidize coverage for low-income individuals.[7] In theory, the plan would lower individual patients' insurance costs by enlarging the pool of insured patients. In particular, younger, healthier patients (who often choose not to purchase insurance) would be required to do so, thus paying a portion of the health costs of the larger population.[8]

The plan was attractive to liberals and conservatives alike. Liberals embraced it because it supposedly promised "universal coverage" without requiring them to support politically risky Canadian-style "single-payer" socialized medicine.[9] Conservatives embraced it because it supposedly encouraged "personal responsibility" while preserving a "market framework" for health insurance.[10]

For these reasons, mandatory health insurance has become popular with politicians in both major political parties, including Republican California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.[11] The idea has been endorsed by the National Small Business Association and the National Business Group on Health (an association of large businesses).[12] Several states besides Massachusetts and California--including New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Colorado--have considered or are considering some version of mandatory health insurance.[13]

Yet two years after its inception, the Massachusetts plan has failed to achieve either of its goals. The plan did not lower health care costs, nor did it achieve universal coverage. Thus, given the growing popularity of mandatory health insurance, Americans would do well to take a close look at the results of the Massachusetts plan--and, more importantly, at the reasons for those results...

***

Endnotes

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Diana Hsieh, Lin Zinser, and Brian Schwartz for their enormously helpful suggestions and advice.

1 William C. Symonds, "In Massachusetts, Health Care for All?" Business Week, April 4, 2006.

2 Mitt Romney, "Health Care for Everyone?" Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2006.

3 Edmund F. Haislmaier, "The Significance of Massachusetts Health Reform," Heritage Foundation Web Memo #1035, April 11, 2006; Marilyn Werber Serafini, "The Mass.-ter Plan," National Journal, June 10, 2006, pp. 3-4.

4 Milt Freudenheim, "Health Care Costs Rise Twice as Much as Inflation," New York Times, September 27, 2006; Julia Appleby, "Health insurance premiums vault past inflation," USA Today, September 11, 2007.

5 John Donnelly, "47 million Americans are uninsured," Boston Globe, August 29, 2007.

6 "Health Care Reform Act of 2006," http://www.mass.gov/agr/news/health_care_reform_act.htm; and Boston Business Journal, "Mass. health insurance penalties to spike in '08," December 31, 2007, http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/12/31/daily4.html.

7 Serafini, "Mass.-ter Plan," p. 4.

8 Betsy McCaughey, "The Truth About Mandatory Health Insurance," Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2008.

9 Christopher Lee, "Simple Question Defines Complex Health Debate," Washington Post, February 24, 2008.

10 Edmund F. Haislmaier, "The Massachusetts Health Reform: Assessing Its Significance and Progress," Heritage Foundation Lecture No. 1044, June 28, 2007, pp. 6-7.

11 Kevin Sack, "Massachusetts Faces a Test on Health Care," New York Times, November 25, 2007.

12 Kent Hoover, "Business groups split over individual health mandate," Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, February 29, 2008; "Big business backs health insurance," Associated Press, January 30, 2008.

13 David W. Chen, "New Jersey to Consider Health Plan to Cover All," New York Times, March 18, 2008; "Healthcare Group Recommends 'Individual Mandate' on Health Insurance," Gongwer News Service Ohio, March 26, 2008; "R.I. studying Mass. health plan," Barre Montpelier Times Argus, November 26, 2007; Laurie McGinley, "Should Insurance Be Mandatory?," Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2007; Reed Abelson, "Mandatory Coverage Is Easier Said Than Done," New York Times, June 11, 2007; Tim Hoover, "Health coverage gets new push," Denver Post, March 28, 2008.

Good News from Craig Biddle

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Two bits of good news from Craig Biddle, the editor and publisher of The Objective Standard:

Dear Subscribers and Friends of TOS,

I'm pleased to announce that TOS is now on 310 newsstands (primarily Barnes & Noble) nationwide. Next time you're in your local bookstore, check to see if it's there. If it's not, let the manager know about the journal (you might even show him a copy), and suggest that he order it, which he can do through Ingram Periodicals. Mention that the journal presents a unique and vital perspective on cultural and political issues, elaborate on that perspective as you see fit, and point out that such a journal might sell well today.

Also, we are now selling downloadable PDFs of single articles and book reviews for $4.95 and $2.95 respectively. To purchase PDFs, or to browse what is available, click on "Single [Articles]" in the navigation bar of our website. And if you know anyone who might appreciate one of our articles, please let him know about this new option.

Thank you for your continued business and support.

Yours,
Craig Biddle
Editor and Publisher

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization

By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization
By Thomas Bowden (Bucks County Courier Times, October 11, 2007)

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, opening a sea route to vast uncharted territories that awaited the spread of Western civilization. Centuries later, the ensuing cultural migration culminated in the birth and explosive growth of the greatest nation in history: the United States of America.

It is fitting that we have set aside a day to honor the Great Explorer. On one level, Columbus Day honors the man himself for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition--a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land--a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

Thus, the deeper meaning of Columbus Day is to celebrate the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a pot-bound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

 

Bush Bails Out Subprime Automakers

By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Bush Bails Out Subprime Automakers
October 6, 2008

Washington, D.C.--President Bush just signed into law what the Wall Street Journal describes as “a low-interest loan package to aid U.S. auto makers.”
 
“Have we learned nothing from the subprime mortgage fiasco?” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “We are embroiled in a credit crisis, rooted in government policies that promoted and backed reckless, low-interest loans to subprime home buyers--loans that could eventually cost Americans trillions of dollars in bailouts and losses. And now, when lenders on the private market understandably won’t lend $25 billion to car companies that often shed billions by the quarter, the government is making reckless, low-interest loans to these subprime automakers?
 
“Obviously, our government has learned nothing from the crisis. But it has taught industry a terrible lesson: you fail, you get a bailout.”

###  ### ###

Mr. Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on business issues.

Mr. Epstein’s op-eds and letters to the editor have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Canada’s National Post, and the Washington Times. He is also a contributing writer for The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics. Mr. Epstein has been a guest on numerous nationally syndicated radio programs.

Alex Epstein is available for interviews.
Contact: Larry Benson          
E-mail: media@aynrandcenter.org          
Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

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The Premise of Power and the Power of Premises

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I chatted with a liberal Democrat today. She denounced Sarah Palin as an idiot. Like a parrot she recited the impression of Palin the MSM have been working overtime to convey to voters. Palin is stupid, dangerous and unworthy of power.

And Obama and Biden are what? Geniuses?

Democrats never think Democrats are stupid or inferior. Democrats can smell the aura of power lust in their fellow party members, and this aroma -- an intoxicating blend to the left -- gives their side legitimacy and weight. If a politician has nothing else but the will to power, he has enough for the left. To want to control others -- to deprive them of their freedom and dictate how they should live their lives -- is the be all and the end all of leftist politics. It is their moral and political ideal.

Democrats can sense that Sarah Palin is not consumed with power lust. She is a typical middle class American, with values outside the quest for power that are as important to her as her political career. To the left she should be among the ruled, not the rulers; among the cattle, not the cowboys. Their outrage at her is like that of a slavemaster in the ante-bellum South toward a slave who wants to learn to read. This one is uppity. This one must be put back in her place.

This year we have seen the premise of power intensify on the left. For the first time, a major party candidate has taken on elements of a cult of personality usually seen in communist countries. Children sing mawkish songs praising the great Obama. Obama has used legal threats and intimidation to shut up those who would speak against him. The MSM act like Pravda in the old Soviet Union, self-censoring any news that makes their glorious leader look bad. On top of all this, the financial crisis has led to greater government intervention in the economy. Things are changing quickly for the worse in America.

Most people, I would submit, do not understand how bad things will get or how quickly we can lose our freedom. Many Americans, especially pragmatists, have a hard time understanding that principles tend to work for those who act most consistently by them. Philosophic premises follow logic to its extreme end, despite the denunciation of extremism by moderates.

Perhaps the greatest example of the logical working out of premises in history is the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius that climaxed at the Council of Orange in 529 a.d. Wikipedia explains:

Pelagianism is a theological theory named after Pelagius (ad. 354 – ad. 420/440). It is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature (which God called very good), and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without Divine aid. Thus, Adam's sin was "to set a bad example" for his progeny, but his actions did not have the other consequences imputed to Original Sin. Pelagianism views the role of Jesus as "setting a good example" for the rest of humanity (thus counteracting Adam's bad example). In short, humanity has full control, and thus full responsibility, for its own salvation in addition to full responsibility for every sin (the latter insisted upon by both proponents and opponents of Pelagianism). According to Pelagian doctrine, because humanity does not require God's grace for salvation (beyond the creation of will),^[1] Jesus' execution is devoid of the redemptive quality ascribed to it by orthodox Christian theology.

...

Pelagianism was opposed by Augustine of Hippo, who taught that a person's salvation comes solely through a free gift, the efficacious grace of God, and that no person could save himself by his works.

It would have been much better for Christianity and the west if Pelagianism had held sway and man had not been condemned with Original Sin. But the logic of Christianity's premises made Augustine's victory inevitable. Man was stripped of nobility and considered a worm, a helpless wretch entirely dependent on the grace of God for salvation. Life on Earth was belittled as an illusion; this was a place where one could be tempted by Satan. Augustine denounced science as "the lust of the eyes." This was the philosophic death blow to classical civilization.

The triumph of Augustinism resulted in the Dark Ages. Though the empiricist-minded love to cite 20 or 30 reasons that might have contributed to the Dark Ages, from weather patterns to barbaric migrations, those factors always existed. They had the power to devastate civilization in the 6th-10th centuries because the west was disarmed by philosophy. People were not taught to look at reality scientifically in order to find solutions that would improve human existence. What was the point? This world was an illusion. Only life after death had any meaning.

Doubtless, there were many upper class Romans in the fourth and fifth centuries who scoffed at the idea that Christians would take things to extremes. How could anyone without a suicidal death wish want to destroy their glorious classical civilization? Why would they let their institutions, their cosmopolitanism, their learning and their rule of law slip away and be forgotten? Rational people don't do such things.

And yet it happened. It had to happen because people would rather be moral than practical. In a conflict between the moral and the practical, people go with their morality. (A proper morality does not conflict with practicality, but the west does not follow a proper morality.) The premises of Christianity are at war with happy, productive life on Earth. Christians followed their premises into darkness and chaos.

Today the premises of altruism, statism and collectivism are leading America toward a fascist dictatorship. The left is more consistent with these premises and more committed to following them to their logical end. And that end -- make no mistake about it -- is totalitarian dictatorship. Many will scoff at this as those Roman patricians did, but we have already caught a glimpse this year in that list of trends noted above where the logical working out of our premises is taking us.

The lust for power is greatest on the left, but the right is catching up. The right is declining rapidly as it forgets its heritage of half-hearted mumblings about free markets and becomes a full-throated welfare state party. In the long run the right is more dangerous than the nihilist left because it brings with it that great destroyer of civilization, religion. People cannot live long with nihilism; they can, however, accept the destruction of values on Earth if they think they will be rewarded for eternity after death. Religionists will make hell on Earth for the promise of heaven in a supernatural realm.

Altruism, the idea that only sacrifice is moral, is a morality of death. It is opposed to the Enlightenment values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The premise of altruism is leading America toward the abyss. Our only hope is to change our philosophic premises.

For those who yearn for good news, I will say this: we are much better off than the west was in the 6th century a.d., for now we are philosophically armed. Now we have a defense of the morality of rational self-interest, the epistemology of reason and the metaphysics of reality. We have the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It's just a matter of spreading the news.

Until then, things will continue to get worse. Before this year I thought we had plenty of time to get the word out. Now I'm not so sure.

John Lewis FROST Talk in Denver: A Call to Action

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you live in Colorado, I urge you to attend this Front Range Objectivism Supper Talk with Objectivist historian John Lewis. (Notice that an RSVP is required by the 13th.)

• Speaker: Dr. John Lewis
  
• Talk: A Call to Action: Understanding and Defeating the EPA's Plan for Environmental Dictatorship
  
• Date: Saturday, October 18, 2008
  
• Time: 6:00 pm social hour (cash bar); 6:30-6:45 FRO Free Books For Teachers Auction; 7:00 pm dinner; 8:00 pm talk
  
• Location: West Woods Golf Club, 6655 Quaker Street in Arvada, Colorado
  
• Cost: $55.00 per individual, $30.00 for students
  
• RSVP by October 13th to Betty Evans via e-mail (betty@frontrangeobjectivism.com) or phone (303.421.7334). Please send your check to FROST c/o Betty Evans, 1140 US Hwy 287 STE 400-283, Broomfield, CO 80020.

About "A Call to Action: Understanding and Defeating the EPA's Plan for Environmental Dictatorship"

On July 11, 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking-the outline of a national plan to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide, a "pollutant" according to the U.S. Supreme Court. The EPA admits openly that, under this plan, the entire nation is in non-compliance, and will have to be controlled in minute detail by a maze of bureaucratic rules and procedures. The EPA has invited public comment on this plan, to which the speaker has replied with six reasons to reject these proposals categorically.

This talk will consider why non-scientists should reject claims to an imminent global disaster, and why the true disaster facing us is our own self-created political destruction. This is a moral issue, and it is only by affirming a morality proper to man's life that we can preserve and defend our freedom as sovereign moral beings. To learn more before the talk, go to http://www.classicalideals.com/EPA_Ruination.htm.

About John Lewis

John David Lewis received his PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is visiting associate professor of political science at Duke University. He has been a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship. A writer for The Objective Standard, his books are Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens, and Early Greek Lawgivers.

If you haven't yet done so, I urge you to speak out on this issue. You can find out how to do so on John Lewis' web site. Here's the e-mail that I sent on Sunday:

Dear EPA Administrator --

Re: Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0318

I am completely opposed to the rules outlined in this Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR).

These rules are incompatible with a free society: they would grossly violate our rights as Americans to life, liberty, and property.

These rules are incompatible with science: carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a gas vital to life.

These rules are incompatible with prosperity: business and industry will be strangled by them.

Personally, I'm alarmed by the prospect of EPA regulation of the food supply. The government already does enormous harm by promoting demonstrably unhealthy foods -- particularly grains, sugars, and modern vegetable oils -- while doggedly opposing healthy foods like raw milk. More government regulation would only do more damage to the health and happiness of Americans. It would certainly be very bad news for me.

Please -- in the name of American values -- reject these rules.

-- DMH

Diana Hsieh
Sedalia, Colorado

The Congressional Betrayal of America

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

"...I know that I have never been so well pleased, as when I could shift power from my own, on the shoulders of others; nor have I ever been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.” -- Thomas Jefferson on his presidency, January 1811*

“Howard, have you ever held power over a single human being?”
“No. And I wouldn’t take it if it were offered to me….It was offered to me once. I refused it…I had to.”
“Why?…Out of respect for the man?”
“…Out of respect for myself.”**

To his pathetic, costly and destructive legacy President George W. Bush has added the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (H.R. 1424) passed by a corrupted Congress on October 3. He anxiously signed it into law less than ninety minutes after it was passed, as though it might vanish before his signature could make it real. He lobbied heavily in the Senate and the House to push it through.

There is an historic parallel to his anxiety, that of George Grenville, prime minister of Great Britain in 1765, who, aware of his unpopularity, pushed through a corrupt Parliament the Stamp Act over the objections of the American colonists and many members of Parliament in order to leave his own legacy of economic solvency.

Who knows what arm-twisting, browbeating, and threats were employed to persuade recalcitrant members of the House to drop their objections to the virtual nationalization of the economy and the granting of dictatorial powers to Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury? Perhaps one or two members of the House opposed the bill for the right reasons. The others, having no moral grounds to their opposition, could do little else but surrender to Bush’s efforts.

The Stamp Act proved to be Grenville’s undoing; it was repealed exactly a year later after passionate debate in Parliament and Grenville’s government fell even before that. While Bush’s administration will end in January – and be replaced with a much worse one – Americans should not expect Congress to debate the destructive consequences of the bailout bill with a view to its repeal on moral or Constitutional grounds.

The Senate, for its part, is more culpable in the crime than either Bush or the House, having scrapped that part of the Constitution which states that only the House can originate money or spending bills (Article I, Section 7). The Senate’s fundamental purpose, after all, is to safeguard the principles of life, liberty, property and happiness that animate America by rejecting rights-violating populist legislation passed by the House. Instead, on October 1, it took the House’s bill, sweetened it with minor revisions and bribes, exploited a legislative trick and appended to it another bill loaded with earmarked pork barrel appropriations, thus avoiding the charge of violating Article I, and sent it back to the House. The House, which might have remained deadlocked, succumbed to the bait. In the end, both the Senate and the House, with great relief, contentment, and sanctimony, betrayed the country.

Also complicit in the betrayal are the news media. Most newspapers and all broadcast networks hyped up the economic peril of Congressional non-action, treating the importance of the bailout bill as a practical imperative, joining in the Republican and Democratic chorus in blaming Wall Street, capitalism, and corporate greed. On a few occasions editors and journalists ventured the idea that perhaps the bank failures and the collapse of the mortgage industry were entirely the responsibility of government intervention and manipulation, but these were sallies across a No Man’s Land that were quickly repulsed and abandoned.

The power Congress has abrogated to itself is a major step in the direction of full-scale statism. If Obama wins the White House in November, then we shall see his brand of socialist nationalism. If McCain wins it, then we shall see his brand of socialist nationalism.

If one wanted proof of the utter contempt which Congress holds for America and the American people, note that emails and phone calls to Congress from constituents overwhelmingly “voted” against the bailout bill. Many Congressmen scrambled back home to explain their votes for or against the bill. Who knows what promises any of them made to their constituents to guarantee their reelections, so they could drop of burden of opposition and vote with the majority? Some of them even claimed during the second debate and voting that abruptly and inexplicably their constituents deluged them with calls and emails demanding they vote for the bill. But lying about their constituents’ actions is the least of their crimes.

In an article in The New York Times on October 4, “Bailout Plan Wins Approval; Democrats Vow Tighter Rules,” appeared a number of hysterical and sonorous excuses expressed by Congressmen who at first voted against the bill, but then for it.

“Nobody in East Tennessee hates the fact more than me that I am going to vote yes today after voting no on Monday,” Representative Zach Wamp, a Republican, said.

Those who voted against the bill again in the Senate and House did so for irrelevant reasons: that it wasn’t enough; that it didn’t punish or rein in Wall Street to their satisfaction; that it didn’t really address the problem. No one in either chamber mentioned “socialism” or “nationalization” again. Those who did last Monday could not find the courage to repeat it. Those who objected to it, voted on the premise that if they did not identify it, it could not exist.

Presidential candidate John McCain, who vows to veto every bill sent to the White House larded with earmarks, voted for the bill, protesting that “It is an outrage that it’s even necessary.” So much for his commitment to fighting pork barrel appropriations and his vaunted status as a “maverick.” If vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden is right about anything, he is right about that.

Gloating over the Democratic victory, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California proclaimed:

“High-fliers on Wall Street will no longer be able to jeopardize that personal economic security of Americans, because of the bright light of scrutiny, accountability and the attention given under regulatory reform.”

She is a person who should be slapped silly for her insolence, venality, and naked lust for power. The bright light of scrutiny and accountability was not shed, nor will it ever be by the news media, for example, on her pork barrel appropriation in the bill for a tuna plant in American Samoa, owned by StarKist, one of her constituents and a donor to her campaign for office.

Barney Frank will not be subjected to scrutiny and accountability. The representative from Massachusetts was the champion of the Saul Alinsky-inspired Community Reinvestment Act. His special and sordid relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the years – he asserted many times that the two quangos were in fine financial shape, and led to fight to oppose Bush’s scrutiny of their operations and bookkeeping fraud – would be grist for the Police Gazette.

More than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Frank has successfully applied the methods and thuggery outlined in Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, but on a national scale. It should come as no surprise that Alinsky was a friend of Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s second-in-command in the 1930’s; one may imagine that Alinsky and Nitti traded ideas on how best to shake down banks, neighborhoods, and ordinary citizens. That book doubtless occupies a special shelf in Frank’s library.

Frank is an Alinsky-esque “community organizer” of the first rank, the “community” being the United States. He is the real-life successor of Ellsworth Toohey, the collectivist villain of The Fountainhead. Very likely he has no knowledge of the scene in that novel in which his fictive predecessor demands, “Let us organize, my brothers. Let us organize. Let us organize. Let us organize” – but would understand Toohey’s meaning to its core.***

Organize against what? The freedom of the individual to live his own life, and pursue his own happiness, without being shackled as an indentured servant to a chain gang and compelled to chant “community first,” or “minority first,” or “country first.”

For two excellent but frightening descriptions of the ramifications of the bailout bill, see Jonathan Hoenig’s “Politicians Use Bailout to Grab More Power” of October 2, and Declan McCullagh’s “Bailout bill loops in green tech, IRS snooping” of October 3. Both articles focus on how the government will own billions in worthless mortgages and lines of credit under the fiction of American taxpayers being “stakeholders” (just as Soviet citizens once “owned” the government’s assets and bureaucracies). McCullagh’s article also reveals how the bill has expanded the powers of the IRS to “police” individual and corporate tax returns and especially its power to run entrapment sting operations to detect noncompliance and evasion..

And all the while Obama, McCain, Frank, Paulson, Bernanke, Pelosi were crowing that they were acting in the interests of the middle class and inveighing against the greed and reckless behavior of Wall Street speculators and the fabulous severance packages of failed CEO’s, not one of them dared mention their own avarice, corruption, ill-gotten wealth and standard of living, reckless speculation, “golden parachutes” and irresponsibility, all of it sustained by taxpayers, not to mention the fabulous severance packages failed regulators walked off with when fired from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

While they and their ilk in Congress all worked themselves into a lather decrying the irresponsibility of regulated businessmen who ought to be punished for not being regulated enough, none of them dwelt on their own exemption and insulation from the consequences of their own actions. Barney Frank, speaking to the press after the bill was passed, claimed that voters calling and emailing their Congressmen (allegedly) changed their minds after facing the “economic reality” of their predicament. But “economic reality” is something neither he nor his co-conspirators in government and Congress have ever encountered or concerned themselves with. “Economic” reality is subsumed by metaphysical reality, and that is what they wish to evade and be protected from.

It baffled Thomas Jefferson, but not Howard Roark, why anyone would think his happiness could be founded on holding power over others. But, what is the nature and attraction of such power? No matter what logical or analytical route one follows to examine the desire or quest for such power, one will always find fear the core motivation. Though he did not know it, Jefferson answered his own question: a rational being would not seek such power; like, Roark, he would know that there is a distinction between man acquiring power over nature to sustain and further his own life and happiness, and power over others as a substitute for power over reality. In a power-seeker, there is little or no self to respect. The smiles one might have noticed on the faces of Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd and others as they watched Nancy Pelosi sign the bailout bill mask a fear, and is just another expression saying: “We got away with it again – big time.”

Our political leaders think: “Others” create reality; ergo, “others” must be controlled to protect them from reality. And, in politics, when that policy of necessity fails – when the justice of reality comes calling – they do not acknowledge its failure or the justice, but act to broaden the scope of power.

And that is a fundamental reason why Congress betrayed America.

It would be wrong to conclude that corruption, hypocrisy, venality and systematic looting by law constitute the natural, inevitable course of events leading to the demise of a great country, and that one is helpless to combat it, especially when one knows that the demise will drag one down the same tragic path. The alleged potency of evil should not cause one to think one is superfluous. That, too, would be another form of the “other-oriented” fallacy. If men believe it is inevitable, then it will happen. However, the Founders encountered the same kind of resignation among men in their own time. But they did not think that submission to Crown authority and tyranny was their inexorable fate. America was the result, among their many other virtues, of their self-respect as rational beings.

And so, for all these reasons, my own answer to Congress, President Bush, and the presidential candidates is: Damn you all to hell.

And long live Lady Liberty!

*Letter to A.L.C. Destutt de Tracy in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, Library of America, 1984, p. 1245.
**Exchange between Howard Roark and Gail Wynand, in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943). Plume/Penguin Centennial Edition, 2005, p. 574.
***Op. cit., p. 103.

We Are All Venezuelans

By Gina Liggett from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

There's a Barney Frank before, and a Barney Frank after. No, the pork-belly king hasn't gone on a diet. But Americans probably will have to go on one, now that the $700 billion bailout has been hastily rammed down the country's throat.

All I can say is, "Bad, Bush!" "Bad, Barney!" for taking such a hard left turn to the land of socialism when they were warned about the crisis in the housing markets years ago.

Furthermore, "Bad, Democrats!" for blaming the whole thing on the Republicans, when the Clinton administration helped stage the inevitable fallout by legislating irrational lending to facilitate home ownership among people who otherwise wouldn't qualify.

And "Bad, Bolivia!" "Bad, Brazil!" for blaming the whole financial crisis on capitalism.

Dr. Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institute, provides a good explanation of the real underlying causes of the biggest financial threat to this country since the Great Depression. This whole greasy mess is a direct consequence of a conglomeration of governmental initiatives such as: artificially-low interest rates set by the central planners at the Federal Reserve; politically-motivated lending standards set by the social planners in Congress; and the artificial profit opportunities created by the financial planners at Freddie and Fannie and the SEC. It is a conspiracy of irrational market manipulations that preclude any corrective forces that would have kicked in long ago in a truely free-market.

At some point, the houses of cards had to fall down. And now we're stuck with a botched emergency Financectomy performed on Wall Street's bleeding wallet by a panic-stricken Treasury Secretary, President, and Congress.

And it doesn't matter who takes over the care of this patient in November because both candidates were right there in the operating room agreeing with the chief surgeon's basic care plan. And both blamed the crisis on some entrenched greediness of businessmen.

Hugo Chavez must feel vindicated. He even says that it's so bad over here, America needs a new Constitution to free itself of the tyranny of big banks and corporations.

Thanks for the advice, Hugo, but I think the Constitution--even with its flaws--is pretty good already. It's just that our leaders don't like to follow it. It's like they've missed the whole essence of it. Ayn Rand clarifies that the "Constitution is a limitation on the government...(it is) a charter of the citizens' protection against the government."

While Hugo confuses American political power with the economic power of our quasi-capitalist system, he hasn't missed the chance to enhance his own economic power by exercising his monopoly on political power in Venezuela. And America has been inexorably following suit.

This bailout is just the latest in a long string of Venezuelanesque growth in government: from Medicare/Medicaid/FDA...to public schooling... to Social Security...to limitations on abortion..to special programs this..to special programs that...to subsidized industries in agriculture/autos/airlines/Savings and Loans....and now to the big kahuna bailout of October 3. The greed of capitalism? I don't think so.

But if we did follow Hugo's advice and make a new Constitution, maybe it should start with, "We The People of the United States, who don't want our freedoms mucked up by a bunch of central planners in Washington, want a Constitution that really means it when we say limited government..."

Changing the culture; saving America

Fellow Objectivists:

In case you haven't already seen it, I wanted to let you know that the three-lecture series "Cultural Movements: Creating Change" is available for free on the Ayn Rand Institute's web site. These are the lectures given by Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate at this summer's OCON.

In my opinion, every Objectivist should hear these lectures.

If you haven't already heard the lectures, I highly recommend that you watch the videos online. If you have, I suggest that you spread the word among Objectivists you know.

To summarize their importance in my own words: For decades, the repeated theme in the Objectivist movement has been that we must concentrate on influencing academic philosophy in university departments. Now, Drs. Brook and Ghate are saying that it is time for the movement to branch out: that we need intellectual, cultural, and in some cases even political activism in every area, every subject, every industry, every pursuit. Academia is no longer hostile territory for Objectivism, and the culture at large has been softened to our message. It is no longer too early to begin the wider Objectivist Revolution--it has, in fact, already begun--and if we don't act soon, it may be too late, as religion and environmentalism eat away at the American sense of life.

ARI can't lead the entire effort--your help is needed. Successes such as Lin Zinser's group Foundation for Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) or John Allison's efforts as head of BB&T Bank show us it can be done.

Many OCON attendees, myself included, found the lectures inspiring and motivating. I hope you will too.

Regards, Jason Crawford

Ancient History payment plans now available!

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Ancient History page has been updated with three fantastic payment plans to suit your budget.

• OPTION 1: The 5-month plan, for five easy payments of $69.80.
• OPTION 2: The 7-month plan to reduce your monthly payment to only $49.86.
• OPTION 3: The ultimate in manageable payments: 10 payments of only $34.90!

Classes start October 8th! Go to the Ancient History page now to take advantage of these great payment options!

      

Justice is Finally Served

By noreply@blogger.com (EC) from Atlantis,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The following quote is good news, although it of course it should have happened in the 90's. This thug is finally going to probably spend the rest of his life behind bars as he has deserved for a long time.

The Hall of Fame football star was convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery and 10 other charges for gathering up five men a year ago and storming into a room at a hotel-casino, where the group seized several game balls, plaques and photos. Prosecutors said two of the men with him were armed; one of them said Simpson asked him to bring a gun.

This all I have to say on this for now, it's justice that this man is finally going to prison

Main Street vs. Wall Street (Part 2): Illustrated :)

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In a previous post, I said that "Main Street vs. Wall Street" is an incorrect way to think of our current financial problems.



The issue is not money, not the $700 billion... but something more fundamental: the role of government. This might be a turning point (hopefully temporary) where the U.S. goes through a phase of relatively-increased class-warfare and (resulting) government control.



To understand the money involved, contrast this bail-out to the recent "stimulus checks". If I remember right, that was a government outflow of $150 billion. In contrast, the "bailout" is an outflow of $700 billion, of which much will flow back when the paper is sold. Even if we assume that the $700 will become $1 trillion; there's a good chance that a large chunk of that will be repaid by the mortgage holders. It all depends on the prices at which the government buys the paper, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that the net outflow will not be much more than $200 - $300 billion. (Even Paulson's assertion that there may be zero net outflows is not total hogwash.)



Yet, there is such a ruckus about the bailout, while many people I know ("Main Street" folk) were glad to get the stimulus checks. Why? Because it is not the amount, it is about the perceived unfairness. This perception is creating an environment where voters are more disposed toward socking it to the rich. This structural change has more serious consequences than the bailout itself.



Here's an illustration: On the left is Wall Street, consisting of good guys and bad guys. On the right is Main Street, with both good and bad. In both places, there is more good than bad (the illustration does not do that enough justice).

Using this map, the politicians want the battle to be fought left to right (Wall Street vs. Main Street). The real battle ought to be fought top to bottom. If the responsible home owners and borrowers and the responsible bankers team up, they do not have to subsidize the irresponsible.

The politician fears that: they will not need him any more. instead, he looks at this and sees lots of money on the left and lots of votes on the right. So, that is the battle that he promotes, because only he has the legal power to take that money from the left and hand it over for votes on the right.

The Looming Crisis over Free Speech

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I heard Eric Daniels give three excellent lectures on freedom of speech this summer, so I'm quite certain that this CU Berkeley talk will be stellar:

The Looming Crisis over Free Speech

What: A lecture examining the escalating censorship in America and explaining what is needed to protect our freedom of speech

Who: Eric Daniels, research assistant professor at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism

Where: 101 Morgan Hall, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720

When: Monday, October 6, 2008, 7 pm

Description: In this lecture, Dr. Daniels examines the state of free speech in America and finds that it is under serious threat. From campus speech codes to anti-discrimination and harassment law, from campaign finance to commercial speech, Americans today enjoy less and less freedom in communicating their ideas. Today's colleges and universities have become a hotbed of censorship, producing generations of Americans who have accepted suppression of speech as the norm. Daniels argues that the emerging crisis is a result of the lack of a proper understanding of individual rights, especially property rights. Only by understanding the proper basis of rights can we act to secure our freedom of speech and to protect the rights that give rise to it.

Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a research assistant professor at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has lectured internationally on American history, particularly on American intellectual history, business history and political history. He taught for five years at Duke University's Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, where he was nominated for a university-wide teaching award. Dr. Daniels was a contributor to the recently published Oxford Companion to United States History, and wrote a chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust. He has appeared on C-SPAN and Voice of America Radio.

An American Carol

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I went to see An American Carol. It has some novelty value as a right-wing movie made by Hollywood. As Dr. Johnson said of a dog walking on two legs, the wonder is not that he does it well, but that he does it at all. Aside from the interest of watching a right-wing movie, which gets old pretty fast, the film has little of worth. Like most movies, it is idiotic and tedious.

I was the only patron in the theater at a 10:15pm screening on Friday Night. I got up during the second half and stood for awhile to keep myself awake. I don't expect this movie to do much at the box office. (BTW, the ticket, a bottle of water, small popcorn and candy cost me $22. For a family of five we're talking $100. I would guess that's why they make DVD stores.)

Hollywood can make stupid left-wing movies, and now it has proved it can make stupid right-wing movies. Mostly it makes just stupid movies that don't aspire to any ideology. When Hollywood makes good, intelligent movies, I'll be impressed.

On the way home I heard "Since I've Been Loving You," by Led Zeppelin on the radio. What a great song. Both Page and Plant are at the top of their game on that recording. Page's guitar work is amazing.

Poker's Similarity to Capitalism

By noreply@blogger.com (EC) from Atlantis,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I think poker is the ultimate game of the Capitalist. More than that just like Capitalism correlates with mans needs qua man so does the game of poker.

When men trade via Capitalism they use money as the means of exchange, and the agreed upon price represents a sum of a nearly limitless number of value judgments of each trader. In poker chips perform the exact same function of money. A man can only know a limited amount of information of his transaction in either poker or trade, therefore money or chips quickly set an agreed upon value to every transaction. If you think you are going to profit you buy at the price you or the other person sets given an infinitude of factors. The same principle follows in poker. Given your limited knowledge of what the other person is selling and other factors, (marketing ;) ) you either buy what he's selling or you raise the price or drop out depending on the whole context of your present knowledge. The degree to which you appropriately acquired knowledge in either case usually directly correlates to your degree of profit or loss in regards to either one.

I'll admit that this line of reasoning might seem to be a bit random to an outside observer, but it does represent my current thinking if that is enough of an interest for anyone, reading.

I would also say just as poker correlates to Capitalism and Capitalism to real life, i.e., ethics, poker has its correlation to real life instances.

There are times in you life that you decide to play the hand you were dealt to the best of your ability because given the context you think it is the best hand you can play on a given day or period of your life. So you do a careful study of all the circumstances and knowledge available and you make the best decision that you can given what you know to be true and what you know of the strength of your hand. You decide to move all-in. After the chips fall you have done all that you can up to that point given the current context and what happens next is up to your opponent and/or chance. You made the best choice you could. You played your best game. You put all your chips in and all you can do is wait to see what develops.

I recently moved my chips all-in. What happens, happens. A is A

EC

Quick Roundup 366

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Now in Newsstands!

Via email:

Dear Subscribers and Friends of TOS,

I'm pleased to announce that TOS is now on 310 newsstands (primarily Barnes & Noble) nationwide. Next time you're in your local bookstore, check to see if it's there. If it's not, let the manager know about the journal (you might even show him a copy), and suggest that he order it, which he can do through Ingram Periodicals. Mention that the journal presents a unique and vital perspective on cultural and political issues, elaborate on that perspective as you see fit, and point out that such a journal might sell well today.

Also, we are now selling downloadable PDFs of single articles and book reviews for $4.95 and $2.95 respectively. To purchase PDFs, or to browse what is available, click on "Single Issues" in the navigation bar of our website. And if you know anyone who might appreciate one of our articles, please let him know about this new option.

Thank you for your continued business and support.

Yours,
Craig Biddle
Editor and Publisher

You can preview the seven main articles and five book reviews of the Fall 2008 issue at the TOS web site. Being in the process of relocating to Boston due to my wife's medical residency there, I'm particularly interested in Paul Hsieh's "Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America". In fact, the topic came up indirectly when I was on the phone with Mrs. Van Horn last night.

If you see TOS during your shopping trips in Boston or Houston, where I'll be through the end of the year, let me know!

I'd Last Longer Tied to a Bedpost with a Velociraptor!

Having work to do yesterday evening, I missed meeting with my home brewing club, and worked at home instead. Breaking for dinner, I figured that this week's episode of The Office might be on, so I turned on the boob tube, only to find that the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden had preempted it. It must have been around the same time Dismuke tuned in. Sez he:

I listened to part of it on the radio. When it started, I was actually rooting for Palin - not because I like McCain (I don't) but because of the slime and sludge that has been thrown at her by the Walter Duranty media.

Her AGREEING with Biden that it was a lack of regulation (!) that caused the current economic mess - well, I wanted to puke. The Democrats and the Walter Duranty Media have been trying to lay the blame for the situation on capitalism. Here was a chance for someone who ought to know better to bypass the Walter Duranty media filters and educate the public on what REALLY caused the mess. But instead she merely echoed the media and the Democrats. That is pretty close to treason in my book. Was it her own doing - or was she simply following the wishes of her boss, John McCain? I am not really sure that it matters one way or another. The damage has been done.

He may have lasted longer than I. I heard her say this, or something very like it, adding something to the effect of "John McCain is known for advocating tough regulations." She cited campaign finance reform -- a primary reason I simply can not vote for the man -- as an example. As if that were a good thing!

I turned off the tube immediately. You'll have to go to the Man with the Iron Stomach, Myrhaf, for a detailed analysis of the debate....

I will say a couple of things, though. First, I thought that Biden trounced Palin in terms of sounding like he knew what he was talking about, but that in terms of likability, it was even more heavily skewed the other way. Second, if you want to know how long you'd last tied to a bedpost with a velociraptor, go here!

Opting Out of Making a Principled Stand

On several occasions (esp. links in first paragraph), I have discussed the pernicious idea of "libertarian paternalism", which is especially appalling when governments apply it to make unwitting citizens into organ donors by default, as some have in Europe:

A "social good?" American defaults could "just" be flipped around? That's my body, asshole, and possibly my life you're talking about like it's a damned toggle switch! Whether I part myself out is up to me. The "difference" between the United States and "parts of Europe" is not so much that "the defaults" are different, but why they are different: In the United States, the government is designed to protect individual rights by default, not infringe upon them. The argument against the government applying "libertarian paternalism" in cases like this, and in getting it away from more benign instances like the one I cited above, is that the government should respect individual rights.

Given my obvious moral opposition to that idea, as well as to libertarianism, it stands to reason that I would take a gander at this libertarian critique of libertarian paternalism (a review of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein) I found at Arts and Letters Daily.

I was not disappointed, at least in the perverse sense of finding only weak objections where unsparing attacks should have been. Will Wilkinson offers the following objections to applying libertarian paternalism to a couple of policy questions.

Suppose President John McCain were to implement a policy of opt-out national service. We might reasonably object on the grounds that it would all too clearly communicate that individuals need reasons not to serve the state. If allowed to stand, such a policy could shape social expectations and individual preferences in a direction at odds with individual liberty. Soon enough we might find ourselves asking, "Why should you be able to opt out at all?" The initial paternalistic nudge may "leave the choice open," but accepting the legitimacy of certain nudges may eventually diminish the value we place on liberty. [bold added]

The point about choice withering away when we hand all power over to the state is well-taken, but the state's ability to even be in the position of being able to offer such a "choice" already depends on the violation of individual rights on such a massive scale as to make the question a bad thought exercise at best! Why not kill two birds with one stone by morally opposing national servitude -- and the massive welfare state that has acclimated the public to being told what to do, and makes it easier to implement than it would be otherwise? We remain somewhat free even now: Our descent into tyranny is preventable, but on the cultural level, which is to say, on the level of the philosophical ideas held by the general voting public.

And then we get back to my favorite, the practice of the state harvesting organs from the incapacitated without their actual consent:

Thaler and Sunstein's suggestion to increase the supply of transplant organs by changing the default rule to "presumed consent" instead of nondonation may leave you with similar thoughts. To say that an individual's body is common property by default is to make a statement with cultural consequences that reach beyond the policy's immediate effects. Anyway, why not just legalize markets in organs and tissue, a genuinely libertarian form of choice architecture likely to have even better results? [bold added]

Again, a good point in the last sentence, but has Wilkinson ever felt the palpable rage that such a suggestion can draw from a religionist who doesn't want "us" "playing God"? And speaking of rage, where is his? What Thaler and Sunstein propose is wrong, and beyond the pale, and yet all Wilkinson can muster against it is that it "has cultural consequences beyond the policy's immediate effects"!?!?

Thaler and Sunstein are wrong, but they're pikers. It isn't so much the fact that they are implying that we don't even own our own bodies that is the problem, but the fact that they can get away it so easily. Our culture is saturated with the notion (in many ultimately inconsequential variants) that man does not exist for his own sake. Failing to take a stand against that very idea -- and instead feebly offering as Wilkinson does that it might have unpleasant consequences -- is not going to stop such an idea from being implemented.

People generally buy into the idea that the moral and the practical are often at odds and, when they see a clash, they will favor the "moral" if they are decent. If they are not, they will permit themselves to be "nudged" into doing what they feel is expedient, which ultimately means that decent, mistaken people and range-of-the-moment pragmatists all end up doing the same foolish things.

Libertarian paternalism is, as Wilkinson puts it, "no source of ideological realignment", but that's not the issue here. The issue is that it is a symptom of the fact that our culture needs a massive ideological realignment, one away from the altruism and collectivism that makes serious proposals to steal the liberty of the conscious and the very bodies of the unconscious possible in the first place. Such a realignment cannot occur when, in the face of such obscenities, one fails to call a spade a spade. Altruism is not just something with unpleasant "cultural consequences": It diminishes and ends human lives. As such, it is immoral and must be exposed as such at every opportunity.

The facts of reality make a proper morality a necessity. There is no way to opt out.

(I note with interest that there is a review of Nudge by Eric Daniels in the upcoming Objective Standard.)

-- CAV

Hsieh LTE on the Bailout

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The September 30, 2008 Denver Post did publish my LTE on the proposed bailout, but only in the online edition, not the print edition. (All of the LTE's on this topic were online-only.)

It's the second LTE on the page:

The current financial mess is not the fault of the free market, but rather of government interference in the free market. It's clearly not in the interest of banks to loan money to people who can't pay it back. The government created artificial incentives (such as the Community Reinvestment Act) that rewarded lenders for doing so, with the implied promise that taxpayers would pick up the tab if anything went wrong. The current mess is exactly the result one would expect.

To blame the free market for problems caused by government interference in the free market is like blaming one’s automobile accident on the car, rather than the fact that one was driving while yakking on a cellphone while looking at the onboard GPS system while reaching for a stick of gum in the glove compartment...

Paul Hsieh, Sedalia

For a longer discussion of this issue, see "The Long Road to Slack Lending Standards" by Steven Malanga. Here's an excerpt:

Many defenders of the government's efforts to prompt banks to lend more to minorities have claimed that this effort had little to do with the present mortgage mess. Specifically they point out that many institutions that made subprime mortgages during the market bubble weren't even banks subject to the Community Reinvestment Act, the main vehicle that the feds used to cajole banks to loosen their lending.

But this defense misses the point. In order to push banks to lend more to minority borrowers, advocates like the Boston Fed put forward an entire new set of lending standards and explained to the industry just why loans based on these slacker standards were somehow safer than the industry previously thought. These justifications became the basis for a whole new set of values (or lack of values), as no-down payment loans and loans to people with poor credit history or to those who were already loaded up with debt became more common throughout the entire industry.

What happened in the mortgage industry is an example of how, in trying to eliminate discrimination from our society, we turned logic on its head. Instead of nobly trying to ensure equality of opportunity for everyone, many civil rights advocates tried to use the government to ensure equality of outcomes for everyone in the housing market. And so when faced with the idea that minorities weren't getting approved for enough mortgages because they didn't measure up as often to lending standards, the advocates told us that the standards must be discriminatory and needed to be junked. When lenders did that, we made heroes out of those who led the way, like Angelo Mozilo, before we made villains of them.

Now we all have to pay.

A deliberate policy of elevating "lack of value" above value sounds almost like something from Atlas Shrugged. The end results certainly looks like it...

Emergency Legislation we really need

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

There is one piece of emergency legislation that we really need right now: temporary suspension of CRA-related review of bank mergers and acquisitions.

I'm politically savvy enough to know that the CRA isn't going to be repealed any time soon. However, political pressure can be brought so that the government temporarily suspends (they might call it "give a lower weight to") past CRA compliance, when approving buy-outs.

This will allow sound banks that have money to bid for poor banks, even if the sound bank has not done what the government wanted under CRA. There is a large example of that right now. The government told Wachovia to merge with Citibank, and as part of the deal, the government underwrote some of the riskier Wachovia assets.

Now, Wells Fargo -- probably the best bank among the super-large, national ones -- has offered to buy Wachovia for more, and without requiring the government to underwrite risky assets. It is imperative that the government does not stand in the way of this merger. If Wachovia has made some commitments to Citi, let the courts decide that; but, the executive and legislature must not favor one over the other for CRA reasons... let the higher bidder win.

An activist group from Florida is up in arms about the Wells Fargo offer. Here is their criticism: "[Wells Fargo] has virtually no CRA presence in Florida. It exists mainly to fulfill objectives derived from its California headquarters with little or no input from Floridians. They have showed total disregard for Florida’s minority and under-served communities... ”

It is sick that these cannibals aren't happy they devoured their previous golden geese; they want the old parasitical rules to apply to those who are still standing. In the spirit of "emergency" the government may go light on a CRA-review and let the deal go through. I intend to write to to the President and my legislators, telling them I'd like to see a formal emergency suspension of CRA reviews.

The Vice-President Debate

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Man, that was boring.

The big question, of course, was how Sarah Palin would do. Would she be the bad bullshitter she was in recent interviews? Would she be the drooling moron the Kossacks so desperately want to smear her as?

She was poised, intelligent and confident. She passed the test easily. She also has a winning personality and charisma most politicians would sell their soul to have. Charisma has always been the CW about the Democrats' idol, President Kennedy. If the MSM were not functioning as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, the word charisma would be mentioned in every lead paragraph of every story written about Sarah Palin. Since she is a Republican, the story they tell instead is one of a stupid, unprepared woman. Americans saw tonight that the MSM's story has little to do with reality.

This is not to say Palin does not have a serious problem in that she has never been terribly interested in national issues and is not informed. When Couric asked her what Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with, she couldn't even come up with Kelo. This is a woman who has been far away in the arctic circle not paying a lot of attention to American politics.

Facts can be learned fairly fast, though. Can Obama ever learn the values of freedom and individualism? Can Obama unlearn a lifetime of being surrounded by anti-American radicals? I'm a lot more worried about the premises Obama brings to the White House (and his strange, nebulous character) than I am about Palin's preparedness to serve in the Oval Office if McCain should die as President.

Most of the debate can be dismissed as welfare state BS. Both Palin and Biden speak in platitudes designed to offend as few voters as possible. Obama talks about change and McCain talks about reform, but whoever gets elected will give us bigger government and business as usual.

Palin's biggest failing was to agree with her running mate -- something Vice-Presidents pretty much have to do -- that the problem on Wall Street is greed. Those darned financiers just wanted to make too much money, and somehow that created the current crisis. So Palin is rather stupid -- not in the way the Democrats think, but because she talks like a Democrat.

At one point, and I can't find a transcript of the debate to copy and paste from, Biden accused McCain of supporting deregulation. I believe Palin denied it. Deregulation did not cause the economic crisis; it is what we need to solve the problem and get the economy moving again. But on deregulation McCain/Palin side with the socialists. In their deep ignorance they have chosen to side with power over liberty, with darkness over light. History will not be kind to them.

1999 New York Times on Fannie Mae

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here are some excerpts from an interesting article in the September 30, 1999 edition of the New York Times on Fannie Mae's new policies:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

..."Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements," said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. "Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market."

...In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's. [Emphasis mine. -- PSH]

"From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry."

...Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

At least Fannie Mae's directors had good intentions -- shouldn't that be what's most important here?

Wall Street vs. Main Street - Faulty conceptualization

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The "bailout" is being framed as "Wall Street versus Main Street". Bush, Paulson, Obama and McCain, all say this package is not for Wall Street, but really for Main Street. Detractors say they don't want Main Street bailing out Wall Street. The battle of the two streets is the battle of class-warfare.

However, our problems were not caused by the rich to be paid for by the middle class. Primarily, this is a government-caused problem: caused by messing with the economy, distorting the price-mechanism, and the risk-tolerance of market-players. Even secondarily, it is not the rich (Wall Street) who took advantage of this (or were led astray); nor was it the middle class (Main Street) who were left out of the craziness. No, that is faulty categorization.

The fallen: People who took advantage of, and were misled by, government actions came from both places: on the one hand they were people who were buying more home than they would have if the government had not engineered artificially low interest rates and artificially low risk-premiums. And, then there were investors who bought into the same "reality".

The responsible: Meanwhile, people who stayed away from the fray also came from both Wall Street and Main Street. Many banks kept their distance from the madness, and some investors started selling Fannie and Freddie stock when those two began delving into sub-prime paper. On Main street too, many people did not use their homes as piggy-banks; and even today one in three U.S. homeowners own their homes 100%, with zero mortgage debt. Even among those who can get loans (incomes over $150,000 a year), 20% do not carry mortgages.

The tab: It is also false to say that Main street picks up the tab. The rich pay taxes too!

In summary: The Main Street vs. Wall Street classification is misleading. It would be clearer to use a different distinction.

Bonus: Here's a transcript of an interview with John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, a bank that has not made the news because it is safe and sound. It's boring today, and was not sexy yesterday. These are the types of people that make America great.

Factor #6: It Won't Actually Be Paulson's Money

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I realized this today. In a follow up to my post on "Why Paulson's Money is No Good" describing why government money can't replace private capital, I forgot one key item, and it's a really good one.

Broad open-ended "emergency" legislation such as the $700b bailout is implemented and interpreted by men. A key feature of the rule of law, and the principle behind the idea the idea of a "government of laws, not men" is that the caliber of people to objectively interpret and benevolently administer law varies. And one feature of a pragmatic approach to public service is that credible men make us think that a government of men is alright. Greenspan, in many times running the FED as if he were a private banker, lulled us into thinking that the FED as legal entity isn't so bad.

Enter Hank Paulson. He's credible as an ex-Wall Street CEO, right? I have many conservative friends who, on that basis alone, are willing to at least entertain the idea that the bail-out money can't be spent that poorly. But civil servants change. New ones come. Sometimes the one we entrust a particular policy to is not the one who actually carries it out, and as a result, they carry it out poorly.

Hank Paulson isn't going to be the one administering this bail-out. In all likelihood, it will be the person selected as Treasury Secretary under President Obama [sic]. Do you know who that is? I certainly don't. Are you willing to trust that person to make good judgements about how to effectively spend this money? I shudder at the thought.

Unintended Consequences

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Bail-out bill continues it's steady march to realization. While the mainstream media and a lot of intelligent people I know continue to advocate for the bail-out, the narrative of the proper causes of the bailout is making it into the mainstream. I don't think it's a majority voice yet, but it is a mainstream voice. Radio commentators like Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, and even morning radio entertainer Mancow (this morning he identified Fannie/Freddy, the CRA, and government intervention as the key causes of the mess) are openly advocating and identifying root causes properly. Senator DeMint and popular economic commentators are starting to advocate strongly against the bail-out.

The problem however, judging from those I've talked to is that the analysis of the cause and effect seem to be superfluous to the thinking of what to do going forward. I have a whole post brewing on why this is, but I think that we who advocate on the principles of free markets, also have to begin to articulate the concrete free market options, and question the wisdom of the prevailing thinking. That is why I changed my tone on the last letter to my Congressman. I don't think it's necessary that you have a knowledge of economics take this tack. You can also focus on experts in the media who are advocating options, and pointing out problems with the bail-out option.

I have a post brewing on some of what I perceive as the faults in this line of thinking. One aspect is that while many people consider the intended consequences of any advocated action, it is many times the unintended actions that actually can do the damage. Many examples abound, and here are two regarding the crisis.

From a Wall Street Journal Article "Free AIG", it appears as though, in retrospect, the nationalization of AIG a few weeks ago, may not have been a good idea (bold mine).

We don't know if AIG debt deserves a downgrade, but the ratings drama tells us something about the original deal. In fact, the further we get from the New York Fed's takeover of AIG, the worse this transaction appears for both taxpayers and shareholders. In the wake of Lehman's bankruptcy filing, an intervention might have appeared necessary. Now this alleged rescue is even drawing skeptical looks from state insurance regulators, triggering a surreal press release on Monday.

The New York Fed's release had no news, only an assurance that its credit facility was actually intended to help AIG: "This program is designed to stabilize AIG with sufficient liquidity, and to enable AIG to make appropriate dispositions of certain assets over time." (Read full press release here.) Why does the Fed need to convince people that it's helping a company it is lending $85 billion to? Perhaps because shareholders didn't vote for this federal help and might reject it if they could.

There's also downside for taxpayers, because the bizarre structure of this deal encourages the company to put them on the hook for all $85 billion. AIG would have to pay 10.5% this year on the full $85 billion, even if the company didn't borrow a nickel. Taking the money only increases the rate to about 14%. Naturally, the company has already borrowed more than half of the available taxpayer funds.

Once accepted, the onerous terms of this facility force AIG to immediately commence asset sales. Taxpayers might celebrate that the Fed is driving such a hard bargain when owners of a business come to Washington for help, but again, the owners never did. We have found no evidence to suggest that the AIG board, the Treasury or the New York Fed consulted the firm's largest shareholders before striking this deal.

Some shareholders are wondering if a Chapter 11 filing wouldn't have been a better deal. Clearly the word "bankruptcy" in news stories about an insurer can be toxic. Customers begin to flee and state regulators might seek to put even the healthy insurance subsidiaries in conservatorship. But with the company preparing to sell off pieces to satisfy Fed loans, AIG is not exactly in a growth phase now. Shareholders have occasionally prospered when a holding company with a liquidity problem but otherwise healthy business has reorganized under Chapter 11.

Only weeks after the deal, it's unclear that it had any effect that a Chapter 11 filing wouldn't have had. Here's a great example of a free market option that simply wasn't taken, that could have been, and may have been better for the company in the long run.

And on another note, the common belief among many smart but pragmatic advocates of the bail-out today deals with the belief that the short term credit market (commercial paper, and money markets) is too big to fail. This market is used to fund ongoing operations (payroll, accounts receivables, etc) at many companies, and so many CEO's are worried about how to finance these operations, and whether they can raise capital. This is one key aspect addressed Treasury's "sorta" plan. However, some technically knowledgeable people are now considering whether the act of the FED raising $700B in capital by selling Treasury notes won't harm these short term markets rather than help them, simply by sucking cash from them, because of investors seeking safer investments than the currently shaky markets are offering. Think about that. It starts to make everyday common sense. If the problem is one of liquidity (cash flow), where is Treasury going to get the $700B? By sucking it out of the markets that are already illiquid! An unintended consequence. See discussion here, and here.

It is the unintended consequences that will hurt us here, and given that it is highly unclear that government action will improve things and it is very possible that it will make things worse.

These types of arguments are directed at the question "What do we do next?" and they are concrete. I believe that this is what we can start to point out. In essence we argue for more time and consideration, for a rational consideration of the options. Argue it on common sense grounds. Argue to give more time for the voices which are starting to hear raised. Yes, argue in principles, but we also need to make those principles understood by chewing them and giving very easily inducible, concretized arguments that they support. "Capitalism by Induction" if you will.

More Letters

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This letter went to my Representative today (or at least it will as soon as his website isn't so jammed.) I took a little more pragmatic approach in my positioning, only because of where I'm seeing the argument leading among honest individuals these days. More on that in another post. There is still time. Please write your congressman.

Dear Sir:

As the House now considers a 2nd “Bail out” provision, I again urge you to vote NO on any such provision.

This crisis was caused by extended government intervention in the financial markets, over the course of many years. It is very difficult to see how our government’s ability to understand the unintended consequences of its actions is going to improve by an increasing level of panic, shortened time of execution and far too little consideration of alternatives. It is said that “we cannot afford to stand by and do nothing,” but I would say that when government stands up to “do something” in the economic markets, there is hardly assurance that the cure will not be worse than the illness.

I know that CEO Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical has come out for the bail-out on the basis that the short term credit market cannot afford to fail. His voice surely makes an impression on you. Yet, even now, many are beginning to worry that in an effort to save the short term credit market, the raising of such large sums of money via Treasury’s issuance of T-bills will in fact make the liquidity crisis worse by pulling money from those markets. It is the unintended consequences of hastily-taken policy moves like this one which will ultimately undo our financial system. (please see: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/10/more-discussion-of-why-bailout-bill.html )

The Great Depression of the 1930’s was not caused primarily by the stock market crash of ’29, but by a series of actions by government including excessive tarrifs, taxes, and social programs enacted in the subsequent years, which ultimately deepened what could have been a short recession. Congress at that time, was trying to help as well.

Please take this time to think hard that in passing this bill, your vote to “do something” may have unintended consequences that may very well make things worse.

Let the “something” we choose to do be to allow the free markets to work out this crisis, to lower capital gains and income taxes to fuel liquidity and spur growth, and to clear bureaucratic hurdles to allowing speedy recapitalizations of these distressed companies.

Vote NO on any “stimulus” package.

Best regards,

Kendall J

How Not to Defend Free Markets

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

How Not to Defend Free Markets
October 3, 2008

Washington, D.C.--In response to the financial crisis, traditional defenders of free markets have criticized certain controls passed by U.S. regulatory agencies, but are not calling into question the legitimacy of the agencies themselves. But, argued Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “It is insufficient and indeed counterproductive to criticize a few failed policies of the Fed and the SEC, without challenging the existence of these market-dictating agencies in the first place.
 
“As Exhibit A, consider the response to the SEC’s recent war on short selling. The Wall Street Journal, regarded as a strong defender of free markets, wrote that ‘[T]he SEC first clamped down on so-called naked shorting--a reasonable move under any circumstances, even if there’s no evidence of widespread naked shorting of financial stocks in this panic. But Mr. Cox didn’t stop there. The SEC has also temporarily banned any short selling of hundreds of financial stocks, a list that has grown to include the likes of General Motors. Then, when the SEC was reminded that selling a stock short is a legitimate part of many unimpeachable hedging strategies, it relaxed the prohibition for certain types of sales while continuing to expand the list of “protected” stocks. . . . If the SEC wants to help restore calm, it would stop issuing new emergency rules in the dead of night and bring some transparency and calm to its own rule-making.’
 
“In praising some of the SEC’s actions, while criticizing others, the Wall Street Journal is conceding a disastrous principle: that financial markets should be controlled by government at all.
 
“Under capitalism, the proper role of the government in financial markets is to protect individual rights by banning force and rooting out fraud. This requires objective laws that do not permit would-be central planners to tinker with markets when they don’t like the results. But the SEC’s regulatory authority allows it to coercively prevent individuals from engaging in voluntary transactions like short selling whenever it decides those transactions do not serve the ‘public interest.’
 
“Since the ‘public interest’ is an indefinable standard compatible with any interpretation or rationalization, this means in practice that SEC goons can arbitrarily unleash their regulatory club on financial markets whenever they feel it’s warranted. For example, see Chris Cox’s blitzkrieg of contradictory emergency orders attacking short sellers.
 
“The basic principle behind regulation is that the government can use force, not to protect individual rights, but in an attempt to engineer ‘socially desirable’ outcomes, i.e., outcomes different from what would result from the voluntary choices of individuals on a free market. That is the same premise that underlies all disastrous attempts at central planning--from the Soviet Union to modern-day Venezuela.
 
“If the Wall Street Journal really wants to defend capitalism, this is the premise it must oppose. Instead of prodding government regulators to be better central planners, it should call for a complete end to government control of financial markets. This is the lesson all defenders of capitalism must learn: you cannot defend capitalism by conceding the legitimacy of its opposite.”

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel (The O’Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN (Talkback Live and the Glenn Beck Program), CNBC (Closing Bell and On the Money), and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

In Defense of Speculators and Short-Sellers

By Amit Ghate from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In Defense of Speculators and Short-Sellers

By Amit Ghate

Everywhere today government bureaucrats and media pundits blame unwanted price movements on speculators and short-sellers. If prices are “too high”--it’s the fault of greedy speculators; if prices are “too low”--it’s the work of evil short-sellers. To hear these critics tell it, speculators have the ability to create artificially high prices, while short-sellers can wantonly destroy sound companies. (Ignore for now the obvious question: “Where are the short-sellers in markets that are 'too high' and the speculators in markets that are 'too low'?")

The critics then claim that since neither speculators nor short-sellers perform any positive economic function, barring them from the marketplace is an appropriate remedy, one that’s long past due. (Recently the United States did just this by making some shorting illegal.)

So to begin, let’s ask what the critics consider a “correct” price? Clearly it’s not the price which obtains when all market participants are free to engage in trade based on their best judgment, because this is precisely the free-market price--a price which they so vociferously condemn. But if “too low” and “too high” aren’t judged relative to the free market, what is the standard? Stripped of euphemism: their wishes.

For example, they wish--contrary to all relevant facts--that oil be priced at $20/barrel and that Lehman’s stock trade at $80/share. Never mind that environmental policy has prevented the drilling of oil and the development of nuclear power for decades now, or that Chinese and Indian oil consumption is growing relentlessly; forget too that Lehman chose to leverage itself at 35:1 and made riskier trades year after year--if these critics wish for a price, then that should be the price, facts be damned!

But of course, attempting to set prices by wishing doesn’t--and can’t--work, not for Lenin, Stalin or Brezhnev; or for Paulson, Bernanke and Bush. If prices are to reflect reality, they must be the result of an objective process of discovery and judgment performed by interested actors.

So just as doctors specialize in identifying and evaluating the facts affecting health and disease, speculators and short-sellers specialize in identifying and evaluating the facts pertinent to market prices. They make it their business to understand economic facts like supply and demand, and then risk their capital on their judgment, properly profiting if they’re right and losing if they’re wrong. Thus in a free market, rather than prices being set by wish or decree, they are set by a rational process, one which benefits from the knowledge of all who participate.

For instance, if speculators believe that future oil supplies won’t match demand, they buy oil, increasing its price. If they’re right, and oil prices continue to increase, they sell their positions, profiting from their insight but also capping prices as their supply comes to market; furthermore, their initial effect on prices signals to the market that greater oil supplies are needed and reduced oil consumption is appropriate--efficiently allowing market participants to adjust their actions to the facts.

So too for short-sellers. If they judge that Enron is cooking the books, or that Lehman is insolvent, they can seek to profit from their insight by short-sales. These lower stock prices in the present and convey to the market that there are potential problems with the companies, helping others avoid losses in the stocks. And if shorts are proved correct, rather than exacerbating any price slide, they actually mitigate price declines when they buy their positions back. (Of course, short-sellers, like speculators, only profit if their judgment is correct. If they short a productive, undervalued firm, say, e.g., Wal-Mart or Apple, they lose when the actual facts belie their predictions.)

Consider the recent failure of Lehman, where critics claim that short-sellers caused the decline by obscuring and distorting the company’s true value. The facts say otherwise. When the government shopped Lehman to potential buyers, opening the books to them, not a single buyer emerged, not at any price! Everyone who examined the company concluded it was worthless. This was the fact that short-sellers grasped earlier than others--it wasn’t a fact they created.
 
Speculators and short-sellers don’t create facts, they seek to identify and respond to them; and in the process they help adjust prices to economic conditions and establish smooth and liquid markets. As a result--instead of being scapegoated and banished--they should be respected and welcomed for the productive role they play in our markets.

Amit Ghate is a guest writer for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, a division of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is a full-time trader who often speculates and shorts.

 

To Defeat the Growth of Government it's Time to Win the War of Ideas

By noreply@blogger.com (EC) from Atlantis,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Many have written recently about the looming financial "crisis". While I have wanted to comment on this subject, what is there to say without echoing the chorus of our intellectuals that it is the government to blame for this mess and that any further intervention will only make the situation worse--much, much worse? This is, of course, true; but just because something happens to be true doesn't mean that it should be repeated ad infinitum.

So what new insights do I have to add on this subject? This is the question I have been asking myself. The answer in this case is none. The ARI and especially Yaron Brooks and Alex Epstein have this subject covered as well as can be done, in my opinion. This however does not mean that we--the advocates of Objectivism, Capitalism, individual rights, and rational egoism should keep our mouths shut.

We do live in a unique time in these early days of the 21st Century, my writing this post and your reading it is proof of that assertion. What I mean is, literally at all of our fingertips we have the power via our writing and the vastness of the internet's reach to convey our ideas and values nearly instantly to virtually anyone on earth.

So while, we have the luxury of relying on our movement's intellectual leaders to get ideas our ideas "out there" and they are doing an exellent job at ARI we also have the power to do it ourselves.

I am not going to repeat the mantra of the government creating this "crisis" via it's immoral intervention into the economy by way of regulations, the FED, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, etc. because all that is obvious to "the choir". I am not going to mention that any "bailout" legislation that finally gets passed will probably lead us to the 21st Century version of The Great Depression and a huge jump to full-blown socialism because all that goes without saying if one accepts and understands the concepts of Capitalism and it's philosophical underpinnings--rational egoism and Objectivism.

What I want to suggest is that we all learn to use this amazing technology at our fingertips, known as the internet, to pass on our understanding of these truths to the general public. It is time for us to complete the American Revolution that was primarily a revolution of man's mind. It is time for us to learn to use all the available technologies available to us to spread our ideas of freedom.

First each of us needs to live our lives as best as we can, selfishly persuing our own goals, to serve as points of light that other rational men will want to emulate. Second, you must learn that it is in your rational self-interest to use the internet to share your ideals with the world, whether it's via blogs such as this, letters to your local newspapers expressing your views, or even just normal conversations with your friends and co-workers along a similar vein.

We have a great opportunity to show why are ideas are right--why the are the good. We now have the technology--the means--to do this on a scale previously unimagined. All we need is enough people willing to fight for the future--to fight, intellectually using today's advanced technologies--for freedom in their lifetimes.

We all seem to acknowledge the fact that to win at all this and to stop this march towards tyranny that seems to be accelerating almost by the day we must first win the war of ideas. We are involved in a philosophical war in which the American people are not completely at odds with us. For example, notice how the "bailout" plan failed a few days ago because of the vast numbers of people writing to their respective Congress members in disgust. We have the audience, we have the means, all that is left is the will--or more precisely, the productive effort of us ordinary men and women of the mind--to win this war of philosophical ideas. How many of us are ready to step up and use this oportunity to finally change the tide of this war in our favor? It won't be easy. Nothing worth doing usually is. But it is the right thing to do, and now is the time to do it.

Are you in? I am, because I value freedom and want to see the world as it could be and ought to be--in my lifetime. How about you?

Bringing Back Gold

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Via Randex and HBL is an article in The Wall Street Journal that reads almost as if Ayn Rand herself had written it: "Loose Money and the Roots of the Crisis".

Here's an excerpt.

In the aftermath of this financial catastrophe, as we sort out causes and assign blame, with experts offering various solutions -- More regulation! Less complex financial instruments! -- let's not lose sight of the most fundamental component of finance. No credit-default swap, no exotic derivative, can be structured without stipulating the monetary unit of account in which its value is calculated. Money is the medium of exchange -- the measure, the standard, the store of value -- which defines the very substance of the economic contract between buyer and seller. It is the basic element, the atom of financial matter.

It is the money that is broken. [bold added]

The article is worth a full read and even manages to deal with former Objectivist Alan Greenspan's role as a central banker about as well as one could hope for a non-Objectivist proponent of capitalism.

After the article is the following blurb about its author: "[Judy] Shelton, an economist, is author of 'Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency System' (Free Press, 1994)."

Notice the year her book came out. I remember that year, and the heady (but mistaken) feeling that came with the Republicans winning control of Congress. It seemed at the time like we were finally about to make some progress towards reversing the decades-old trend towards a government-run economy.

Now, nearly a decade and a half later, we have not only failed to achieve even the beginning of a rollback, but have seen a massive increase in the size and intrusiveness of the federal government, and driven by a Republican President at that! For anyone urging a vote for McCain based on the notion that you "fight an election with the politicians you have", there might be a historical lesson here.

The fight for a sound financial system is too important for pro-capitalists to make the mistake of pledging loyalty to any one political party. Advocates of capitalism must instead present our arguments to the public at large, and make the parties vie for our votes in every election instead. The former will ensure that our numbers grow, and the latter will protect our political power from misuse by false allies (such as the religious right) for purposes at odds with freedom.

-- CAV

Berton Braley on the Bailout

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Berton Braley was a very popular early 20th century poet; his writings often extolled the virtues of capitalism, industry, success, and the like. Here's a particularly apt poem, sent to me by Boaz Arad:

The Profits and Loss
By Berton Braley

From New Deal Ditties: or, Running in the Red with Roosevelt, 1936

When "planned economy" first began
It looked like a swell "idea" –
Until we learned it had no plan
And wasn't economee.

For the taxes rise and the budget's shot
And the New Deal costs are met
By spending money we haven't got
For things that we never get.

The Billions roll in mighty stream,
A regular tidal flood,
With the net result that each spending scheme
Bogs down in a sea of mud.

When plans and programs go all to pot
Do the New Deal planners fret?
Why no, they think up a brand new lot
Of schemes to spend what we haven't got
For things we will never get!

The House is scheduled to vote on this new bailout plan on Friday. It might well pass this time, in part due to all the special-interest pork added to the bill. (UGH!) Please tell your representative that you still oppose the bailout. You might wish to mention that your vote in November will be influenced by their vote tomorrow.

Objectivist Roundup: Financial Crisis Edition

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The latest Objectivist Roundup -- featuring blog posts by Objectivists on the financial crisis is now posted on Crucible and Column. Go check it out!

Vatican Sullies the Mantle of Science and Reason

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Vatican has announced it will host an "Evolution Congress" as a part of the Pontifical Council for Culture's "Science, Technology and the Ontological Quest" project. This is to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin's landmark work, The Origin of Species.

Phillip Sloan, a professor at Notre Dame, told the press conference the evolution debate, "especially in the United States, has been taking place without a strong Catholic presence ... and the discourse has suffered accordingly."

See? They're here to help! And you can tell they're serious because they are planning to exclude creationists and "intelligent design" advocates (but I repeat myself). After all, these religionists are intellectually respectable, unlike all those biblical literalists:

Jesuit Father Marc Leclerc, a philosophy professor at the Gregorian, told Catholic News Service Sept. 16 that organizers "wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific" and that discussed rational philosophy and theology along with the latest scientific discoveries.

He said arguments "that cannot be critically defined as being science, or philosophy or theology did not seem feasible to include in a dialogue at this level and, therefore, for this reason we did not think to invite" supporters of creationism and intelligent design.

(Yes, it isn't obvious how ID Creationism isn't theological, being a product of religious dogma.) But here's what should be catching everyone's attention: they also said that "the other extreme of the evolution debate -- proponents of an overly scientific conception of evolution and natural selection -- also were not invited."

Of course. We wouldn't want our science to be too scientific at a "strictly scientific" conference, would we? What a charade.

The "Sensitivity" Syndrome II

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

One wishes that courage was spent on causes and actions worthy of the virtue. Last August, in "The 'Sensitivity' Syndrome," I commented on Random House's cancellation of the publication of Sherry Jones's The Jewel of Medina, a kind of feminist "bodice-ripper" novel about Aisha, the child-bride of Mohammad, for fear of Islamic "extremist" violence. The novel, if published in August as planned by Ballantine, a subsidiary of Random House, I noted, would have quickly sunk out of sight into the morass of mediocre fiction which the trade regularly churns out, but for the efforts of a non-Muslim provocateur, associate professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Denise Spellberg.

Spellberg was sent a review copy by the publisher for her endorsement in the form of a jacket blurb. Instead, she first warned the Muslim grapevine that it offended Islam, and the next day warned Random House of possible "extremist violence." She claimed, among other things, that the "sacred history" of Mohammad had been turned by Jones into "soft core pornography."

"I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history," she claimed in an email. What she apparently does not have a problem with is inciting violence among Muslims, who, without Spellberg's calling attention to the novel, might have remained ignorant of its existence. What any other writer should have a problem with was her calculated conspiracy to see the novel unpublished through censorship by fear. She called the novel a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." That description more aptly applies to Spellberg's actions.

The publication rights to the novel were bought by a small British publisher, Gibson Square, which has published other controversial books, including Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips, which details the gradual submission of Britain and the British government to Islam, and Blow up Russia, by Alexander Litvinenko, who was murdered by Vladimir Putin's agents in London.

On September 27, Muslims firebombed the London home of Martin Rynja, the Dutch publisher and owner of Gibson Square. Rynja's home also served as the offices of the book-publishing firm. Gibson Square announced on September 5 that it had bought the publication rights to Jones's novel and planned to publish it. Another small publisher, Beaufort Books of New York, in cooperation with Gibson Square, plans to publish The Jewel of Medina in the U.S., and has signed a contract for its sequel. Last Monday Beaufort Books closed its office as a precaution against similar censorship by violence. Rynja is presumably now in hiding or under police protection, and publication of the novel in Britain or in the U.S. remains to be seen.

Three Muslims have been arrested, two of them outside Rynja's home. That aspect of the incident is curious. Scotland Yard's Special Branch, in an undisclosed undercover operation, had knowledge of the conspiracy to firebomb the house and presumably murder Rynja, who was told to leave. The police waited for two of the suspects to actually commit the arson by shoving a container of gas through Rynja's letterbox, which ignited inside the house, before collaring the two Muslims. Then the police and firefighters had to break down the front door to extinguish the fire. The house is now vacant.

So one might wonder why the police waited until the Muslims had actually committed a crime they were certain was going to occur, instead of arresting them before Rynja was compelled to leave and his home was damaged. The police's odd behavior is linked to the fear of the authorities of being accused of racial or religious "profiling," an illogical policy that debilitates Britain's counter-terrorism efforts (and also the U.S.'s).

Aside from the presumed undercover operation that netted them knowledge of the suspects' intentions, the police refused to risk arresting two Muslims who were walking around London with an incendiary device at two o'clock in the morning in the vicinity of the intended victim's neighborhood as not grounds enough for action. That is, the police and the courts would have likely accepted the Muslim position that it was not grounds enough for action. This is another face of the "sensitivity syndrome" that is requisite for submission to Islam and Sharia law.

Leaving aside Rynja's literary esteem for Jones's novel - "I was completely bowled over by the novel and the moving love story it portrays," he said weeks before the firebombing - Rynja expressed the proper moral position against censorship by firebombing, government edict, or by popular opinion. "I immediately felt that it was imperative to publish it. In an open society there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear."

Going by descriptions of The Jewel of Medina, I do not plan to read the novel.

"Described by critics as a tale of 'lust, love and intrigue in the Prophet's harem,' The Jewel of Medina traces the life of Aisha, Mohammed's favorite wife. It tells of her marriage aged nine to Mohammed, who is much older, and how she is forced to use her wits and sword to defend her position as he takes another 12 wives and concubines," reported the Daily Mail.

"The novel also tells how, at 14, Aisha almost betrays her husband after they are separated as they travel together. She is rescued by a childhood friend who tries to seduce her. She resists, but the scandal rocks Medina. When she returns, a mob accuses her of adultery. Mohammed's friends urge him to divorce her, but he tells them: 'I would just as soon cut out my own heart.'"

Not exactly on the level of Othello. But one imagines that Muslim objections to the novel dwell on the portrayals of Aisha as a Wahhabist Wonder Woman and of Mohammad as a guy with a heart of gold who wouldn't dream of allowing his favorite wife to be stoned to death or beheaded on the rumor that she had committed adultery, which is the kind of punishment that Saudi and other theocratic courts mete out to wayward women. Aisha's and Mohammad's actions contradict Islamic moral and social norms; those actions are at variance with Sharia law; therefore Muslims are offended by the novel and oppose its publication.

And oppose the novel they do, and any form of representation of Mohammad in word or image, as the reaction to the Danish cartoons demonstrated in 2005, or any criticism of Islam or Muslims that could be interpreted as "religious hatred" or "incitement" to it by both Muslims and Britain's suborned judicial system. One Muslim cleric, Omar Bakri, was outspoken about the fate of those who were in any way associated with publication of The Jewel of Medina, that the firebombing of Rynja's home was but "the thin edge of the wedge."

Another Muslim cleric also weighed in.

"...[T]he radical cleric Anjem Choudhary said the book was an insult to the Prophet Mohammed's honor, something he said would warrant a 'death penalty' under Sharia law."

Note the qualifier in Choudhary's description as a "radical" cleric. This is also a form of "sensitivity," which blanks out the fact that any Muslim cleric must be "radical" by definition of Sharia law and its imposition on both Muslims and non-Muslims. There is no "moderate," conciliatory form of Islam, just as there can be no such thing as a "moderate" Muslim willing to observe secular law at the price of compromising his religious beliefs. Islamic clerics warn of punishment of Muslims who do recognize the validity of secular law. An Islam that made such a concession to secular law would no longer be Islam, no longer be "extreme," and no longer be a threat to the West.

Compare the Telegraph article with that of the New York Times of September 29, "Attack May Be Tied to Book About Muhammad." It "may be"? Was Rynja being threatened by Christian Scientists or Jehovah's Witnesses, or by members of Holiness, a branch of the Mennonites? Submission to Islam is evident on both sides of the Atlantic.

A sample of official Islamic mental gymnastics may be seen in a Daily Telegraph opinion piece from 2004, "We need protection from the pedlars of religious hatred," by the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

There is no point in warning that the same brand of submission to Islam can happen in the U.S. It already has, as the action of Random House has demonstrated, and also the evasive manner in which especially the federal government and the news media sensitively treat Islamic "extremism."

Sensitivity's other name is self-censorship, and opposition to it has fallen to small publishers and those who would defend them at renewed risk, such as Salman Rushdie, subject of a similar fatwa of reprisals in 1989 for The Satanic Verses. The champions of the freedom of speech have always been in a minority, and very often they have made a difference. Never minding its literary value or lack of it, we should hope that Sherry Jones's The Jewel of Medina sees the light of day.

Book Review: 'FDR's Folly' by Jim Powell

By noreply@blogger.com (Doug) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The ongoing financial crisis is being compared to the early warning signs of the great depression. Alarmingly, today's political leaders are proposing the largest act of Federal economic intervention since the New Deal. Barack Obama has repeatedly called for "21st century regulations" on hedge funds and commodity speculators throughout his campaign. John McCain routinely likes to blame "greed", be it from CEOs or investors, for contemporary financial woes. This leaves no doubt that both candidates share the same toxic premise in their proposed economic reforms: more government involvement.

Tragically, a common and fatal historical misconception is that FDR's New Deal rescued the United States from the Great Depression. This is often cited as motivation for great government involvement on Wall Street today. Given that this argument is so common and so virulent, it is crucial that Objectivists familiarize themselves with the real history of the Great Depression and the New Deal so that arguments can easily be defeated.

To this end, I highly recommend FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell. In FDR's Folly, Powell, a CATO Institute historian, examines the long-term results of the New Deal and persuasively argues that they crippled the U.S. economy. Although Powell does not present a compelling moral argument against the New Deal, Powell's attention to detail is impressive and his compilation of facts is extensive. In this respect, his book is of enormous value.

In this detailed book, you will learn about the numerous programs the FDR administration brought about, including the following:

• Programs that inundated private businesses with unprecedented waves of regulations, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the National Recovery Act and the Securities and Exchange Commission.


• Programs that redistributed wealth from producers to consumers, such as the Federal Emergency Relief Act and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.


• Programs that nationalized industries, centrally planned infrastructure or created makework projects to increase employment such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Powell argues that these programs typically led to poorly planned infrastructure that was more expensive than what could have been acquired in a free market.

The economic results of FDR's programs were devastating. For example, consider the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). The price and production controls of the AAA led to perverse practices such as millions of tons of domestic oat and corn being burned while the U.S. simultaneously imported oat and corn, millions of peaches being left to rot and millions of "excess" pigs being needlessly slaughtered while lard was being imported from overseas. The extent of economic regulation under the FDR Administration reached such absurd levels, there was even a government board organized solely to control the production and pricing of milk!

This book will also detail the oppressive controls on income and wages under the FDR administration. Under FDR, scores of private sector jobs were eliminated through minimum wage laws, personal income taxes hit 91% for certain brackets and it was a stated part of FDR's platform that nobody should have an annual income in excess of $25,000.

Powell reveals how all of FDR's programs are based upon the fatally flawed premises of Keynesian economics, including the following:

• That government spending is always good for the economy, even if it is engaging in pointless ventures such as building pyramids.


• War is good for the economy.


• Gold (as a standard of currency) is a "barbarous relic" that prevents economic growth.


• A capitalist economy will inevitably slow to a halt without periodic bolsters from centralized planning.


• Consumption (i.e., the destruction of wealth) not production, drives the economy. Thus, government should redistribute wealth from those who would invest it to those who would spend it.

From reading this book, you will also learn that many of FDR's earliest programs, such as the AAA and the National Recovery Act, were originally ruled as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately FDR stayed in office long enough to appoint 7 of the 9 sitting supreme court justices, which eventually opened the floodgates for New Deal reforms. Thus, is the unforeseen danger of having a President serve more than two terms.

Powell has done a fantastic job with this work. I am not surprised that FDR's Folly has been enthusiastically recommended by famed free market economists such as Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in free market capitalism and learning the real history of the Great Depression.

Two other great resources on the history of the Great Depression include Richard Salsman's lecture: The Cause and Consequence of the Great Depression and Burton Folsom's forthcoming book New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Legacy Has Damaged America, which I am confident will be an amazing read.

If you enjoyed the above review, please rate it as helpful on Amazon.com. My Amazon version of this review can be found here. The more helpful ratings I receive, the higher my visibility is on Amazon.com. You can access all of my reviews on Amazon.com here.

Calhoun on the Bubble

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Reader Dismuke alerted me via email to an excellent piece at RealClear Markets regarding the current economic crisis, by investor Joseph Calhoun. What I like about it is that it busts two myths at once: that the current crisis represents a failure of capitalism and that there is a shortage of capital in the economy. Each has been used when convenient lately to sow panic and to justify massive new government interventions in the economy.

Last week Goldman Sachs raised $10 billion in new capital in one day. They sold $5 billion in preferred stock and warrants to Berkshire Hathaway and also completed a secondary offering of common stock that raised another $5 billion. Friday, JP Morgan raised $10 billion in a secondary offering to help pay for the Washington Mutual takeunder. Both of these offerings were oversubscribed, meaning that the companies could have raised more capital if they wanted. There is not a shortage of capital for well run financial companies.

There is, however, a shortage of capital for companies that have acted irresponsibly with investor capital in the recent past. For some reason, our political leaders believe this is a failure of the market, but isn't this what should be expected from rational investors? Given a choice,why would a rational investor allocate limited capital to the losers rather than the winners? If capital is really as scarce as it seems, isn't it better for our economy if we make sure that it is allocated wisely? [This can be done only by making sure that people who know what they are doing are free to act on their rational effort. --ed]

The biggest bank failure in the history of the United States happened last Thursday night and by Friday morning, it was business as usual. The only difference was the name on the door and the losses suffered by those unfortunate enough to invest in Washington Mutual bonds or stock. The taxpayers didn't lose anything and depositors didn't lose anything, only investors. That is how capitalism works in case everyone has forgotten. [bold added]

Oh, and scratch what I said about "justifying" government intervention in the economy. The proper verb in my last sentence is really "excuse". Capitalism depends on (and, to the extent that a nation is free, it is the triumph of) countless individuals exercising their own, independent judgement. This is impossible without freedom, which must be protected by the government. In fact, that is the only proper function of the government.

Any time and for any reason (HT, C. August) the government interferes with individual rights, it curtails the ability of some individuals to act according to their best judgement, and threatens to do so for all. Think about what this means in the context of the current crisis.

Those who have made bad decisions in real estate (and related) investments have already suffered their losses, or can probably see them coming.

What good is it going to do for our economy or our freedom for the government to take money away from those who have not made similar mistakes and hand it over to those who have? And what good will "supervision" of the able (in the worst imaginable context, that of threats) by the very people who helped create this mess do? Most importantly, by what right?

In all the disgraceful spinning of campfire ghost stories, cries of "act now, think later", and groveling before Nancy Pelosi (of all people!), not once has any politician in favor of the bailout explained why robbing American citizens for the benefit of inept bankers is the right, American thing to do. That's because they can't, any more than Nancy Pelosi can wave a wand and relieve all of us from the necessity of thinking carefully in order to make a living. Or make socialism compatible with the actual requirements of human life.

Just for starters, a "bailout" will insulate those who deserve their losses from the consequences of their bad decisions, as well as (via the inevitable redistribution of wealth) visit those consequences upon those who don't deserve them and deprive the rewards of sound judgement from those who do deserve them. Isn't the last thing our economy needs right now to throw good money after bad, while removing incentives from those best able to make good economic decisions?

If we allow sympathy for the inept (or the foolish) or envy of the able to cloud our judgement enough to blind us to the fact that government intervention in the economy is ultimately achieved by violating someone's inalienable rights, we will rue that choice sooner or later. A mere bursting bubble will look like a walk in the park. (Calhoun hints at that, too, although he could have gone a lot farther.)

Read the whole article. (Among the things I haven't discussed here, Calhoun succinctly explains how some recent government interventions have already misfired.)

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected typos.

Single Payer Heath Care: Immoral And Deadly

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

[The following is a mirror of the original post at PatientPower. Brian's post was also the winner in Week 4 of the Anti-Socialized Medicine Blog Post Contest.]

The following letter on the dangers and immorality of single-payer health care was co-authored by Brian Schwartz, Ph.D. and Paul Hsieh, M.D. in response to an article in the April 2008 issue of Annals of Surgery supporting such a policy (Sarpel U, Vladeck B, Divino C, et al. Fact and Fiction: Debunking Myths in the US Healthcare System. Ann Surg 2008; 247(4):563-569; available at Medscape here, registration required [free]).

The journal describes itself as "the world's most highly referenced surgery journal, provides the international medical community with information on significant contributions to the advancement of surgical science and practice."

The Editorial Board rejected it. The reviewer stated:

This is a very biased and vitriolic letter. There certainly is a broad range of opinion as to the best system of health care for the United States and open discussion is to be encouraged. However, to call a single payer system, that serves much of the Western world with equal or better results than we achieve in the United States, "immoral" and "deadly" is inappropriate and serves no purpose. Prior to consideration for publication, this letter needs to be toned down several notches.

The reviewer apparently believed that it was out of bounds to question either the morality of single-payer health care or the alleged fact that it yielded "equal or better results" than the American system. Of course, these were the very points that we believed needed to be challenged and discussed in an open fashion.

Also, as shown here, while the journal was "happy to evaluate a revised version of this manuscript," the reviewer provided minimal guidance on appropriate revisions, and our request for more constructive feedback was ignored.

We submitted a revised version, which the reviewer found "not acceptable for publication in the Annals of Surgery." We'd like to let readers decide for themselves. Here is the complete text of the revised version:

Single-Payer Health Care: Immoral and Hazardous to Patients' Health
In "Fact and Fiction: Debunking Myths in the US Healthcare System"^[1], Sarpel et al presume "an obligation to provide healthcare to those who need it." This faulty moral premise underlies all forms of socialized medicine (including the single-payer system they advocate) and should be rejected by Americans as immoral and antithetical to core American values.

The only moral and proper role of government is to protect individual rights of its citizens. But health care is a need, not a right. A right is a freedom of action one possesses, such as the right to free speech. Rights are not automatic claims on goods and services produced by others -- that is just state-sanctioned robbery. If a man is hungry, he doesn't have the right to take a can of soup from his neighbor's pantry. A man's rights imposes only the negative obligation on others to not violate those rights, not a positive obligation on others to provide for all his needs.^[2]

Whenever a government attempts to guarantee any service (such as health care) as a "right," it must also control it. This can only be done by violating citizens' actual rights. Under a government-run single-payer system, bureaucrats ultimately decide who receives what care and when, not doctors and patients. Doctors must work under the government's terms and for the government's prices. The inevitable result is a system like Canada's, which harms both patients and doctors through its infamous waiting lists and rationing.

Canadian patients routinely suffer and die while waiting for their "free" health care. According to the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, "Canadian doctors say patients wait almost twice as long for treatment than is clinically reasonable, ...almost 18 weeks between the time they see their family physician and the time they receive treatment from a specialist."^[3] A Canadian woman with a newly-diagnosed breast cancer might wait several months before she receives the appropriate surgery and chemotherapy.^[4] The Canadian Medical Association noted, "Protracted treatment delays increase mortality and morbidity rates. [In a 12-month period in Ontario], 71 patients died while waiting for CABG [and] 121 were removed from the list permanently because they had become medically unfit for surgery."^[5] The Supreme Court of Canada summarizes these injustices: "[W]aiting lists for health care services have resulted in deaths, have increased the length of time that patients have to be in pain and have impaired patients' ability to enjoy any real quality of life."^[6]

The Canadian single-payer system takes its toll on doctors as well. According to the New York Times, significant numbers of frustrated neurosurgeons have left Canada for the US (a net loss of 49 out of a total of 241 in the entire country over a six year period). The surgeons' primary complaint was not money but rather a government bureaucracy which "increasingly rations service because of various technological and personnel shortages," making it impossible for them to practice according to their best medical conscience.^[7]

American health care has genuine problems, but they were not caused by the free market but rather from decades of government interference in the free market, as documented in an article co-authored by one of us (PSH).^[8] For example, politicians should not dictate whether consumers buy insurance on their own, through a membership group, or through their employer. But, as Sarpel et al acknowledge, the tax-exempt status of employer-sponsored insurance does just that. It locks employees to their jobs, shields insurance companies from competition, and encourages excess insurance coverage which gives patients little incentive to be cost-conscious consumers.^[9]

Instead of worsening the current government-caused problems by imposing more futile controls, politicians should adopt free-market reforms that respect individual rights. At the federal level, legislators should eliminate the employer tax break and lower tax rates commensurately. A second-best solution would be to extend the tax exemption to all medical insurance and expenses. Health Savings Accounts are a step in this direction, but should be eligible to everyone regardless of their insurance plan. Such "Large HSAs" would allow consumers to buy medical care and insurance with tax-free earnings.^[9]

State-level reforms to make insurance affordable include eliminating mandatory insurance benefits, community rating, and guaranteed issue. Largely because of such controls, the average price of individual and family insurance in the five most expensive states is three times the price in the five least expensive states.^[10] Repealing laws that forbid purchasing health insurance across state lines would make health insurance available to millions who currently cannot afford it, while respecting individual rights.^[11]

The free market has done a magnificent job in providing Americans with all other necessities of life, such as food, shelter, and clothing, and can do the same for health care if freed from government interference. Patients trust their physicians with their health and their lives. Physicians must not betray that trust by turning them over to the tender mercies of a single-payer socialized medical system that, as we contend, would be both deadly and immoral. They should instead demand free-market reforms.

***

Citations

1. Sarpel U, Vladeck B, Divino C, et al. Fact and Fiction: Debunking Myths in the US Healthcare System. Ann Surg 2008; 247(4):563-569. (Available at Medscape here, registration required [free])

2. Peikoff L, revised by Zinser L. Health Care Is Not a Right, Denver: Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine; 2007.

3. Skinner B, Rovere M, California Dreaming: The Fantasy of a Canadian-Style Health Insurance Monopoly in the United States. Fraser Institute Digital Publications, Fraser Institute, May 2007: 1-4.

4. Saint-Jacques N, Younis T, Dewar R, et al. Wait times for breast cancer care. Br J Cancer 2007; 96:162-168.

5. Davies R. Waiting Lists for Health Care, a Necessary Evil?. Can Med Assoc J 1999; 160(10): 1469-1470.

6. Steinbrook R. Private Health Care in Canada. N Engl J Med 2006; 354:1661-1664.

7. Krauss C. Windsor Journal; Doctors Eying the U.S.: Canada Is Sick About It, New York Times. October 27, 2003.

8. Zinser L, Hsieh P. Moral Health Care Vs. "Universal Health Care". The Objective Standard. Winter 2007-2008; 2(4):9-41.

9. Cannon M. Large Health Savings Accounts: A Step toward Tax Neutrality for Health Care, Forum for Health Economics & Policy 2008; 11(2) Article 3.

10. America's Health Insurance Plans. Individual Health Insurance 2006-2007: A Comprehensive Survey of Premiums, Availability, and Benefits. December 2007.

11. ...And Escape From New Jersey, Wall Street Journal. May 29, 2008. A16.

More Analysts Blaming Government For Economic Crisis

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here are a couple more articles in which non-Objectivists are correctly putting the blame for the current mortgage crisis on government policies, not the free market.

In "Credit Crisis Not a Free-Market Failure", Thomas Sowell writes:

...Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.

The government does not guarantee Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but the widespread assumption has been that the government would step in with a bailout to prevent chaos in financial markets.

... If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the expectation of future bailouts.

In "Reject bailout rush to socialism", David Littmann writes:

...Washington does not want you to remember the four ways it has brought us to this unfortunate moment. Let's review:

* The Community Reinvestment Act (approved in 1977 during the Carter administration) compelled banks and other lenders to loan money and grant mortgages in areas where they would have never dreamed of making such loans because of the exceptional risks of default. Banks were denied charters for growth and geographical expansion if regulators found them to be out of compliance with these politically correct regulations, enforced by the Federal Reserve and others.

* Government-sponsored enterprises (such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) received taxpayer subsidies to provide mortgages and are favored by politicians and regulators with the privilege of maintaining very thin capital reserves as buffers against losses that result from defaulting on delinquent mortgages.

* Insane accounting rules, the Sarbanes-Oxley regulatory regime and Securities and Exchange Commission rules have contributed to the mess, especially the devastating "mark-to-market" requirement. The financial reports of firms and financial organizations must carry assets on their ledgers as though they were forced to sell them immediately into distressed markets, rather than at book value...

* And the Federal Reserve spurred subprime lending by pursuing inflationary money policies that dropped bank-borrowing rates to 1 percent.

To avoid greater government involvement and messes in the future (think Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security), Washington must extricate itself from the market. As real estate prices become more affordable, credit-worthy firms and individuals throughout the nation and world are ready to pounce on bargains that will appreciate.

The government got America into this situation. The solution is simple: Government, get out.

I'm heartened to see this idea in circulation. We should continue to stress this point when we discuss this issue with legislators as well as others.

To keep things simple and easy-to-understand, I've been using the three key points that Tony Donadio mentioned in his earlier comment:

(1) The current crisis was created by government interference in the housing market.
(2) Further interference will only make things worse.
(3) It is unjust to make innocent people who did not make or take out irresponsible loans pay for the mistakes of those who did.

The Ancient History Webpage is Finally Up!

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Unions Tout "Free Choice," Except for Employers

By Tom Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Unions Tout “Free Choice,” Except for Employers
October 1, 2008

Washington, DC--If Democrats gain control of Congress this November, they are likely to enact some version of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which would revamp the way employees choose whether to endorse a labor union. Under current law, employees vote anonymously. But under the new scheme, they would vote with signed cards, open to union inspection, showing each employee’s name and vote.

“Even by Washington standards, this proposal is high hypocrisy,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “This misnamed law claims to promote free choice for employees, but where’s the freedom for employers? Companies are forced by law to recognize and bargain with any union approved by a majority of employees--no choice allowed. Why is nobody speaking up for their rights?

“In a free society, the law would recognize the absolute right of companies and employees to deal with each other on an entirely voluntary basis. That means an employer would be free to bargain with workers individually, or through a union, as the parties’ economic self-interest dictates.

“Opponents of the proposed law fear, with good reason, that unions would intimidate anti-union workers into casting pro-union votes. But such problems arise only when government grants unions special privileges. In an unregulated labor market, if union promoters resorted to intimidation, a company would boot them from the premises, just as it would any employee, vendor, or visitor who introduced threats or violence to the workplace.

“The Employee Free Choice Act, if enacted, will obviously allow unions to target employees who can be pressured into voting yes. But the proper response to this transparent scheme is not merely to reject it, but to begin repealing the various labor laws that deny free choice in bargaining.”

########

Mr. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor, who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes.

Thomas Bowden and other Ayn Rand Center experts are available for interviews on this topic.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@AynRandCenter.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

                                                                                            RSS 

The Ayn Rand Center Responds to the Financial Crisis

By Don Watkins from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Ayn Rand Center Responds to the Financial Crisis
September 30, 2008 

Washington D.C.--Americans are now facing an historic economic crisis. What was the cause? What is the cure? How do we prevent it from happening again? 

While pundits and politicians blame the current housing and financial crisis on "greedy" businessmen and lax regulators, and are frantically urging the government to expand its control over our economic lives, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched a new Web page to defend a different view—that the actual cause of the crisis is government intervention, and the only cure, laissez-faire capitalism. 

We invite you to check out our collection of essays, op-eds, lectures, and interviews arguing for a rational approach to this crisis—an approach you will not find anywhere else.

#####  #####

Hey, Big Spenders!

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Hey, Big Spenders!
September 30, 2008

Washington, D.C.--In Friday’s presidential debate, John McCain railed against government spending, trumpeting his opposition to earmarks.

“While McCain and Obama pose as opponents of government spending, they are not,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “To actually stem the torrent of government spending, it is not just pork that must be cut--but the massive welfare state entitlements that neither McCain nor Obama dares challenge.

“It takes little courage to denounce bridges leading to nowhere and buildings dedicated to campaign donors. Such projects are transparent examples of politicians using taxpayer funds to curry favor with special interests. But such projects make up only a tiny fraction--six-tenths of a percent--of the government’s $3 trillion dollar budget.

“The real spending spree isn’t to be found in government pork but in massive welfare state entitlements, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These are the programs that have led to soaring debt, a crushing tax burden, and economic stagnation.

“So long as America is forced to bankroll costly welfare programs, there is no way to meaningfully reduce government spending. What we need is a politician who will stand up for the ideals of the Founders: a government limited to its proper function of protecting individual rights; a government under which people are responsible for providing for their own needs--and are left free to do so. That would take real political courage.”

### ### ###

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel (The O’Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN (Talkback Live and the Glenn Beck Program), CNBC (Closing Bell and On the Money), and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213
media@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Objectivist Round Up - Financial Crisis Edition

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Welcome to the October 2, 2008 edition of Objectivist round up. This week we're focusing specifically on the Financial Crisis from an Objectivist perspective. This is a crucial point in our nation's history, and one which illustrates the value of good ideas, and the failure of bad ones. Your voice is necessary in this time of high anxiety. Hopefully, the Objectivists here help make things a little bit clearer. This issue is quite full so let's get right to the substance.

Also, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has set up a web site dealing specifically with the Financial Crisis and offering insight and analysis on this crisis and capitalism in general. That site is located here.

 

Financial Crisis - Principles & Analysis

Rational Jenn presents Nine Years Ago posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "Even The New York Times saw this coming! Plus, bonus advice on making Government Interference work for you!"

Ari Armstrong presents Capitalism In Two Minutes posted at FreeColorado.com, saying, "While I've posted several other links to good articles against the bailout, I thought this short, pithy piece served as a decent summary of the virtues of capitalism -- and the evils of economic controls."

Edward Cline presents America vs. Congress et al. posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "There was nothing in the original Constitution that gave the government the power to "improve" the economy, except, implicitly, to let it alone."

Sascha Settegast presents "Market Failure" vs. Individualism posted at Heroic Dreams.

K. M. presents The financial crisis and pragmatism posted at Applying philosophy to life, saying, "A brief post about the role of pragmatism in the financial crisis"

Noah Stahl presents Blank-and-effect – The economics of pragmatism posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Stahl examines the current administration's "flexible” approach to the financial crisis, about which President Bush said, “There will be ample opportunity to discuss the origins of this problems[sic]. Now is the time to solve it.” Why do Bush and Paulson think they can solve the problem with no understanding of how it came about?"

Gus Van Horn presents Calhoun on the Bubble posted at Gus Van Horn, saying, "As the man says, "That is how capitalism works in case everyone has forgotten.""

Paul Hsieh presents Bush Vs. Ott On The Bailout posted at NoodleFood, saying, "It's too bad Bush didn't make this speech."

Financial Crisis - What's Next?

The Aesthetic Capitalist presents Proper Response to The Bailout posted at The Aesthetic Capitalist.

Diana Hsieh presents Correspondence on the Bailout posted at NoodleFood, saying, "Historian John Lewis eviscerates the typical arguments in favor of the bailout offered by his representative."

C. August presents RIP Bailout... Now What? posted at Titanic Deck Chairs, saying, "The House voted down the bailout. A sigh of relief was followed by dire predictions for what it would do next week. Now it seems that the Senate may beat them to it."

Nicholas Provenzo presents The Financial Panic and the Only Proper Answer to It posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "We are told that the ruthless self-interest of Wall Street (rather than the "compassionate" gift-giving of the Congress) is the cause of the current financial crisis. Unfortunately, the truth is a little more complex. Perhaps we should examine this truth, that is, before we blithely allow our political leaders to add nearly a trillion dollars to the public debt and give new powers to those who helped bring the disaster along in the first place."

Kendall Justiniano presents Why Paulson's Money is No Good posted here at The Crucible and Column, saying, "Why government can't do what the private economy should be allowed to."

 

More Objectivist Commentary

Burgess Laughlin presents What can historians study? posted at Making Progress, saying, "This is an ode to the enormous variety of objects--wide and narrow, great and small, abstract and concrete, exalted and mundane--that historians (and their readers) can study."

Kevin Morrill presents Steve Ballmer and the meaning of money posted at Net Profit Motive.

Paul McKeever presents Freedom and the Proper Regulation of Speech posted at Paul McKeever, saying, "did the title get your attention?"

Peter Cresswell presents Is the phenomenenal disconnected from the noumenal ... ?posted at Not PC, saying, "A little humour for Objectivists this week ... by all appearance the world's most destructive philosopher is alive and well and in business down in Fiji!"

John Drake presents China for a day posted at Try Reason!, saying, "Thomas Friedman, famed author of the book "The World is Flat", is out peddling his latest book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded". In it, he reveals to the world his disdain for individual rights. In my post, I discuss his speech for the Washtenaw Economic Club, delivered at Eastern Michigan University, and how his vision for tomorrow is fundamental wrong."

Ryan Puzycki presents A Stroke of Good Luck posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Instead of nervously worrying about the declining health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, the U.S. should view it as an opportunity to reevaluate our appeasement of his despotic regime."

The Editors at The Undercurrent presents The Environmentalist Attack on Outdoorsmanship posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "This essay examines the corruption of the conservationist movement, which once sought to conserve nature for human pleasure - not from human beings, as current environmentalists do."

Kristina Saraka presents Protesting Prices posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Kristina looks at the phenomena of protesting in order to bring about lower or higher prices, and examines what bad premises such protests are based on."

Eric Peltier presents Evaluating the War Effort posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Who are we really fighting, and what is our goal in the "War on Terror"?"

Noah Stahl presents The Bankruptcy of the Mixed Economy posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Noah examines how the mixed economy became so uncontroversial."

Adam Reed presents Religion is the Marxism of the 21st Century posted at Born to Identify, saying, "The last economic crisis of comparable magnitude led to the Great Depression and the Age of Dictators. What can we learn from the history of ideas about the corresponding risks and threat levels from this one?"

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of objectivist round up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: objectivist round up, blog carnival.

Why Paulson's Money is No Good

By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
         - Groucho Marx

As Diana points out, free-market economists and businessmen are starting to articulate the proper principles, causes and needed actions in this crisis. I fear however, that the prevailing philosophy in Washington will not respond to these voices and we will see a nominally similar bail-out pass through Congress. Coupled with a probable Obama presidency and a Democratic Congress, and the tax increases and "relief" measures sure to pass, I also fear a looming full-scale Depression. If capital should flee American shores as a result, we will see a severe loss of value as the Dollar slides and is no longer the bulwark of stability in a storm. Capital has options today. It's not like the Crash of '29.

Many of my Objectivist friends are blogging and articulating the proper philosophical principles by which to evaluate the crisis including The Rule of Reason, Galileo Blogs, Applying Philosophy, and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

In today's post I thought I'd attempt to discuss what the current crisis consists of, what a proper solution would accomplish, and why bail-out money cannot accomplish the same thing.

Most of the free-market solutions I'm seeing posted all involve the same sorts of actions: orderly liquidations, and/or recapitalizations, and some sort of write-down/containment of the distressed instruments (mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps) to restore liquidity. But what the heck does that mean?

The primary issue here is one of confidence, and hence liquidity. A lack of liquidity is jargon for the inability of money to flow (hence the "liquid" reference) to where it needs to. Note that this does not mean that there isn't money out there ready to flow, but that it simply is frozen. Why? Well, the primary reason is that some banks are holding assets or liabilities that are changing in value at a rapid pace, and in some cases this is threatening to overwhelm a banks ability to pay its obligations. These banks can no longer loan out money. Banks to whom they owe money see that they may not get paid and as a result have stopped lending funds to conserve cash. Healthy banks that might loan them money do not wish to do so because it's unclear what their assets are worth and whether they can pay back the loans. Some banks are sick, some banks are really sick, and since the value of their potential liabilities are changing, it's difficult to decipher which banks could go under and which will survive. So money stops flowing. Uncertainty is high. Confidence is low.

Note, when a bank is close to going under, this does not mean that the healthy assets of a bank somehow vanish. What it means is that under the current capital structure, the bank has more liabilities than assets and has run out of cash, and can no longer raise cash to meet it's obligations.

The key is with the sick banks. In order to restore confidence to the system and hence liquidity, these banks have to be restructured or recapitalized. This can involve the purchase of a stake in the company, outright purchase and assumption of the obligations, and write downs of the asset value. It almost always means that some parties, most notably the owners or stockholders must take a loss. Sometimes certain of the banks obligations are defaulted upon, and even creditors may lose a portion of their assets. Usually the capital infusions result in new controlling interests and the management team is replaced. The new cash, coupled with the loss taken by the various interests, and the change in value of various assets or obligations restores the balance sheet of the company to health. At this point, the bank has the assets to be able to begin loaning again, and confidence in it's balance sheet and it's new management mean that other banks will loan to it. The banks that were owed have taken some loss and may or may not need recapitalization of their own, but eventually, they too can begin loaning again.

There is an orderly due process by which this occurs in the free market, up to and including the use of receivership/bankruptcy to liquidate assets. This process preserves the existing priorities of owners of the company, and it has been shown to work. In a phenomenal article in Monday's Wall Street Journal, "Calling J.P. Morgan" the mechanism by which Morgan recapitalized banks in the crisis of 1907 is wonderfully detailed.

In the fall of 1907, it took J.P. Morgan just eight weeks to resolve a credit crisis similar to ours. Several years of buoyant growth and too much risk-taking in poorly understood investments led to needs for capital that could not be met. Morgan, then 70, locked the nation's top bankers into the ornate library at his home for late-night confession sessions. He asked them to lay bare their balance sheets, keeping himself alert with endless Havana cigars.

The bankers reviewed one another's assets and liabilities. Morgan then decided which financial institutions had to go and which would live, getting commitments from the survivors and from the U.S. Treasury for infusions of capital. This Panic of 1907 had rattled the New York Stock Exchange and the markets for gold and municipal bonds, ruined several banks and trust companies, and nearly bankrupted New York City. Share prices fell by half. But once Morgan was done knocking banking heads together, markets swiftly recovered.

Ever heard of the Panic of 1907? There's a reason. "Markets swiftly recovered." The faster that this can happen today, the faster that we will recover. Yes, government intervention in our economy for the last 10 years means that a large amount of assets are far overpriced and these assets must be revalued, and losses will occur. It will mean that bankers that were foolish enough to overvalue these assets will lose their companies. However, these distressed assets are limited to two sectors of the economy (sub-prime mortgages, and credit default swaps) and in the case of sub-prime the underlying assets (homes) still have value, as do the remainder of assets in all the other sectors. The devaluation of the overvalued assets will mean a recession, but the quicker banks are restored to health, the quicker capital begins flowing and the economy revives.

The question is, aren't capital infusions from the government to recapitalize companies just as good? Here are some key differences to think about, and they are differences that are so fundamental that I counter that even an attempt by Hank Paulson to "look" like a free market will still fail. In a free market:

1. Capital is not used to prop up unhealthy balance sheets. Assets that are truly overvalued are written down quickly. Losses are taken quickly. Propping up bad decisions by pretending that they weren't bad only compounds the problem. Govt money most assuredly will mix it's aims, seeking to rescue those who do not deserve it, either out of altruism or the "too big to fail" doctrine. Government will buy assets before private investors would (since they claim that no one is stepping in, when really no one rationally would step in, at that price) and so guarantee the taxpayers a loss.

2. The people doing the recapitalization have proved themselves adept at managing these operations. In effect, the successful are taking over the unsuccessful. With a regulator making decision, who know if he is capable or not.

3. The people doing the recapitalization have a strong incentive to value assets properly - they put their own money on the line. Transparency of target balance sheets is demanded or no deal. I considered some sort of system where Paulson was required to put every last cent of his personal fortune against his restructuring decisions in direct proportion as a motivator. That certainly incentivizes him, but because of #2 it does nothing to assure that he's capable of making the proper decisions, only that he's motivated.

4. Prior management teams are almost always disposed of. The key here is less that we get rid of the old CEO's but that their replacements are proven to be capable. I don't worry for an instant that Paulson could depose a CEO, but I strongly doubt his decisions on a replacement.

5. The rule of law and sanctity of contract are preserved. In the seizure of WaMu, Treasury seized the company and by fiat destroyed all contractual priorities set forth in the capital structure. This act alone has exacerbated the liquidity problem because now any potential lender to a distressed bank risks losing his entire investment regardless of pre-negotiated terms, to arbitrary exercise of force. Henry Paulson's money comes paired with the potential for wholesale rights violations.

The use of government to attempt this function necessitates rights violations, spends money indiscriminately, and preserves the structures which created the panic at taxpayers expense. The proposed bail-out illustrates perfectly the concept of chasing bad money with good. Voluntary action by the free market instead "cleans house". It cannot be otherwise, no matter how well-intentioned the government.

What can the government do? Primarily, get out of the way, and preserve the rule of law. It needs to definitively state that it will not meddle in the function of the market. By implying that it will do so, government actually impedes the free market from functioning as it should since distressed bank management are hoping to preserve their operations through government action, rather than lose their banks in recapitalizations. It should reduce taxes; capital gains, corporate income, and personal income. In so doing it will encourage the influx of capital and stimulate liquidity and healthy economic functioning. It should clear bureaucratic barriers to bankruptcy and receivership so that these mechanisms can function as quickly as possible. In essence, government should proceed to leave the economy, not meddle in it.

There is one answer to this crisis: laissez-faire!

Bailouts: No. Capitalism: YES!

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The fashionable and freedom-focused are all rushing to order CAC's 'Bailouts: No. Capitalism: YES!' T-Shirt in time for the big vote.

Pictured below is the Women's T-Shirt; in addition, we are also offering Men's standard, fitted, light and organic T-Shirts as well.

The Financial Panic and the Only Proper Answer to It

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

One fact is absolutely clear: most of the blame for the current financial panic is utterly misdirected. Rather than hold accountable the irrational government policies that encouraged irresponsible lending and mountains of homeowner debt (and those who supported these policies), the moral foundation of the free market is itself being disparaged and attacked. We are told that the ruthless self-interest of Wall Street (rather than the "compassionate" gift-giving of the Congress) is the cause of the current crisis. Unfortunately, the truth is a little more complex. Perhaps we should examine this truth, that is, before we blithely allow our political leaders to add nearly a trillion dollars to the public debt and give new powers to those who helped bring the disaster along in the first place.

If you notice, our government has a policy of promoting borrowing over savings. For example, we permit our government to fully tax the savings that someone might make in order to pay for a home while allowing a person to deduct the interest costs of their home mortgage against their taxes; that is, through its tax policies, our government punishes savings and encourages home debt. Given this financial incentive to borrow (an incentive that happens to suit those who build and sell houses and lend mortgage money just fine) you would have to be a fool to save for a house rather than borrow for it. Most people tacitly recognize this fact and that is why they choose to take on debt in order to buy their homes.

Furthermore, if there is one thing that that government is, it is helpful to those who have political pull. For the last seventy years there has been no pull like that of those selling the American dream. To help encourage people to own their own homes, our government created two quazi-private monopolies: Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970. These government-sponsored monopolies buy mortgage debt, pool it, and then resell the debt as mortgage-backed securities to investors on the open market. This secondary mortgage market increases the supply of money available for mortgage lending and new home purchases.

What happens when the government makes credit more available than credit would otherwise be in a free market? People will respond to the incentive and find ways to take advantage of the newly available cash. As long as home values were increasing because of the ever-increasing demand for homes, there wasn't really much to worry about; a person could do well even with risky financing arrangements like zero-down, interest only or negative amortization loans. And even if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn't directly encourage those kinds of loans, they allowed themselves to be dangerously exposed to fallout from those who did.

But that is not the end of it; we didn't demand our government to limit its interference to just tax incentives and home loan monopolies however; we allowed it to offer us even more unearned gifts. Passed in 1977 and amended over the years, our government gave us the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a law that mandated that banks must extend credit to those who otherwise would not be credit-worthy. If the banks didn't make enough risky loans, being heavily regulated by the government, they would be denied the ability to open new branches, merge with other banks and enter new business endeavors, etcetera.

Again, as long as housing prices were always going up, real estate was a great racket to be in; in some areas, home prices saw double digit increase in valuations and there were even whole TV series dedicated to the phenomenon of house-flipping, the process where a real estate speculator would buy a distressed property, fix it up a little, and then cash in on the re-sell. Who would ever argue against the policies that helped make it all happen? How could one ever go wrong when the tide was always rising?

Yet the problem with tides is that they don't always rise. If you allow yourself to be heavily leveraged and the person who lends you money allows himself to be heavily leveraged and the insurer that insures his loan to you allows himself to be heavily leveraged, the fall of your one little domino can wreak a lot of havoc. Add tens of thousands of dominos all falling at the same time and you have the underpinnings of a financial panic.

Now in a free market, you might have your panic, but it would soon stop. Those people who made irrational choices with their money and assets would lose them. Those people who were rational and had chosen to protect themselves from calamity would not. If you look at the financial panics in the age before massive government intervention in our economy, these panics were smaller and when they did their damage, the spendthrifts received their just reward, and the rest of the people soon recovered and moved on with their lives.

Today, we are not fortunate enough to live under a free market. Most Americans seem to like their lives to be controlled by those who claim to act out of the public interest--and today there is no public interest like assuaging need through government controls. If you need to borrow money for a home even though you can't afford to pay back your loan, the government will see to it that you get your money. If you build your house in a flood plain and the flood comes, the government will tax others so you can rebuild it. If you make poor financial decisions that improperly account for economic risk and that cause your bank to go bankrupt, the government will pay to bail you out. Today we live under an economic and political system where need is a blank check and risk is nationalized.

So just who does our current system of national relief favor? Does it favor the independent, thrifty, hardworking and non-foolhardy? Hardly. Such a person is able to think and act for himself; what need does he have for our government? Instead, our system today favors the unwarranted risk-taker. It favors the person who presses for political favors. After all, there was a reason why the most corrupt (and now bankrupt) home lenders were giving sweetheart home loans to key members of Congress--and it wasn't to restore the free market in housing. It was to keep the incentives that Congress created to steer money into housing flowing because there was a ton of money to be had doing so.

So unlike the claims of some, the current crisis is not so much a battle between Wall Street and Main Street. The problem we face today rests in every street; it rests in our nation's unchallenged enshrinement of need as a virtue and its willingness to use government power to assuage that need. Instead of leaving people free to work toward improving their lives though their own efforts, we have created a system of perverse incentives; a system that has now collapsed as a system so-designed must.

What then is the answer to this panic? I hold that we simply ought to let the businesses that failed fail, expedite the liquidation of their assets at their current market value under streamlined bankruptcy laws, and once and for all remove our government from the business of creating perverse economic incentives.

Notice however that such a plan is not a serious proposal being debated within the halls of Congress. Instead we are told that we require more regulation of banking through "Financial Stability Oversight Boards," smaller CEO salaries, stricter business accounting rules, massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of baking, subsidies to borrowers, and perhaps most rich, we are told that we should expect our government to make money from it all as it essentially nationalizes the commercial banking sector. I'm sure the folks at Amtrak think that they are going to make money one day too, but institutions that respond to political wishes rather than the reality of the marketplace do not make money; they lose it and in our age they lose it to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars.

So for the market to be restored, we must first demand an ethical revolution, one that says that people have a right to their life, liberty and the freedom to pursue their own happiness, but not a right to claim the unearned or a right to have our government provide it for them. Our nation needs to learn a new mantra: Give us liberty, and death to government controls.

Book Review: 'The Capitalist Manifesto' by Andrew Bernstein

By noreply@blogger.com (Doug) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Given the recent depressing current events, I am planning to review several books that are pertinent to those who wish to defend laissez-faire capitalism on moral, historical and economic grounds. This is the first of several such reviews.

Although I expect that most of the regular readers of the weblog of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism have read Dr. Andrew Bernstein's masterpiece, I decided to review it anyway. With the recent discussions of a $700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout, universal healthcare, massive environmental regulations and the bipartisan disdain for profit-seeking businessmen, there is no doubt that capitalism is under attack in the United States. Despite the ongoing rebirth of free-market economists in academia, economic arguments alone are impotent at defending laissez-faire capitalism (hence Capitalism) as a political system. When individuals vote, they are typically more interested in doing what they perceive to be right than what they perceive to be good for the economy. Thus, it is absolutely necessary that Capitalism be properly defended on moral grounds. Although it is beyond the scope of this post to corroborate this argument here, I highly recommend Eric Daniels' lecture The Morality of Capitalism, which is available (to registered users; registration is free) in the database for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights lecture series.

For those who wish to defend capitalism, it is imperative that you read this book. In addition to providing a compelling economic and historic case for Capitalism, Dr. Bernstein provides a powerful *moral* defense of Capitalism using Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

The first part of this book focuses on the history of Capitalism in the United States. You will learn about the history of the Industrial Revolutions, including the enormous increase in per capita wealth, standard of living and life expectancy during these periods. You will also learn that the British Industrial Revolution was a direct outgrowth of the Scottish Enlightenment. In addition, you will also learn about many of the heroes of this time, including "The Colossus of Roads" Thomas Telford, James Watt, Henry Bessemer and "Iron Man" John Wilkinson. Further still, you will learn about "The Inventive Period" in America, which is when Thomas Edison, Cyrus McCormick, Eli Whitney, the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, Charles Goodyear, Isaac Singer, George Washington Carver and numerous other inventors thrived.

In the second part of this book, Dr. Bernstein defends Capitalism on moral grounds. In this section you will learn that Capitalism is the only political system consistent with the complete protection of individual rights. The underlying ideas in this chapter are expressed throughout Ayn Rand's works. However, Dr. Bernstein fleshes out many details not explicitly addressed in other Ayn Rand works, making this section valuable even for Ayn Rand fans.

The third section of this book dispels two common attacks on Capitalism: that it leads to Imperialism and that it was responsible for slavery. Dr. Bernstein notes that, in essence, Imperialism and slavery rely on an institutionalized, blatant disregard of individual rights. Thus, since Capitalism is the only system that protects all individual rights, both Imperialism and slavery are in fact antithetical to Capitalism.

The fourth part of this book analyzes the "great laboratories" of political economy in history. Specifically, in this section, Bernstein contrasts human flourishing in United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. You will also read about the failure of communist states such as Cuba and North Korea, the rise of the capitalist-embracing Asian Tigers: South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as the Celtic Tiger: Ireland. You will also read about the alleged success of the "socialist" Scandanavian nations. In the summary of this section,
Dr. Bernstein refutes the claim that Capitalism leads monopolies that make products more expensive and less abundant. In fact, Dr. Bernstein argues that the opposite is true. Finally, Dr. Bernstein will also refute the claim that unbridled Capitalism led to the Great Depression. As before, Dr. Bernstein will reveal that the Statist policies of the Hoover Administration and the New Deal are actually to blame for the depression.

Lastly, in the Appendix, Dr. Bernstein exposes the prodigious injustice of the label "robber baron". In this section, Dr. Bernstein details the enormous amount of wealth created by giants such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, James J. Hill, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman. Dr. Bernstein persuasively argues that these so-called "robber barons" should instead be remembered as "productive geniuses".

Again, this is a must-read for all those who wish to understand and defend capitalism.

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