The Immoral Opposition to Cloning

IRVINE, CA--This month marks the tenth anniversary of the birth of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal. "That impressive scientific advance opened up a world of possible life-saving treatments--yet in the name of 'morality,' some perversely oppose cloning," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"Motivated by a religious morality that says it is wrong for human beings to 'play God,' the opponents of cloning claim cloning cheapens human life by making it just another part of nature scientists can manipulate and control.

"This is a profound inversion of the truth. Cloning has the potential to stimulate scientific advances that would drastically improve human life, perhaps giving us the ability to someday create new skin for burn victims, or spinal rod cells for victims of paralysis.

"Those attempting to stand in the way of such advances are the real enemies of human life."

Copyright 2006 Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.

On Fanatics and Delusional Minds

By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

On July 27th a Texas jury found Andrea Yates, who confessed to drowning her five children in a bathtub, not guilty by reason of insanity and possessing a delusional mind.

Two weeks ago, Israel began a retaliatory assault on Lebanon in self-defense against the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which has launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. Its forces also reentered Gaza for the same reason, to cripple Hamas, another terrorist organization, which also was sending rockets into Israel.

Both Israeli incursions were sparked by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by terrorists. The scale of destruction wrought by Israel in Lebanon and Gaza is significant. But much of the news media and the press, many politicians in Europe and the U.S., and of course the United Nations, have found Lebanon and the Palestinians not guilty by reason of being victims of Israel's "disproportionate" military response.

There has been far more sympathetic news coverage of the plight of Lebanese fleeing Israel's wrath than of the victims of Hezbollah's rocket attacks (shall we say, "disproportionate" coverage?) The response to Hezbollah's depredations can be characterized as a frown of embarrassment; the response to Israel's justified actions, wild-eyed, fist-shaking outrage.

We are to never mind the fact that most Lebanese tolerate the marriage of their "democratic" government and a terrorist organization. Nor are we to place any importance on the fact that most of the Americans evacuated from Lebanon are Shi'ite Muslims holding dual citizenship, and who sympathize, not with Israel, but with Hezbollah.

Nor are we to observe that President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and others are tip-toeing around the knowledge that Hezbollah's military "might" is sustained and made possible by Iran by way of Syria, and that Hezbollah is a solely-owned paramilitary franchise of Tehran's.

But, is there an arguable connection between the Yates verdict and the actions of Islamic terrorists?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines delusion as "a false belief held in spite of invalidating evidence, especially as a condition of mental illness." The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines it as "a form of madness."

Yates murdered her children to "save them from Satan." She killed them because she had dreams of each of them falling under the influence of Satan. Presumably, she imagined she was sending them to heaven.

A jihadist of any stripe you care to name murders Westerners, Jews, apostates, and others damned by the Koran because they are said to be under the influence of Satan, in order to send them to hell. If he is a member of Al Quada, Hezbollah or Hamas, and is killed in the process of assaulting the "People of the Book," or martyrs himself as a suicide bomber, the jihadist expects to go to heaven.

Frankly, I do not see a syllogism's worth of difference between Yates's actions and those of any random Islamic terrorist. Yates and the terrorist acted from faith, from an unsupportable belief. From a delusion.

Yates and the jihadist acted "morally," in conformance with their beliefs. Psychologically, morally, in practice, there is little difference between Yates being consistent with the dictates of her faith, and the jihadist being consistent with his. The difference is in the scale of criminal behavior.

I won't be the first to say that a belief in a deity, regardless of its name, is a delusion, invalidated by the provable existence of the universe and by the unprovable existence of a deity. Our policy of pursuing "peace at any price" is also a delusion, a belief invalidated by a history of "peace movements" that only have lead to war. (See Thomas Sowell's excellent article, "Pacifists versus Peace" from July 24th on Capitalism Magazine.) And, about ninety-nine percent of humanity, since it believes in some form of deity, can be said to be governed by a delusion. I leave it to the reader to evaluate the mental health of humanity.

The important point here is that the Texas jury succumbed to the "delusional mind" argument of Yates's defence. The jury could not deny that the children were murdered, and that Yates murdered them. Nor could it admit that the murders were a moral or rational action.

But even though Yates was a (nominally) rational person, able to function in a civilized society, because she committed the crime while "deluded" -- but at the same time sensed it was wrong to commit the murders -- the jury in effect forgave her, and instead of concluding that she had forfeited her life -- that she was responsible for her actions -- decided to sustain it and commit her to a mental institution, partially exonerating her of the responsibility for her actions.

My rhetorical question is: If we can disregard the "delusional" mind-set of a common holdup artist, who acts on the premise that force is a practical way of living, and sentence him to prison, why should we make an exception for a murderer, any murderer? Shouldn't the contents of a murderer's mind be deemed irrelevant, as well? After all, Yates thought that murdering her children was a practical and moral way of saving their souls, just as a holdup artist thinks that force is a way of preserving his life.

The jury, in effect, said that Yates "meant well," but she went about it in a horrific way. One can only suspect that part of the jury's consensus was an unwillingness to challenge Yates's Christian motivation. Questioning her "delusional" motivation would have meant questioning Christian morality itself, all the way down to its root: sacrificing oneself to God. In this instance, they might have concluded that Yates was willing to sacrifice her freedom in order to save her children's souls.

But, why is a jihadist's mental state considered less delusional than Yates's? After all, he, too, acts from his beliefs.

Anyone seen to possess a "delusional mind" can be forgiven horrendous crimes. Irrationality can be tolerated, but rational actions that require "violence" -- such as Israel defending itself, or even one's own self-defense with a gun against a burglar or rapist -- are regarded as intolerable and "disproportionate." This is why terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas can be tolerated and even forgiven (they are, say the media and our State Department, "freedom fighters"), but Israel receives not a word of moral approbation.

One could say, to paraphrase President Bush's assertion that Islam is a "religion of peace" hijacked by fanatics (or "extremists"), that Yates's Christianity was "hijacked," as well. He would likely agree with that, if anyone had nerve enough to put it to him. If individuals deny the existence of God, according to Christian dogma, they are likewise condemned to an eternity in hell. Before the Catholic Church's political power and influence were diluted by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Church pursued heretics and apostates with the same fervor as Islamists do today, with the same consequence: death.

"Fanaticism" is largely a pejorative term, connoting an obsession with consistency or purity. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a fanatic as "a person possessed by an excessive zeal for an uncritical attachment to a cause or position." Thus, Islamic terrorists who obey the injunctions of the Koran to wage jihad against infidels, are deemed "fanatics" or "extremists." No judgment is made of Islam itself (nor of Christianity or any other creed).

What is "extremism" but applying a moral code in its purist, most uncompromised, unadulterated form to one's actions? The "extremism" of altruism is self-destruction. The "extremism" of Christianity is the constant sacrifice of one's values for lesser or non-values. The "extremism" of Islam is the sacrifice of all to Allah.

If Andrea Yates can be found not guilty of multiple murders by reason of insanity and delusion, what is sanity? Again, the American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "soundness of judgment or reason." Consistent, conscientious sanity might also be a form of "extremism," that is, rationality in all things.

It is disgraceful that the West, particularly the U.S., is allowing Israel to fight our true Mideast enemy, Iran, by proxy. Sanity would have us annihilate Iran and Syria (and, for good measure, vaporize North Korea's nuclear weapons program and its million-man army). But sanity is not the ruling philosophy in politics or morality. Delusional "world opinion" forgives Andrea Yates in a Texas courtroom, just as it forgives the Lebanese for wishing to coexist with killers. It is the delusion of non-responsibility that permits such obscenities.

Philosophical Hors d'Oeuvre

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The newsletter of the Ayn Rand Institute, Impact, does not merely report upon the ever-growing successes of the Institute. Each issue also contains some philosophic meat, whether an interview with an ARI scholar (like Dr. Ghate or Dr. Mayhew) or an extract from a recent lecture or essay. I particularly enjoyed the two extracts from Dr. Tara Smith's recent ARI lecture "Passing Judgment: Ayn Rand's View of Justice" in the most recent issue. (That lecture is available for free to registered users on the ARI web site. The full lecture plus Q&A is available for purchase from the Ayn Rand Bookstore.)

The first extract, quoted below, concerns the importance of moral judgment -- a topic near and dear to my heart. The second is a discussion of the ways in which egalitarianism subverts the proper demands of justice. Of course, both of these issues are covered in Dr. Smith new book Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist. However, I haven't read the chapter on justice yet: I was too busy to read anything at OCON, so I'm still in the middle of rationality. Moreover, I enjoy reading the isolated tidbits, since then I can more easily mull them over than if I'm plowing my way through a full book or lecture.

So here's what Dr. Smith says about the importance of moral judgment, as extracted in Impact:

We are normally told that it's wrong to judge. There's an acute taboo against judging people; "judgmental" has become a dirty word. Yet the need for justice shows that you must exercise your judgment on other people in order to figure out how to deal with them.

One way of failing to be just is by deliberately depriving others of their deserts--stealing their money, violating contracts, rigging elections, or passing over a deserving candidate to give a promotion to a friend. These are the most conspicuous sorts of injustice. But another way of being unjust is by simply sitting back and never passing judgment in the first place. While this may not look as ugly or smell as foul, it is every bit as unjust and every bit as destructive.

Adopting a policy of being non-judgmental--" who am I to judge?"--or fence-sitting as an agnostic is incompatible with the demands of justice. As a statement, such a posture is a lie, and as an action (or more accurately, as a default on action), it is self-defeating. That policy would be dishonest insofar as it ignores the reality that individuals are different from one another and that those differences matter to your life. Such a policy would be self-defeating insofar as, by not condemning a person's bad character or negative traits, you are lending those traits shelter, lending them oxygen--you are helping to sustain things that work against your interests. By the same token, by failing to acknowledge and encourage the good in others, you are depriving it of oxygen, of support that can help to sustain it.

Ayn Rand herself put this eloquently. Speaking of judging people's moral character, she wrote: "When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you--whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?" She proceeded to explain that to retreat into a "judge not" posture "is an abdication of moral responsibility; it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself." ("How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" from The Virtue of Selfishness) The fact is, we need to be discriminating. We need to judge others objectively, to be sure, but emphatically: we need to judge.

Ayn Rand denounced neutrality even more vividly: "To withhold your contempt from men's vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement..." (Atlas Shrugged) Failing to condemn those who deserve it is counterfeiting insofar as it pretends that these people are better than they are, that they offer value--just as a person passing out counterfeit currency pretends that it has value. Correlatively, to withhold admiration from men's virtues is embezzlement. It is taking something for nothing, without paying: you benefit from their virtues, but you offer nothing in exchange--not even your acknowledgment of their virtue. That is what a moocher does--a sponge, a freeloader; not a trader, who gives value for value.

The reason I think it's useful to see the issue in these stark terms is that, when a person is tempted to that neutral posture, he doesn't normally think that what he's considering is anything like counterfeiting or embezzling; these are felonies, after all! The person simply thinks, "This guy isn't really so impressive, he's not so hot"; or: "I'm just being lenient, I'm cutting somebody a little slack." Yet in fact, this is what's going on. When you don't judge and treat others objectively, you are engaging in a fraud.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Dr. Smith's work in ethics is her persistent invitation to the reader to ask himself: How does this principle apply to my own life? Am I falling into any of these traps? How can I do better? She challenges her readers without threatening them. (That's a delicate skill!)

Just so folks know, a subscription to Impact requires only a small donation to ARI. I'd strongly recommend a larger donation than the minimum, since ARI is doing so much great work promoting Objectivism in our culture. (Oh, and did I mention that our very own Don Watkins writes for Impact? He's the Assistant Editor!)

Five "Superficial Facts"

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

Psychotherapist Michael J. Hurd did an excellent job distilling the recent retrial of Andrea Yates -- mother and murderer of five -- down to its essence. In a short commentary which appeared in the Boston Globe, he begins by noting Rusty Yates's reaction to the recent verdict of "not guilty, by reason of insanity":

Her ex-husband, with whom she's still friends, applauded the new jury's decision. He thanked them for "rising above the superficial facts" because she was obviously psychotic rather than a true killer. Hmmm... Five dead kids, maliciously tortured and killed by their mother. These are superficial facts? This man clearly has issues. [bold added]

And if Hurd hit that nail on the head, a recent article in the Houston Chronicle describes in lurid detail how this came about in the court system, through an unholy synergy of five years of relentless left-wing propaganda and the misuse of legal technicalities by lawyers for whom protecting the innocent is plainly not the priority.

This Houstonian fully agrees with prosecutor Joe Owmby's description of how local news media willfully biased the entire pool of potential jurors for the retrial.

"We've had five years of editorial opinions, especially in the local paper [The Chronicle --ed], editorial opinions about Andrea Yates, most of it weighing heavily in favor of her," Owmby said. "I think the last thing I read from a Texas law professor was 'Why don't we just let her go?' So we've had that kind of opinion out there for five years, informed or not, (and) I think it must have had an effect in a similar way on the jury. I'm not talking about jurors not following their instructions, but they are human beings and they have been living with this for the last five years, as have we all." [bold added]

Frankly, this description borders on understatement. It has been clear since the end of the first trial that if there were any way imaginable for this multiple child murderer to have the judicial equivalent of a recount, it would happen and all the stops would be pulled to make sure she could walk.

And here's how a murderer -- nobody disputes that she drowned all five of her children -- is allowed to walk on a technicality and with the aid of a hand-picked panel of useful idiots.

... Because the first jury had sentenced her to life, prosecutors could not ask for death in the second trial. That made a significant difference in the selection process. As a general rule, death-qualified juries are considered more conservative and prosecution-oriented.

...

"This was a totally different jury pool, totally different selection process and totally different jury as a result, much more like a jury you normally get at the courthouse," [defense attorney Wendell] Odom said.

When the second trial started in late June, just over five years had passed since the death of Yates' children. The retrial was still front-page news around the country, but the media frenzy was past. Odom sensed that the atmosphere of the trial was significantly different and, in his view, had a less vengeful tone. [bold added]

"Vengeful" is the politically correct term for "just".

Michael Hurd is on the money when he describes the implications of this verdict, which follows no less than three other cases of mothers being let off the hook for murdering their own children in Texas alone.

Let's be blunt here. It takes work to drown all five of your kids. You must watch them gasp for breath, struggle for life -- and still decide to let them die. If Andrea Yates can be released from responsibility for killing her children in a clearly insane, yet also systematic and premeditated way, then you or I can be released from any wrongdoing we commit in a period of "depression." Could this be the true motive behind a jury forgiving the unforgivable?

A world where everything becomes tolerable and excusable is the real definition of insanity, if you ask me.

The Chron, hoping we'll forget all about the five victims of this home murder spree, had the audacity to headline its story "Playing field leveled for defense". A "level playing field" ?!?! The only "field" that has been "leveled" is the one these kids should be playing on -- by each one now being six feet under without possibility of appeal. Good job, Chronicle. Way to go, Messrs. Odom and Parnham. And good thinking, jurors. I guess Andrea Yates did get a "jury of her peers".

-- CAV

All about AMLO

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

Libertarian Pacifism: Don't Touch the Civilians!

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Just in case anyone is still wondering whether Objectivists substantially differ from libertarians on matters of policy, just consider what Dr. Tom Palmer says about Israel's invasion of Lebanon. (Dr. Palmer is a Senior Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute). On his blog, he writes:

With the rest of the world I have watched in horror at what is happening in Lebanon. Hezbollah, supported by the extremists in Tehran, has goaded Israel into striking, not only at Hezbollah, but at the innocent Lebanese, as well. The Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure throughout the country and the destruction of the lives of innocents are simply unconscionable.
...
I pray that the Israelis rethink their approach and stop the attacks.

Now consider the remarks of Dr. Onkar Ghate, Senior Fellow at the Objectivist Ayn Rand Institute, in a recent op-ed:

To achieve peace in the Middle East, as in any region, there is a necessary principle that every party must learn: the initiation of force is evil. And the indispensable means of teaching it is to ensure that the initiating side is defeated and punished. Decisive retaliatory force must be wielded against the aggressor. So long as one side has reason to think it will benefit from initiating force against its neighbors, war must result. Yet this is precisely what America's immoral foreign policy gives the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah reason to think.
...
Only when the initiators of force learn that their actions lead not to world sympathy and political power, but to their own deaths, will peace be possible in the Middle East.

Obviously, wars cannot be fought without harm to civilian populations. Governments and their militaries are do not exist in some separate dimension from civilians, such that they might be uniquely targeted by an invading force. Enemy governments are thoroughly integrated into the territory over which they rule, depending upon its wealth, hospitals, roads, factories, trains, farms, ports, industry, people, and more. That's why quickly and decisively eliminating the threat posed by an enemy nation cannot but require the bombing of so-called "civilian" targets.

Moreover, without active support and/or tacit submission from a majority of the civilian population, no government could maintain its grip on power. That's why the vast majority of the population of an aggressive enemy nation are not morally innocent bystanders. The sometimes-awful luck of genuine innocents in wartime, such as young children or active dissidents, is a terrible tragedy. However, the party responsible is not the nation defending itself but rather all those who made such a defense necessary, particularly the countrymen of the innocents complicit in or supportive of the aggression of their nation.

Of course, all the same considerations apply to terrorist organizations allowed to operate by a nominal government unable or unwilling to control them.

Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, upon what theory of war does libertarian Tom Palmer base his not-so-well-concealed pacifism? None other than just war theory. In the comments, he writes:

It is hardly a modern position that in war, no civilians must be hurt. Quite the contrary. The medieval rule was that, in general, noncombatants were not the legitimate targets of violence. It is the modern position (dating from the French Revolution), not the medieval consensus, that civilians are legitimate targets, since it is "nation against nation," rather than ruler or dynasty against ruler or dynasty. I agree that sometimes war is necessary and justified, but I do not agree that it is legitimate to seek to attack the civilian population of a foreign state.

For the proper response to that whole Christian mess, I cannot do better than to point my readers to Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein's article "Just War Theory" vs. American Self-Defense -- yet again.

Hezbollah Speaks

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Via this Volokh Conspiracy post, I found this interview with Hezbollah's Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah. Starting with Mohammed himself, Muslim leaders have a long history of lying when it suits their purposes, so I think his claims must viewed with some skepticism.

Nasrallah claims widespread but quiet support from Arab rulers and people:

[Nasrallah] ... Today, I do not expect anything from certain Arab rulers. Now if you ask me about what I expect from the nation, I know that if you examine the hearts of all people in the Arab and Muslim nations, they are with us. They may sit in front of television screens, cry, and show emotions. If they hear good news, they may stand up, clap, and show joy; if they hear sad news, they may cry and feel sad; and if they have the chance to show genuine emotions, they would do so. I have no doubt about this. I am even certain that some sons, daughters, and wives of some Arab rulers are with us. But I tell the Arab rulers, I do not want your swords and I do not even want your hearts. To say it in Lebanese slang, the only thing I want from you is leave us alone. Sit on the fence and have nothing to do with us. You have said what you said, thank you, go and rest. Today, there is a war that was imposed on Lebanon whose aim is to liquidate everything called resistance and resistance men in Lebanon and punish Lebanon for the defeat it inflicted on Israel. In fact, the war on Lebanon aims at liquidating the Palestinian cause. Everybody knows that the wide-scale uprising in Palestine erupted following the victory in Lebanon. ...

Unlike our appeasing politicians and intellectuals, Nasrallah knows that the failure of the Arabs to speak out against Hezbollah is a victory for Hezbollah. Evil does not require widespread enthusiastic support to flourish, but only a lack of opposition. That's why the refusal to speak out against evil is to support it. As Ayn Rand said in "How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" (in the The Virtue of Selfishness):

Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man's character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.

It is obvious who profits and who loses by such a precept. It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men's virtues and from condemning men's vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you--whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?

Even more startling were Nasrallah's claims about the willing complicity of the Lebanese government:

[Nasrallah] ... Let me go back to your question about not telling them [the Lebanese Government] or asking them. First, the government statement, on the basis of which we participated in the government, talks about the Lebanese Government's endorsement of resistance and its national right to liberate the land and the prisoners. How could a resistance liberate prisoners? Go to George Bush for example? I cannot and will not go to George Bush. When you talk about the resistance's right, you are not talking about the Foreign Ministry's right. You talk about an armed resistance, and you establish in the government statement its right to liberate the land and the prisoners. So, I represent a resistance and I have weapons. This was the government statement according to which the government won the vote of confidence from the Chamber of deputies. That was the first point. ...

So the current government is not opposed to aggression against Israel. I'm not surprised. And:

[Nasrallah] ... However, there are two issues that can stand no postponement. The first is the prisoners' issue, for this involves humanitarian suffering. The second is any attack on civilians. I told them on more than one occasion that we are serious about the prisoners issue and that this can only solved through the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Of course, I used to make hints in that respect. Of course I would not be expected to tell them on the table I was going to kidnap Israeli soldiers in July. That could not be.

[Al-Jazeera] You told them that you would kidnap Israeli soldiers?

[Nasrallah] I used to tell them that the prisoners' issue, which we must solve, can only be solved through the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

[Al-Jazeera] Clearly?

[Nasrallah] Clearly. Nobody told me: no, you are not allowed to kidnap Israeli soldiers. I was not waiting for such a thing. Even if they told me no you are not allowed [nothing would change]. I am not being defensive. I said that we would kidnap Israeli soldiers in meetings with some of the key political leaders in the country. I do not want to mention names. When the time comes for accountability I will mention names. They asked whether this would resolve the prisoners issue if this happens. My answer was that it was logical for such an act to solve the prisoners' issue. I assure you that our assessment was not wrong. I am not being stubborn. In the entire world, tell me about any state, any army, or any war that was waged because some people kidnapped two soldiers, or even took hostages, not military soldiers. Tell me about a war that was waged against a state because of two soldiers. This has never happened in history. Nor has Israel done it anytime before. However, what is happening today is not a reaction to the kidnapping of two soldiers. I repeat that this is an international decision and an Arab cover. It is a decision that has to do with...[changes thought]. I stress to you that had we not captured two soldiers in July, which could have happened in August, September, or some other time, the Israelis would come to this battle and would create for it any pretext and any excuse. The issue of disarming and finishing the resistance could not be achieved domestically, regionally, nor at the negotiating table. The Americans were well aware that this issue cannot be addressed domestically. Therefore, the Lebanese were told to step back and to let Israel terminate and disarm Hezbollah. But a cover was needed. So they provided an international and an Arab cover. This is what the issue is about. Finally, I will tell you how any resistance in the world operates. If I want to kidnap or capture two Israeli soldiers, the political leadership would make the decision and hand it to me, but even my brothers [in the leadership] should not know that this would happen at such a time and such a place. If 60 to 70 people know such details, would a capturing operation be successful? No, no such operation would be successful, let alone when informing a government of 24 ministers, three key leaders, political forces, and political blocs. On the table of dialogue, we hold discussions, and only one hour later the minutes of the sessions become available to [foreign] embassies. So do you expect me to tell the world I am going to capture [soldiers]?

That's something of a muddle, but the gist seems to be that the Lebanese government supported armed resistance against Israel and knew of general plans to kidnap Israeli soldiers, but didn't know of the particular plans that ignited this conflict. If that's true, then the Lebanese government is even more guilty than I thought. While I wouldn't be shocked by that, Nasrallah's claims might be self-serving lies. (That too has a long tradition in Muslim politics, starting with Mohammed.) He might wish to spread some of the blame for the current conflict to the Lebanese government, so as to deflect criticism from Hezbollah. Or he might be trying to more closely connect Lebanese government with Hezbollah, so that the Lebanese government will defend Hezbollah against Israel.

In any case, the Lebanese government has been in bed with Hezbollah for quite some time now, as this ARI letter to the editor observes:

Dear Editor:

President Bush is urging Israel to preserve the fragile government of Lebanon, which was recently chosen in democratic elections supported by Bush himself. But Israel should do exactly the opposite.

Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored Islamic terror group now under attack by Israel in Lebanon, is part of the Lebanese government. Twenty-three of Hezbollah's members were elected to parliament, and two of its members were given cabinet positions.

A government that tolerates the operations of a terror group within its country, that does nothing to stop it from launching rockets on its neighbor's cities, and that further allows its presence in the parliament and cabinet, has no legitimacy at all.

If the Lebanese are ever to have a legitimate government and lasting peace with Israel, they will have to show that they, like Israel, will not tolerate Hezbollah any longer.

David Holcberg

Copyright (c) 2006 Ayn Rand(R) Institute. All rights reserved.

To put the point bluntly: Any government that includes leaders of a terrorist organization in its cabinet is definite on the "against us" rather than the "with us" side of this conflict.

History for Kids and Adults

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

An announcement from Powell History:

For readers of [Powell History Recommends Newsletter] that have children, or who know homeschoolers or parents who would like to have their children learn history properly, I'm thrilled to be able to officially inform you for the "Remote History Program" of the VanDamme Academy, beginning this fall! This program, an integration of the unmatched VanDamme Academy History curriculum and the delivery platform developed by Powell History, will make it possible for students anywhere in the world to enjoy the story of man's past. Please see the VanDamme Academy website for more details, as they become available.

Regarding the excellent First History for Adults, Scott says:

Thanks in part to the great interest from OCON attendees, a new session of "A First History for Adults" has just started. This fourth group of students of Part 1, The Story of America has just completed its second class, and it is moving ahead twice-weekly during the summer. There's still time to join this session, by using the registration page.

If you've been thinking about taking "A First History for Adults," but you haven't managed to fit it in, keep two things in mind: 1) You can take the class via the web-based recordings. If you don't have time for lectures twice a week, this way you can pace yourself. 2) The *last* session of Part 1 begins in September, and it will run Tuesday evenings. Go to the registration page to join 1HFA1-5!

100% of the NoodleFoodlers who've tried "A First History for Adults" strongly recommend it!

A Question

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Did Fyodor Dostoyevky ever clearly argue -- whether himself directly or through one of his characters -- that morality is impossible without God? I've often heard that he did, but I can't find a clear reference. However, I did find this page: Dostoevsky Didn't Say It. Does anyone know the real scoop?

Voter Bribery on Arizona Ballot

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

I have mentioned here on past occasions my frustration with the wide currency of the misconception that what America has (and needs to export to the world) is "democracy". The fallacy of this notion is nowhere more evident than in "Palestine", whose benighted people recently elected into power terrorists, who not only seek endless war with Israel, but continue Yassir Arafat's other tradition: of running roughshod over the rights of the people they govern.

As Yaron Brook so ably pointed out some time ago:

Viewed in this context of dictatorial rule, the alleged right of Palestinians to "self-determination" is groundless. No group has a right to its own state if what it seeks is a dictatorship. Arafat's "Palestinian self-determination" really means more of Arafat's despotism--it means granting legitimacy to a state that is utterly hostile to its own citizens.

As Ayn Rand wrote, "the right of 'the self-determination of nations' applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships." The only legitimate reason to found a new state is to escape tyranny and secure freedom. Thus, America's Founding Fathers rightly fought for independence from England's oppressive rule; the United States was founded on the recognition of individual rights. What Arafat desires, however, is the "right" to rule rightless serfs in a state run by a ruthless dictator. Nobody has a right to create and maintain such a state.

Just because large numbers of people go through the same physical motions as free people holding elections does not somehow magically transform what they have into the same thing that our Founding Fathers won by their own sweat and blood -- not to mention their not inconsiderable intellectual efforts.

In fact, what distinguishes our form of government is that it respects individual rights. The practice of voting to enact some legislation or to choose representatives is merely the mechanism by which the opinions of the governed are taken into consideration. As the famous warning went shortly after the revolution, "A republic -- if you can keep it." If men make enough foolish decisions, they can destroy their government and with it, their freedom. This happened in one election (which should never have occurred) in "Palestine" and it is happening slowly (but not irreversibly) here.

But there are those who, completely failing to appreciate the intellectual dimension of the government of a free society, seem hell-bent on making us lose our freedom by replacing the considered deliberation of the earnest voter with the ritual of voting copied endlessly by trained monkeys. For these champions of democracy, and they do in fact champion mob rule, it is quantity over quality. "If only we can get as many people as possible to punch ballots," they seem to think, "we will have good government."

Only someone who would rather a million imbeciles than thousands of intelligent and well-informed voters make important decisions would favor, as one John Vasconcellos of California did two years ago, lowering the voting age to 14. And the same (or worse) could be said of Arizona's Mark Osterloh, a busybody who has introduced a ballot initiative to "reward" voting with a chance at winning the lottery -- as if the chance to secure one's freedom by participating in the process of governing weren't its own reward.

It should come as little surprise that so much devotion to mere ritual -- and so little stock placed in reason -- would come from a Bible-thumper.

Osterloh said the concept of rewards is not so odd. He said it actually comes from the Bible -- that if you do the right thing, you get into heaven.

"If incentives are good enough for God, they're good enough for Arizona," he said.

Osterloh said he'd be willing to look at the punishment side of the equation -- don't act properly and wind up somewhere unpleasant. That actually is the system in Australia, where citizens can be fined $20 or more for failing to vote, a system that has resulted in a 95 percent turnout.

But that isn't an option here, Osterloh said, because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

"It's an issue of free speech," he said.

Even his apparent respect for freedom of speech is formulaic! For what difference does freedom of speech make -- in the form of political debates -- if we do everything we can to lure dolts who don't give a damn about these debates to the polls?

This is a foolish idea. Fortunately, it seems that the idea is not going over well with everyone out there, and there is some time for opponents to offer their counter-arguments. They will need it, though. If the measure is approved, it will be retroactive, meaning that exactly the kind of moron who will vote randomly simply to have a shot at the loot will probably show up in droves.

In other words, the bribery -- for one foolish vote and many more that are quite literally nothing more than getting one's ticket punched -- has already begun.

-- CAV

The Danger of Snooze Buttons

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A few months ago, Paul pointed me to this interesting post by Steve Pavlina on how to get up right away when your alarm goes off. His discussion of the basic problem of the standard approach -- willpower and commitment -- is basically right, I think:

First, let's consider the way most people tackle this problem -- what I consider the wrong way.

The wrong way is to try using your conscious willpower to get yourself out of bed each morning. That might work every once in a while, but let's face it -- you're not always going to be thinking straight the moment your alarm goes off. Your may experience what I call the fog of brain. The decisions you make in that state won't necessarily be the ones you'd make when you're fully conscious and alert. You can't really trust yourself... nor should you.

If you use this approach, you're likely to fall into a trap. You decide to get up at a certain time in advance, but then you undo that decision when the alarm goes off. At 10pm you decide it would be a good idea to get up at 5am. But at 5am you decide it would be a better idea to get up at 8am. But let's face it -- you know the 10pm decision is the one you really want implemented... if only you could get your 5am self to go along with it.

Now some people, upon encountering this conundrum, will conclude that they simply need more discipline. And that's actually somewhat true, but not in the way you'd expect. If you want to get up at 5am, you don't need more discipline at 5am. You don't need better self-talk. You don't need two or three alarm clocks scattered around the room. And you don't need an advanced alarm that includes technology from NASA's astronaut toilets.

You actually need more discipline when you're fully awake and conscious: the discipline to know that you can't trust yourself to make intelligent, conscious decisions the moment you first wake up. You need the discipline to accept that you're not going to make the right call at 5am. Your 5am coach is no good, so you need to fire him.

To put the points in Objectivist terms: When you first wake up in the morning, particularly in response to an unexpected alarm, you are not even remotely in focus. Consequently, you cannot consider your agenda for the day, including the importance and consequences of failing to rouse yourself at this painful hour. If you haven't slept enough, your consciousness is probably entirely consumed by the unpleasant feelings of desperately wanting to sleep more. Moreover, focusing your mind enough to remember and examine the purpose of waking up now rather than later requires effort -- and that's hard to do under such circumstances. So you're liable to simply groggily half-think that nothing could have warranted such pain -- and return to the to-be-regretted bliss of sleep.

I do like Steve Pavlina's suggestion for overcoming this problem, namely that of automatizing a happy and well-rested wake-up. (He offers specific instructions.) And I might follow his plan, particularly since I'm going to be waking up at some obscene hour like 5:30 am twice a week next semester to teach an 8:00 am ethics course at Boulder. However, I should at least mention my own alternative, developed while in high school.

If my alarm clock is within reach on my nightstand, I will turn it off immediately, often without any memory of doing so. After too many late mornings, I realized that moving my alarm across the room would allow me to be awake enough by the time I reached it to rouse myself into full wakefulness. That does work quite well. When I hear the buzz of the alarm clock, I leap out of bed to turn off the offending noise. After about three seconds and four steps across the room, I'm far more capable of thinking. It also helps that I'm no longer enveloped in the snuggly warmth of the covers. Although I'll sometimes hit the snooze, I can exercise semi-reasonable judgment in doing so. That's good. However, more extreme measures might be required this upcoming semester!

Update: Steve Pavlina has also written two posts on how to become an early riser, as well as on his own experiment with polyphasic sleep. (I've been intrigued by polyphasic sleep ever since I first heard about it a few years ago, but I just don't have the time required to adjust to it -- at least not right now.)

Sparrowhawk: Lacunæ and Artistic License

By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Someone may ask about Sparrowhawk: If one of my purposes was to recreate a world of heroes and the era that saw the birth of the United States, how can one create one's own world in a historical novel, when one's characters must conform to the historical record?

The answer is: When there is no historical record for them to conform to. Moreover, the question is asked on the premise that it is impossible to recreate a historical period and also write a Romantic novel in which the characters exercise volition and can choose and pursue their values in that period. It certainly is an achievable literary goal, and Sparrowhawk sets no precedent in this regard. Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas (père) and other nineteenth century novelists and playwrights did it without risking the charge that they rewrote history.

And, there is a certain irrelevancy to the question. One doesn't choose to write a Romantic-historical novel solely to recreate a particular period. One may as well write a history. If the period is important to one's fiction-writing purposes -- and certainly the pre-Revolutionary period in the American colonies and Britain was integral to mine -- then the characters one creates must be able to act freely in it, just as they should in a story set in one's own time.

In writing Sparrowhawk, it was important for me to heed and respect the historical record, because my characters are depicted as contributing to some of the events of the time. In recreating the events in the Virginia General Assembly and the House of Commons, for example, it was crucial that they be portrayed objectively and in character. This meant availing myself of the extant records and journals of both institutions.

And in those records and journals I discovered significant gaps. Of course, there were no such members of the Commons as Dogmael Jones and Henoch Pannell, no rotten boroughs as Swansditch and Canovan. On this side of the Atlantic, there was no such county as Queen Anne in Virginia, and no burgesses by the names of Hugh Kenrick and Edgar Cullis to represent it in the General Assembly. The boroughs, county and characters are all pure creations.

But, it was not a journalistic, naturalistic novel I wished to write. The gaps in the historical record made it easier for me to recreate the culture and politics of the period in Romantic terms, and to fill those gaps with my story. As Ayn Rand noted in her Introduction to Hugo's Ninety-Three, "To a Romanticist, a background is just a background, not a theme. His vision is always focused on man -- on the fundamentals of man's nature, on those problems and aspects of his character which apply to any age and any country." A background is similar to a theatrical setting, a stage on which men may think and act in a plotted story. The props, the costumes, the lighting, and so on, are all a means of establishing time and place, merely "special effects" subsumed by the story. (Today, special effects in film and on the stage are becoming the dominant focus, at the expense of the story, when there is one.)

While the records of Parliament in Sparrowhawk's period are abundant (though still incomplete), there is a paucity of records of the General Assembly, and what exists of them is colorless and dry, thick with the yawn-inducing minutiæ of mundane, unimportant issues. On the other hand, in reading the accounts of the debates in Parliament on the Stamp Act, one encounters a startling mix of eloquence and rude manners, unbridled passion and sly connivance.

Where the record was incomplete, I relied on secondary sources, such as diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts to reconstruct events. Even then, I had to fall back on my deductive powers and imagination when the records were lacking or so vague or sketchy as to be useless. For example, the numbers of the Virginia Gazette, published in Williamsburg, that might have reported what actually happened in the General Assembly in May 1765 when Patrick Henry introduced his Resolves, are missing. Furthermore, I found that I had to write Henry's "Cæsar had his Brutus" speech, because there is no written record of it, only memorable fragments recalled by men years after the event.

Let me cite two important events, the debates on the Stamp Act in Parliament, and the debates over the Stamp Act Resolves in the General Assembly, dramatized in Book Four: Empire.

Many of the actual speeches made by George Grenville, Isaac Barré, and other actual members of the Commons are excerpted in the novel. The two major fictive speeches made by Dogmael Jones and Henoch Pannell represent the fundamental, opposing positions taken by the parties, Pannell's an expression of contempt for the colonies, Jones's a spirited defense of them. But, the climax of the debates was the vote on the Stamp Act. The record shows that it was unanimous, with no dissenting votes noted.

Jones, of course, would have voted against the Act, and his would have been the single, lone dissent. To "conform" to the actual record, and to underscore the venality rife in the Commons at that time, I have Grenville's secretary bribe the House clerk not to record Jones's dissenting vote in the official journal.

Hugh Kenrick calls the General Assembly a "cameo" of Parliament. Complementing the absence of Jones's dissenting vote in the Commons journal was the subsequent expunction of Patrick Henry's fifth Resolve, and probably the sixth and seventh, as well, from the Burgesses' journal. There are contradictory accounts on whether or not the sixth and seventh were even introduced, debated and voted on, one by an anonymous Frenchman who witnessed the debates, the other by Lieutenant-Governor Francis Fauquier in his official report to the Board of Trade in London.

The contradictory accounts create a unique lacuna. Which account is true? Whose veracity, the Frenchman's or the Lieutenant-Governor's, should one place more weight on? Without any supporting evidence one way or the other, and in this instance there is none, it is anyone's educated guess about what actually happened. One would think that such an epochal event would have been meticulously documented. But, either it was not, or if it was, the records perished, or are molding undiscovered in someone's attic or in some library's special collections.

The greater gap was the means by which all seven of Henry's Resolves were broadcast to colonial newspapers outside of Virginia. There is no record of who was responsible for sending them. Henry at that time was a freshman burgess for his county, and it is doubtful that he knew any of the editors of those newspapers. Accounts of the event and biographies of the principal actors simply gloss over the subject. (My own unsupported theory is that it was Richard Henry Lee, burgess for Westmoreland County, who, because of the animus between him and the conservative Tidewater gentry that controlled the House, was not present during the Resolves debates that spring but who published his own protest of the Stamp Act.)

The Resolves, to our knowledge, were not reported in the Virginia Gazette, which was controlled by the Lieutenant-Governor, who dissolved the Assembly over the Resolves. The numbers of the Gazette from that period are missing. Perhaps one of Henry's allies in the House was responsible. The evidence of responsibility is simply absent. So, I hit upon a means for the Resolves to be sent "abroad."

It was important that I devise a means of disseminating the Resolves, for they served to unite the colonies for the first time in a common cause, which was to challenge Parliamentary authority. I date the true beginning of the Revolution to the summer of 1765.

Indian censorship: The Band of the Banned

By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlog

What do you do when Islamic fundamentalists murder 200 people? Why, you censor anyone who criticizes Islam, of course! At least, that was India’s response, when it forced Indian ISP’s to censor the following 17 websites. None of them advocate terrorism - they just dare to blaspheme against Islam.

The Band of the Banned

• The Jawa Report
• Exposing the Leftz (aka, OpiniPundit)
• The Pirate’s Cove
• Merri Musings
• Macker
• Princess Kimberly (now defunct)
• Editors in Pajamas
• Commonfolk Using Commonsense (their old website banned)
• My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
• Hindu Human Rights (down - by govt?)
• rahulyadav.com (404)
• dalitstan.com (404)

Please republish the list on your own blog to show your stand against censorship!

The Force is Upon Us

By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As a postscript to my commentary of July 13th, "The Force is with them," I am compelled to cite another article, forwarded to me by a British contact, that more thoroughly discusses the rise of "consensus science" in relation to the alleged "debate" on the causes of global warming (if, indeed, such a phenomenon is occurring). The Financial Post (Canada) article, "Climate consensus and the end of science," by Terence Corcoran, is more philosophical in its critique of consensus science. Corcoran may be a closet "Objectivist," because his critique correctly identifies the conflict and illuminates the more abstruse roots of the deterioration of reason and the rise of "belief systems." Here are a few excerpts, to whet your appetite:

"Back when modern science was born, the battle between consensus and new science worked the other way around. More often than not, the consensus of the time -- dictated by religion, prejudice, mysticism and wild speculation, false premises -- was wrong. The role of science, from Galileo to Newton and through the centuries, has been to debunk the consensus and move us forward. But now science has been stripped of its basis in experiment, knowledge, reason and the scientific method and made subject to the consensus created by politics and bureaucrats."

Ayn Rand once quipped, "Fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one." The relevance of that doesn't need explication here.

"In short, under the new authoritarian science based on consensus, science doesn't matter any more. If one scientist's 1,000-year chart showing rising global temperatures is based on bad data, it doesn't matter because we still otherwise have a consensus. If a polar bear expert says polar bears appear to be thriving, thus disproving a popular climate theory, the expert and his numbers are dismissed as being outside the consensus."

And:

"Jasper McKee, professor of physics at the University of Manitoba and editor of Physics in Canada, asked recently: 'Is scientific fact no longer necessary?' Apparently it's not. 'In the absence of hard scientific fact or causal relationships, a majority vote of scientists can determine scientific truth.'"

This is not irrelevant to the subject, but I might add that these post titles were inspired by the climax of George Lucas's original Star Wars film (1977), in which Luke Skywalker, trying to shoot a fuzzy electronic torpedo into a vent leading to the Death Star's power center, hears a voice, "Use the Force, Luke. Don't think. Just feel." Or words to that effect. Just feel. Just believe. Never mind your reason, or the evidence of your senses, or your skills, or the fact that you blasted a lot of TIE fighters. Trust your feelings on this one. The Force is with you.

Force, of course, having a double meaning in the context of these posts.

The Force is with them

By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

"The debate in the scientific community is over," said Al Gore during an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos to discuss the former vice-president's sortie into the movie business, "An Inconvenient Truth." This is a "scientifically based" documentary that asserts that an environmental apocalypse is gathering strength, and that its sole cause is man's uncontrolled carbon dioxide emissions.

But in a revealing article in the Wall Street Journal ("Don't Believe the Hype"), Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, writes that there has been no "debate" in the scientific community, and that what passes for truth about global warming is a mere consensus among those who wish to believe that man is the cause of catastrophic climate changes.

After bursting the bubbles of computer models and theoretical projections, and detailing the level of ignorance about climatology among scientists honest enough to admit their ignorance about what causes glaciers to retreat or the frequency of hurricanes, Lindzen concludes his article with, "Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods, but by perpetual repetition."

I would have put it: But by perpetual chanting by savages to entice the rain gods to make rain.

Perpetual repetition it has been for years, and also by dramatic pictures intended to frighten the unwary and persuade the impressionable with guilt. "You wanted your SUV! Well, there's the result, that avalanche of ice falling off of Greenland!" However, as Dr. Leonard Peikoff years ago remarked about the anti-abortionist tactic of using gruesome photographs of aborted fetuses, "A picture is not an argument."

And this is the substance of the environmentalists' scare campaign: impressive sounding but nevertheless bogus science, razzle-dazzle photography, and a belief closed to reason. Remember that today's environmentalist establishment had its roots in the ecology movement of the anti-establishment hippies and "radicals" of the 1960's. Those creatures are now the establishment, and tolerate no criticism. If you never credited the power of unopposed irrationality, of faking reality at the price of dismissing or suppressing reason, the success of the environmental establishment ought to convince you of it once and for all.

"I am here to say the debate is over: the science is clear," Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona said in a televised news conference about the alleged dangers of secondhand smoke. In a New York Times article, reporter John O'Neil on June 28th wrote that, according to Carmona's new report, "the evidence is now 'indisputable' that secondhand smoke is an 'alarming' public health hazard, responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths among nonsmokers each year."

Of course, the science of the health effects of smoking and secondhand smoke is not clear, either. The issue has been "debated" on government terms for decades, and is an obsession of those who would impose their "findings" on everyone, regardless of the truth. Anymore, a government report on any subject -- whether on secondhand smoke, the dangers of cholesterol, or the thriving of the spotted owl or jeopardized salmon runs or the decline or increase of teenage pregnancies -- is an invitation to hard scrutiny. So many government-funded findings and studies, as well as those emanating directly from the government, are just so much a priori number juggling and reality-faking legerdemain.

In the disguise of science, a cohort of totalitarians has ascended to prominence. To what end? Ultimately, to absolute control of the individual, the extinction of selfish pleasure, and the inculcation of voluntary, public-spirited abstinence (from any pleasure you care to name), for the sake of the allergic, for the elderly with heart and respiratory problems, and, of course, for that regular Trojan horse of justification, the children, born and unborn.

"Dr. Carmona warned that measures like no-smoking sections (in restaurants and bars) did not provide adequate protection," reports the Times article, "adding, 'Smoke-free environments are the only approach that protects nonsmokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke.'"

Adolf Hitler, a virulent nonsmoker, also intended to impose such a policy on Germany if it had won the war. And, his Aryan scientists could just as well have conducted a study that meshed perfectly with such a policy, one that concluded that a "Jew-free Germany is the only approach that would protect Germany from the dangers of Zionism."

What is opposing the advance of the nanny-statists? Certainly not reason. Lindzen, writing about the speciousness of the environmentalist premise that man alone is causing global warming, remarks:

"Even among those arguing [in the alleged "debate"], there is general agreement that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can't think of anything else."

That is an example of the consequences of repetition creating a "truth." It is nothing less than the death of thought. In George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," O'Brien eventually convinces Winston Smith that two plus two equals five. We have been witnessing the same phenomenon, only in slow motion, over a vast field of issues, for decades.

There is little difference between the means and ends of the environmentalists and the anti-smoking brigades in the U.S. and the means and ends of Russian President Vladimir Putin's preparations for the G8 summit in St. Petersburg this weekend. Under the headline, "Putin cracks the whip for summit," the Daily Telegraph (London) of July 12th reported that "The Russian authorities have been instructed to banish the poor -- and the rain - from St. Petersburg."

People who are likely to demonstrate are being forced to leave the city, activists are being jailed, stray dogs are being killed, and the homeless evicted for the duration of the summit. To what end? To create the illusion of serenity, stability and order.

"Mr. Putin," reports the article, "wants to ensure that the world's most powerful politicians never come face to face with aspects of St. Petersburg that most discomfit him." In short, he is exercising his power to fake reality. The faking even extends to having the Russian air force on standby "to 'seed the clouds,' pumping ions into the air that supposedly will ensure the rain falls anywhere but on the Konstantinovsky Palace, where leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations will stay."

"I think, therefore I am." "I wish it to be true, therefore it is true." And if repetition will not make it "true," or result in a consensus that will create an "accepted truth," force will. Force, not facts, will settle the issue. Facts, or the absence of evidence, have always been an "inconvenient truth" to those who wish to resort to force to accomplish their ends when indoctrination and brain-washing have failed. And what is their supreme end? Power, in the name of the "public good."

When a petit totalitarian reaches for his gun, or threatens to use it unless one submits to his moral or "scientific" authority, then the debate is indeed over.

Sparrowhawk: Some Stones of Style

By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Some readers have posted requests on the "Sparrowhawk: The Project" comment page that I discuss "fiction writing in general," and provide some insights gained from writing the series.

First, I will say that my principles of fiction writing differ not a whit from Ayn Rand's. The difference is that she articulated them first, and then better than I ever could. (See her The Art of Fiction, edited by Tore Boeckmann.) There are also her notes on The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in The Journals. Years ago, I remember sitting with nearly open-mouthed astonishment when I listened to her taped course on this subject; virtually every point she made about dialogue, characterization, narrative, description, and so on, I'd thought of or was already applying to my own writing.

As for insights, those I needed to have before I could write a single paragraph. All the novels I wrote before beginning Sparrowhawk I considered training to write about the 18th century, and everything I learned by writing those novels in terms of economy and style enabled me to write the six titles of the series. I consider Whisper the Guns, finished in 1972, my first polished novel. I wrote two before that one, and actually found literary representation for them.

That being said, allow me to demonstrate one technique I've used to establish and maintain relationships between all the major and minor characters in the Sparrowhawk series, in this instance between Dogmael Jones and Henoch Pannell, two members of the House of Commons, and minor characters in the series. Both are accomplished speakers and are on opposite sides of every political question in Parliament. They are not so much rivals as antagonists. Pannell revels in the sordid, corrupt character of Parliament; Jones despises and fights against it. Their animosity reflects an intimacy possible only in politics.

Pannell most resembles Casper Gutman, a villain in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon; he is a large, blustery man who likes to talk, hear himself talk, and waste people's time (although I did not model him on the Hammett character; that honor went to the actor Charles Laughton). Jones is a career barrister and trial lawyer, introduced in Book Two at the Pippin trial.

Jones, member for Swansditch, a rotten borough, makes his maiden speech in the Commons in Chapter 25 of Book Three: Caxton. The subject is the House's proposal to expel John Wilkes from the House for allegedly libelous remarks he made about King George the Third in a private political publication. Jones is defending Wilkes's right to speak his mind, in or out of the House.

Henoch Pannell, member for Canovan, another rotten borough, sitting on the Treasury or government side of the House, remarks to another M.P. during Jones's speech, "He is effective, very effective. I like his style. It may be his undoing. He stabs with words, and wounds, and shames, and invites a round of stone-casting."

His companion answers that Jones has "a pile of stones to cast, while they [Jones's enemies] are armed with soft, worn pebbles. Hardly an equal contest, sir."

Pannell answers that against "his wounding words of stone will be the energy of inertia and what he calls 'sheer funk.' Together, they will wear down his stallion spirit! Yes, sir! For each stone he casts, a hundred emery pebbles will answer!"

Now, all that was preparation for their next appearance (but presumably not their first encounter, I leave that to the reader's imagination) in Book Four: Empire, in the Purgatory Tavern, years later, just before another session of the Commons (Chapter 10). The literary device is stone, playing on the homily from the Bible ("He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." -- St. John, Chapter 8. verse7), although there are no religious references or innuendoes intended in the dialogue. Jones is "without sin," while Pannell is boastfully and contentedly corrupt.

Readers may also recall the scene in Book One: Jack Frake, when a crowd of spectators tosses stones at Isham Leith at the Falmouth gallows, and the scene in Book Two: Hugh Kenrick, on the Charing Cross pillory, when Hugh hurls stones back at a mob in defense of his friends.

Jones is in the Tavern, taking notes and preparing to argue in the House against passage of the Stamp Act. Pannell, who has argued in the Commons for more stringent controls on the American colonies, and who knows that Jones could possibly harm chances of the Act's passage, has hunted him down in order to apprise his opponent.

Pannell regarded him with smug jollity. "Composing more injurious eloquence, Sir Dogmael?" he asked.

Jones glowered up at him, not only because he disliked the man, but because he had interrupted a thought. "Yes," he answered. "And, like Demosthenes, I shall spit stones."

Jones, of course, is making an ironic pun on the Athenian statesman and orator, Demosthenes, who corrected his stammer by practicing oratory with pebbles in his mouth (and who also roused the Greeks to oppose the Persian Philip the Second), but not at Demosthenes's expense, nor at his own, because he is not burdened with a speech impediment. He is saying that he plans to make some damaging points against the Stamp Act. Pannell is inferring that Jones's skill at oratory and rhetoric can hurt the cause of the government party to secure passage of the Act.

That, in brief, is how to set up a meeting and a clash of minds, and a single instance of how to establish a credible relationship between characters. The fulcrum point, if you will, is stones; what Pannell and Jones say about stones is determined by their characters. The technique is repeated numerous times throughout the series, using devices other than stones, such as gorget. It was made possible by context and an organized subconscious geared to feed my conscious mind the right information, vocabulary, style of speech, and so on. My goal in most of the dialogue in Sparrowhawk was to accomplish precision and understatement at the same time. That's the beauty of articulate, written and spoken British-English.

In answer to Chris, who queried about a new Merritt Fury novel: I wrote two more Fury novels, one of which, We Three Kings, finished in 1980, deals directly with what can now be called "Islamic totalitarians." In it, Fury is pitted against a Saudi sheik, who is given carte blanche by our State Department to deal with Fury. Sound familiar? I can't predict that it will ever be published. I have a suspicion that American publishers are still burdened with Danish cartoon funk.

More, later.

Chocolat

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A few nights ago, Paul and I watched Chocolat. Given all the recommendations I've heard over the years, I expected a compelling and dramatic story. I wasn't expecting such a strong theme against duty, particularly not religious duty. (My only small complaint concerned the Easter Homily: The pro-life sensuality of Vianne was not tolerated but embraced.)

I also recently watched The Miracle Worker -- and let me simply add my voice to the chorus of recommendations for that excellent movie.

I am presently on the hunt for This Land is Mine, a movie recommended as their absolute favorite by both Yaron Brook and Lisa Van Damme. Since its only available on VHS at present, I'm going to see if I can find it via TiVo.

I've never been much of a watcher of old movies, so I'd appreciate any strong recommendations from my readers.

Lest We Forget

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

Quick Roundup 78

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

Who started this, anyway?

Via this roundup at The Intellectual Watchman, comes a very informative post from The Dougout, in which Grant Jones first quotes Ed Koch on the origins of the Battle of Lebanon, for the benefit of anyone who can't wrap his mind around Israel's decision to operate there. (Wretchard provides us with a good idea of what the Israelis are up against, here.)

A second front was opened on Israel's border with Lebanon on July 11th, with Hezbollah crossing Israel's border killing eight Israeli soldiers and taking two soldiers prisoner. Hezbollah has rained more than 1,000 missiles down on Israel, inflicting 24 deaths and 300 casualties. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government having several cabinet ministers and 13 members of parliament. Hezbollah has been ceded by the Lebanese government the right to control southern Lebanon and its border with Israel. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has threatened before and during these latest hostilities the destruction of the State of Israel.

And then Jones quotes from an article written by an Arab who holds American citizenship for the sake of convenience.

Protecting Israelis while leaving Arabs to a fate of humiliation, occupation, degradation and subservient acquiescence to Israeli-American dictates only guarantees that those Arabs will regroup, plan a resistance strategy, and come back one day to fight for their land, their humanity, their dignity and the prospect that their children can have a normal life one day.

As if a "normal life" includes launching missiles at the homes of complete strangers miles away. As if the desire held by the Israeli people not to be attacked at random is some sort of humiliating demand. As if compliance with this whiner's demand for surrender will result in and end to Arab savagery.

If our leaders were more forceful in their prosecution of this war, an alternative that Rami Khouri seems unaware of -- the total defeat of his people -- would provide a needed context to his petulant musings, perhaps causing him to realize that leaving us the hell alone isn't really all that "degrading" or "subservient", after all.

Thanks for providing us with yet another reason to dispense with the unmitigated folly of the "proportional response", Rami.

The Middle-Eastern "Cycle of 'Proportionality'"

In considering the ramifications of the idea of the "proportionate" response, I have realized that it has other negative implications besides just hamstringing our side. Here are a couple.

For one thing, proportionality also lends false credibility to the notion that the two sides in a conflict are morally equivalent. Since this requirement of Just War Theory precludes any decisive action by the moral side, any conflict that does not end quickly in a decisive victory for the aggressor will devolve into a long, drawn-out exchange of hostilities, a "cycle of violence 'proportionality'", if you will. Why? Because the aggressor wants the war and will continue to attack as the Moslems continuously do to Israel while the moral side merely retaliates, instead of doing what it ought: ending the threat by whatever means are necessary. After awhile, it looks exactly as senseless as a family feud.

For another thing, proportionality also feeds into the chronic myopia caused by the pervasive influence of pragmatism. Notice that for all its predations against Israel (and America), the focus of the current battle with Hezbollah isn't "How can Israel (and America) most quickly and effectively eliminate Hezbollah (and Iran) as threats to peace (i.e., our lives)?", but "What deal can we broker that will secure the release of the two imprisoned Israeli soldiers in exchange for a cessation of 'hostilities' (meaning: defensive activity by Israel, which did not begin the fighting)?"

Not that I am unmoved by the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers, but the conflict in Lebanon is not merely about them. (Although I hope the kidnapping is the straw that broke the camel's back of this ridiculous stalemate.)

And the conflict in Lebanon is not the only event in the ongoing Islamic war against civilization. Almost as a footnote to the conflagration in Lebanon, various news outlets have been reporting something about which our leaders and the commentariat seem largely unconcerned (so far, I hope): That Iran and North Korea are collaborating.

One or more Iranians witnessed North Korea's recent missile tests, deepening U.S. concerns about growing ties between two countries with troubling nuclear capabilities, a top U.S. official said Thursday.

(HT: Resident Egoist)

Whack-a-Mole

Andrew Dalton points to an excellent horse-whipping of George Gilder, a prominent figure in the "Intelligent Design" sect of Creationism, that I'd intended to mention in yesterday's roundup when I read it a few days ago. One point is that "debating" Creationists is like playing a game of "whack-a-mole". This is a good analogy, but there are many other things to recommend the article, such as these choice passages.

Speciation via evolution underpins all of modern biology, both pure and applied. Note that in the latter category fall such things as new cures for diseases and genetic defects, new crops, new understandings of the brain, with consequences for pedagogy and psychology, and so on. To say to biologists: "Look, I want you to drop all this nonsense about evolution and listen to me," is like walking into a room full of pilots and aeronautical engineers and telling them that classical aerodynamics is all hogwash.

...

Scientists discover things. That's what they do. In fast-growing fields like genomics, they discover new things almost daily -- look into any issue of Science or Nature. What has the Discovery Institute discovered this past 16 years? To stretch my simile further: Creationists are walking into that room full of pilots and aeronautical engineers right at the peak of the Golden Age of flight, never having flown or designed any planes themselves. Are they really surprised that they get a brusque reception? [link added]

Very amusing and very informative.

And then there were three....

Is it just me, or are have the moons of Pluto been, like clothes hangers in a closet, reproducing while we aren't looking? (HT: Adrian Hester. And no, I had no idea there were three of them!)

Happy (Belated) Birthday, ...

... Blair!

-- CAV

Net Neutrality: Obscenity

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

News.com: On a completely different topic, what do you think of Net neutrality? T.J. Rodgers, CEO Cypress Semiconductor: This is where basically the Net is not allowed to discriminate? I think it's an obscenity. I think people that have paid for the wires and cables should able to charge whatever they want for their product. And for other people to come in and force companies to run their

Evolution Of The Milky Way

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

From Korean.net: A Korean satellite is helping explain the evolutionary process of the Milky Way by drawing the first map of high temperature plasma gas structures within the galaxy, a special edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letter said Tuesday (July 18). The gas structure defined by the Science and Technology 1 satellite, launched in September 2003, is important because these are formed

Mickey Spillane Dies

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Author Mickey Spillane died on Monday. Jackie Nelson of MyrtleBeachOnline.com reprinted a 2005 article: Mickey Spillane wrote "I, the Jury" in nine days and gave the world "Mike Hammer." As a young man, he wrote for comic books and pulp magazines; however, during 1950 and 1952, he published five Mike Hammer mysteries. His most recent published works are two children's stories. He's even written

Mid-East Roundup

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Joseph Kellard (via HBL) sent the following letter to President George W. Bush: President Bush, When are you going to finally destroy the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran? This is the only reason I voted for you in 2004. Post-9/11 you said you would end states that sponsor anti-American and anti-Western terrorism, Iran has for decades been the premier terrorist state, and the Iranians are

"First Human To Walk On The Surface Of The Moon"

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Today in history: At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. From The History Channel. and... Ayn Rand on "Apollo

Mecklenburg Republicans On The Wrong Path

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Jim Puckett sent out an email entitled "Jim Puckett's proposal for moving forward". I have placed the COPs package on our agenda for our meeting in August. In an effort to seek consensus I am contacting you to allow for input on my “amended” compromise. First it is important to state that I and the other Republican County Commissioners do not think that the

Government Censorship

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Example #63,922 of why you can't trust government censors: ErgoSum reports that "India has banned blogs hosted on Blogger, Blogspot, Typepad, and Geocities." (Visit the link for more information on the reasons -- with updates!)

A Second Recommendation of A First History!

By Don from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A few days ago, Diana recommended Scott Powell's First History for Adults. I want to second her recommendation. I cannot say enough good things about this course and about its teacher.

Scott's course has many virtues, but the greatest, in my estimation, is that it not only teaches us history, but how to understand history.

To take just one example, a mistake many Objectivists make is to try to jump from the concrete events of history to broadest philosophic causes of those events. But that is like trying to jump directly from the observation that apples fall to Newton's laws--you can't do it, and if you try to, all you'll be left with are random concretes and floating abstractions. Scott's course shows us the proper historical hierarchy in a way that is clarifying and captivating .

And that is the most thrilling aspect of Scott's class to me: to see the Objectivist epistemology applied to history in a way that illuminates both.

No matter how rich (or poor) your knowledge of history, you will benefit from this course.

Update from Diana: Scott Powell tells me that Session 4 of the course begins Wednesday. It will run Wednesday and Thursday nights at 7:00 PM Pacific for the duration of the summer.

Government vs. Science

From Dr. Yaron Brook:

IRVINE, CA--"The political fighting over embryonic stem cell research is the inevitable result of government funding of science," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"It is only because science today is so dominantly funded by the government that restrictions on federal funding can wreak the devastation they have--severely hindering a promising area of potentially life-saving medical research."

"If science were left free, as it should be, funded solely by private sources, a scientist would not have to plead the merits of his work before a majority of politicians, however ignorant or prejudiced by religious or other dogmas they might be.

"The government should get out of the business of funding science. But so long as it is involved, it must scrupulously respect the separation of Church and State. Its funding decisions must be made on rationally demonstrable, not faith-based, grounds. Bush's veto clearly violates this principle."

Stem cell foes are the anti-life ones

By David Holcberg and Alex Epstein/Ayn Rand Institute

It is widely known that embryonic stem cell research has the potential to revolutionize medicine and save millions of lives. Yet many people, including the Pope in his recent public address, oppose embryonic stem cell research -- and do so under the banner of being "pro-life."

The opponents of embryonic stem cell research claim that their position is rooted in "respect for human life." They say that the embryos destroyed in the process of extracting stem cells are human beings with a right to life. In Pope Benedict's recent words: "The loving eyes of God look on the human being, considered full and complete at its beginning."

But embryos used in embryonic stem cell research are manifestly not human beings -- not in any rational sense of the term. These embryos are smaller than a grain of sand, and consist of at most a few hundred undifferentiated cells.

They have no body or body parts. They do not see, hear, feel, or think. While they have the potential to become human beings -- if implanted in a woman's uterus and brought to term -- they are nowhere near actual human beings.

What, then, is the "pro-lifer's" reason for regarding these collections of cells as sacred and attributing rights to them? Religious dogma.

The "pro-lifers" accept on faith the belief that rights are a divine creation: a gift from an unknowable supernatural being bestowed on embryos at conception (which many extend to embryos "conceived" in a beaker). The most prominent example of this view is the official doctrine of the Catholic Church, which declares to its followers that an embryo "is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized."

But rights are not some supernatural construct, mystically granted by the will of "God." They are this-worldly principles of proper political interaction rooted in man's rational nature. Rights recognize the fact that men can only live successfully and happily among one another if they are free from the initiation of force against them.

Rights exist to protect and further human life. Rights enable individual men to think, act, produce and trade, live and love in freedom. The principle of rights is utterly inapplicable to tiny, pre-human clusters of cells that are incapable of such actions.
In fact, to attribute rights to embryos is to call for the violation of actual rights. Since the purpose of rights is to enable individuals to secure their well-being, a crucial right, inherent in the right to liberty and property, is the right to do scientific research in pursuit of new medical treatments. To deprive scientists of the freedom to use clusters of cells to do such research is to violate their rights -- as well as the rights of all who would contribute to, invest in, or benefit from this research.

And to the extent that rights are violated in this way, we can expect deadly results. The political pressure against embryonic stem cell research is already discouraging many scientists and businessmen from investing their time and resources in its pursuit. If this research can lead, as scientists believe, to the ability to create new tissues and organs to replace damaged ones, any obstacles placed in its path will unnecessarily delay the discovery of new cures and treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, and diabetes.

Every day that this potentially life-saving research is delayed is another day that will go by before new treatments become available to ease the suffering and save the lives of countless individuals. And if the "pro-lifers" ever achieve the ban they seek on embryonic stem cell research, millions upon millions of human beings, living or yet to be born, might be deprived of healthier, happier, and longer lives.

The enemies of embryonic stem cell research know this, but are unmoved. They are brazenly willing to force countless human beings to suffer and die for lack of treatments, so that clusters of cells remain untouched.

To call such a stance "pro-life" is beyond absurd. Their allegiance is not to human life or to human rights, but to their anti-life dogma.

If these enemies of human life wish to deprive themselves of the benefits of stem cell research, they should be free to do so and die faithful to the last. But any attempt to impose their religious dogma on the rest of the population is both evil and unconstitutional.

In the name of the actual sanctity of human life and the inviolability of rights, embryonic stem cell research must be allowed to proceed unimpeded. Our lives may depend on it.

David Holcberg is a media research specialist and Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand -- best-selling author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.

KANT AT NYT

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog


Day By Day Cartoon by Chris Muir. 07/18/06

Related: My post, "GOOGLEFIGHT".

Sparrowhawk: The Project

By Edward Cline, from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

At the suggestion of Nick Provenzo, I will occasionally discuss various aspects of my Sparrowhawk novels here.

I wrote nine novels before embarking on the Sparrowhawk project: three suspense novels and six detective novels; only two of the nine have been published. The Sparrowhawk series of six titles, each a full-length novel in its own right, will total over 2,000 pages and some seven million words.

There comes a point in any writer's career when he knows he is ready to tackle a book idea that has perhaps simmered in the back of his head for years. A novel about the causes of the Revolution was mine. The point for me was reached in 1992, when I attended an Objectivist conference in Williamsburg. I had just finished a second Roaring Twenties detective novel, and Whisper the Guns, my first suspense novel, had been recently published by the Atlantean Press.

What convinced me I was ready to begin work on what I imagined would be a two-volume novel was a combination of three things: John Ridpath's moving lecture on the founding of Jamestown; my discovery of Colonial Williamsburg, just down the road from the conference's hotel; and the most recent remake of James Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which devoted about five seconds to the conflict between colonial Americans and the British during the French and Indian War. All that served to click in my subconscious and tell me: Now is the time to begin it.

Thirteen years later, in the spring of 2005, I finished Book Six-War. My purpose from the beginning was not to write about the Revolutionary War itself. That had been done in numerous novels by other writers. What I saw lacking in American fiction was a serious treatment of the causes of the move for independence. The causes were ideas, ideas taken seriously, and for the ideas to be taken seriously, meant, of course, a sea change in men's thinking about their relationship with government and with each other. More importantly, it implied a change in how men thought about themselves. If men simply regarded themselves as members of a collective, or simply resented their servitude, they would hardly be drawn to a political philosophy that encouraged a radical individualism. No, a revolution would have had to occur first in the men themselves, they would have had to acquire the virtue of self-esteem first before they could ever act on those ideas.

In drawing up an outline and making notes for the first title of the series, I almost immediately discarded the idea of introducing the principal heroes as American colonials. That would have been too easy. The colonials had a head-start in that respect, separated from the mother country by an ocean and living on a continent that demanded more of their actual independence, ingenuity and self-sufficiency. To better dramatize the role of ideas that led to the Revolution, I decided to make the principal heroes British, or English, if you prefer, born and raised in the milieu of British culture and politics, and then brought to America where they become Americans. Why do they come to America? Because they will not relinquish their minds or their self-esteem, they alienate themselves from the culture they were born into.

At the same time, I wanted to give them both an anchor for the ideas. Ever conscious of the role of art in my own life, and in that of others, I created a fictive novel that dramatized what both thought ought to be: Hyperborea. Just as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged served to help shape my own character and convictions, Hyperborea served in the same manner for Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick. No actual 18th century novel could have done that. At the same time, however, this fictive novel had to be of the 18th century but anticipate the Romantic novels of the 19th century. Jack and Hugh could hardly be inspired by Samuel Richardson's or Rousseau's novels, nor by Voltaire's. Moreover, the novel could not credibly be written by an "establishment" writer of that time. It had to be penned by a literal and moral outlaw.

I should stress here that I did not set out to write an "Objectivist" novel, nor to create, in Jack and Hugh and in the minor heroes, such as Glorious Swain or Dogmael Jones, prototype Objectivist heroes. How could I? The most brilliant minds of that period were not Objectivist -- not Jefferson, not Adams, not Franklin, not Washington or any of the other great men to whom we owe thanks. The task was to imbue my characters with the best received wisdom of their time, and then carry it only a little bit further as a measure of their own intellectual efforts. The fundamentals of a correct political and moral philosophy had to wait two hundred years for Ayn Rand to think of them.

One reader commented on Amazon, in response to Book One, that it was a "turgidly argued apologia for Libertarianism"! This person completely missed the point, and descended to a personal attack, as well. If I wanted to write an "apologia," I'd have written a satire, and Libertarians would have hated it. I will mention that there have been very, very few displeased readers of the series, and their comments on Amazon and elsewhere are of a caliber I would expect of a New York Times reviewer: malicious, irrelevant, snobbish, blind, and possibly even envious. And all I will say to those persons is: Match it. In the context of today's literary environment, in the context of new novels, there is nothing else like Sparrowhawk.

Furthermore, the series was not written exclusively for an Objectivist readership. The overwhelming number of fans and people who appear at my book-signing table are not Objectivists, but they love the series for the right reasons. If I wanted to summarize the response of non-Objectivist readers, that is, why they value the series so passionately, I would say it is because I told them, in the story: This is what we have lost, and this is what we must regain. To the extent that readers, Objectivist or non-Objectivist, value the series and are inspired by it, that is how much they have regained.

Originally posted by Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason

There Is No Need for an Endless Global Conflict

By Debi Ghate:

Islamic totalitarians have explicitly stated their goal: to forcibly impose Islamic law around the world. To succeed, they will continue to attack those parts of the world that oppose their "divine mission." The United States, Israel, Canada, England, India, and any other country that places the least bit of value on freedom and progress, will continue to be targets.

The freer nations need to recognize the real nature of this enemy: an ideology that demands complete submission to Allah, either voluntarily or at the point of a knife. Do you wait for the knife to slit your throat or do you fight back and defend yourself?

The combined military strength of the freer countries is more than enough to eliminate decisively and definitively the assorted collection of murderous terrorists and the governments that support them financially or ideologically. There is no need for an endless global conflict. What there is a need for is a recognition that those of us living in freer countries have the right to take any necessary actions to defend ourselves--and that our lives are at stake.

Me on net neutrality

By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In response to a criticism of a defense of Senator Steven’s essentially correct “Internet tubes” speech.

Rockwell's and Steven's basic point is that internet bandwidth is a scarce resource, and the only way to efficiently use it is to allow entrepreneurs to decide how resources should be allocated, and how traffic should be prioritized. While the internet was not initially a private entity, the companies that now run it have found many ways to do so in the past, and are currently experimenting with new methods that have been made possible by new technology, and that will make new technologies possible.
Until recently, it was not technologically possible to prioritize certain types of internet traffic over others, making the internet unreliable for mission-critical applications, which required expensive dedicated connection that were only feasible for large corporations. However, the exponential growth in computational power has recently made it possible to examine the contents of individual data packets and prioritize them accordingly. What the net neutrality debate is essentially about is whether ISP's should be allowed to prioritize those packets by the sender of the packet in addition to the type of packet it is.
I think that there are many possibilities that are made possible by such party-based "packet discrimination" - such as remote surgery, which is currently too unreliable without a very expensive dedicated line. This can't be done by class-based packet prioritizing alone, since it can't distinguish between a YouTube homemade video download, and a surgical telecast. Email another area packet discrimination can help -charging a small "toll" for email traffic has been frequently mentioned as the best way to make spam unprofitable.
These possibilities may or may not pan out - but what right does a politician have to stop me from investing in them?

Freedom vs. Unlimited Majority Rule

By Peter Schwartz:

Hezbollah, which has been waging war on Israel, and America, for years, is the immediate cause of the current fighting in the Middle East. The broader cause, though, is the United States government.

When Washington declared that freedom could be advanced by elections in which Hezbollah participated, and by which it became part of Lebanon's government, we granted that terrorist entity something it could never achieve on its own: moral legitimacy.

We gave legitimacy to Hezbollah--just as we did to such enemies as Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and the budding theocrats in Iraq and Afghanistan. These people all came to power through democratic elections promoted by the U.S. But a murderer does not gain legitimacy by getting elected to the ruling clique of his criminal gang--nor does anyone gain it by becoming an elected official of an anti-freedom state.

The premise behind the Bush administration's policy is the hopeless view that tyranny is reversed by the holding of elections--a premise stemming from the widespread confusion between freedom and democracy.

The typical American realizes that there ought to be limits on what government may do. He understands that each of us has rights which no law may breach, regardless of how much public support it happens to attract. An advocate of democracy, however, holds the opposite view.

The essence of democracy is unlimited majority rule. It is the notion that the government should not be constrained, as long as its behavior is sanctioned by majority vote. It is the notion that the very function of government is to implement the "will of the people." It is the notion espoused whenever we tell the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Palestinians and the Afghanis that the legitimacy of a new government flows from its being democratically approved.

And it is the notion that was categorically repudiated by the founding of the United States.

America's defining characteristic is freedom. Freedom exists when there are limitations on government, imposed by the principle of individual rights. America was established as a republic, under which the state is restricted to protecting our rights. This is not a system of "democracy." Thus, you are free to criticize your neighbors, your society, your government--no matter how many people wish to pass a law censoring you. You are free to own your property--no matter how large a mob wants to take it from you. The rights of the individual are inalienable. But if "popular will" were the standard, the individual would have no rights--only temporary privileges, granted or withdrawn according to the mass mood of the moment. The tyranny of the majority, as the Founders understood, is just as evil as the tyranny of an absolute monarch.

Yes, we have the ability to vote, but that is not the yardstick by which freedom is measured. After all, even dictatorships hold official elections. It is only the existence of liberty that justifies, and gives meaning to, the ballot box. In a genuinely free country, voting pertains only to the means of safeguarding individual rights. There can be no moral "right" to vote to destroy rights.

Unfortunately, like President Bush, most Americans use the antithetical concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" interchangeably. Sometimes our government upholds the primacy of individual rights and regards one's life, liberty and property as inviolable. More often, however, it negates rights by upholding the primacy of the majority's wishes--from confiscating an individual's property because the majority wants it for "public use," to preventing a terminally ill individual from ending his painful life because a majority finds suicide unacceptable.

Today, our foreign policy endorses this latter position. We declare that our overriding goal in the Mideast is that people vote--regardless of whether they value freedom. But then, if a religious majority imposes its theology on Iraq, or if Palestinian suicide-bombers execute their popular mandate by blowing up Israeli schoolchildren, on what basis can we object, since democracy--"the will of the people"--is being faithfully served? As a spokesman for Hamas, following its electoral victory, correctly noted: "I thank the United States that they have given us this weapon of democracy. . . . It's not possible for the U.S. . . . to turn its back on an elected democracy." All these enemies of America--Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiites--abhor freedom, while adopting the procedure of democratic voting.

If we are going to try to replace tyrannies, we must stop confusing democracy with freedom. We must make clear that the principle we support is not the unlimited rule of the majority, but the inalienable rights of the individual. Empowering killers who happen to be democratically elected does not advance the cause of freedom--it destroys it.

Peter Schwartz is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (www.AynRand.org) in Irvine, California. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

A Tale of Two Dollars

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

Psst! Congress! There's a war on!

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

Robert Tracinski's superb analysis of recent goings-on in the Middle East (which appeared in yesterday's TIA Daily) has top billing in today's listing of commentary at RealClear Politics and is a must-read. Tracinski discusses (and provides links to other relevant material for) several important aspects of the situation, including: current American policy towards Iran, the rationale for why (and where) Iran is acting now, and the limitations inherent in its approach. He ends with the following:

Iran has revealed its hand, challenging the US and its allies and openly demonstrating its desire to dominate the Middle East through force and terror. While we have been trying to delay the war with Iran, it has brought the war to us, in a manner so obvious that even the mainstream media cannot evade it.

In doing so, they have made their threat to America and its interests more obvious and more urgent--providing a stronger case for war than their nuclear program could provide. There can be no question here about whether Iran really has aggressive designs in the Middle East, whether it really seeks the weapons to attack the US and its allies, and how long it might take for such a threat to materialize. The threat is here and Iran's newest war on the West has already begun.

Iran is risking everything on this new strategy, and the only hope they have of success is the expectation that, as they bring the war closer and closer to America, we won't fight back.

But that means that we have an easy way to blow their strategy to smithereens.

All we have to do is to start fighting back.

There are two further things beyond this analysis that warrant further consideration by our leaders and the public that elects them.

(1) As two recent posts at Principles in Practice point out, we have not -- our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq notwithstanding -- even begun fighting back. We have been fighting a partial war and not even against the main enemy so far.

As Craig Biddle puts it in "The Taliban Can ... Because We Let Them":

Our primary target after 9-11 should not have been the Taliban in Afghanistan; it should have been the regime in Iran. But if we were going to pursue the Taliban, we certainly should have eliminated these vile creatures swiftly and permanently. In order to have done so, however, our military would have to have been under the command of a president who was willing to use the full force of the military -- and to use it not only against the Taliban but also against the regime in Pakistan, which materially and spiritually supports the Taliban. Instead, the Bush administration dropped small bombs and much bread on Afghanistan, permitted the Taliban to escape into Pakistan, and dubbed the regime in Pakistan our "friend." [bold added]

One could just as well say, "Iran Can ... Beacuse We Let It".

And David Holcberg, in a reprinted letter to the editor, sums things up very nicely in this way: "It is long past time for Israel to wage a real war against these terrorist groups and states. And it is long past time for the United States to join."

If recent events wake us up, we will at least finally have the right target in our sights. That will correct one error we have made. The other error, as Biddle indicates, lies in what "fighting back" means. A review of the end of the conflict with Japan in World War II is in order for tha

Microsoft's tacit surrender to antitrust

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This week the European Commission issued a 280.5 million euro fine against Microsoft for failing to fully respect their 2004 antitrust ruling. But first, a brief synopsis: In 2004, EC antitrust regulators ordered Microsoft to pay a massive 497 million euro fine for its 'monopolization' of the computer operating system market, and required that the software giant sell a version of its Windows operating system without Media Player software and divulge information on Windows source code needed by makers of rival products. In effect, the EC regulators argued that Microsoft's success--and its desire to add to that success--made it a coercive threat to its customers and rival firms under the antitrust laws, and they punished Microsoft accordingly.

So what then was Microsoft's answer to the EC regulators' order? It paid its fine, offered a version of Windows minus its Media player technology (which predictably enough, no one wanted), and failed to sufficiently meet the EC's demand that it open up Windows to rivals. In a press briefing on the day of the EC's new fine, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith cited the order's "lack of clarity" as his firm's defense.

"Lack of clarity?" All of antitrust is unclear. The "intent to monopolize" and "monopoly maintenance" can be interpreted to mean anything and is, as the history of antirust enforcement, from its beginnings with the case against Standard Oil to today's case against Microsoft itself proves. Yet while Microsoft has made tremendous efforts to argue that it is innocent of violating the antitrust laws in the courts, it has nevertheless been unwilling to publicly attack these laws as such or question the premise behind them. The firm's seeming position is that the antitrust laws are just fine--but they don't apply to Microsoft. In the process, Microsoft has forfeited its most potent weapon against those who seek to regulate it.

For at root, Microsoft was a tremendous firm (and I use the word "was" deliberately; for a company of its size, Microsoft has long ceased being an important technological innovator). More than any other company, it was Microsoft that launched the PC revolution which helped put a computer on every desk. Today however, Microsoft is only a shadow of what it once was, for despite all its denials, Microsoft has been effectively neutered by antitrust. Today it is Google that has invigorated search, Apple that has invigorated multimedia, and Mozilla Firefox that has invigorated web browsing--not Microsoft. Innovation and regulation don't go hand in hand.

Thus it is easy to see why Microsoft's star is fading. Every time you hear an antirust regulator talk about Microsoft's next round of operating system upgrades, you hear them say that Microsoft had best tread lightly--or else. What incentive then does an individual have to innovate if at every moment he must look over his shoulder to ensure that his ideas won't prompt a competitor or a regulator to file an antitrust suit that destroys both him and his innovations? Which force is more powerful--the joy of creation (and the profits it may bring), or the omnipresent threat of treble damages under antitrust?

And therein lies Microsoft's greatest failure. If Microsoft were to have argued against the validity of the antitrust laws, it would have highlighted that these laws negate a businessman's moral right to his property. It would have highlighted that it is not an act of force to put a product on the market that becomes the industry standard and to integrate new features into that product. Microsoft can no more force itself upon its customers than any other firm--only a government regulator possess the power of outright coercion. And thus Microsoft failed to make the most important point in any discussion about antitrust--the point that there is a difference between a businessman and a regulator, a distinction that the philosopher Harry Binswanger once wryly described as the difference between the "dollar and the gun." Microsoft simply refused to declare its moral innocence and refute the charges of attackers on their own terms. It left that work to others (it even supported my organization's advocacy for a brief time), but it never spoke unequivocally in its own defense and in its own voice.

Why? I recall when Bill Gates, while addressing the Columbia Business School, remarked that "you don't have to go as far as Ayn Rand to think that allowing businesses to keep innovating in their product is a good idea." In his case, he certainly lived up to his words; instead of going as far as Ayn Rand and her philosophy of reason and individual rights, he instead elected to cravenly apologize for his wealth, often repeating the line that he is a mere custodian of society's money and that he wanted to "give back" to others. Now, after years of after antitrust suit after antitrust suit, he has chosen to dedicate his attention and the proceeds of his vast fortune to altruistic endeavors such as curing the sundry diseases that plague the people of Africa's dictatorships. And since Gates has announced that he will dedicate the rest of his years to others, even those who once attacked him for his riches have seemed to warm to him--yet Microsoft, its employees and shareholders are none the better for it.

Thus the silence of Microsoft's leaders on the evils of the antitrust laws--a deliberate silence, for they must live with the choking fallout of these laws every day--is nothing less than an act of sanction. Let us not forget, the firm's tacit support for the antitrust laws has already cost Microsoft billions of dollars in fines and settlement fees. At what point does one simply stop and say, "enough is enough"?

Many will argue that Microsoft had no choice--that the regulators have too much power and thus cannot be resisted. I hold this argument to be false, for it undersells the power of dissent. A dissenter speaking in defense of truth won't necessarily win outright, but he can begin to change the terms of the debate. He can check excesses, and over time, he can build a movement that will win him his ultimate victory. As long as Microsoft is a market leader, the company will be a target for looters acting under the guise of antitrust. As long as regulators and Microsoft's competitors have license to file antitrust suits, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel for the firm--or any other successful firm. Effectively defeating antitrust must be a long-term priority for Microsoft (and other firms with the sense to protect their own self-interest), for no company that is consistently denied the ability to improve its products can long last.

In defense of its virtues, in exasperation of being cut down and cut down again, Microsoft should simply declare that it seeks the abolition of antitrust, and refuse to rest until these laws are repealed--or risk fading into obscurity. If Microsoft takes this righteous stand, it will be known for both leading the PC revolution, and for leading a far greater revolution in American business.

Three Announcements for Students

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Three important announcements for students from Matt Davis, Campus Clubs Coordinator, Ayn Rand Institute:

(1) The deadline for the 7th annual essay contest on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is fast approaching! We are now accepting essay entries through September 15. Entrants to our college contest will compete for one of 49 prizes and a top prize of $5,000. If you are enrolled in a college or university at least part-time this fall, or if you were enrolled last spring, then you qualify for this contest. For further information on the essay topics and contest rules and guidelines, please visit our website at www.aynrand.org/contests, or write to essay@aynrand.org.

(2) The Objective Standard is a quarterly journal of culture and politics written from an Objectivist perspective. The journal is available to students at substantial discounts. A one-year student subscription to the print version (which includes online access) is $49 per year; a one-year student subscription to the online-only version is $39 per year. While supplies last, you can still begin your subscription with the inaugural issue, sample articles from which are accessible online for free here. TOS also has a blog, Principles in Practice, where you will find principled commentary on cultural issues and current events.

Craig Biddle, Editor
The Objective Standard
www.theobjectivestandard.com
Phone: 804-747-1776
Fax: 804-273-0500

(3) The deadline for submitting an application to the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC) is July 30, 2006.

This program, designed for college students seeking a deeper understanding of Ayn Rand's principles, offers students the unique opportunity to study with Objectivist experts and learn the essentials of Objectivism in an exciting and challenging way. OAC students also have the exclusive eligibility to receive scholarships to attend ARI's summer Conferences free of charge. We are also putting into place a program whereby students can get college credit for OAC courses, which could lighten the course load required by universities and colleges.

For more information on the OAC, as well as for a link to the online application, please visit www.aynrand.org/academic. We're looking forward to hearing from you.

I've never entered the Atlas Shrugged essay contest, but I can highly recommend such contests as a means of earning much-needed extra dough in college. (My earnings from essay contests were critical when I was an undergraduate!) The Objective Standard is fantastic: I'm eager to read the second issue. And, as I've said before, I cannot recommend the Objectivist Academic Center highly enough.

David Kelley co-producer of $40 mil Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy?

So says Robert Bidinotto. Kelley rates the script an "8 out of 10." Whether the high score reflects commitment to Ayn Rand's vision or Kelley's, uh, "open" and "benevolent" take on Objectivism remains to be seen.

More details:

* The final go-ahead "deal" was signed on June 29. The film is well-capitalized, with Lionsgate -- the studio that produced the most recent Oscar-winning film, "Crash" -- investing $40 million or more for initial production effort.

* The plan is for the film to be shot and shown in three parts, as a trilogy, like "Lord of the Rings." Only that length, they said, would give sufficient scope to tell Ayn Rand's long, complex story. (The initial $40 million would go mainly to Part I.)

* To hold down production costs, much of the filming may take place in Europe and in the American Southwest, with only "second unit" establishing shots done in iconic venues such as New York City. Filming for more than one of the three parts may occur at the same time.

* The first draft of the script for Part I has been completed by James V. Hart (right), a veteran screenwriter among whose major credits are "Contact," "Hook," and "Tuck Everlasting."

* While the Estate [of Ayn Rand - aka Leonard Peikoff] has the right to review early script drafts and to offer input, even that input ends with the director's acceptance of a "shooting script." Editorial control remains in the hands of the production company, not the Estate. By contract, the production cannot be halted or delayed unreasonably by the Estate.

Net Neutrality vs. Internet Freedom

By Alex Epstein:

America's leading Internet service providers (ISPs) have spent many years and billions upgrading their transcontinental networks, which constitute the backbone of the Internet. Now they are eager to profit by offering new, compelling services. One plan is to give certain websites high priority on their data, so as to guarantee "quality of service"--the speed, frequency, and reliability with which data is delivered. This would enable content providers to offer high-quality live TV and videoconferencing or advanced remote medical monitoring, without the delays and unreliability that plague the Internet today. Unfortunately, data prioritization is fiercely opposed by advocates of "Net Neutrality," who claim paradoxically that freedom and innovation demand that companies not be free to make this innovation.

Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs should not be able to favor some types of data over others; their networks must be "neutral" among all the data they carry. Net-neutrality supporters claim that if ISPs are free to give preferential treatment to certain websites' data, they might drastically slow down un-favored or less-wealthy websites, diminishing their ability to offer content and make innovations. A prominent net-neutrality coalition cautions: "If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you may be impeded from providing the 'next big thing' on the Internet."

But such scenarios are nonsensical. For any of the nation's competing ISPs to offer customers slow, patchy, let alone nonexistent access to the websites they seek to visit, would be commercial suicide. As for innovation, websites are free to continue using standard, non-prioritized Internet service. The fact that this would be slower than premium service does not mean that it would be slow, just as UPS's decision to offer overnight delivery did not lead them to suddenly degrade their Ground shipping. Premium Internet services would enable, not stifle, innovation, by giving websites creative options they did not have before.

The specter of ISPs offering glacial access to certain websites is a smokescreen, designed to obscure the net-neutrality movement's goal: preventing anyone from having superior, unequal access to customers. In the minds of net-neutrality advocates, the Internet is a collectively owned entity, to which all websites have an equal claim and are entitled "equal access." As the title of a leading net-neutrality group proclaims: "It's our Net."

But it isn't.

The Internet is not a collectivist commune; it is a free, voluntary, and private association of individuals and corporations harmoniously pursuing their individual goals. (While it began as a government-funded project, the Internet's ultra-advanced state today is the achievement of private network builders, hardware companies, content providers, and customers.) Because the Internet is based on voluntary association, no one can properly compel others for their ad space, bandwidth, publicity--or data prioritization. Those who create these values have the right to use and profit from them as they see fit. Google has no more right to demand that Verizon be "neutral" with its network than Verizon has a right to demand that Google be "neutral" with its coveted advertising space.

The only thing equal about the participants on the Internet is that all have equal freedom to deal with others voluntarily. This means they are equally free to compete for the bandwidth, dollars, and talents of others--but not entitled to an unearned, equal portion of them.

It is the freedom of participants on the Internet to offer and profit from whatever products, services, or content they choose that has made it such a phenomenal source of content and innovation. Net neutrality would deny ISPs that freedom. It would deny their right to engage in creative, innovative, and profitable activity with those networks--in the name of those who demand their bandwidth, but are unable or unwilling to earn it in a free market.

The widespread support for net neutrality among successful Internet companies--including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon--is short-sighted and contemptible. These companies, which have benefited greatly from the unimpeded freedom of the Internet, are now trying to deny the same freedom to innovative ISPs and ambitious competitors under the egalitarian banner of "equal access." This is an invitation for any clever moocher to demand "equal access" to their hard-earned resources; indeed, Google is already being sued because its proprietary search engine allegedly gives "unfair" rankings to certain companies.

The Internet is one of the great bastions of freedom and innovation in our civilization. Let us keep it that way by rejecting "net neutrality."

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Israel Should Wage a Real War

By David Holcberg:

What will it take for Israel to go to war? How many more Israelis will have to be murdered, kidnapped, or maimed?

Israel says the killing and kidnapping of Israelis by Islamic terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas are acts of war. But is Israel prepared to wage a real war in self-defense?

Hezbollah and Hamas have been launching attacks against Israelis for decades--yet Israel has not used its military capability to inflict massive destruction on these groups and obliterate the terrorist states that harbor and sponsor them.

It is long past time for Israel to wage a real war against these terrorist groups and states. And it is long past time for the United States to join Israel in waging this war.

Fast Food Bans

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

Letter to the Editor: 'Literary Losers'

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I fired off the letter below to the Wall Street Journal in answer to an article on Friday that described the dumbing down of grade-school summer reading lists.

Editor:

Your July 7th "Literary Losers" in Review & Outlook makes the trenchant point that the kinds of lack-luster fiction being foisted on hapless students is uninspiring and mediocre, and unlikely to encourage reading either in class or over the summer. This is tragic, for without the examples of integrity and heroism made real though great romantic literature, what guideposts will inspire our children toward greatness? After all, no video game could ever hope to compete with the themes of independence as portrayed in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," or of justice as portrayed in Terence Rattigan's "The Winslow Boy," yet for too many of our youth, video games will be all they ever see.

That why I'm heartened to see the growing success of Edward Cline's "Sparrowhawk" series of novels (and not surprised that Cline has yet to be noticed by a virtue-deaf literary and critical establishment). Cline sets his series in England and Virginia in the decades immediately preceding the American Revolution and features heroes, introduced as young boys who mature into men passionate about their freedom and the principles behind it. Filling a gap in literature that seriously treats and brings to life the pre-Revolutionary period, Cline recreates the culture and politics of that time in an epic that entertains, inspires, and educates. And with a reading age range between eight and eighty, Cline's "Sparrowhawk" series is starting to be found in classes spanning middle school to the university, as well as among parents who are home-schooling their children.

And I can't help but notice, these people who put Cline's and other great authors' works in front of their children are a new breed of rebels, defying an educational establishment that expects so little from our children and offers them no challenge worth meeting. It certainly will be interesting to see how this revolution spreads and observe the character of those who resist it.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Provenzo
Chairman
The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

I believe that Edward Cline's achievement is going to have to be fought for. If you value his work, I encourage you to do the same.

Will AMLO's ploy backfire?

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

Bob Herbert grinds his ax on the armed forces

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This op-ed by Bob Herbert of the New York Times is appalling:

The biggest lesson we failed to learn from Vietnam was how utterly tragic it was to pull the trigger on an unnecessary war. Now once again we are condemned to suffer the consequences, and those consequences are not always self-evident.

For example, the U.S. military -- its capabilities and its reputation so painstakingly rebuilt in the decades since Vietnam -- is again falling victim to lowered standards, breakdowns in discipline and a series of atrocities that are nothing less than a betrayal of the many honorable men and women in uniform and the country they serve.

The Army has had to lower its standards because most young Americans want no part of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Recruiters, desperate to meet their quotas, are sifting for warm bodies among those who are less talented, less disciplined and, in some cases, repellent.

John Kifner reported in The Times last week about a study by a watchdog group that showed that recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military.

The study, by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist groups, was titled "A Few Bad Men." It said that recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure to fill the thinning ranks, "often look the other way" as militant white supremacists and anti-Semites make their way into the armed forces.

The center quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying: "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad. That's a problem."

This comes 10 years after a Pentagon crackdown on extremist activity in the armed forces. The crackdown followed the Oklahoma City bombing, which was carried out by Timothy McVeigh, a gulf war veteran, and the murder of a black couple by skinheads in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

This is the sort of thing that happens when the military is run by power-hungry amateurs who lack the maturity and the sense of history to temper their arrogance.

So I read through the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report that Herbert references and its supporting documents. While the report describes some troubling individual cases, it also alleges that there are "thousands" of neo-Nazis serving in the armed forces, yet I didn't see much offered in proof that the actual numbers were as high as SPLC claims. After all, it is hard to imagine active neo-Nazis thriving in an institution that includes Americans of all races and ethnicities and that functions as admirably as our military.

That does not imply that there are not racial bigots in the ranks of the armed forces; in an institution that large, it is all but guaranteed that there are some. That issue is solved by merely informing commanders of the powers granted to them under the UCMJ to police their ranks. And thus it is here that Herbert's outrageous charge that commanders are "power-hungry amateurs who lack the maturity and the sense of history" utterly breaks down. For that statement to hold true, Herbert would have to offer evidence that commanders are explicitly using racial bigots to achieve their misbegotten ends.

Instead, there is no proof offered in either Herbert's article or SPLC report that evidences that commanders are failing to expel bigots due to manpower pressures from above. From the examples offered, at worst, commanders are merely unaware of the latitude they have under Article 134 of the UCMJ to evict bigots from the military, and not participants of any conspiracy to turn a blind eye to those whose beliefs are antithetical to the military's basic tenets.

Given Herbert's obvious hostile and accusatory tone, I'd argue that his article does much to dispel the myth that the anti-war left hates the war, but nevertheless respects the military. To toss around unsubstantiated and unjustified charges as Herbert's does, in my estimate, reveals an animus against the military that runs far deeper than the current controversy in Iraq could ever legitimately engender.

AMLO: No Patriot

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

OCON 2006 Report

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

My 2006 OCON has finally come to a close.

The end was a bit delayed for me by the extra day-and-a-half Teaching Workshop for graduate students. That was definitely the extreme highlight of the conference for me: I learned oodles that will be so helpful for teaching philosophy, points that I would not and could not learn from regular academics, points with which I was struggling on my own. (Thank you, ARI!)

Most of the lectures and courses were good to great. However, I'd like to particularly highlight a few that were beyond fantastic.

Without a doubt, my award for Best OCON 2006 Lecture goes to C. Bradley Thompson for his general lecture "Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea." Here's the abstract:

During the 1930s a group of young Trotskyists at Brooklyn College advocated Marxism and worldwide communist revolution. Today, those same men dominate conservative political thought and politics. Known as the neoconservatives, they control the leading conservative think-tanks and magazines, they hold prestigious university positions and they are credited with defining Republican domestic and foreign policy, from Reagan to Bush.

But just who are the neoconservatives and what do they really stand for? At first blush, the "neocons" are impressive: they take ideas seriously, they're pro-American, they're critics of the New Left and they support capitalism. In this lecture, Dr. Thompson will examine the ideological origins of neoconservatism, the neocons' intellectual method and their plan for governing America. He will demonstrate that the neoconservatives are altruists in ethics and pragmatists in politics and are, therefore, a threat to a free society.

I simply cannot recommend the lecture highly enough: you will learn more about the nature and extent of the conservative threat to America than you thought possible in the span of a mere 90 minutes.

Tara Smith's general lecture "Unborrowed Vision: The Virtue of Independence" wins my honorable mention. I particularly enjoyed its perfect blend of the theory and practice of this virtue.

As for the optional courses, I most enjoyed Yaron Brook's course "The Rise of Totalitarian Islam" and Robert Mayhew's course on Descartes's Meditations. However, John Lewis' The Greco-Persian Wars was an intellectual delight from beginning to end. And I learned so much about literary analysis from Dina Schein's Savoring Ayn Rand's Red Pawn. Paul also had high praise for Greg Salmieri's Objectivist Epistemology in Outline, but I won't be able to hear that until the recording I ordered arrives this fall. With rare exception, I thought my optional courses were exceptionally good this year. Despite taking copious notes, I decided to order recordings of all of the above.

Overall, I had a fantastic time at OCON -- and I'm really looking forward to Telluride next year!

Forced To Pledge?

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

One legislature, almost indivisible, wants the Pledge of Allegiance in every student's school day.

When school re-opens next month, North Carolina will likely become the 34th state to require a daily recitation of the pledge. [Charlotte Observer]

Interesting. What if a student doesn't want to pledge allegiance to the United States? What if a student doesn't believe we are one nation under God?

Being forced to "pledge allegiance" is distinctly un-American. Sounds like another anti-freedom move by conservatives -- who else would come up with this craziness?

Posted by Meta Blog at 12:23 PM