The Atlas Shrugged movie challenge

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

Most Objectivists are aware by now that a movie version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is in production, featuring Randall Wallace ("Braveheart," "Pearl Harbor") as screenwriter, Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart, and tolerationist-in-chief David Kelley as consultant. While hope springs eternal, I wager the movie will be a disaster on the terms that are most important to us, and that it will likely be attacked in the press as a vanity project for a bunch of egotistical Hollywood types.

There's a big silver lining in all this, no matter how awful the movie proves to be, or just how vicious the denunciations of Objectivism that result from it are, and that’s the simple fact that Atlas Shrugged will be in the news, and there is no way that can be a bad thing.

In fact, there are a lot of things that we can do to capitalize on an Atlas movie, and here's just one idea. Since one of the elements that will greatly impact the quality of the movie will be how well Ayn Rand's ideas are brought to screen (including the challenging job of culling Galt’s radio address), why not create a "Galt's challenge" for film students. Say for a top prize of $50,000, we run a competition that would have film students present excerpts from Galt's speech totaling no more that five minuets, but with the goal of dramatizing the presentation of Galt's speech in film.

This way, if the movie makes a muck of it because of the inherent challenges in encapsulating a climax that takes the shape of a three hour radio address, one could point to the film contest winners to show examples of how the various entrants worked to get the presentation right. Put the best on YouTube, and let the world beat a path to your door.

To pull the contest off, one would have to hire an IP expert to make sure that student’s use of Atlas snippets falls under fair use. Beyond that, I think it would be a fantastic way to present Ayn Rand's ideas, and good way to counter any weakness in the Atlas Shrugged movie.

The Failure of 'Flags of Our Fathers'

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

I've been in Internet hell yesterday and today with problems with both Blogger and my ISP, but I'm pleased to finally be able to post my review of the new Clint Eastwood film "Flags of Our Fathers." Oh, and that "one scholar" I quote is none other than Andy Bernstein in his essay "The Philosophical Foundations of Heroism".

The Failure of 'Flags of Our Fathers'
Hollywood's most famous anti-hero turns valor into tragedy.

Taking the high ground in battle is often a precondition of victory; it allows an army to project force upon its enemies at greater range and with greater effect than from other, less advantageous positions. It is not surprising then that AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's stirring photograph of six Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima would become the most duplicated image from World War II. Not only did Rosenthal's image mark the Marines' achievement in that particular battle, it also signaled a larger, more important truth: that our men had the power to overcome ruthless enemies who were suicidal in their determination not to yield—that our men could win the war.

Yet in one of the accidents of history, the scene that Rosenthal captured was of men replacing the first flag that had been raised on Suribachi's peak a half-hour earlier, and not of the original scene that had so buoyed the Marines in the heat of their battle. Rosenthal's act was to create a monumental image of a minor moment—but a moment that nevertheless inspired a nation. It is this historical footnote that director Clint Eastwood chose to bring to the forefront in his film adaptation of James Bradley and Ron Powers's bestselling book Flags of Our Fathers.

Eastwood centers his lens on the lives of the participants of the second flag-raising, flashing back and forth between the combat at Iwo Jima and the victory-bond tour that the three surviving flag-raisers participated in after the battle to raise money for the war effort. Throughout the movie, it is often hard to discern which scenes Eastwood intends to be more troubling: those of the savage hell of the battlefield of Iwo Jima, or those of the banal aftereffects of a celebrity seemingly earned more by dumb luck than by heroism.

And that's not to say that the men Eastwood depicts aren't heroes (although he repeatedly has them deny it far beyond humble self-effacement). Each of them display bravery, ranging from the Navy corpsman and flag-raiser who saves the life a wounded marine despite a hail of bullets (and is subsequently awarded the Navy Cross for his actions), to the men who showed their courage simply by their mere presence on the battlefield and their refusal to turn around and flee.

Yet in presenting the heroes-turned-celebrities of the second flag-raising of Iwo Jima, Eastwood repeats a disturbing mantra throughout his film: the "true" heroes of Iwo Jima were the men who died, and not those who survived the battle. This premise is underscored by Eastwood's depiction the lives of the surviving flag-raisers after the war. One of the men would just as soon forget the battle (and even his own acts of bravery) and move on with both his nightmares and the rest of his life in quiet privacy. Another attempts to collect on the promises made to him during the height of his celebrity, only to discover frustration when these promises are left unfulfilled.

The last man, Marine PFC Ira Hayes, is torn apart by guilt, unable to reconcile that he survived and was made famous for an unessential act while his squad-mates on Iwo Jima died, and he puts himself to death through the slow poison of alcoholism. In his effort to portray the battle's complex dilemmas and conflicted heroes, Eastwood ultimately reduces the story of Iwo Jima to that of confused tragedy.

The real heroes of Iwo Jima—both those who died on the battlefield and those who lived though it—deserve a better telling of their story. A hero, as defined by one scholar, is a person of "elevated moral stature and superior ability, who pursues his goals indefatigably in the face of powerful antagonists." A hero need not necessarily achieve practical victory in order for his deeds to have spiritual meaning, but only a culture that enshrines altruism and self-sacrifice would demand a hero's outright immolation before it allowed him to recognize that he is truly worthy of the title.

And if "uncommon valor was a common virtue" of the Marines of Iwo Jima, isn't it important to depict how so many men came to discover such virtue? Isn't it important to depict not just the suffering and deaths of these heroes, but also the principles that defined their lives and brought them and their nation victory in the face of so many obstacles? Even the tragedy of Ira Hayes deserves a better telling, if only so those in similar straights can come to learn from his story and avoid his end.

It is in this light that "Flags of Our Fathers" is exactly the opposite from what it should be. What good is heroism if a hero cannot live to enjoy the fruits of his victory without guilt? Yes, some heroes endure hell, risk death, and even die in pursuit of their ends, but death is not their aim—life is. We ought to remind our living heroes of it, for today we posses a far greater understanding of the psychological pains that can afflict even the most stout-hearted of combat veterans.

We can (and must) tell our new generation of war heroes that for many of them, the act of returning to fulfilling and guilt-free lives may prove just as challenging as their trials on the battlefield, but that they have a moral right to every happiness. Clint Eastwood, a man who helped to depict cowboys as existentialist anti-heroes, has proven by "Flags of Our Fathers" that he is too enthralled by tragedy and irony to be of much help in such an endeavor.

It is shameful that to make a positive, life-affirming statement about our men and women in uniform becomes its own act of heroism, but the veterans of Iwo Jima—and the other veterans of our nation's battles deserve as much.

DIM Hypothesis Course Available Free

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Given the ongoing debate on Dr. Peikoff's statement about the election, this announcement from ARI offering free access to his DIM Hypothesis course couldn't be more perfectly timed.

Leonard Peikoff's The DIM Hypothesis available FREE at aynrand.org!

Next summer, Objectivist Summer Conference 2007 will present a new lecture series by Leonard Peikoff, presenting a detailed examination of his forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis.

For a limited time, as a prelude to this event, we are able to present to you, free of charge, a streaming audio recording of the original lecture series, delivered in 2004, in which Dr. Peikoff gave the first detailed presentation of his exciting new theory. Listeners are invited to experience this course as a document of the early development of Dr. Peikoff's latest work.

Streaming audio links for the course can be found online at the Ayn Rand Institute's Registered User Page. (If you aren't yet registered, registration is fast, free and easy--just click to register now!) Audio streams are available in both RealMedia and Windows Media formats.

LISTEN NOW:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=iiaa_pV9ufTws1U7BfjLzA..

FREE REGISTRATION:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=VwUIJ2nKQqhyQbZypTpVcw..

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This 15-session course--part lecture, part discussion--was presented live to a worldwide audience by phone and on the Internet. It is based on Dr. Peikoff's "The DIM Hypothesis" (book-in-progress), in which he looks at the role of integration in the culture and in practical life.

This course explains and explores Dr. Peikoff's new DIM hypothesis, applying it to ten different cultural areas, as listed in the course outline. The hypothesis identifies and distinguishes three types of mind: the mind characterized by I (Integration); by D (Disintegration); or by M (Misintegration). In the sessions Dr. Peikoff points out how all of the influential movements in the areas included reflect--and could only have been created by--one or another of these three mind sets. If enhancing your understanding of today's world and of where we are heading is an important concern of yours, Dr. Peikoff believes that you will find a DIM perspective on events to be of significant value.

As Dr. Peikoff recently explained: "[M]y thesis is that the dominant trends in every key area can be defined by their leaders' policy toward integration: they are against it (Disintegration, D); they are for it, if it conforms to reality (Integration, I); they are for it, if it conforms to a superior reality (Misintegration, M)."

Please don't comment upon the election in response to this post. I have a fairly long essay on that topic that I'll be posting later today. I'd rather that all hell break loose after I've said my part.

Why I'm Voting for the Democrats

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dr. Leonard Peikoff recently posted the following Q&A on the upcoming election on his web site.

Q: In view of the constant parade of jackassery which is Washington, is there any point in voting for candidates of either entrenched party? Throwing out the incumbents "for a change" is to me an idea based on the philosophy that my head will stop hurting if I bang it on the opposite wall.

A: How you cast your vote in the coming election is important, even if the two parties are both rotten. In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.

Socialism--a fad of the last few centuries--has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast--the destroyer of man since time immemorial--is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government.

The survival of this country will not be determined by the degree to which the government, simply by inertia, imposes taxes, entitlements, controls, etc., although such impositions will be harmful (and all of them and worse will be embraced or pioneered by conservatives, as Bush has shown). What does determine the survival of this country is not political concretes, but fundamental philosophy. And in this area the only real threat to the country now, the only political evil comparable to or even greater than the threat once posed by Soviet Communism, is religion and the Party which is its home and sponsor.

The most urgent political task now is to topple the Republicans from power, if possible in the House and the Senate. This entails voting consistently Democratic, even if the opponent is a "good" Republican.

In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life--which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.

If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the U.S. toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner.

I fully support Dr. Peikoff's statement.

I am acutely aware of the concrete evils of voting for the Democrats: high taxes, environmentalism, welfare programs, socialized medicine, and gun control. Nonetheless, I will vote for Democrats as long as necessary, even for Hillary Clinton in 2008.

That is a substantial change for me, as some of you might recall. In the 2004 election, I was hopelessly torn by the choice between Bush and Kerry. While I knew that both were evil, I could not say Bush was apocalyptically evil while Kerry was merely ordinary evil. (Frankly, that middle ground was progress for me, as I'd been pro-Republican in the general vein of TIA Daily for many years beforehand.) I continued to pursue the matter after the election: I knew I needed to understand the relevant principles much better than I did. Listening to Dr. Peikoff's excellent DIM Hypothesis course made the most difference to me: upon hearing the whole course, I finally understood the real meaning of the posted excerpt on the 2004 election. Of course, I still had much more thinking to do. Dr. Peikoff's Religion Versus America and America Versus Americans lectures were illuminating, as was Dr. Yaron Brook's lecture The Morality of War and Dr. John Lewis' Ideas and the Fall of Rome. Dr. Brad Thompson's recent article The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism is also a must-read.

I mention those sources for a very specific reason: It's hard to understand the depth and power of Dr. Peikoff's position unless familiar with them, particularly his DIM Hypothesis course. Dr. Peikoff's position is not based on any casual survey of recent events; it is well-grounded in fundamental principles, particularly the essential factors governing philosophic change in cultures over the course of centuries. The Objectivist view of the role of philosophy in shaping individual lives, politics, culture, and history is a massive integration. While most professed Objectivists could summarize it, they do not genuinely understand it for themselves, i.e. based upon their own induction from the concretes. Dr. Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis course makes that induction so much more clear. It helps a person cut through the confusing sea of today's concretes, so as to see the essential trends. (Note: The Ayn Rand Institute has made Dr. Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis course available for free to registered users!)


As regards the election, the past two years of the Bush Administration and its Republican Congress have displayed the true philosophic commitments of today's conservatives more starkly than ever. In their domestic policies, the Republicans fully support socialism and statism. They simply so do in craftier ways than the Democrats. Most obviously, the Bush Administration successfully pushed its prescription drug plan -- a massive new entitlement -- through a Republican-dominated House and Senate. Even with his Democratic Congress, Clinton was unable to match that feat of welfare statism. As a general matter, the Bush Administration is not even slightly concerned with controlling spending or the growth of government. Consider these "hard facts" from Dr. Thompson's The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism:

Government spending has increased faster under George Bush and his Republican Congress than it did under Bill Clinton, and more people work for the federal government today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. During Bush's first term, total government spending skyrocketed from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, an increase of 33 percent (almost $23,000 per household, the highest level since World War II). The federal budget grew by $616.4 billion during Bush's first term in office. If post 9/11 defense spending is taken off the table, domestic spending has ballooned by 23 percent since Bush took office. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, federal spending equaled 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, but by the end of the first Bush administration, government outlays had increased to 20.3 percent of the GDP. The annualized growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland-security outlays has more than doubled from 2.1 percent under Clinton to 4.8 percent under Bush.

Increased spending inevitably means increased taxes. Thus, despite President Bush's much vaunted tax cuts, Americans actually pay more in taxes today than they did during Bill Clinton's last year in office. The 2006 annual report from Americans for Tax Reform, titled "Cost of Government Day," sums up rather nicely the intrusive role played by Republican government in the lives of ordinary Americans. The report says that Americans had to work 86.5 days just to pay their federal taxes, as compared to 78.5 days in 2000 under Bill Clinton. In other words, the average American has worked 10.2 percent more for the federal government under George Bush than under Bill Clinton. When state and local taxes (controlled in the majority of places by Republicans) are added to federal taxes, Americans worked for the government eight hours a day, five days a week, from January 1 until July 12, meaning they worked full-time for the government for more than half the year. As Tom Feeney, a congressional Republican put it: "I remember growing up and reading in some school textbooks that if more than half your paycheck went to the government, then you were living in a socialist society." Just so, Mr. Feeney.

The profligate spending of President Bush and the Republican Congress is thoroughly consistent with current Republican principles. In fact, Bush's massively expensive prescription drug plan was based upon the very same model of a "conservative welfare state" as his failed attempt to reform Social Security, his support for school vouchers, and his tax cuts. As Dr. Thompson explains:

How does a conservative welfare state work? And how does it differ from a liberal welfare state? The neocons advocate a strong central government that provides welfare services to all people who need them while, at the same time, giving people choice about how they want those services delivered. That is what makes it "conservative," they argue. That is how the neocons reconcile Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Hayek and Trotsky.

In practice, this means that the coercive force of the state is used to provide for all of the people's needs--from universal social security to health and child care to education--but the people choose their own "private" social security accounts; they choose their own "private" health and child-care providers; and parents receive vouchers and choose which schools their children will attend. The choices, of course, are not the wide-open choices of a free market; rather, the people are permitted to choose from among a handful of pre-authorized providers. The neocons call this scheme a free-market reform of the welfare state.

As economic "supply-siders," the neocons occasionally support tax cuts--but not because they want to return to taxpayers money that is rightfully theirs. Instead, they advocate lowering the marginal tax rate because it will provide an incentive for people to work harder, earn more money, spur economic growth--and, thereby, generate more tax revenue that will be used to fund the conservative welfare state.

In other words, President Bush's occasional vaguely free-market rhetoric means nothing. The guiding ideal of his administration is that of total government control over our lives, albeit with some nominal choices sanctioned and regulated by that government. That's the kind of "freedom" that today's Republicans support -- and that TIA Daily routinely praises. It's worse than a farce: it's a dangerous illusion. Due to the apparent choices still available to them, Americans might not recognize the ever-tightening vise of government control until it's too powerful to effectively resist. To put the point somewhat crudely, the Republicans want Americans to indulge their power-lusting fantasy that their kinder, gentler form of rape is actually consensual sex, i.e. that their form of statism is actually freedom. It's not. If Objectivists can't see that, then America's prospects are very bleak.

Even more alarming, Republicans at the local, state, and federal levels are actively intertwining religion and politics. Republican candidates clearly display their Christian credentials in their campaign literature and declare their intention to govern by Christian principles. They claim that America was founded upon Christian principles -- and advocate a return thereto. They actively promote religion with state power and taxpayer dollars via faith-based initiatives. Many now openly reject the very idea of secular government, i.e. of separation of church and state. For example, Janet Rowland, the woman Colorado's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez selected as his running mate, openly advocates teaching creationism in public schools, wholeheartedly supports faith-based initiatives, and denies any Constitutional support for separation of church and state. She claims that "we should have the freedom OF religion, not the freedom FROM religion."

Based upon recent threads on Objectivist discussion boards, many Objectivists seem to think that the meaning of Christian government in America is limited to marginal issues like abortion, stem-cell research, evolution, euthanasia, and the like. That's completely false. Christianity is an all-embracing worldview: otherwordly, mystical, altruistic, and authoritarian. Its holy scriptures are explicitly and unequivocally opposed to all the values of this world: success, wealth, pleasure, science, justice, love, reason, pride, independence, and even long-range planning. It demands poverty, incompetence, misery, suffering, mercy, humility, submission, miracles, faith, and death. In recent decades, ever-growing millions of American Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, have embraced an ever-truer faith. They are committed to living in obedience to God. They are rediscovering the actual meaning of the teachings of the New Testament. They are rejecting the common sense worldliness that has long tempered American Christianity; they are embracing the blind emotionalism of faith. Ominously, they are raising an even more radical generation of Christians, teaching them to be "sons of God" rather than "children of the world," just as Augustine demanded. This new Christianity is a whole new animal.

Unsurprisingly, these millions of serious Christians want to live in a society that reflects and supports their Christian values. Also unsurprisingly, they are perfectly willing to use the coercive power of the state to achieve that end. They fight to implement and/or retain laws criminalizing homosexual sex, forbidding the co-habitation of unmarried couples, and requiring modest clothing. They support the Bush Administration's vigorous prosecution of obscenity and heavy fines for indecency in the name of "family values." They demand that religious nonsense (i.e. "intelligent design") be taught as science in public schools. They demand the removal of un-Christian books from public and school libraries. Significantly, serious Christians will not be satisfied with success on those limited issues. They will demand strict divorce laws, limit access to birth control, prosecute adultery, and demand religious instruction in schools. To set a proper moral example for the children, they will force everyone to live a Christian life. They will silence critics of religion, whether by actively denying the right to offend religious believers or by passively permitting the intimidation of speakers. (Sadly, that's not much of a stretch in light of Bush the Father's response to the fatwa Salman Rushdie and Bush the Son's response to the Muslim jihad against the Danish cartoons.) Meanwhile, these Christians will continue to support socialism for the simple reason that the New Testament commands it. It demands total collectivization of property and distribution according to need. In passage after passage, it inculcates vicious hostility to wealth, in part on the grounds that the wealthy exploit the poor. Marxism collapsed as an ideological force with the Soviet Union, but Christianity can and will give socialism a new lease on life. The utter misery created by Christian socialism will not be a reason to abandon it; Christianity is explicitly opposed to worldy values like happiness and prosperity. It lauds the silent endurance of suffering and misery as a virtue -- and Christians will force you to be virtuous.

The size and power of the evangelical Christian subculture in America should not be underestimated. It is millions strong, generously funded, and growing quickly, often below the radar of the mainstream media. (See the excerpt from the DIM Hypothesis course for details.) Moreover, consider the slew of large Christian organizations seeking to influence American politics, such as American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Christian Coalition of America, Pro-Family Law Center, and Family Research Council. All were created in the last 30 years. In addition, Christian conservatives are successfully infiltrating academia, filling the vacuum created by the ideological death of the left. (To head off a likely objection: Yes, Democrats are increasingly appealing to religion. However, they're doing so because they've seen the great success of the religious Republicans. For now, it's just opportunistic me-too-ism. If religious Republicans are rejected by the American people sooner rather than later, it will disappear. If not, Christian Democrats will gain power over their party and thereby eliminate the possibility of secular government.)

For those who understand the awesome power of philosophy in human life, the grave threat posed by this virulent new strain of Christianity is obvious. If America embraces the Christian government of the Republicans, the anti-reason and anti-life ideals Christianity will soon permeate every aspect of American life: politics, business, foreign policy, art, science, criminal and civil law, medicine, education, child-rearing, and more. Of all people, Objectivists ought to see that, precisely because Objectivism recognizes that philosophy is the fundamental driving force of human life and society. Yet many of Dr. Peikoff's critics dismiss the reinvigorated Christianity spreading throughout Republican Party as irrelevant or marginal, focusing only upon superficial issues of policy. They are utterly missing the point.

As if the prospect of Christian government in America isn't bad enough, the foreign policy of the Republicans is even more dangerous. The Bush Administration is not fighting a half-war against Islamic totalitarianism, as its Objectivist apologists claim. It is fighting an altruistic pseudo-war in which the lives of thousands of American soldiers and billions of taxpayer dollars are openly sacrificed for the good of the enemy.

To take the most telling example, President Bush has embroiled the American military in years of fruitless war in Iraq -- with no end in sight. On the present course, American can only leave Iraq in defeat, i.e. by withdrawing troops as the country sinks further into chaos. When that happens, Iraqis will be free to do as they please, namely to slaughter each other in religious and civil war culminating in the establishment of a repressive Islamic theocracy. That new Iraq will be far more dangerous to America than Saddam's regime ever was; it will be another Iran. Notably, Bush's lofty plan for Iraq diverges only slightly from that grim reality: he wants Iraqis to democratically vote themselves some new government, any new government. Since his basic goal is promote democracy rather than secure America, he's willing to accept an Islamic theocracy hostile to America, so long as Iraqis vote for it. That's what our soldiers in Iraq are fighting and dying to protect in President Bush's "war on terror." The fact that they have killed some jihadists is wholly irrelevant: militant Islamists are not in short supply in the Middle East.

America's bloody self-sacrifice in Iraq is the concrete reality of President Bush's "Forward Strategy of Freedom." According to that doctrine, the root cause of the "stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export" common to almost all countries in the Middle East is the absence of democracy. So the solution to Islamist terrorism is to allow Islamists the power of the vote. By implication, Islam is fundamentally unrelated to terrorism. As a "religion of peace," Islam cannot inspire or motivate terrorism, whatever the terrorists might say. Notably, Bush explicitly connected his Forward Strategy of Freedom to his own religious faith. He declared the spread of democracy to be America's "calling," a task to be accomplished with God's assistance and American sacrifice. Iraq was supposed to be the first major step: "the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." In fact, the only significant outcome has been an explosion of Islamism in Iraq.

President Bush's much-lauded Forward Strategy of Freedom has worked equally well elsewhere. The Bush Administration has vigorously promoted government by democratic vote in Muslim countries, even when that elevates violent Islamic totalitarians to power. Democracy brought Hamas to power over the Palestinian Authority, injected Hezbollah into the Lebanese government, and enshrined Islam as the law of the land in Afghanistan. Yet Bush continues to push for full-blown elections Egypt and Jordan, even though that would undermine the efforts of those semi-friendly countries to suppress militant Islam. By promoting democracy, President Bush is aiding our enemies, openly helping them gain political power that otherwise would have been out of reach. Yet he has not been deterred from his God-given mission by the ever-growing political power of the Islamists around the Middle East. Like any good Christian, he is impervious to the facts of this world.

The Bush Administration's foreign policy is influenced by Christianity in more than just this "love your enemies" plan for Islamists. In his recent talk, "Nothing Less Than Victory," Dr. John Lewis rightly argued that America ought to demand that the Muslim world wholly separate mosque and state. As in Shinto Japan after World War II, Muslims would be free to pray to Allah in their private lives, but Islam would be barred from public life and politics, including education. Muslims could rationalize that public secularism however they pleased -- or abandon Islam entirely. Such secular government in Muslim countries is required to eliminate their threat to the West. Yet President Bush is completely incapable of demanding anything of the sort. He does not believe in the separation of church and state; he's actively intermingling religion and politics in America. So he has no principled objection to states governed by Islamic law. He regards religion as a positive force in human life and in the state. He merely prefers Christianity to Islam.

In essence, by the very nature of his guiding philosophy of life, President Bush is incapable of defeating Islamic totalitarianism. He lacks the capacity to identify the enemy as Islam and to demand the separation of mosque and state. The result is not some half-good measures against Islamic totalitarianism. He's actively sacrificing American lives, dollars, and security in order promote Islamists to political power.

Even worse, by so doing while posing as a tough defender of America, the Bush Administration has substantially destroyed the critical ingredient in the battle for Western civilization against the Muslim barbarians, namely our will to fight. America's military might is awe-inspiring. If victory was the goal, America's military could probably crush Islamic totalitarianism in mere months, if not sooner. The only question is whether America has the moral confidence to use that awesome military power in the service of its own defense. In the weeks and months after 9/11, most Americans were eager to terminate the deadly ambitions of the Islamists. The Bush Administration bled dry that fighting spirit with years of war in Iraq, not to mention the ongoing appeasement of terrorists and the states that sponsor them. The cultural and political power of the Islamists in the Middle East has only grown since 9/11, so much so that many Americans now regard victory against the Islamists as impossible and self-defense as slow suicide. They do not think we can win; they aren't certain we deserve to win; they don't even know what "winning" would mean. That's obscene. In concrete terms, the loss of moral confidence means that America will not confront Iran or Saudi Arabia, even though they are the two ideological and financial fountainheads of terrorism against the West. Our government will continue to appease Iran with diplomacy while it openly pursues nuclear weapons. It will continue to pretend that Saudi Arabia is an ally.

Of course, I cannot imagine that the Democrats will wage anything like proper war against the Islamic totalitarians determined to destroy America. However, I can reasonably hope that their fearful cowardice will protect us from self-sacrificial wars. They will not sap America's will to fight, but perhaps even reinvigorate it by their inaction. For example, by pulling out of Somalia in disgrace, the Clinton Administration saved us from the self-sacrifice of Bush the Elder's humanitarian "war" to protect and serve a hostile population. Americans were not sapped of their will to fight thereby: most understood that we could and should have retaliated -- even though we shouldn't have embroiled ourselves in that mess of a country in the first place. In contrast, if Bush the Younger were in charge, American soldiers would probably still be dying senselessly in Somalia, just as in Iraq today, on the premise that Somalis really want freedom too.

The world would be a safer place today if President Bush refused to take any action in response to the 9/11 attacks. Fewer Islamists would be in positions of political power in the Middle East. Americans might be frustrated by the inaction rather than cowed by improvised roadside bombs.

Objectivists ought to recognize the total failure of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly in light of the slew of articles and lectures on the topic in recent years by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Brook. Yet many seem utterly blind to the disaster, focusing only upon insignificant concretes. The fact is that the Bush Administration is not fighting a war against Islamic totalitarianism: as a matter of deliberate policy, it is promoting their political and cultural domination of the Middle East. Yet that's the Administration that TIA Daily praises, supports, and urges you to vote for -- precisely on the grounds of its "war on terror." It's appalling.

Those are my basic reasons for regarding today's Republicans as far, far more dangerous than today's Democrats. The problem is not some few individual Republicans but the whole Republican Party, including its leadership. It must be told in no uncertain terms to reverse course. It will only do so if punished by voters for injecting religion into politics and promoting Islamism in the Middle East. Yes, the Democrats are awful. Yes, it will be painful to vote for them. However, the alternative of Christian government is so much more dangerous to our liberties.

The fundamental philosophic principles required to clearly understand the nature of our choice in this election are not self-evident. They can be difficult to understand, even for someone long familiar with Objectivism. An honest Objectivist could be confused by the flood of irrelevant concretes and misleading analyses, particularly if attentive to the seemingly Objectivist defenses of the Bush Administration published in almost every TIA Daily and commonly posted on HBL (based on what I saw during my trial membership this spring). However, I think such confusion is possible only to a person without anything like a firm grasp of the relevant philosophic principles. That's why I agree with Dr. Peikoff's claim that "anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life--which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world." Sadly, that assessment has been confirmed by the flurry of concrete-bound objections to Dr. Peikoff's statement posted on various Objectivist forums. More particularly, most critics of Dr. Peikoff dismiss as insignificant (or even deny) the rise of a new form of Christianity among millions of Americans over the last three decades. They treat Christianity as relevant to little more than birth and death, i.e. to abortion and euthanasia, even though millions of Christians are determined to live by the actual teachings of the New Testament. They claim that America's sense of life makes theocracy impossible, as if the sense of life of a nation is independent of and impervious to massive changes in explicit philosophy. In essence, they do not recognize that Christianity is an all-encompassing philosophy with the power to drag America into a second Dark Ages if unchecked. In other words, they fail to grasp "the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life."

In response to Dr. Peikoff's claim, some argue that a person's vote reveals nothing about his understanding of Objectivism. In fact, a person's concrete actions often do reveal failures of understanding--particularly when the choices are stark. An Objectivist who occasionally shoplifts doesn't understand property rights (and more); an Objectivist who stumps for the Libertarian Party doesn't understand the role of fundamental philosophy in politics (and more); an Objectivist who admires Kant's philosophy doesn't understand much of anything. Similarly, an Objectivist who thinks that today's Republicans are less evil or as evil as today's Democrats fails to grasp the fundamental ideological commitments of the Republicans and the real life meaning thereof, particularly the totalistic crushing oppression of life in a Christian culture and under Christian government.

Moreover, I'm glad that Dr. Peikoff was so blunt, even though some were insulted. Many Objectivists needed to hear those shocking words. They needed to be told in no uncertain terms by the foremost expert on Objectivism that their understanding of the philosophy is seriously deficient. If Dr. Peikoff had stated his views in less stark terms, most pro-Republican Objectivists would have dismissed them without much consideration. Others would have remained oblivious to the enormous differences underlying the positions advocated by Yaron Brook, John Lewis, Craig Biddle, and Leonard Peikoff on one hand and Robert Tracinksi, Jack Wakeland, and Harry Binswanger (at least in 2004) on the other. A wake-up call was needed. Yes, it's blaring -- probably because the softer alarms weren't often heeded.

Obviously, a person who fails to properly understand Objectivism is not thereby dishonest or immoral. However, some of Dr. Peikoff's most vehement critics have interpreted him as saying just that -- wrongly, I think. Dr. Peikoff wrote:

Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because "both are bad."

In my judgment, that claim of immorality presumes that a person understands the choice in question basically as stated, i.e. between an ever-weaker killer and an ever-stronger killer. If a person fails to understand that despite serious and honest effort, then his failure to vote for the Democrats would not be a moral failing, although still a serious mistake. More generally, the identification of a certain act as immoral doesn't imply that everyone performing it is immoral. For example, it's immoral for a husband to lie to his wife to spare her feelings, but if he's accepted the standard view of honesty, he might reasonably think that some "white lies" are proper. Such a husband has done something wrong by lying, even though he's not acted immorally in the sense of evading his knowledge. Hopefully, someone will tell him that he's doing wrong, that lying to his wife is immoral, and that he doesn't understand honesty. That's what Dr. Peikoff has done for Objectivists. (Of course, some pro-Republicans Objectivists are probably dishonest in their views. However, my point is simply that Dr. Peikoff didn't say that all were.)

Finally, I must comment upon some of the vicious attacks on Dr. Peikoff posted to the ObjectivismOnline and The Forum threads on his statement. To be blunt, I'm appalled by them, particularly by the many accusations of intimidation, bullying, dogmatism, and the like. (For example, Jack Wakeland began this post with "Thank you, [name omitted], for so quickly standing up to Dr. Peikoff's attempt to bully.") Such charges are absurd: a person does not dogmatically impose himself upon anyone else by expressing strong epistemological and moral judgments. (That's David Kelley's "tolerationist" view; it's not Objectivism.) Dr. Peikoff is certainly not obliged to sugarcoat his negative judgments for the sake of spineless cowards fearful of his disapproval, particularly not on such weighty issues like the fate of America.

More generally, Dr. Peikoff deserves far better treatment from Objectivists than he's received of late. Apart from Ayn Rand, he's undoubtedly the most knowledgeable and accomplished Objectivist philosopher -- by far. No one else could have so skillfully and clearly systematized Objectivism as he did in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. For that feat alone, he deserves the deep respect and admiration of Objectivists. In action, such respect means that Objectivists ought to give his arguments careful attention and scrutiny, even if ultimately disagreeing with them. That's hardly too much to ask. However, that's not happened in this debate. Dr. Peikoff has been attacked in the very same terms as I often heard in TOC circles, i.e. with the same casual disregard for facts and the same specious arguments about intimidation. Also like at TOC, many people have dismissed his arguments as absurd without any substantial effort to understand them. That's inexcusable.

To be perfectly clear, I will not tolerate any such attacks upon Dr. Peikoff in the comments on this post. Disagreement is fine, but I want nothing to do with anyone who treats him with the dismissive contempt I've seen elsewhere. My admiration for Dr. Peikoff and his accomplishments means something to me, something serious and important. So those supposed Objectivists who cannot treat Dr. Peikoff with some minimal respect are kindly invited in advance to remain silent.

Wear A Gasmask And Vote Republican

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Every two years I go through this agony. I ask myself, “Have the Republicans finally deteriorated so much that I should not vote for them? Should I withhold my vote? Should I finally vote for (shudder) a Democrat?” This year’s agonizing has been worse than ever. The Republicans have become a party that stands for big government – but not quite as big as the Democrats want – and appeasing the enemy – but not quite as much as the Democrats want. The Republican motto should be, “Me too, kind of.”

Objectivists are divided over which party is the lesser of two evils. Leonard Peikoff leads the faction voting Democrat, which includes Diana Hsieh, Trey Givens, Mike at The Primacy of Awesome, David Landy and others. Robert Tracinski leads the faction voting Republican, which includes Oakes, Gus Van Horn and others. Nicholas Provenzo doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.

Which party will do the least damage to individual rights and buy America time as the philosophy of Ayn Rand spreads through our culture? Although the growth of the religious right is ominous, the answer is still the Republican Party. The Democrats have been taken over by the New Left and have been radicalized. The Republicans have great potential for destroying liberty, but the Democrats are actually destroying it today.

Our campaign to spread Objectivism needs the right to free speech more than anything. The Democrats are the worst threat to this right. Political correctness, campus speech codes and thuggish attempts to shut up free speech are old news on the left.

In September prominent Democrats sent a letter to ABC that was a veiled threat to take away their broadcasting license if ABC did not change the criticisms of Democrats in its movie, “The Path to 911.” Neal Boortz fears the Democrats will use the Fairness Doctrine against right-wing talk radio if Air America fails. The religious right has the potential to do great harm to free speech someday. Democrats use the threat of government force to shut up speech they oppose today, right now.

Look at free speech in the socialist states of the West and you see where the Democrats would take us were they not restrained by the Constitution and the Republican Party. In Canada, a shipment of pamphlets from the Ayn Rand Institute was stopped by Canadian customs and held for three days on suspicion of being “hate speech.” In Britain you can be arrested for racism.

The Democrats threaten freedom in many areas. They are happy to subvert free elections to gain power. In 2000 the Democrats had telemarketers calling Floridians on the afternoon of election day in an attempt to whip up public concern about the fairness of the election. By the evening they had over 70 lawyers flying into Florida. This all indicates that they had planned in advance to contest the Florida election in court.

The Democrats have begun using mob violence to affect elections.

From John Fund in 2004:

Last week, in Orlando, Fla., approximately 60 union protestors stormed and ransacked the local Bush-Cheney headquarters causing considerable damage and injuring one campaign staffer, who suffered a broken wrist.

…

Orlando's fracas was mirrored in Miami, where police reported that more than 100 union protestors stormed the Bush-Cheney office and shoved volunteers aside. No one was charged because most of the protestors left before the police arrived. In
Tampa, about 35 protestors filled the local GOP office and intimidated the elderly volunteers working there.

The AFL-CIO took credit on its Web site for similar demonstrations--apparently all coordinated--in Independence, Mo., Kansas City, Mo., Dearborn, Mich., St. Paul, Minn., and West Allis, Wis. In what could be a related incident, the Bush-Cheney office in Knoxville, Tenn., had its plate-glass windows shattered by gunfire on Tuesday morning before volunteers showed up for work. Another Republican office, in Seattle, was broken into and had computer files stolen.

Voting fraud by Democrats is an increasing problem.

From John Fund:

A former Democratic congressman gave me this explanation of why voting irregularities more often crop up in his party's back yard: "When many Republicans lose an election, they go back into what they call the private sector. When many Democrats lose an election, they lose power and money. They need to eat, and people will do an awful lot in order to eat."

And:

Why is such activity proliferating? It flows from the success of Democratic lawmakers in pushing aside clear, orderly, and rigorous voting procedures in favor of elastic and "inclusive" election rules that invite manipulation. A machine for corruption is the 1993 "Motor Voter Act," the first bill that President Clinton signed. The law requires government officials to allow anyone who renews a driver's license or applies for welfare or unemployment to register to vote on the spot, without showing ID or proof of citizenship. It also allows ID-free registration by mail. The law also makes it hard to purge voting lists of those who've died or moved. All this makes vote fraud a cinch, almost as easy as when Tammany Hall handed out pre-marked ballots.

When Democrats let the truth slip out, their radical collectivism shows. Senator Kennedy made this now infamous statement while lauding the New England Patriots:

At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good.

Democrat think tanks recently advocated “common good” for the party’s new slogan. (The staleness of the phrase supports Dr. Peikoff’s argument that the left is a spent ideological force. They have no new ideas.)

The Democrats show a cynical contempt for the truth. Bill Clinton’s presidency was an eight-year exercise in lying, distorting and evading. Since the advent of Borking the Democrats have increasingly resorted to character assassination and scandal-mongering to defeat their opponents; they do it far more than the Republicans. And when a Republican gets mired in scandal, he is thrown overboard. The Democrats rally around their people in trouble, regardless of the facts; power is more important to them than truth or ethical standards.

The Democrats believe that the end of power justifies any means necessary to attain it.

The Democrats oppose any assertion of American force abroad, even if it is in self-defense, unless the mission is purely altruistic as it was in the Balkans. The anti-Americanism of the radical left has infected the Democrat Party.

Finally, the Democrats want outright socialism on the fast track. Hillary Clinton attempted to make health care a fascist nightmare in 1993. The Democrats are NEVER for smaller government. They want the state to control every aspect of the economy.

To sum up these points, the Democrats:

1) oppose free speech
2) undermine free elections
3) oppose individualism
4) show contempt for the truth
5) believe the end justifies the means
6) are anti-American
7) are socialists

These traits are all aspects of totalitarianism. Yes, the religious right has the potential to destroy freedom in America, but the Democrats are actually doing it today.

You’ll notice that my argument is not for the Republicans, but against the Democrats. This is the dismal state of American politics today: the two major parties really are two evils. Many individual Republicans show aspects of the seven traits of totalitarianism outlined above. (Many politicians from the days of ancient Greece on have lied and smeared their opponents.) Both parties are taking us toward the abyss; the Republicans are jogging there; the Democrats are sprinting.

Some argue that the gridlock of divided power is ideal, therefore we should have a Democrat Congress with our Republican President. Gridlock worked superbly with a Democrat President and a Republican Congress, but I don’t think a Democrat Congress will fight Republican spending. They will only obstruct the war and mire Bush in hearings.

A vote cast today is not about what will happen in the long run; it is about what will happen in the next two, four or six years. Right now the Democrats are so far gone that it is best they do not control power in Washington, D.C. We need freedom NOW in order to spread Objectivism. In the long run, if we fail, then it will not matter which party takes us to the abyss of dictatorship.

Objectivists and Politics

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

Yes, I've read Leonard Peikoff's latest on the election, and I've read Robert W. Tracinski's sundry articles on it as well. I side with Peikoff on his larger point about the nature of the right these days, but I do not support the manner which he used to make his argument, which was weak at best. The parties do a lot to camouflage their agendas, and it does not follow that a person is ignorant of the role of philosophy in man's life to be taken in by it—but only to a point.

Getting that out of the way, I do not understand why some Objectivists get tied up in knots over general elections. If we had a parliamentary system of government, it would pay to care about elections, if only to place a dissenting voice in the government. But under our "winner take all" system, our vote is only worth the chance that it can swing an election. In most cases, that isn't much of a chance.

Furthermore, there will always be two parties in our system, and until we grow our numbers sufficient to set the national agenda, these parties will be unworthy of much support. We deserve a rational government--and nothing less, and thus I refuse to tolerate the current machinations of partisans from either party. If they want to support me on a single-issue project, fine, and if they propose a rational policy, I'll support it in turn--but nothing more.

And this is not to say that there aren't important evaluations that need to be made about which forces in our culture are the more present threat--but only as a means to determine what topics we talk about when we offer Objectivism as the alternative. My view is that while the religious pitchmen who come to my door look more like CEO's and less like they live under a bridge (in contrast to many of the leftists I run into), they are the deeper threat. If the skeptic-bound, nihilistic left seeks to hijack science in the name of environmentalism, the religious-bound right seeks to abandon it outright whenever it infringes upon its mystical creed--and it does so under the ostensive mantel of individualism, laissez-faire and concern for morality. That's unacceptable. It is taking away people who should side with us.

Lastly, I'll simply note my disagreement with Objectivists who have criticized efforts to confront the courts. I think the courts are the one branch of government where presenting Objectivist ideas creates a practical voice of dissent--given a consistent stream of arguments on the legal questions of the day. In my experience, there's no negative side to presenting principled arguments before a serious forum.

Anarcho-Tyranny

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

This is slightly old news that managed to slip under my radar, but hearing about it right after encountering a description of Britain's increasingly Orwellian method of rationing medical care does make me wonder whether we should start calling the place "Airstrip One".

In any event, it seems that a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl was recently arrested (HT: What Would Charles Martel Do?) for the heinous crime of asking to be transferred during a group activity in the classroom to -- gasp! -- a group of students who -- brace yourselves -- speak English!

The Brussels Journal quotes The Daily Mail:

A teenage schoolgirl was arrested by police for racism after refusing to sit with a group of Asian students because some of them did not speak English. Codie Stott's family claim she was forced to spend three-and-a-half hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers. According to Codie, the five -- four boys and a girl -- then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher.

"I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'." Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest. "They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewellery, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken," said Codie. "It was awful."

[...] Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said: [...] "A lot of these arrests don't result in prosecutions -- the aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say."

Whelan hits the nail on the head, but it's even worse than that. Quite a while back, I noted that "hate crime" legislation in America penalizes individuals for their beliefs to the extent that it assesses additional penalties for actual crimes based upon the motivation for these deeds. This is even worse. In Britain, people can apparently be charged for the "thought crime" itself, without even having to commit a real crime as a pretext for doing time for their beliefs! Yes. The goal is certainly self-censorship, but the groundwork for outright government censorship has already been laid through precedents like this.

The Brussels Journal ends by making the following excellent point.

... The less control the authorities have with Muslims, the more control they want to exercise over non-Muslims. This strange mix of powerful censorship of public debate, yet little control over public law and order, has by some been labeled anarcho-tyranny. The reason why European authorities are becoming increasingly totalitarian in their censorship efforts is to conceal the fact that they are no longer willing or able to uphold even the most basic security of their citizenry. [italics added]

This is almost completely on the mark, although it does miss the original motivation for the censorship: the doctrine of multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are equally good. To quash criticism of other cultures -- even criticism which exists in the imagination of some minor functionary upon hearing a schoolgirl's request to be able to understand her classmates -- is the real goal of this censorship. That such censorship can also hide the ugly results of implementing this doctrine just happens to serve the purpose of exempting this doctrine from objective evaluation.

Government is the only institution in Western society that can legally wield force -- the delegated retaliatory force of its citizens. For that force to be used to prevent these citizens from stating the obvious about members of other cultures (including when some of them pose an objective threat to their well-being) is to hand our delegated power of self-defense directly over to those who would do us harm. As the term "anarcho-tyranny" implies, this combines the worst of the worlds of anarchy and of tyranny.

Europe is in serious trouble.

-- CAV

The Media's Mistreatment of Jeff Skilling

Irvine, CA--Upon hearing the news that former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 years, most Americans, trusting the newspaper articles and books they have read on Enron, think that justice has been served. But, said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "Jeff Skilling has not gotten justice, and the media bear a major portion of the blame.

"Few Americans know that during Skilling's trial, the prosecution came nowhere near proving its central allegation that Jeff Skilling engineered a conspiracy to defraud investors. Few know that Skilling, upon leaving Enron five months before its collapse, destroyed no documents, nor did anything else resembling a criminal cover-up. Few know that the prosecution, unable to prove a conspiracy, spent huge swaths of the trial taking pot-shots at Skilling with issues not even mentioned in the indictment, such as the failure of Skilling, a multi-millionaire many times over, to disclose a failed $50,000 investment to Enron's board.

"The media's misportrayal of the case against Skilling long predates the trial. Ever since the fall of Enron, most of the media have treated as fact every conceivable smear against Skilling made by ax-grinding prosecutors or ex-Enron employees, while treating as absurd Skilling's claim that he neither engineered a conspiracy nor lied to investors.

"There can be no doubt that the media's treatment of Skilling contributed to his conviction for a phantom conspiracy--and to the outrageous 24-year sentence that he has now received. And the mistreatment of Skilling is part of a broader trend: the trend of treating businessmen as guilty until proven innocent. Our journalists and intellectuals, accepting the idea that the pursuit of profit is morally tainted, assume that whenever anything goes wrong in business, it is the result of crooked behavior by greedy, rich CEOs--and slant their coverage accordingly. This practice is putting numerous innocent men in jail, and instilling terror throughout corporate America.

"During Skilling's appeal, let us call for the media to start treating Skilling--and all businessmen--fairly."

Moral Minority

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

Glenn Reynolds points to an interesting book, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, by Brooke Allen, about the religious views and practices of six of our Founding Fathers. He also points to two interesting reactions to the book.

George Will gives the book a mostly favorable review, although he does note that the author -- as one might expect of many of today's nominally secular intellectuals -- tends to do a little "baptizing" of her own.

Not since the medieval church baptized, as it were, Aristotle as some sort of early -- very early -- church father has there been an intellectual hijacking as audacious as the attempt to present America's principal founders as devout Christians. Such an attempt is now in high gear among people who argue that the founders were kindred spirits with today's evangelicals, and that they founded a "Christian nation."

This irritates Brooke Allen, an author and critic who has distilled her annoyance into "Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers." It is a wonderfully high-spirited and informative polemic that, as polemics often do, occasionally goes too far. Her thesis is that the six most important founders -- Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton -- subscribed, in different ways, to the watery and undemanding Enlightenment faith called deism. That doctrine appealed to rationalists by being explanatory but not inciting: it made the universe intelligible without arousing dangerous zeal.

...

In a grating anachronism unworthy of her serious argument, she calls the founders "the very prototypes, in fact, of the East Coast intellectuals we are always being warned against by today's religious right." (Madison, an NPR listener? Maybe not.) ...

Forget NPR. How 'bout fighting a war against our European betters? That aspect of the book sounds irritating, but at least I've been warned.

Will is mostly spot-on, although he fails to credit sufficiently the realization (often from cruel experience) among the Christians (nominal and otherwise) of early America that religious persecution is something the government can prevent only by not being the agent of any particular faith. The opposite, the placing of force at the disposal of religious authorities is one of the best ways to make the unverifiability of religious dogma particularly dangerous. The Founding Fathers, religious or not, understood this point well. Hence Thomas Jefferson's insistence on a wall between church and state. And adoption of same by his colleagues.

But what I found even more interesting was the kind of argument presented by Michael and Jana Novak in reaction to the idea that more than one of our Founding Fathers might not have been Christians. They do offer good evidence that at minimum many were not simply just Deists. And they do raise many good points. But I laughed when they had to throw in the towel and agree with another author that Thomas Jefferson, the quintessential Founding Father, was an "outlier".

The Novaks write a piece that, again, brings up several good points, but its lynchpin is the following very interesting bit of context-dropping:

Beyond that, one must consider the full implications of Allen's fundamental thesis, as stated by Will: This tiny minority of six expressed a very different set of beliefs privately from those they showed in public. The usual term for that species of action is hypocrisy. Its ingredients are a lack of candor, if not outright dishonesty, and an exceedingly low sense of honor. One has only to express this implication to grasp either its moral repulsiveness or its implausibility. For George Washington, it is out of the question. [bold added]

Would the Novaks (or anyone else), if they consistently followed the code of self-sacrifice called for by their own religion, be nearly as well-off materially, as they are now? I doubt it. Would they, were religious education as prevalent now as it apparently was in Massachussetts in John Adams' day, even belong to their present sect? And by what standard does one religion tolerate the existence of another? And do any such faiths withstand encounters with nontolerant ones like Islam? Religion demands that its followers guide their lives by following arbitrary (and often, astoundingly ridiculous) dictates. Propriety forbids that I not inquire about whether these authors regard their own sexual conduct as moral. Nonethless, I will note that propriety has never stopped religious zealots from passing out orders on such a sacred and personal matter. Quick! Ask a Shaker -- before they die out!

The arbitrary dictates of religion are precisely the opposite of how man, the rational animal, must guide his life. Consequently, hypocrisy is a direct consequence of the religious moral code. The Novaks have no business calling anyone on that.

Furthermore, it is interesting that the Novaks point to the following passage from a letter he wrote to the President of Yale as "evidence" that Benjamin Franklin took religion seriously.

I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals, and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England some doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.

Is this second paragraph confidence on Franklin's part, as the Novaks claim, that he "will meet Jesus Christ after death, to see the evidence for [himself]"? Or is this a great way to get a pest off of one's case? Or both? I don't know, but if I recall my own religious training correctly, to believe all the more sincerely because something is ridiculous is a far greater badge of honor in religion than to demand evidence.

Franklin's opening credo to the contrary, his questioning approach is essentially different than the truly religious approach. That stuff flies over the heads of religionists all the time -- at least when they don't have the apparatus of the state at their disposal....

In their first paragraph, the Novaks, mischaracterize and damn as hypocrisy the kind of attitudes and behavior that rational men transitioning away from religion before their time (and having to navigate a more religious society) would almost inevitably display. On the other hand, the Novaks were correct about our age being more "secular" in one sense, only they used the wrong word. "Profane" or "nihilistic" would have been far better. Given that philosophy was not yet developed enough to provide a better alternative, our Founders appear to have relied upon reason in their daily lives. But they also valued moral guidance and had an appreciation for the sublime. I don't damn them for having to resort to religion for those things. And I do not regard that as hypocrisy in any meaningful sense. They were not, after all, trying to perpetuate a fraud. They were, to the extent they did not take orders from zealots, escaping from one.

The question of what religious beliefs were professed by the Founding Fathers and what observances they made are interesting and important, but of far greater import is how they approached knowledge. Did they tend to blindly accept things on faith or were they fundamentally rational? This is the really important question.

And it is in that regard that the Founders resemble neither the theocrats nor the followers of the liberal faith of today.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected typos and made some clarifications.

Physicians as "Little Dictators"

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

The Media's Mistreatment of Jeff Skilling

Irvine, CA--Upon hearing the news that former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 years, most Americans, trusting the newspaper articles and books they have read on Enron, think that justice has been served. But, said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "Jeff Skilling has not gotten justice, and the media bear a major portion of the blame.

"Few Americans know that during Skilling's trial, the prosecution came nowhere near proving its central allegation that Jeff Skilling engineered a conspiracy to defraud investors. Few know that Skilling, upon leaving Enron five months before its collapse, destroyed no documents, nor did anything else resembling a criminal cover-up. Few know that the prosecution, unable to prove a conspiracy, spent huge swaths of the trial taking pot-shots at Skilling with issues not even mentioned in the indictment, such as the failure of Skilling, a multi-millionaire many times over, to disclose a failed $50,000 investment to Enron's board.

"The media's misportrayal of the case against Skilling long predates the trial. Ever since the fall of Enron, most of the media have treated as fact every conceivable smear against Skilling made by ax-grinding prosecutors or ex-Enron employees, while treating as absurd Skilling's claim that he neither engineered a conspiracy nor lied to investors.

"There can be no doubt that the media's treatment of Skilling contributed to his conviction for a phantom conspiracy--and to the outrageous 24-year sentence that he has now received. And the mistreatment of Skilling is part of a broader trend: the trend of treating businessmen as guilty until proven innocent. Our journalists and intellectuals, accepting the idea that the pursuit of profit is morally tainted, assume that whenever anything goes wrong in business, it is the result of crooked behavior by greedy, rich CEOs--and slant their coverage accordingly. This practice is putting numerous innocent men in jail, and instilling terror throughout corporate America.

"During Skilling's appeal, let us call for the media to start treating Skilling--and all businessmen--fairly."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute.

Totally Unjustified Antitrust Suit of the Day, No. 1

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

By definition, every antitrust suit is unjustified. By criminalizing the actions of a businessman in the free market, the antitrust laws equate everyday enterprise with outright coercion. That said, some antitrust suits are more unjustified than others. Take this one for example:

A Russian hockey club filed an antitrust lawsuit Thursday against the NHL and the Pittsburgh Penguins, saying rookie Evgeni Malkin shouldn't be allowed to play in the league because he remains under contract in his native country.

The Metallurg Magnitogorsk hockey club, which filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also demanded unspecified damages from the NHL and the Penguins over Malkin's deal to jump teams this summer. [AP via the St. Petersburg Times]

If the Russian hockey club has a legal case, why isn't it against Evgeni Malkin, for alleged breach of contract, rather than against the NHL and the Penguins for "restraint of trade" under antitrust?

Rachel Corrie--the play

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


Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout writes about "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," Alan Rickman's play about the 23-year-old left-wing activist who was run over by an Israeli Army bulldozer in 2003. Teachout leads his article with the trenchant observation that "Politics makes artists stupid." While there is a certain truth to his claim, a more accurate observation would be that spate of obnoxious political tracts in art is more the fault of the artist's philosophy than of his politics, and here Rickman's play is a prime example. In fact, Teachout almost says as much when he writes:

"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," [is] a scrappy, one-sided monologue consisting of nothing but the fugitive observations of a young woman who, like so many idealists, treated her emotions as facts. "I am disappointed," she declares, "that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world." To mistake such jejune disillusion for profundity and turn it into the climax of a full-length play is an act of piety, not artistry. [emphasis added]

Indeed. When a person (or an artist) enshrines emotions as self-evident primaries, the end result is always irrational. Rachel Corrie was an ignorant young woman who stood for a reprehensible cause. Who cares how she "felt" about it.

I argue that if Rickman would have been willing to turn the tables on Corrie and dramatize just how and why she developed the core ideas that led her to so foolishly impale herself upon the blade of an Israeli bulldozer, that might have made for interesting drama. Corrie was a self-conscripted pawn in a far larger war, and the ideas behind it have yet to be explored artistically. Such is the shame of the art world today, for in the massive conflict of civilizations, all it elects to offer us is some vapid activist's personal diaries.

Quick Roundup 112

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

Light Blogging Possible

From now until Wednesday, I will be busy enough that I may post less regularly than usual.

Google Ads

I have briefly fooled around with the ad filter for Google Ads, but have so far found (incorrectly, I hope) that the only way to be selective with the ads is to blacklist individual URLs. It also takes far longer than the advertised four hours for such ads to disappear.

Given the kind of ads I have been drawing as pro-war blogger, this filtering strategy strikes me as being about as effective as -- oh, I don't know -- treating every single terrorist as if he were a lone criminal rather than an enemy combatant in the service of a death cult.

I have only two questions at this point: (1) Why would any of my regulars -- besides the occasional blogger in need of material -- click on any of these ads? (2) How useful is this to me as a someone who wants to generate income?

I don't expect to agree with every ad that gets placed here, but this is a little ridiculous.... I will either find a better way to filter or I will drop Google Ads.

Karl Marx wins "Greatest Philosopher" at the Beeb.

Reader Apollo notes, "The BBC decided to do the 'Greatest Philosopher in our Time Vote'. And of course Ayn Rand wasn't even mentioned, and even worse Aristotle wasn't number one." [link added] Unfortunately, given the cultural climate of Europe, I find neither the omission nor the final result too surprising.

Ain't Nothin' on Mine!

After asking, "What's on your iPod?" Craig Ceely notes a strange coincidence: The Beirut Bombing and the introduction of the iPod share an anniversary.

My wife got me an iPod for my birthday recently. And then she exchanged it for a better one she found at the same price. The fun will begin Thursday, when I have some time to iron out a kink and figure out which software is best for making it talk to my Linux computer!

Greg Packer

Somehow, I don't think that Ayn Rand was thinking about this guy when she used the colloquialism "the man in the street" in some of her writings and lectures.

He's not just another face in the crowd at concerts, book signings, and sporting events. Somehow, over the course of 10 years, one man has managed to become the media's go-to guy, quoted more than 100 times in various publications, including several prominent newspapers. Greg Packer is the "man on the street."

Packer, 40, of Huntington, N.Y., arrives early to media events. His latest accomplishment: being 15th in line in Washington, D.C., to pay his respects to former President Ronald Reagan. "I'm the best person to come to -- anywhere," says Packer. "I always give time, and I always have an answer."

While Packer says "honesty is very important to me," he does admit that about 5% of the time, "I'm making stuff up to get in the paper." A Boston newspaper, for example, quoted him as saying he had a ticket for the 1999 baseball All-Star Game there when he really didn't.

For awhile, this guy was getting into the papers so often that the Associated Press put out a memo for its reporters to avoid him! And yet he still gets in!

Of course, if I were Jackie Harvey, I'd probably be thrilled that someone from Noodle Food is doing so well at getting an Objectivist perspective out to the popular media.

Your contribution has been matched by: Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan

Via IMAO, there is a link to some Democrat blogger who first gets wildly paranoid about whether the donation matching site for the Democratic Party has been hijacked. Then he and his pals suddenly talk tough about crime. Then he tells other potential pranksters exactly how to do the same thing!

Now if you click that link, you'll see that ANYONE is able to select an amount and leave a message for the donor that they will be matched with. This will allow two grassroots donors to come together and possibly build a lasting relationship via their donations. This is a GREAT idea, that's why I wanted to be a part of it. BUT what happens is that as the person making this pledge, I don't have to submit a credit card or be verified in ANY WAY. Let me say that again, the person making the pledge is not verified in ANY WAY! That person also doesn't have to put money in upfront, so they can submit cute messages like I got and suffer nothing. This is a gaping hole in the plan and allows other donors to get these stupid messages and defeat the purpose of the matching program.

Yeah. No verification. Sort like the way you birds would have it at the polls on Election Day!

This was a surprise? Yeah. Yeah. I know.

-- CAV

Pipes: Op-Eds vs. Bullets

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

Two Objectivists on the Election

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

Via Noumenal Self and The Primacy of Awesome comes Leonard Peikoff's take (apparently from a recent Q&A) on the upcoming elections. Because there does not appear to be a permanent link (and it is relatively short anyway), I will quote it in its entirety, minus the question.

How you cast your vote in the coming election is important, even if the two parties are both rotten. In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.

Socialism -- a fad of the last few centuries -- has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast -- the destroyer of man since time immemorial -- is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government.

Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because "both are bad."

The survival of this country will not be determined by the degree to which the government, simply by inertia, imposes taxes, entitlements, controls, etc., although such impositions will be harmful (and all of them and worse will be embraced or pioneered by conservatives, as Bush has shown). What does determine the survival of this country is not political concretes, but fundamental philosophy. And in this area the only real threat to the country now, the only political evil comparable to or even greater than the threat once posed by Soviet Communism, is religion and the Party which is its home and sponsor.

The most urgent political task now is to topple the Republicans from power, if possible in the House and the Senate. This entails voting consistently Democratic, even if the opponent is a "good" Republican.

In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life -- which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.

If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the U.S. toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner.

With the approach of another election, we once again see a difference of opinion between major Objectivist intellectuals. Robert Tracinski, in a much longer article, recently discussed his initial leaning in the same direction, followed by his settling on the opposite conclusion -- to vote for the Republicans.

[I]f you want to have a debate over how to fight and win the War on Terrorism, you'll have to have it within the right. The left contributes nothing but proposals for surrender, appeasement, and passivity. As far as the war is concerned, that "D" next to a candidate's name on the ballot stands for "defeat."

A loss for the Democratic Party in November's election would be a crushing blow. If they lose when every short-term political trend was in their favor, everyone will see it as a public repudiation of the Democratic Party. I advocate this outcome, not because I think it will cause soul-searching and a change of policies within the left -- though that may well be the short-term result -- but simply because the decay of the left is the long-term trend of the past three decades, and we should do everything we can to hasten it.

The more the left fades from the scene, the more the national political debate will be a debate within the right. The American system is not friendly to monolithic one-party rule. The moment one party begins to dominate, it tends to split apart along its internal fault lines. The more the Republicans dominate American politics, therefore, the more intensely they will debate among themselves -- precisely the kinds of debates I have described above.

I can't guarantee that such a debate would produce the best result -- I would like to see the emergence of a small-government, pro-immigration, pro-war, secular right -- but I can guarantee that such a debate would be more interesting and much more productive than the debate we're having with the left right now. [bold added]

Each man makes very good points, although I disagree with Peikoff that "anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life".

Why? First, the manner in which electoral results affect the nation's public debate is a complicated topic. As things currently stand -- with small government and religious conservatives allied against the socialists -- each election ends up being exactly the kind of "choice" Peikoff describes. But what if the left were finally quashed in this election? Although a political realignment might also happen through the left joining forces with the religious right (e.g., via the environmentalist agenda) I think Tracinski has a good point.

Second, there is the only slightly less complicated matter of how we should best recover from our poor prosecution, so far, of the war. I do not simply hate the left blindly. I have noticed that they have no interest in fighting the current war at all and -- far worse -- I fear what kinds of restrictions they would quickly impose on freedom of speech if they ever were to regain power. No freedom of speech coupled with a huge overdose of multiculturalism will also put a "rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer" in charge. It will just be the other rotten killer: Islam rather than evangelical Christianity. The left in power again would manage to degrade our position in this war no matter where we started.

Even aside from that, I am not so sure that kicking the Republicans out will necessarily slow down efforts to inject religion into government -- because the left has shown that it is not above pandering to religionists, including the Christians they allegedly hate. (Where were Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson during the Schiavo debacle? Hint: Not defending Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo's previous agreement to "pull the plug" or the scientific evidence in the case or the rule of law.) At present, the religious right are allied with small government conservatives and the left is trying to court the religious right. We can continue having three factions, two of which compete to make the religionists the kingmakers. Or we can knock out the left and have two clearly opposing factions. I would far prefer the latter scenario, if at all possible.

In addition, I see the left as tending towards totalitarianism if in power (See "restrictions" above.) and -- as we saw in numerous incidents of violence and vandalism in the last presidential election -- irrational to the point of violence under the right conditions.

It is interesting that I learned of the Peikoff piece today since two postings at Sister Todjah, a conservative blog, had me thinking about just these issues. First, there is the matter of religious conservatives being unreliable allies of limited government, which Sister tells you in her "About" entry:

I've never looked back nor regretted my change from liberal to conservative, even when my party has sometimes not acted conservative - but that mostly seems to be happening on fiscal matters.

So the goals of the socialists are, apparently, tolerable so long as the government, say, forces our kids to pray in public schools (rather than abolishing them). Great.

But then we also have this (via Glenn Reynolds), which Sister quotes from The Huffington Post:

But whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House's freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don't win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets. [formatting removed, bold added]

And this is what they're like without fangs....

This is a step beyond Al Gore's attempt to steal the 2000 election and reminds me of the following quote of Ayn Rand's that I dredged up when the loser -- a leftist -- of Mexico's recent presidential election did just that.

The only power of a mob, as against an individual, is greater muscular strength -- i.e., plain, brute physical force. The attempt to solve social problems by means of physical force is what a civilized society is established to prevent. The advocates of mass civil disobedience admit that their purpose is intimidation. A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes -- the physical intimidation of some men or groups by others -- loses its moral right to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow. [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 256]

I think the left is dying out, knows it, and will try to take us with it if it gets the chance. I think having the left in power remains a greater short-term threat (due to their suicidal levels of nihilism) than having the right remain in power. I'm with Tracinski on this one.

-- CAV

Updates

10-23-06: (1) Peikoff's Q & A now appear at Capitalism Magazine. (2) The Inspector voices concerns similar to mine.
10-24-06: (1) Mike N argues for split government here. (2) Via the trackback to Primacy of Awesome are links to two related discussions.

How Britain Should Promote Assimilation

Irvine, CA--"Britain is embroiled in a fierce debate over British Muslim women who wear a niqab--an opaque veil that covers a woman's entire face. Many British Muslims have expressed outrage that a public schoolteacher was ordered to remove her veil--while many other Britons have defended the school, criticized the wearing of niqabs, and called for the greater assimilation of Muslims into British society.

"Britons are absolutely right to criticize the niqab," said Alex Epstein, junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is a demeaning, barbaric article of clothing that inculcates shame in women, depriving them of individuality and femininity."

"But to criticize niqabs will not go very far in making Britain a more integrated, less balkanized nation. Britons' most powerful tool of assimilation is to understand and proudly and convincingly proclaim Western ideals. They must understand that what made the West great is individualism, reason, the pursuit of happiness--and that this is objectively superior to the tribalism, superstition, and earthly deprivation that many Muslims seek to live out and bring to Europe. Britons must reject the insidious idea of multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are of equal value. Cultures are not of equal value: prosperity is superior to poverty, happiness is superior to misery, freedom is superior to slavery, and a visible face is superior to a slit revealing two anonymous eyes."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute.

Restrictions on Internet Gambling Are an Infringement on Our Rights

Irvine, CA-- On Oct. 13 President Bush signed into law the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a measure restricting Internet gambling.

"This measure, which requires financial institutions to block credit card and other payments to Internet wagering businesses, is an infringement on our rights," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"Gambling, when practiced responsibly, can be a totally legitimate form of entertainment. The government has no right to prohibit adults from doing it--on the Internet or anywhere else--and no right to prohibit businesses from offering gambling opportunities to potential customers.

"Why do supporters of the law deny individuals the freedom to spend their hard-earned money on gambling? Because, they say, people will bet and lose more than they can afford. In other words, individuals are inherently incapable of making rational decisions, and thus it is the government's job to protect us from ourselves. This vicious, paternalistic idea has no place in a free society."

Improving our Universities, Part II

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

The North Korean cult of human sacrifice

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

This article presents yet another chilling appraisal of the mindset of the North Koreans:

Faced with a starving population, an economy that is a shambles and its longtime Communist allies tripping over themselves to embrace free-market capitalism, North Korea's leadership long ago turned weakness into strength by steeling its population for permanent war.

The years of spadework have paid off, experts say. With tighter restrictions on oil, food and other goods a near-certainty after Monday's announced nuclear test, Pyongyang seems confident that its long-suffering people -- battered by famine, floods and economic mismanagement -- will bow their heads and continue to suffer in silence. This is an important surety in the regime's decision to detonate what it said was a nuclear device, a major gamble.

Many of the intimidation tactics employed in North Korea to keep its population in line are common to totalitarian regimes elsewhere. But North Korea has taken them to the extreme, analysts say, maintaining a tighter lid on its society than East Germany in its darkest days.

For decades, North Korea has subjected its population to a propaganda assault centered around the concept of juche, roughly translated as "self-reliance." In recent years, scholars say, the term has also come to connote unquestioned trust in the "living god" leadership of national founder Kim Il Sung and his son, current ruler Kim Jong Il.

This link between sacrifice, national glory and the near-divine leadership is evident in the smallest details. During a tour of Pyongyang's Tower of the Juche Idea last year, guide Park Gyong Nam explained that the 560-foot-high monument was built in 1982, the year of the 70th birthday of Kim Il Sung, using 25,500 granite blocks. Do the math, and that works out to one block for every day of Mr. Kim's life, he said.

The truth is that socialist North Korea has never been self-reliant, depending since its formation on the Soviet Union, then China and the United Nations and other international donors to feed itself. But this myth is part of the glue that binds North Koreans to the regime.

"This has a huge impact on people's ability to withstand hardship," said Cui Yingjiu, honorary director of Peking University's Institute for Korean Culture Studies. "For most of the past 100 years North Koreans haven't had enough to eat or wear. This gives them enormous tolerance for hardship," added Mr. Cui, who attended university with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in the early 1960s. [Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times]

They don't have enough to eat or wear, they are convinced the world persecutes them, they enshrine sacrifice, they think their leader is a god—and now they have the bomb. Brilliant.

GOP Albright ad

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

Update: bigmac ads:

The ad was made by David Zucker, producer of movies like Airplane!, Naked Gun, and Scary Movie 4. When GOP officials saw the ad, they declined it. I haven’t read anything saying whether or not the GOP funded the ad or otherwise participated in making it. If they did, and if it was intended for TV, then it’s surprising it got this far. Perhaps it was really intended for this kind of viral online distribution in the first place?

The continuing saga of Microsoft and DOJ-ware

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

This story by By Aaron Ricadela at InformationWeek on the upcoming release of Microsoft Vista caught my eye:

The simmering battle between Microsoft and the two biggest security software vendors is boiling over as Microsoft finalizes changes to the Windows Vista operating system that Symantec and McAfee say impede their products

. . . [I]n addition to bundling antivirus and anti-spyware software into Windows and limiting users' ability to install software, Microsoft has closed a loophole that gave products from Symantec, McAfee, and other makers of security software access to the Windows kernel, which controls the operating system's most basic functions. The vendors use that access to detect and block rootkits, keystroke-logging software, and worms.

Trouble is, malware writers exploit the same interfaces to access Windows' kernel, a threat that Microsoft says outweighs the benefits. Modifying the kernel also compromises Windows' performance, according to the company. Versions of Vista for 64- bit PCs will include technology called PatchGuard that prevents kernel modification. "Either everybody has access to the kernel," says Microsoft senior product manager Stephen Toulouse, "or nobody does."

Symantec and McAfee say the move undercuts their products at the very moment Microsoft is entering the $4 billion market for desktop security software. Microsoft "is putting the core of the operating system in a lock box," says a Symantec spokesman. Security vendors also are asking Microsoft to make it easier for users to uninstall Windows Security Center, a dashboard that controls security settings in Vista. "You almost need an IT help desk" to change the controls, a McAfee spokeswoman says.

Or an antitrust regulator.

Here we have a case of a business working to improve a long-standing problem with its product. Yes, the improvement would put third-party software providers in a spot. Yet how is it that Microsoft owes them their position? Where do they draw the moral right to access the Window's kernel, if Microsoft chooses that its interest lies in not granting them access?

Of course, Microsoft has long surrendered the moral high ground on antitrust, and in my book, the firm gets what it deserves for not attacking the premise behind antitrust itself. By Microsoft's implicit concession, it allows Symantec and McAfee to argue that they simply need access to the Window's kernel, and that their need takes precedence over any of Microsoft's rights, or the desire of Microsoft's customers for a more secure OS.

DOJ launches antitrust investigation of Cypress Semiconductor

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

This could get interesting . . .

The Common Good: Not Good For Anyone

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

From AP via Drudge: The term is "common good," and it's catching on as a way to describe liberal values and reach religious voters who rejected Democrats in the 2004 election. Led by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think-tank, party activists hope the phrase will do for them what "compassionate conservative" did for the Republicans. "It's a core value that we think organizes the

Two Faces?

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

Golden Genes

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

Out of the suffocating bureaucratic morass that is the European Union - suffocating because of its campaign to homogenize its members and emasculate their sovereignties, even to the extent of subverting their individual legal systems - stands a Frenchman who defies the gray and flaunts his gold. The gold is that of genetically modified corn.

On October 12, The Wall Street Journal ran a story, "Stalk-Raving Mad," about this crop featuring a French farmer near Bordeaux, Claude Menara, who experimented with the "alien" corn, planting a mere seventeen acres of the Monsanto-patented seed in 2005. He was so impressed with the results that this year he planted 250 acres, and next year he plans 500.

I do not believe the French are wild about corn-on-the-cob. It is, after all, an American favorite. Most of the corn grown in France and in the rest of Europe is destined to be consumed by cattle, in M. Menara's case, by Spanish cattle. According to the WSJ, in fact, Spain is the biggest producer of GM (genetically modified) corn with 148,200 acres devoted to its production, followed by France, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Germany. GM corn is the only "man-made" crop permitted by the EU to be grown in all that it surveys and regulates, although the bureaucrats of Brussels do allow a few GM crops to be imported. They are mulling over what other GM crops they will allow their worker ants to grow.

Like the French butter industry, the French corn industry is subsidized by the EU. M. Menara receives about $225,000 annually, a subsidy which will be phased out by 2013. It would be easy to gainsay M. Menara on the point of the subsidy, but his recognition that GM crops are a value is a quantum of redemption. He is looking ahead to when he can make a profit sans subsidies, thanks to the "alien" corn. A great portion of his expenses in damage control goes to using pesticides to protect his traditionally grown corn. The GM corn requires none.

The most telling part of the article was a picture of M. Menara holding two ears of corn: the perfectly golden GM one, and one grown by "traditional" methods, a quarter its kernels gone, the remaining ones with mottled brown spots, evidence of rot and parasites. Only cattle might have found it appetizing.

The culprits were mainly borer worms, which destroyed half of M. Menara's crop in 1988 and which continue to consume significant percentages of his traditionally grown corn even with the use of pesticides.

"On a recent morning, he shows off an ear of GM corn, full and yellow, alongside an unaltered ear that was withered and ruined. Transgenic corn had added genes, which produce a protein that makes the borer's stomach explode. Cracking open the stalk of the non-GM ear revealed a squad of pink worms."

I was reminded of the season at Colonial Williamsburg when, in the course of researching the Sparrowhawk novels, I worked in costume in the "rural trades" section, growing tobacco, corn, beans and other colonial fare by 18th century methods. Just as disgusting and labor-intensive as picking hornworms from tobacco leaves and ridding the plants of equally destructive aphids, was inspecting and harvesting the corn, which crawled with pests that consumed entire ears. The only "pesticides" available in the 18th century were various kinds of domestic fowl that would be let loose in the tobacco fields to eat the hornworms. Raising a good corn crop, however, was a matter of chance.

A worse threat to M. Menara's crop are environmental jihadists, reports the WSJ - although the article referred to them as "activists," too benign a term to identify criminals and terrorists. Even though GM-produced food crops have not been proven to jeopardize human or livestock health, French environmentalists have mounted a campaign to ban the growth of GM crops not only in France, but also in the rest of Europe. Using modern technology such as the GPS, the Internet, and testing techniques perfected in the U.S., anti-technology Greenpeace jihadists randomly identify farms and send "detectives" to them to determine whether or not a farmer is growing GM corn. If he is, then gangs of environmentalists descend on the farm and trash his crop, or as much of it as they can before the police arrive.

M. Menara has the right perspective on these bipedal pests. "They are thugs," he told the WSJ. He sued Greenpeace to force them to remove his GPS-located farm from its website, and won. "A few days later, Greenpeace activists traced a cross in his field by knocking down corn stalks," reports the WSJ. Later, a notorious French environmentalist, Jose Bové, who was jailed for destroying a McDonald's, led a mob of his ilk to M. Menara's farm and destroyed 30 acres of GM corn. Three of the mob were arrested and face jail time. Menara plans to go ahead with planting his 500 acres of GM corn. It is encouraging to read of a Frenchmen who doesn't wave the white flag of surrender.

Environmentalists opposed to GM crops claim they are concerned about their spread to, well, the environment. Environmentalism is their mystical calling. In this instance, their ostensive, short-range goal is to force farmers to grow crops by "traditional" methods, methods used in the 18th and 19th centuries until technology was brought into the business.

Their long-range goal is, frankly, man's extinction, since even fields of crops are "intrusive" and replace whatever grew wild on the land before men came to make it productive. Never believe an environmentalist when he asserts a concern for humanity; it is humanity he hates and wants to erase from existence for the sake of an "unaltered" earth. The same motive that prompts terrorists to destroy a dealership's SUV's or to booby-trap trees to protest forestry companies, prompts them to sabotage farms.

For my money, M. Menara is a true "friend of the earth" and of human life.

Solon the Thinker

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

John Lewis' new book on Solon is now available for pre-order from Amazon. (Prepare yourself for a hefty price tag, unfortunately.) Dr. Lewis posted the following on Principles in Practice about the book:

A new book, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (London: Duckworth, 2006) deals with the poetry of perhaps the earliest political thinker in history, Solon of Athens. Selected as Chief Official in Athens in 594 BC, he is often credited with laying the groundwork for the political constitution of Classical Athens, through a set of written laws that protected the freedom of the Athenians through a rational, even if ill-defined, legal process. This book considers, on a specialist's, level, Solon's poetry as the first extant political thought from ancient Greece.

About the Book

Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens presents the hypothesis that Solon (ca. 640-560 BC) saw his beloved Athens as a self-governing, self-supporting system akin to the early Greek conceptions of the cosmos. Solon's polis (city-state) functions neither by divine intervention nor the force of a tyrant, but by its own natural, self-governing internal energy. An orderly, understandable polis is founded on the intellectual health of its people, depends upon their acceptance of justice and moderation as orderly norms of life, and leads to the rejection of tyranny and slavery in favor of freedom under written laws. Solon is the thinker who conceives this ideal for the Athenians, and the teacher who brings it to them.

But Solon's views of order are limited; each person in his own life is subject to the arbitrary foibles of moira, the inscrutable fate that governs human life, and that brings us to an unknowable but inevitable death. Solon represents both the new rational, scientific spirit that was sweeping the Aegean—and a return to the fatalism that permeated Greek cultural life. He deserves credit not only as a poet and a lawgiver, but as a thinker who was at the cutting edge of an intellectual revolution.

"John Lewis's Solon the Thinker contains a careful reading of the poetic fragments of Solon—not as poetry, but as political thought. Lewis's interpretation of these poems provides one with a greater understanding and appreciation of the political views of Solon—arguably the first (and only) Presocratic political philosopher—and his place in the history of ideas. Anyone interested in early Greek discussions of the polis, justice, tyranny, slavery, and freedom should find this book worthwhile reading." —Robert Mayhew, Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University

"In contrast to scholars who treat Solon's political reforms and his poetry in isolation from each other, John Lewis demonstrates that Solon's poetry is in fact a fertile source of important political ideas such as order, wisdom, moderation, justice, and law. Solon conceptualized freedom as a political ideal in opposition to tyranny, and he viewed the polis as a haven for human beings against the ravages of unrelenting destiny. Solon the Thinker is a major contribution to our appreciation of Solon as a poet and to our understanding of his pivotal role in the development of ancient Greek political thought." —Fred D. Miller, Jr., Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University

Select Passages from the Book

From the Introduction:

"The purpose of this book is to examine the poetic fragments of Solon as early Greek political thought. The focus is on Solon's preserved poetry, not on laws or institutional reforms attributed to him by later writers, and not on his place in a literary or historical tradition. What rises out of Solon's verses is an all-embracing way of looking at his world—a way of understanding Athens and the men in it, of grasping the certainty of justice and the arbitrariness of fate, and of judging rulers both bad and good—that is rooted in a new world-view that was sweeping the Aegean world. His preserved verses, even though fragmentary, often cast in epic form, and motivated by an opaque rhetorical purpose, present an enlightened frame of reference, an energetic moral program, and a well-organized set of ideas. His words mark the birth of thought about the polis as a lawful, just community."

From Chapter One: 'I brought the people together': Solon's Polis as Kosmos

"Such ideas were part and parcel of new forms of thought that were sweeping the Aegean world. In Solon's day, Greek thinkers had begun to search for a singular principle underlying life on earth. This does not mean that they had a cosmology, a systematic view of the earth and the heavens. But their 'world-view' had a meaning more fundamental than cosmology: a basic understanding of how the world operates, and of their place in it. Such a world-view establishes, among other things, whether man is to be a plaything of omnipotent deities, a pawn in a capricious world without consistency, an autonomous being able to control his own fate, or an unstable and ill-defined mixture of these ideas. Such a world-view may be well thought out and explicit, or it may be implicit, unexamined and unconceptualized, expressed as an emotional 'gut feeling' or as an absolute that defies challenge and explanation; it may be riddled with contradictions, but it is implied in any generalization about the nature and purpose of human life in the world.

"For a peasant the world may not extend beyond the closest village, and the cycles of life may be no wider than agricultural seasons, religious festivals and wars. But the world-view of an archaic Greek thinker was expanding, encompassing wider ideas about the nature of life and offering answers to its basic questions… The new understanding was growing out of earlier developments, in which the creative acts of individuals added up to a cultural revolution."

From Chapter Five: 'Moira brings good and evil': Bios and the Failure of Dikç

"There is a searing paradox evident in Solon's claims about the polis, wisdom and human life. On the one hand his verses proclaiming his ability to know the inevitable consequences of human actions in the polis are emboldened with the kind of unalloyed certainty once relegated to the gods alone. As lawgiver he takes over where Dikç [Justice] dare not tread, seeing that which will be and claiming its inevitability in terms that are comprehensive and inescapable. Yet, the inability of any man to see the ultimate end of all things was a common tenet in early Greek thought, and Solon can claim no exception to this rule. Man's noos [mind] is ephemeral, and it is difficult or impossible to know the end of life itself. Solon's verses combine 'Dikç surely comes later' with 'the mind of the immortals is hidden from men', claiming both the ability to know 'what will be', and that 'what will be' is hidden to us. Some readers have argued that a division, or split, exists in his thought, between his revolutionary view of political matters and his traditional view of fate (Moira], and that his poem 13, the Hymn to the Muses, expresses this split. But what is the mess here: is it in Solon's ideas, or our understanding of him?"

From Chapter Seven: 'I set them free': Tyranny, Slavery and Freedom

"It is a serious oversight that Solon's first use of these terms (eleutheros) as political freedom should get so little emphasis. This point cannot be overstressed: Solon's is the first statement of political freedom in all of western thought. His special sense of freedom is its political nature. The word eleutheria exists in texts prior to Solon, but is not understood in distinction from political despotism. The four 'day of freedom' and 'cup of freedom' phrases in the Iliad exhaust Homer's uses of eleuther- forms. The Trojans who cry for eleutheria want to drive off foreign armies, in order to return to despotic rule under their king. Freedom means living under King Priam's rule, and slavery means being taken in personal bondage to work in a far off land. This is not political freedom; it is independence from foreign takeover. Eleuther- terms are otherwise used only rarely in poets before Solon…

"For Solon a free man is an Attic-speaking male whose personal autonomy inside the polis is protected from attacks by his fellows. Solon's poem 36 is the first statement in western thought to base a political order on a distinct idea of justice under enforced written laws, promoted by persuasion rather than divine commandment, and legitimated by a claim to have set its inhabitants free."

Order Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens from Amazon.com.

It looks excellent!

Final Reminder

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Your final reminder about next weekend's conference in Boston:

Jihad Against the West: The Real Threat and the Right Response

What: A series of lectures and a panel discussion examining the threat of Islamic totalitarianism to the West and how best to combat it

Sponsored by: Objectivist Conferences (OCON) and the Ayn Rand Institute

Who: Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute; Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch; Flemming Rose, Danish editor who commissioned the Muhammad cartoons; Peter Schwartz, author of "The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America"; and John Lewis, assistant professor of history at Ashland University

Where: Boston World Trade Center Amphitheater, Boston, MA

When: Oct. 21, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Oct. 22, from 10:00 AM to 12:40 PM

Schedule:

Saturday, Oct. 21
9:15 AM to 10:30 AM
"No Substitute for Victory: Military Offense and the Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism": a lecture by John Lewis explaining the necessity of totally defeating the governments that support Islamic terrorism

10:45 AM to 11:55 AM
"Muhammad and His Relevance Today": a lecture by Robert Spencer examining the crucial role of Muhammad's life in the motivation and ideology of Islamic jihadists

1:30 PM to 2:45 PM
"Radical Islam and the War on Terror": a lecture by Daniel Pipes explaining why the West must defeat radical Islam and replace it with a moderate form of Islam

3:00 PM to 5:00 PM
"Jihad Against the West: The Real Threat and the Right Response": a panel discussion with Yaron Brook, Daniel Pipes and Flemming Rose on the Islamic threat to the West and how best to combat it

Sunday, Oct. 22
10:00 AM to 11:15 AM
"Islam and Europe after the Cartoon Crisis--Clash of Cultures or Coexistence of Civilizations?": a lecture by Flemming Rose on the current encounter between the West and Islam in Europe

11:25 AM to 12:40 PM
"Defending Freedom: The Principled vs. the Pragmatic Approach": a lecture by Peter Schwartz criticizing the pragmatic approach to conducting foreign policy and explaining why only the consistent adherence to the right principles can lead to success in defending America.

Admission: $55 per lecture [but free for students]

For more details on these events, the lectures or the speakers, please e-mail media@aynrand.org or visit http://www.objectivistconferences.com/fordhall06/

"Impulses" vs Principles

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

The difference freedom makes

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

From the Daily Mail: a photo of North and South Korea with commentary from Donald Rumsfeld:

"It says it all. There's the south, the same people as the north, the same resources north and south, and the big difference is in the south it’s a free political system and a free economic system.

“The people in the north are starving, their growth is stunted. It's a shame, a tragedy."

An aide added: “This oppressive regime is too busy trying to make war to make life comfortable for its people.”

Some people have asked me about the city in my blog's header. It's Hong Kong. I didn't pick the image at random - the shining skyline represents one of the newly-created engines driving the world forward. My inner optimist wonders about the progress that economic freedom can bring, while my pessimist wonders at how far New York City has sunk in the mire of statism to lose that honor to Communist China. The trends are not evident to everyone yet - but will it be as clear as North and South Korea in 20 or 30 years?

Nobel Prizes in Nullity

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

Even more than the roster of activists for statism and collectivism discussed in my commentary on the Medal of Freedom ("Medals for Mendacity," October 7), the roll call of activists for "peace" is a grab bag of the foolish, the subversive, the charlatan, and the insidious. And, like most of the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, most of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize reveal an ignorance of the requirements for peace among nations, or an overt hostility to those requirements.

For about sixty years in the 19th century, after the last Napoleonic War, peace reigned among the civilized nations of Europe and North America, chiefly because most of these countries had governments limited in their power to abrogate individual rights and which nominally fostered free trade. The harbinger of statism and of things to come in the twentieth century was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, when Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who established a comprehensive, universal welfare state in Germany, maneuvered France into a diplomatic impasse over a possible alliance of Spain and Prussia against France, and then handily defeated the French army at Sedan.

Emperor Napoleon the Third (Victor Hugo's "Napoleon the Little") was deposed by his countrymen, while Germany annexed Alsace and part of Lorraine and occupied France until an indemnity was paid. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine remained a point of conflict from 1871 to the time of Hitler's blitzkrieg aggressions. Under Bismarck's leadership, all the German states, until then a loose confederation, were consolidated under one government and one emperor, William the First of Prussia. From that point on Germany was governed by Prussian militaristic and imperialistic policies up through the end of World War Two.

At the same time, "peace" became an obsession of diplomats and social activists. As a desired relationship between nations, they viewed it as an ideal state of affairs regardless of cause or consequence, without any thought to the political nature of the governments that were expected to observe the peace.

On the other hand, dictators have terms of peace. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and his Islamic imperialist cohorts promise "peace" on earth once a global caliphate is established, by force if necessary. Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and even Napoleon promised "peace" under their ideologies once other nations had been conquered or forced to submit to their hegemony.

But the exigencies of peace have been ignored by both aggressors and pacifists. Aggressors believe that "peace" can be achieved by force; pacifists believe that it can be achieved by compromise. Both force and compromise are antipodes of reason, which men need to consistently employ as individuals in nature and in their relationships with one another. And because reason has rarely played a role in the conflicts between nations, the record of peace movements has been largely one of repeated failure. In fact, most peace movements and diplomatic strategies to prevent war have almost consistently caused or led to war. Efforts by diplomats and pacifists, who eschew violence, to persuade those who live by and for force to refrain from coercion, only encouraged the use of force by those unconcerned with peace.

Ayn Rand observed in her essay "The Roots of War," that:

"[T]hese same peace movements do not oppose dictatorships; the political views of their members range through all shades of the statist spectrum, from welfare statism to socialism to fascism to communism. This means that they are opposed to the use of coercion by one nation against another, but not by the government of a nation against its own citizens; it means that they are opposed to the use of force against armed adversaries, but not against the disarmed." (From Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal)

It is interesting to note that as statism and collectivism grew in the West in the 20th century, peace movements grew shriller and less rational, to the advantage of the blatantly irrational. And the efforts of pacifists have been fundamentally to reconcile either the rational with the irrational, or the irrational with the irrational, with no thought devoted to the necessary preconditions of peace. No one has thought to ask: Why haven't the U.S. and Canada gone to war? Or the U.S. and Britain? Or the U.S. and Mexico (the Mexican-American War of the 1840's was caused by a Mexican dictator's aggression). For example, historically, of all the peace treaties ever signed by former combatants, the oldest still in effect is between the U.S. and Britain, implemented in 1815 at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

The shortest-lived treaties have been those signed between nominally "liberal" nations and dictatorships, such as the Neville Chamberlain and Hitler "peace in our time" paper, and between dictatorships, such as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.

In its long history of awarding Peace Prizes, the Nobel committee has demonstrated a penchant for picking failures, effectively giving recipients a mere "E" for effort. Let's look at the record.

In 2005, the Prize was awarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency "for its efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes...." With North Korea having exploded a nuclear device this week, and Iran determined to enrich uranium to produce its own weapons to use against the West, the failure of the Agency to prevent the spread of nuclear technology is obvious.

In 2002, the Prize was given to former president Jimmy Carter "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts...." Obviously, he has never found those solutions, his effort frustrated by his refusal to distinguish between freedom and tyranny.

In 1994, the Prize was awarded jointly to Shimon Perez and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and terrorist chief Yasir Arafat "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East." Yet, the Middle East is still in turmoil, as Israel struggles to remain in existence, while the Arab campaign to extinguish it has never abated.

In 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of Communist Vietnam received the Prize for having negotiated a peace and the defeat of the U.S.

In 1960, Albert John Lutuli, president of the African National Congress, the political arm of black terrorists, received the Peace Prize. Nelson Mandela, also a leader of the ANC, received it in 1993.

Austen Chamberlain, British foreign secretary and half-brother of Neville, received the Prize in 1925 for having negotiated the Locarno Treaty, which established Germany's borders with France and Belgium. These "inviolable" borders later meant nothing to Hitler. Chamberlain shared that Prize with Charles Dawes, vice president of the U.S. and chairman of the Allied Reparation Commission, who drew up a schedule for defeated Germany to pay for its aggression during World War One. It was a curious arrangement, with the Allies loaning Germany the means to make the payments, the U.S. chipping in $110,000,000. The Dawes Plan and its successor, the Young Plan, which reduced the German debt, were cancelled in 1933 when Hitler became chancellor. One of his political platforms was very popular with the German electorate: the alleged injustice of reparations and the Treaty of Versailles.

Throughout its over one hundred year history, the Nobel Peace Prize has rarely been awarded to a success. And there have been virtually no successful "peace initiatives" because the initiators discard, ignore, or are oblivious to the political requirements to attain a lasting peace. It is on record that nations which have a nominal respect for individual rights do not invade or seek to conquer each other. The histories of North America and post-World War Two Europe attest to that fact. But this fact is lost on diplomats and peace activists.

Observe the fancy, verbose evasions our government emits when faced with the fact that Iran is seeking to produce nuclear weapons to with which to destroy Israel, rule the Mideast, and threaten the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has surrendered its right to self-defense to the tut-tutting of the "international community." It has lost the moral confidence of the rightness of its own existence. Opposing it is the moral intransigence of Islamic totalitarianism, which means to conquer the world. Instead of destroying Iran's nuclear weapons facilities and its regime, the U.S. and the West evade the moral issue with diplomacy and bribery, which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismisses with the same contemptuous flair as his poster boy, Hitler, dismissed treaties and pacts.

Observe our pathetic response is to North Korea's nuclear test. Instead of destroying North Korea's ability to threaten its neighbors and even the U.S. - and destroyed it years ago -- regardless of the "collateral damage" of civilian casualties, we seek to negotiate, cajole, and promise to shake our fist if Kim Jung Il doesn't listen. Now we are talking about "sanctions." Have our politicians forgotten that sanctions were imposed on Iraq, and that these pitiful, ineffectual actions were compromised by the "humanitarian" oil-for-food program, corruptly administered sub rosa by Kofi Annan, the outgoing secretary general, who accepted a Peace Prize in 2001 on behalf of the U.N.?

Apparently, they have. Tony Snow, President Bush's press secretary, simply reported the administration's displeasure at North Korea's "provocative defiance of the will of the international community."

Like the Medal of Freedom, like the Nobel Laureate in Literature, the Nobel Peace Prize, absent all rational criteria for measuring moral worth, is a nullity and a farce.

"A Philosopher In Hollywood"

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

A new exhibit at the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library explores Ayn Rand's life and works. Long before Ayn Rand became a household name for penning the controversial classics "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," the novelist-philosopher lived in Hollywood, struggling, along with so many other immigrants, to launch a career through film. From The LA Times.

Nuremberg Trials For Global-Warming "Deniers"

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

From the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works: A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?” [They] have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes

Defender of Capitalism?

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps was recently awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. The media is portraying him as a defender of the free market, and a recent essay he wrote for the Wall Street Journal is described by Instapundit as "a strong defense of capitalism". But if one looks closer at his essay, there are a lot of problems from the Objectivist perspective.

Phelps does correctly contrast the European mixed economies with the American less-mixed economy, and shows that the increased level of statism in the European systems stifles innovation. But when he defends the American version, he says the following:

We all feel good to see people freed to pursue their dreams. Yet Hayek and Ayn Rand went too far in taking such freedom to be an absolute, the consequences be damned. In judging whether a nation's economic system is acceptable, its consequences for the prospects of the realization of people's dreams matter, too. Since the economy is a system in which people interact, the endeavors of some may damage the prospects of others. So a persuasive justification of well-functioning capitalism must be grounded on its all its consequences, not just those called freedoms.

To argue that the consequences of capitalism are just requires some conception of economic justice. I broadly subscribe to the conception of economic justice in the work by John Rawls. In any organization of the economy, the participants will score unequally in how far they manage to go in their personal growth. An organization that leaves the bottom score lower than it would be under another feasible organization is unjust. So a new organization that raised the scores of some, though at the expense of reducing scores at the bottom, would not be justified. Yet a high score is just if it does not hurt others. "Envy is the vice of mankind," said Kant, whom Rawls greatly admired.

In addition to citing egalitarian philosopher John Rawls, he also cites Kant:

As Kant also said, persons are not to be made instruments for the gain of others. Suppose the wage of the lowest-paid workers was foreseen to be reduced over the entire future by innovations conceived by entrepreneurs. Are those whose dream is to find personal development through a career as an entrepreneur not to be permitted to pursue their dream? To respond, we have to go outside Rawls's classical model, in which work is all about money. In an economy in which entrepreneurs are forbidden to pursue their self-realization, they have the bottom scores in self-realization -- no matter if they take paying jobs instead -- and that counts whether or not they were born the "least advantaged." So even if their activities did come at the expense of the lowest-paid workers, Rawlsian justice in this extended sense requires that entrepreneurs be accorded enough opportunity to raise their self-realization score up to the level of the lowest-paid workers -- and higher, of course, if workers are not damaged by support for entrepreneurship. In this case, too, then, the introduction of entrepreneurial dynamism serves to raise Rawls's bottom scores.

Then there's his mention of the usual purported failures of capitalism, without mentioning how they are actually caused by government interference in capitalism (rather than a problem with capitalism itself):

Actual capitalism departs from well-functioning capitalism -- monopolies too big to break up, undetected cartels, regulatory failures and political corruption. Capitalism in its innovations plants the seeds of its own encrustation with entrenched power. These departures weigh heavily on the rewards earned, particularly the wages of the least advantaged, and give a bad name to capitalism.

And his conclusion spells out his purported defense quite clearly:

I conclude that capitalism is justified -- normally by the expectable benefits to the lowest-paid workers but, failing that, by the injustice of depriving entrepreneurial types (as well as other creative people) of opportunities for their self-expression.

So Phelps' moral defense of capitalism rests on two pillars -- the fact that it is the best system for helping the poorest amongst us, and that it helps maximize "self-expression" of creative people. Although these are incidentally true, they are so far removed from what Objectivists would regard as the fundamental moral defense of capitalism, namely man's need to think in order to live, and the corresponding need for freedom from inititation of force in order to use his mind. So if this is a "strong defense of capitalism", I'd hate to see a weak one!

But it's always interesting to see what is portrayed as a moral defense of capitalism in the mainstream culture (from a well-respected Nobel laureate in economics no less), because this is an area where Objectivists have a critically important and unique contribution of ideas relative to the libertarians and conservatives.

Libtertarian Medical Experiments

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

North Korea's Power Over the West

Irvine, CA--Speculation is rampant about North Korea's apparent test of a nuclear bomb. But one fundamental question is being ignored: How does a country so poor that it citizens die of starvation become a nuclear menace?

"The basic answer," according to Elan Journo, junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "is that North Korea exploits the West's moral cowardice."

"North Korea is an aggressive dictatorship that holds power by force. The regime loots its enslaved citizens and threatens to do the same to its neighbors. What have Western powers done in response to the North's longstanding pursuit of nuclear weapons?

"Did they condemn the regime? Did they stand up to its bluster and seek to end the regime with a self-righteous, airtight trade embargo? Did they exhibit even an ounce of moral confidence? No; they evaded North Korea's vicious nature and appeased it with protection money. Years of Western 'diplomacy'--including gifts of oil and food--strengthened and emboldened North Korea. Whenever the North rattled its saber anew, the morally craven West responded with more diplomacy--and more bribes. This perverse cycle must end."

Mr. Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Improving our Universities

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

Goading Bush

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

Medals for Mendacity

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

An examination of the list of individuals who were conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom over the last twenty or so years would move one to wonder what "freedom" has to do with the award. Originally established in 1945 by President Harry Truman, it was intended to be bestowed on military personnel to "recognize notable service in the war."

President John F. Kennedy reestablished the medal in 1963 as a purely civilian honor. The list of recipients is largely a roster of scoundrels who are noted for having worked to abridge freedom, not promote it.

Not so curiously, in the context of an overall cultural phenomenon, the Medal of Freedom roster is, if seen through a certain prism, the opposite of the list of Nobel Laureate in Literature conferees. With few exceptions, most of the Nobel winners defy memory. Dario Fo in1997? Imre Kertésez in 2002? Naguib Mahfouz in 1988? The citation for Mahfouz reads, "who, through works rich in nuance, now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous, has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind." That was five years before the first World Trade Center bombing; one wonders what "nuanced" works he's writing now.

Other names are recognizable - such as Harold Pinter, Saul Bellow, and Günter Grass - if only because these literary lights have had more press coverage than the others and have drawn the doting attention of our scrofulous critical establishment. And Günter Grass wrote "frolicsome black fables [that] portray the forgotten face of history." Frolicsome and forgettable faces?

There are a few "greats" on the Nobel list: Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling, Sinclair Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, and Henryk Sienkiewicz -- and a few of literary notoriety: Gerhart Hauptmann, Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sartre. But, the list is dominated by obscure authors who may or may not be known to the conscientious reader. The Nobel Prize committee for literature hasn't displayed much prescience in picking memorable writers. Its roster could be dubbed "Authors Anonymous."

Not so the Medal of Freedom list. At first glance, it seems eclectic. Baseball players and comediennes have received the Medal, such as Jackie Robinson and Martha Raye. Bill Cosby, Plácido Domingo, Jacques Barzun and Arnold Palmer have also received the Medal.

But the Medals list is over-populated with the enemies of freedom and their fellow travelers. Cesar Chavez, James Scott Brady, Albert Shanker, George McGovern, and Morris Udall have received the Medal. Labor leaders Walter Reuther and Lane Kirkland have received it. Civil rights activists - or opportunists - Jesse Jackson and Barbara Jordan have received it.

Clergymen and civil rights leaders pepper the list. Millard D. Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, and his selfless, hammer-and-nail handyman, former President Jimmy Carter, share the list with Elliot Richardson and David Rockefeller. Two advocates of public television have received it, Peggy Charren and Joan Ganz Cooney. Nanny state advocates C. Everett Koop and Justin Dart Jr. have received it. And Generals Colin Powell and Tommy Franks are up there with Rita Moreno, Charlton Heston, Julia Child, and Pope Paul the Second. Losers have every right to commingle and hobnob with winners and the half-dead.

All right. There are a few obscurities, such as Wilma Mankiller, former Cherokee Nation leader, Gordon B. Hinckley, a religious leader, and Evelyn Dubrow, a lobbyist. Who? Well, that's not important. Someone thought they were as prominent and well-known as John Kenneth Galbraith, Estée Lauder and Van Cliburn, who also were recipients.

Humanitarians, philanthropists and "government servants," however, dominate the Medal of Freedom list, every one of them dedicated to advancing statism in their own, special little way. It is appropriate that it was the pioneer of the "Fascist New Frontier" who redefined the Medal.

The latest recipients are the not-so-odd couple, those notable humanitarians and inseparable golf partners, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who received their Medals in a ceremony in Philadelphia on October 5th. Bush Senior is also having dedicated to him this weekend a billion dollar aircraft carrier, which undoubtedly will be sent out to carry on future charity work around the world. The reader will now understand why the "Medal of Freedom" is a misnomer and a mockery of the idea of freedom. I trust an extensive rehash of the disastrous administrations of these creatures isn't necessary here.

Suffice to say that "freedom" was not the leitmotif of either of their terms of office, and certainly not the substance of their legislative accomplishments. Bush, among other things, threw away a war, let a dictator remain in power, and spent millions of dollars and American lives to give the Kuwaiti sheiks back our oil fields, in addition to signing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Clinton, among other things, "pursued" Osama bin Laden, oversaw the virtual nationalization of the tobacco industry, and endorsed further federal censorship of the airwaves.

So, when one reviews the list of Medal recipients and why they were bestowed an ounce or so of gold hanging from a ribbon, the question should arise in one's mind: Should the government be in the business of "recognizing" any accomplishments? Military decorations are proper and a means of recognizing and honoring those who risk their lives defending this country. "Civilian" decorations are inherently statist in nature, recognizing as they do statist values and achievements in a nation's culture. The Medal of "Freedom" has become a status symbol for those who either never understood freedom, or who understood it and have dedicated their lives to destroying it.

Cox and Forkum infiltrate Iranian cartoon contest

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

In response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy earlier this year, an Iranian newspaper elected to hold a "Holocaust International Cartoon Contest," and none other than Cox and Forkum were able to slip in a stealth cartoon critical of the Iranian regime (full story at the Cox and Forkum website here).

Here's their cartoon:

Don't see anything special? Flip the cartoon over and presto!

These guys are simply the two coolest editorial cartoonists in business today. Bravo!

Thoughts On: "The Death Of Pop Music" Part 3

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

HB closed the thread on this topic on HBL so this one didn't make it. But it is here. Part 1 is here. *** I think 1989 is a pivotal year and it can be marked as the official beginning of the Age of Passivity. Once the threat of the atheistic Soviet Union was gone, the intrinsicists relaxed. It explains many cultural changes beyond monotonal music and Roseanne. The split in the Republican

Report on the Talk

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm delighted to report that Brad Thompson's talk at Boulder last night went very well. Unlike most campus talks, this lecture was primarily aimed at the Boulder community at large rather than at students. Since that was a new kind of endeavor, Bob Pasnau (the organizer) and I had no idea how many people would show up. Particularly since I worked mostly upon promoting the talk, I was completely beside myself with worry about the attendance. (I've never been so nervous about giving a talk as I was about last night's lecture! I don't think I'll be so beside myself with worry ever again though.)

Happily, we had just over 100 people attend. The local ABC news station even showed up to record the first few minutes of the lecture, although I'm not sure if any of it was aired. (Since the topic of the lecture was so relevant to recent events, I sent the press release as a news tip to all the local stations.) I should call the channel today to find out.

The talk was generally well-received. (If you want to know the general line of argument, you can read this op-ed.) As apparently always happens, a number of students came up to Dr. Thompson after the lecture to tell him that his description of public schooling exactly matched their experience. Personally, the lecture unearthed my mostly-forgotten memories of the utter hell of public middle school in Maryland. Although the academics weren't so terrible -- mostly because I was in all "gifted and talented" classes -- the culture of the school was relentlessly anti-intellectual and senselessly malicious. My parents saved me from that hell by transferring me Garrison Forest School, a private all-girls school in northwest Baltimore, just a few weeks before the start of 8th grade. (Sometime in August, I broke down in tears and begged my mother not to send me back to the public school. My parents somehow managed to send me to Garrison at that 11th hour.) If I'd stayed in public school, I would have lobotomized myself to make school tolerable. The process had already started. Honestly, I'm doubtful that I could have recovered from that (intellectually or emotionally) if I'd stayed in that public school for even just another year.

Judging by Dr. Thompson's talk (and various other sources, including my experience with the students I teach), the situation is even worse for many (if not most) students in the supposedly "better" public schools today. That's frightening.

So many thanks to Dr. Brad Thompson for the excellent lecture, to Dr. Bob Pasnau for organizing the series, and to the Collins Foundation for funding the series!

The next event will be a debate on animal rights on November 16th between David Barnett and Robert Hanna. Mark your calendars now, as it should be interesting! I am determined to attract an audience fairly balanced between supporters and opponents of animal rights. Since animal rights advocates will probably be more motivated to attend, I'd like to particularly encourage opponents to attend too. (Of course, people with unsettled views would be best of all!) As for the two debaters, I'm not familiar with David Barnett's views. However, I did read an interesting paper by Robert Hanna on animal consciousness a few semesters ago; it made a good case that animals are not able to suffer, although they do feel pain. Also, Dr. Hanna is an animated and engaging speaker.

Price No Object

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The quickly-upcoming Boston conference The Jihad Against the West: The Real Threat and the Right Response is now free for students.

Thoughts On: "The Death Of Pop Music" Part 2

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

Follow-up to yesterday's post. Originally posted on HBL.

***
Perhaps it is bad form for one to ask a question of others and then answer the question one's self. Oh, well. In my post on the death of pop music I asked what the philosophical connection is between the rise of whining music of today and the rise of environmentalism. I should have also included the rise of the religious right.

One word came to mind the next day--"passive." The singing reflects no effort of thought or action. As HB mentioned, even a melancholy song is acceptable. Perhaps you lose a lover and you are sad. That is a natural emotion to a human being who is truly alive and who needs values in order to live.

The tone of today's pop songs is different. The tone is passive--as in "Life is happening to me. I am going to drone on about it for the next 3:05."

The passivity is a symptom of the intrinsicism expressed through both environmentalism and the New Right. The passive "monotonal" sound reflects a complete disinterest in *human* goal-directed action on planet Earth.

Here are just a few quotes from OPAR. CD-ROM owners should search OPAR for "passive".

"The mind of such an individual is not active or goal-directed. It is passive, drifting, dazed, oblivious to considerations like truth, clarity, context, or methodology; it merely experiences random stimuli, outer or inner, without self-awareness, continuity, or purpose." [OPAR 57]

"Man cannot, therefore, adopt a passive policy, one of waiting for truth to enter his mind. In the use of a concept, as in its formation, he must choose and act." [OPAR 116]

"Intrinsicism leads to the view that knowledge is the grasp of an object through the passive absorption of revelations." [OPAR 145]

"Capitalism is incompatible with any version of intrinsicism. It is a system of and for mentally active, this-worldly valuers, not of passive self-abnegators." [OPAR 396]

Thoughts On: "The Death Of Pop Music"

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

Dr. Brad Thompson on School Violence

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm helping Boulder's Philosophy Department with its new public philosophy lecture series: Think! The first lecture will be Dr. Brad Thompson speaking on the causes of student violence in public schools this Thursday in Boulder.

** Please forward this information to anyone you think might be interested **

Seven years after the horrifying Columbine High School massacre, America's public schools are still plagued by student violence. This Thursday, October 5th, Dr. C. Bradley Thompson will examine the causes of that violence in the inaugural lecture of "Think!"--a new series of public lectures sponsored by the Center for Values and Social Policy in the Philosophy Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

What: Lecture on "Why Johnny Can't Think or Distinguish Right from Wrong" by C. Bradley Thompson.

Where: Old Main Chapel on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Campus Map)

When: October 5th from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m.

Lecture Description:

What's wrong with America's adolescent boys? Why are they so angry, and why are they committing mass murder in America's government schools? How are we to understand and explain what happened at Columbine high school?

In this lecture, C. Bradley Thompson rejects the leading theories of conservatives and liberals and instead advances a radical proposition--that the cause of America's epidemic of school shootings is to be found in the schools themselves. He argues that the root cause for all these shootings might very well be found in the destruction of the minds and souls of America's young people by an education establishment bent on using our children as guinea pigs for their experiments in schooling.

C. Bradley Thompson is the BB&T Research Professor at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.

"Think!" will also sponsor two events later this fall:

Thursday, November 16th. "What We Owe to Animals: A Debate" David Barnett and Robert Hanna (CU/Boulder)

Thursday, December 7th. "Integral Ecology" Michael Zimmerman (CU/Boulder)

All talks will be held from 8:00-9:30 p.m. at the Old Main Chapel on the CU Campus. They are free and intended for the public. Members of the media are welcome to attend. For more information, visit:

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/center/think.shtml

These lectures are funded through the generosity of The Collins Foundation.

The topic of this lecture was determined some months ago, so we had no idea that it would be so horribly relevant to recent events.

Mollification Fails Again

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

New York Has No Right to Force Restaurants to Cut on Trans Fats

Irvine, CA--New York's Board of Health has proposed a law to force all restaurants in the city to severely limit the content of trans fats in their food.

"The government has no right to dictate to restaurants what they can or cannot serve, and it has no right to dictate to individuals what they can or cannot eat," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"Individuals should be free to judge for themselves what foods to eat, including if and when to eat foods with trans fats.

"Those who believe that trans fats are unhealthy are free not to eat food that contains them--and free to persuade others not to sell or consume them. They have no right, however, to dictate the recipes of restaurants."

Students as Consumers

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Shawn Klein, one of the editors of the Harry Potter and Philosophy volume to which I contributed, has some interesting comments upon the myriad complaints about "consumerism" in education. The problem, he observes, isn't that students regard their education as a service for purchase, since it obviously is just that. Rather, the problem is that students are often confused about what they're purchasing: they're not purchasing the diploma or good grades or even the education. Instead, they're purchasing an opportunity to educate themselves, just as a person who buys a gym membership or personal training sessions is purchasing an opportunity but not a guarantee of getting in shape.

If that sounds interesting, I'd recommend reading the whole post. It's interesting enough that I'd love to see the future Dr. Klein publish a revised version as an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education or somesuch.

WBT's Jeff Katz: Only 2/3 Correct

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

I caught a few minutes of WBT afternoon drivetime radio anchor Jeff Katz yesterday. Jeff made a comment, and I don't have a direct quote, but it was something like, "If you take religion out of the equation, all you have left is moral relativism."

Jeff's point being: There is only one choice for morality and it is religion. Without religion, there is nothing -- no other alternatives.

Jeff made the mistake that most make -- that there are only two choices. The mistake begins with metaphysics. Jeff's options are two variants of the primacy of consciousness -- that either the universe is controlled by a supernatural force or by the whims of men on an individual or group basis.

Epistemologically, Jeff's view is that there are only two means of understanding the world -- either by faith or by force.

Morally, Jeff's view is that there are only two forms of morality -- both of which are variants of the morality of sacrifice or altruism. Jeff's view is that one has only the choice of accepting the morality of sacrificing to God; or sacrificing oneself through personal whim or to the group.

Politically, this leaves one only two choices -- the conservatives versus the liberals.

There is a third choice though in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. The relationship among the three choices is depicted here. That choice says that metaphysically there is an objective reality and that existence holds precedence over consciousness. Epistemologically, reason is the process for determining reality and achieving goals. Morally, the principle is rational self-interest. Politically, the social system is laissez-faire capitalism.

Craig Biddle, in his book Loving Life, makes the moral point clear:

“If there is no God, anything goes.” This popular claim is an eloquent distillation of a deep-rooted false alternative wreaking havoc on human life and happiness. The adage compresses into a few words the age-old debate over whether morality is a matter of “divine commandments” or “human sentiments”.

Whatever their disagreements, both sides of this argument accept the idea that your basic moral choice is to be guided either by faith or by feelings. In other words, both sides agree that your choice is religion or subjectivism. But if you want to live and enjoy life, neither of these will do [editor note: note that Warren is not about enjoying life], neither of these will do.

Neither religion nor subjectivism provides proper guidance for human action; each calls for human sacrifice and leads to human suffering – both physical and spiritual. [Religion Versus Subjectivism: Why Neither Will Do, Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and The Facts That Support It, Craig Biddle, p.1]

The reference to "Warren" in the above quote is mine. "Warren" is Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Drive Life". Awhile ago I reviewed "The Purpose Driven Life" and exposed its failure to provide a morality fit for human beings. Here are the links to that review:

Introduction

1. Does God Exist?

2. If He exists, what is His identity, that is, His nature?

3. Given that identity, how does God act?

4. What is the nature of God’s consciousness?

5. How am I supposed to know these things about God are true?

6. If these things about God are true, how should I act?

7. Why should I act that way?

8. What is the political or social impact of TPDL?

9. "The Purpose Driven Life" or "Bend It Like Beckham"? (Final)

So WBT's Jeff Katz is only 2/3 correct. And 2/3 correct is a failing grade.