Objectivism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth

By Dan Edge from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Introduction

This essay is a discussion of the Correspondence Theory of Truth (CTOT) and how the theory fits into the philosophy of Objectivism. I will argue that properly understood, the CTOT is compatible with Objectivist epistemology. I will also discuss pitfalls that must be avoided to keep the door closed to skepticism.

Readers should note that I am writing here for two distinct audiences. The first is the Objectivist community at large, those who are already familiar with the philosophy. I am also presenting this essay to my Senior Seminar in Philosophy class at the University of South Carolina for peer review.

To the Objectivist community: Some have expressed dissatisfaction with an unqualified acceptance of the Correspondence Theory, and with good reason, as I hope to demonstrate. A proper understanding of the Correspondence Theory is necessary to defend against Juggernaut of skepticism that has been sweeping the academic community for the past century.

To my classmates: This paper is based on information contained in my in-class presentation of Objectivist Epistemology, and it assumes the truth of Objectivism. I will glaze over some technical aspects of Objectivist principles. I encourage any of you to approach me with questions about these principles as you are working through the text.
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The Correspondence Theory of Truth

The first formal expression of the Correspondence Theory of Truth (CTOT) can be traced back to Aristotle, who wrote: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” (Metaphysics 1011b25), though Plato wrote very similar formulations (Cratylus 385b2, Sophist 263b). Kant considers the issue so obvious that it doesn't even deserve arguement, writing "“The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of [a cognition] with its object, is assumed as granted.” (Critique of Pure Reason, 82). The Correspondence Theory has endured over the centuries, in part because it is seemingly so axiomatic, so elegant in its simplicity.

According to the CTOT, a statement is true iff (if and only if) it corresponds to reality. If I make the statement "Dr. Donougho is the Professor of my Philosophy class," this statement is true iff Dr. Donougho is, in fact, the Professor. If anyone else is the Professor (or if I don't have a Professor), then my statement is false. According to most interpretations of the CTOT, my statement would be false even if I have every reason to believe that Dr. Donougho is the professor, but he is not in fact because some impostor has taken his place. One's context of knowledge is irrelevant. Please keep this in mind, as we will have reason to return to it in a moment.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth is an alluring philosophical principle on many levels. At root, it is an epistemological expression of axiomatic metaphysical principles. Two such axiomatic principles in Objectivism are the Law of Identity and the Primacy of Existence. The Law of Identity states that "A is A," or "a thing is what it is." The Primacy of Existence states that "existence has primacy over consciousness," implying that consciousness has no effect on the identity of entities. If one accepts these metaphysical principles, then the task of man becomes to discover the identity of the world around him. His consciousness does not have the capacity to create, only to identify reality.

The Standard of Omniscience

The biggest problem with the common interpretation of the CTOT is that it sets a standard of omniscience for truth, making certainty impossible. If we accept that certainty is impossible, then we leave the discipline of philosophy open to skeptics (who will gleefully agree that reality is unknowable) and mystics (who offer a supernatural source for certainty).

As mentioned earlier, one's context of knowledge is deemed irrelevant when determining the truth value of his statements. If I say that "Dr. Donougho is my Professor," then my statement is false even if I have every reason to believe that it is true. These kinds of situations are not uncommon. The history of man is marked by an ever-expanding degree of knowledge about the nature of reality. In the realm of science, when new data is discovered that contradicts old theories, then the old theories are discarded, and new ones devised. Does this mean that the old theories were always false? How can we ever be certain that our theories will not be contradicted by new evidence at some point in the future? This creates a problem. If truth is determined without regard to context, then one's context must be all-encompassing (i.e., omniscient) to make a claim of certainty. An omniscient standard of truth is incompatible with Objectivism.

Knowledge As Contextual

Objectivist epistemology lays the foundation for a bridge between subject and object, and the reconciliation between the CTOT and certainty. Objectivism states that absolute certainty is possible within a specified context of knowledge. Any statement made by a human being necessarily implies the preamble "within my context of knowledge." This preamble is necessarily implied because man, by his nature, is a being of limited consciousness. He is not omniscient.

For example, Newton's Laws of Motion are true, and will always be true, given Newton's context of knowledge at the time. Einstein has access to better technology and higher levels of mathematics, and was able to expand man's understanding of Physics. He discovered new data that could not be explained by Newton's Laws, and he was able to construct a new theory which did account for the data. It would be false for Einstein to state that Newton's Laws will always always be true regardless of context, but Einstein could agree that, give Newton's context of knowledge at the time, his theories are still true.

The contextual nature of knowledge allows man to continually expand his understanding of the world around him, while at the same time avoid being paralyzed by uncertainty. The rational man forms principles on the basis of evidence, and treats them as absolute unless and until he discovers new evidence that would require him to restructure those principles. This methodology can be applied to ethics, politics, and esthetics, as well as science.

The Implied Conditional of Absolute Principles

Another helpful way of viewing absolute principles is in the form of a logical conditional. One can assert "If there are no aspects of reality outside the context of my knowledge which come into play, then principle X will always hold true." If one has properly formed his principle, and integrated it with all of the evidence available to him, then this statement will always be true, forever and ever.

One can view this logical conditional the same as any other, in terms of truth value. We can represent the statement as:

p-->q

Where

p = there are no aspects of reality outside the context of my knowledge which come into play

And

q = principle X will always hold true

Note that the truth value of this statement follows the same format of any other conditional statement. If 'p' is true, then 'q' must be true. If 'q' is false, then 'p' must also be false. And if 'p' is false, then the truth value of 'q' is indeterminable.

Let's return to Newton to demonstrate this method in action. Newton makes the claim that "if there are no aspects of reality outside the context of my knowledge which come into play, then The Laws of Motion will always hold true." If Newton acquires evidence that his Law of Motion does not apply to a particular case (for example, when entities approach the speed of light), then he knows that an element outside his context of knowledge has come into play. Now, he is challenged to integrate the new data with his old principle, modify it, or discard it favor of a new one. Note that, while 'p' and 'q' in the above example can have varying truth values, the logical statement p-->q is itself an absolute principle.

A New Perspective on CTOT

I have argued that theories and principles can be held with absolute certainty within a specified context. How then can one marry this with the CTOT?

When one formulates a theory based on evidence he has gathered, and integrates it without contradiction into the whole of his knowledge, then his theory does indeed correspond with reality. He has properly identified a relationship between his consciousness and some specified aspect of reality. It is important to keep in mind that a conceptual consciousness is an entity in reality, and an understanding of that consciousness is an instance of correspondence. One's integration of data into concepts and principles corresponds to the reality of his conceptual consciousness, and the contents therein.

One will never be able to step outside of his consciousness and make propositions based on information unavailable to him, but that does not mean that his limited theories do not correspond to the aspects of reality within his contextual range. It is unfair, and indeed irrational, to demand that man define "truth" in terms of the metaphysically impossible, i.e., omniscience.

The Importance of Semantics

An understanding of epistemological concepts is critical to maintain the integrity of philosophy as a discipline. In academic circles, classrooms, journals, online discussion forums, and even private philosophical conversations, the defenders of rationality must insist on the precise use of epistemological terms like "truth" and "certainty." The reason why there is so much misunderstanding about the proper application of the CTOT is that many just assume that the CTOT requires a standard of omniscience. This misunderstanding must be identified, clarified, called out, and rooted out of existence.

When engaged in discussion with an intellectual opponent, especially on issues of epistemology, take care that your opponent is not demanding that you step outside your context of knowledge in order to make a claim of certainty. A flaccid refrain of rationalistic "what ifs" does not take the place principled, logical, evidenced-based discussion. In the of spirit of Socrates, define your terms, and challenge your opponent to define his.

Communication

I must anticipate a challenge to my argument with respect to communication. If all knowledge is contextual, and each individual is working from his own context, then how can one defend against the charge of relativism? Is it reasonable to assume that one can effectively communicate with other individuals, and that the ideas being communicated are understood in the proper context?

My answer to this last question is 'yes!', given that one goes to the effort of defining his terms. This is why the precise definition of philosophical terms within one's own mind is so important. Individuals may define concepts in subtly different ways, so when a misunderstanding arises, the first step is to make sure that participants in a discussion understand each others' context of knowledge with respect to the issues being discussed. Misunderstandings are always possible, but can be limited through proper discourse of ideas.

Also, while individuals may have different contexts of knowledge at any given time, as men we all have access to perceptual concretes. Another method of clarifying interpersonal communication is to logically reduce ideas as close as possible to the perceptual level.

Looking Forward: A Complete Theory of Induction

There are many challenges in the field of epistemology that must still be overcome. The most important of these, in my view, is a more complete theory of induction. Logical induction is man's method of forming rational principles based on evidence of the world around him. Ayn Rand presented a powerful theory of induction with respect to concepts in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but some questions remained unanswered.

First, what degree of evidence is required to form a (contextually) absolute principle? In Objectivism - The The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff discusses degrees of certainty with respect to principles (p67). He classifies theories on a graduate scale, from "possible," to "probable," to "certain." But what delineates these degrees of probability? More importantly, at what point can one settle on any given principle as "certain?" One clue offered by Peikoff is that in order to settle on a principle, "all evidence points in one direction, there is no evidence in any other direction, and no contradictory evidence." This idea is helpful, but insufficient.

If philosophers can agree on the CTOT and proper standards of rational discourse, then I believe these questions are answerable within our lifetimes. The only way to defeat the specter of skepticism in the academic community is through our consistent and determined effort to define our terms in philosophy with the most rigorous logical integrity.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> --Dan Edge<!--[endif]-->

Stanislovski Quotes

By Dan Edge from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Laying the foundation for attacking Google

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

Below is a quote from Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein excerpted a column he wrote on Google titled "How Much More Should It Be Allowed to Grab?"

[P]recisely because of its success, it's fair to ask if Google should be barred from furthering its dominance through acquisitions or collaborations. At issue are the recent purchases of YouTube, the leader in online video sharing, and DoubleClick, the leading broker of online advertising; in both instances Google used its gusher of profits to outbid rivals. There are also new joint ventures with Clear Channel, the giant radio broadcaster, and EchoStar, the satellite television operator.

Consider this: There may never have been a Google without the government's antitrust suit that prevented Microsoft from crushing upstart rivals. By the same principle, isn't it time to begin restraining Google to increase the odds another Google will come along?

I think it is safe to say that Steven Pearlstein will never be as productive or successful as any of the top leaders at Google. After all, if Pearlstein had real business acumen, he would not be a mere newspaper columnist hawking his opinions in a sea of opinion.

Nevertheless, Pearlstein feels himself competent enough ask if it is appropriate to regulate a massive company with thousands of employees and tens of thousands of investors—on the grounds that this company is now too successful and represents a coercive threat to others. Never mind that Google cannot outlaw or regulate its competitors; its mere success equals an act of violence that must be squelched.

Yet consider this: smashing the ability of the successful to reap the benefits of their good judgment and hard work creates a powerful disincentive for the successful to produce. Just what kind of innovation does Pearlstein think will come when the super-productive and super-innovative realize that all their best efforts guarantee them is an antitrust suit?

I suspect that Pearlstein doesn't think that deeply about the issue. The simple idea that there is some imaginary innovator out there who is somehow denied the right to outflank Google is probably justification enough. And that's what you get when you enshrine need as a value—and when great producers fail to justify their right to exist for their own sake.

Stand Up for Reason

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Richard Wills, whom I know from the "1FROG" discussion group of Front Range Objectivism posted the following as a comment on my post on Jesus Camp and Friends of God a while back. I thought it was way too fantastic for just a comment, so with Richard's permission, I'm posting it as its own blog post.

When I see blank-eyed God-squaders destroying children's minds by preaching blind obedience, and destroying their self-esteem by teaching them to cower, I'm reminded of the old hymn, "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus." The opening lines go:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
Ye soldiers of the cross;
Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss.

(See http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh514.sht for complete original lyrics and music.)

As an adolescent forced to go to church, I'd listen to the congregation singing this hymn and imagine they were singing "Suck Up to Jesus" instead. A religious service, after all, is nothing more than an exercise in sucking up to God.

Years later, I came up with my own lyrics for this hymn, imagining them sung by the faithful flock of the little Congregational church I attended near Boston. These are the words they would sing, that is, if they were honest about the meaning of their worship (see first three verses, below). Of course, if they were fully honest about their religion, they'd repudiate it entirely (see remaining six verses).

STAND UP FOR REASON

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
This is our battle cry.
All ye who don't believe us
In Hell will surely fry.
To dogma we bow gladly;
To reason we don't bend.
The truth does not concern us;
We'd rather just pretend.

Kiss up, kiss up to Jesus,
Imaginary boss.
Oh, Great Hallucination,
Without you we are lost.
Our self-respect goes down with us
When we get on our knees.
But if we really grovel,
Salvation is a breeze.

Suck up, suck up to Jesus,
Imaginary friend.
It's party-time at your place
After our lives end.
To reach your cosmic Disneyland,
We'll genuflect and cower;
We'll kiss your ass forever,
Pretending you'll save ours.

But now I've done some thinking
About this savior-dude,
And after due reflection,
Here is what I conclude:
This mindless little carpenter
Was mentally unglued,
And thanks to his religion
Humanity got screwed.

I live my life for me now;
This is my sacred right.
I scorn all gods and masters;
On mankind they're a blight.
I'll raise the torch of reason,
Our one and only hope,
Until the cross of Jesus
Goes up in holy smoke.

Beware of true believers
Who try to suck us in --
Snake-oil hawkers selling
Imaginary sin.
They're dying to convert us
By sword or by the pen,
But if we fall for their lies,
We're suckers born again.

They have the nerve to tell us
We're sinful from our birth.
Their God is cruel and jealous,
Disdainful of our worth.
A pompous little potentate,
He's peevish, he's perverse.
Down with cosmic tyrants;
We have enough on Earth.

Now, pride and self-reliance
Are virtues to admire.
Be noble and defiant;
Live life as you desire.
The heaven that you seek is here;
It's well within your reach.
You hold it in your own hands
And need not God beseech.

May humans thrive forever --
Man, woman, girl and boy.
Our noblest endeavor
Is living life with joy.
And so with reason's counsel,
Stand up and go forth --
Claim your glorious birthright:
This life, this time, this Earth!

Ahhhh...man!

NYT: in politically correct computer science programs, equality trumps ability

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

Now that women are starting to outnumber men on most college campuses, feminists are in the hunt for fresh opportunities to further their agenda.

The New York Times reports on their efforts in a field traditionally dominated by men: computer science. Apparently, programming is just not cool enough for girls:

“The nerd factor is huge,” Dr. Cuny said. According to a 2005 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, an academic-industry collaborative formed to address the issue, when high school girls think of computer scientists they think of geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.

This image discourages members of both sexes, but the problem seems to be more prevalent among women. “They think of it as programming,” Dr. Cuny said. “They don’t think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth.”

Certainly, few people would study computer science if there weren’t useful things to be done with computers. But if your goal is to be an doctor, materials engineer, or climate scientist (why does the media feel the need to push global warming in every science article?), why would you spend four years studying the theoretical foundations of information technology? Virtually all scientific and engineering disciplines require working with computers, but only one specializes in transforming real-world problems into code.

If computer science is not about your programming skill, then what is it about?

Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science. At one time, she said, admission to the program depended on high overall achievement and programming experience. The criteria now, she said, are high overall achievement and broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders. [Emp. mine]

“Broad interests,” “diverse perspectives” and “leadership skills” are politically-correct code words for affirmative action. Once skills are thrown out, what exactly is left? Imagine if airlines and hospitals announced that they were changing hiring criteria from flying ability and medical skill to “diverse perspectives?” Whom would you prefer to have written the software running your airport’s radar - someone with programming experience or “broad interests?”

The NYT implies that computer science is about more than “a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.” That’s certainly true, but ultimately, programming is about sitting on front of a computer screen for years on end and solving highly abstract problems. Whether due to social or genetic factors, more men happen to be suited to that environment than women. (As an application developer in a corporate environment, I can attest to this.) Denying that reality carries a cost: aspiring students who become victims of political correctness because they are found guilty of having the wrong chromosome.

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Free-range livestock on organic farm responsible for deadly spinach outbreak

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

Authorities for the first time said they had isolated the deadly E. coli strain on Paicines Ranch in San Benito County near a field the ranch leased to Mission Organics, a spinach grower.

They found E. coli “indistinguishable from the outbreak strain” in river water, cattle feces, and wild pig feces on the ranch within a mile a from the spinach fields…

Organic food is not necessarily more dangerous than plain food, but this is nevertheless a timely reminder of the productivity and safety benefits of technology.

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Notes on an AP Politics Roundup

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

On the heels of answering a comment from someone who wants me to break up my roundup posts, I find myself in the amusing position of posting a non-roundup post -- on someone else's roundup!

On my morning visit to the Drudge Report, I found the first two stories in this collection of three on politics rather thought-provoking. Both show in their own way that substantive political change cannot occur outside the context of a broader cultural change, which in turn can only come from the introduction of better philosophical ideas.

Dean and "Sound Bites"

First, we have Howard Dean blaming capitalism and telling us what the media would do if he were king.

"The media has been reduced to info-tainment," Dean said. "Info-tainment sells, the problem is they reach the lowest common denominator instead of forcing a little education down our throats, which we are probably in need of from time to time." [bold added]

While it is true that our news media make more money as fertilizer merchants than as purveyors of quality, this is not the fault of capitalism. On the contrary, I see two related factors at work.

First, the altruistic moral ideals and the pragmatic, anti-intellectual approach to political debate that permeate our culture leaves a politician practically no other alternative but to speak in terms of sound-bites. (Myrhaf recently blogged on the entertainment aspect of how the culture affects what can be commercially successful in talk radio.) Practically nobody wants to hear someone question the assumption that we all exist to serve our fellow man, and few have the patience to sit through an actual argument. What else will a market composed of people like this pay to hear? (And, come to think of it, who else would they elect?)

Second, there is no debate about whether there will be a welfare state, just squabbling over which pressure groups will get which favors. Consequently, everything a politician says has to be made as non-offensive and non-threatening as possible to a huge array of factions whose wishes often contradict each other. Again, what else could a politician do but avoid saying very much?

Dean's proposal -- to bar the media from the candidates' political "debates" and other appearances -- amounts only to making it easier for a politician to be all things to all people. Without those pesky media around, for example, one can yell one's brains out around college kids one day, promise more and greater handouts to the underclass the next, and offer a five-year plan to promote a better business climate the following day.

As it is, the media still manage at times -- even through sound bites -- to alert us to which candidate might favor the worst groups or to expose the potentially disastrous character and personality flaws of one candidate or another, as it did with Howard Dean. The article suggested as much by mentioning "The Scream", but did not elaborate enough.

This leaves only one question. Exactly what would Howard Dean have the media "force down our throats"?

Independent

The next story discusses plans for a reality show which will attempt to select a presidential candidate.

The online social networking site MySpace and reality TV producer Mark Burnett are teaming to launch the search for an independent presidential candidate.

The political reality show "Independent" comes with a $1 million cash prize and a catch: the winner can't keep the money.

The prize can be used to finance a run for the White House or can be given to a political action committee or political cause.

I have only two things to say about this insipid idea.

(1) Just watch. The Libertarians and everyone else who harbors the fantasy that all our problems would simply evaporate if we could bypass the Democrat-Republican "duopoly" when we selected a candidate for President will latch on to this. Stand by for Glenn Reynolds to announce it any day now.

(2) Given the ideas and concerns prevalent among the general culture (as noted above), the candidate selected by such a show will hardly represent "none of the above". Rather, expect "more of the same", but with a twist: he'll be unelectable because he is not "qualified" (i.e., experienced in the arts of deception and pull-peddling that constitute politics today). Otherwise, why didn't we already know about him?

Sounds like must-miss TV to me.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added sentence on need for cultural change before political change will occur.

"Anything That's Peaceful"

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

Via Instapundpit is an article the Glen Reynolds touts as an exploration of how the right and Libertarianism diverged. That may be an interesting, not to mention debatable subject for some. Nevertheless, as usual with the political movement that names itself after something it can't even define, the truly interesting question isn't how some movement that pays lip service to free markets has "diverged" from one that pays lip service to morality. (Both are converging to threaten liberty from different angles, but that's a post, perhaps, for another day.) The interesting story is how far Libertarianism "diverges" from aiding the cause of freedom, and why this is the case.

Since the article is as much a panegyric about "consistent modern libertarian" Leonard Read as anything else, perhaps the most straightforward way to examine this pregnant question might be to contemplate Read's own interpretation, as presented by Brian Doherty, of Libertarianism, which Read conveniently summarizes as "anything that's peaceful". Furthermore, although this may sound counterintuitive at first, our journey becomes even easier if we take it in reverse.

Doherty's last point about Libertarianism is its pacifism, particularly with respect to Communism.

To Read and those who hewed to his libertarian line, the warmaking powers of the state were one of the most horrible things about it, and they did not believe it was a proper duty of the American government to go abroad to destroy international communism, or to legally crush domestic communism.

Note the package-dealing of the "warmaking powers of the state" with government censorship (which is the only way I can imagine how a government could attempt to crush an ideology). Note also the context-dropping required to do so. A proper purpose of a government is to protect the lives of its citizens from foreign threats. It does so by waging wars against foreign aggressors. Not that war is pretty, but what is so "horrible" about the fact that one's life is defended from this type of threat?

One cannot object that Read simply felt a normal, healthy dread of warfare. He felt that we should not have intervened militarily in North Korea. Had we complied with Read's wishes, I suppose that once the anti-communists among our allies in the South were executed or holed away in dungeons far from earshot, you could say that it would have been more "peaceful" in Korea. That would have been the clear result of implementing Read's war plan. Don't blame the messenger for telling you what "peaceful" would have looked like in Read's world.

One also cannot object that Read merely disputed whether fighting in Korea was really all that helpful to American security, at least based on this article. He objected to the Korean War not because it was not in America's best interests to fight it, and not because our forces were hamstrung by bad strategy or an irrational policy. No, he opposed this war (and apparently any military confrontation with Communist nations) because "No overseas communist military could really harm the U.S.", and "Communism....is a philosophy to be despised and explained away.... It is not a military threat to be feared and shot away."

Never mind that through past and present foreign aid and espionage, Communist states were dangerous and becoming more so. And never mind that there was no freedom of speech within those nations that would admit of any meaningful opportunity to debate the merits of Communism. We would explain Communism away at home and watch it miraculously wither away abroad. I guess the empirical evidence of its failure (to do what?) amassed by the autocrats of the communist world would sink in after a few more million deaths from state-planned famines and the commissars would suddenly become "consistent modern libertarians". Peaceful rulers, peaceful -- quiet, anyway -- "evidence". Yeah. That's a win-win.

In fact, it's not even that rosy. Not too long ago, Libertarian Arnold Kling, exhibited the same Pollyanna-ish assumption that, contrary to evidence, everyone is open to evidence. He did this and showed the same kind of thinking Read did about Imperial Communism when he proposed as an "experiment" that several states adopt socialized medicine. The goal was for the resulting dead bodies and mangled lives to provide enough "evidence" for Democrats to finally shut up about socializing medicine. (What a "peaceful" way to settle an argument!)

Read's commissars would come to their senses just like Kling's Democrats would accept the results of his "experiment" (or do accept the data already obtained from overseas Guinea pigs the world over). And Read's commissars would experience epiphanies of global capitalism just like all of Europe is preparing to admit the error of its ways and privatize medicine. And just like Americans are laughing themselves silly right now at all those crazy Dems mouthing nonsense about socialized medicine again and expecting us not to notice because they keep saying "universal coverage".

This is not to say that there is not a war of ideas to be fought. It's just that failing to protect the freedom necessary for such a battle will not hasten its progress one bit. Oddly enough, a willingness to wage wars of self-defense abroad has the exact same rationale as our not imposing censorship at home. If the government can threaten you for the ideas you discuss, you are not able to learn everything possible about your position in order to evaluate it objectively. But somehow, Read wants to prevent our government from censoring Communists, and yet not defend our citizens from totalitarians abroad, who would censor some of them and everyone else if they could. Until I encountered Mr. Read, I had no idea that contradiction was so "peaceful".

Well, yes. I am aware that what Read objects to is government coercion as manifest in warfare and censorship. But I am also aware that he is ignoring the difference between government force initiated against the innocent (of which censorship is an example) and government force used in retaliation for force initiated against the citizenry (of which a war of self-defense is an example). This blindness to the moral difference between the initiation of force against others and the retaliatory use of force leads me to my next point: the "moral and prudential arguments", as Doherty calls them, that "run through the libertarian movement".

Doherty then discusses an incident in which Ayn Rand, who worked with Read for a time, objected to the inclusion of an article in their organization's publication.

Rand was outraged that the Friedman/Stigler pamphlet seemed to say that rationing through government action was morally equivalent to rationing [sic] through free markets, merely less efficient. [She actually also objected to the term "rationing" being used to describe the allocation of goods through a free market. See below. --ed] The resulting foofewaw, in which FEE added a footnote against Friedman and Stigler's wishes disagreeing with them on some points, was a great encapsulation of the wars between moral and prudential arguments that have run through the libertarian movement ever since.

Indeed, this "foofewaw" was, but to understand why, we need to take James Valliant's advice, and consider what Ayn Rand herself had to say about it.

No, this booklet alone will not convert people to the cause of property socialization. It's not direct propaganda -- collectivists never work through direct propaganda. It's groundwork-laying. To the extent which this booklet has any influence, is taken seriously or makes any point at all -- to that extent it will prepare the ground (the necessary intellectual confusion) upon which the demand for socialization can be planted, when the right time comes. The booklet itself is just a little drop in the bucket. All the successes of collectivist propaganda have been achieved through just such little drops, carefully planted in systematic progression. (The Letters of Ayn Rand, pp. 325-326.)

Earlier in the same letter (to Read's collaborator, Bill Mullendore), she describes the payoff:

[W]hen the groundwork is ready, a collectivist says to the Average American: "Don't fool yourself, brother. You've always lived under a system of rationing and always will. The only choice you have is this: Do you want to be rationed by selfish, greedy capitalists for their own private profit -- or would you rather be rationed by a public authoritywho will have no motive except your own good and the general welfare?" [bold added] (ibid., p.323)

Before I go on, a question: Just how practical is it to sow intellectual confusion about the nature of capitalism among the general public when one advocates capitalism? Doherty implicitly dismisses Rand's side in this dispute as being impractical. Apparently, Read implicitly disagreed with Rand since he went ahead with the objectionable article, merely adding a footnote of disagreement.

Morality is merely a system for deciding how to live one's life. Ayn Rand's genius in the field was the realization that reason can be used to discover morality.

... Ayn Rand begins by asking what man is, and why he needs a code of morality. Using this approach, she sees right away that man, a rational animal possessed of free will, is a living being and as such must perform certain actions in order to survive. Because man does not have instincts, he must learn everything, including what these actions are.

And because reason allows man to keep track of countless individual concretes efficiently (as well as any important similarities) by means of concepts, it allows him to essentialize the countless similar existents he will face as he goes through life. In particular, man can evaluate various situations (and his actions) conceptually. The science of making such evaluations (and guiding them by considering the evidence for what he needs to live (and flourish) is ethics, or morality.

Ultimately, this means that the moral is the practical. It also means that when one sees a "conflict" between the two, that one's grasp of the both is slippery. Hmmm. I didn't know until today that intractable arguments over life-and-death issues were "peaceful". I guess they are when the parties don't appreciate the stakes. That must be why Doherty called them "foofewaws".

So far we have seen that Read did not make a proper moral distinction between force misused (i.e., initiated) by the government and force properly used (i.e., used in retaliation). On top of misunderstanding the role of government, Read grandstands against American military action against communist nations, calling it "murder", and he does so even though his confusion would hinder discussion about the merits of capitalism as explained above. But when urged not to include an obviously bad passage in his "pro-freedom" literature, he apparently decides that omitting it would be "impractical" and runs with it anyway. Is acting on whim "peaceful", too?

If you're Leonard Read, probably so. This last passage is very illuminating, given that this man basically ignored a warning from his "heroine" about "planting seeds" in people's minds:

Woe betide someone sitting next to Read on an airplane who wasn't in the mood to hear about how coercion could never generate creative activity, or how various government officials ought more properly be called, say, secretary of external violence, or secretary of predation.

If this is literally true (and considering some of the proselytizing Libertarians I have been acquainted with, it wouldn't be a stretch) then Read exhibits a fundamental problem shared by many Libertarians: They do not appreciate the importance of reason as man's tool of survival. (They also have a strange idea of what constitutes a "peaceful" plane ride.)

Consider what proselytizing is. It is the attempt to gain recruits for a cause. There is nothing inherently wrong with that so long as it is not one's primary focus. But consider the difference of focus between attempting to persuade someone of the truth of one's position and attempting to get him to "become one of you". If we suppose that a Libertarian is pro-capitalist (despite what we have seen above) and opposes, say, a zoning ordinance, what difference does it really make if someone is a Libertarian if he ends up buying your argument and voting against the ordinance? None. Conversely, what good is it if you convince someone to "become a Libertarian" if his notion of "free markets" includes carbon credits that will drive you out of business -- not to mention potentially confuse anyone he speaks to about what capitalism is? None.

So for starters, someone focused on getting other people to call themselves something shows a misunderstanding of the importance of ideas in guiding action and of others understanding one's ideas. But that's not all. If one really does think a system of ideas is important, shouldn't one be concerned first and foremost with understanding those ideas himself? What good is your message if the messenger doesn't understand it himself? And how can you fully profit from ideas you don't fully understand? This last includes, but is hardly limited to the question: "How can you profit at all if you unwittingly create enemies of freedom by confusing them about the nature of freedom?"

This focus I see in so many Libertarians on converting other people over really understanding what freedom is and why it is important tells me they do not really understand what they are calling "freedom". The naive notion that people just need "evidence" that freedom "works" shows that Libertarians take reason for granted (or at least assume that the opinions in someone's mind are somehow determined by the evidence it is exposed to).

The failure to ask (or anticipate) questions like, "Works? For what purpose?", shows a failure to grasp the connection between the moral and the practical. This amorality leads to common, blatant errors among Libertarians about the purpose of government, including the sophomoric question of whether we should have one at all. And above all, the formulation that Libertarianism is "anything that's peaceful" summarizes the dumbed-down banality of the whole movement.

Man needs freedom because without it, he cannot take full advantage of his rational faculty. Given how little many Libertarians seem to appreciate the importance of reason, is it any wonder they feel contempt for the very idea of arguing in terms of fundamental principles? And is it any wonder they miss the whole point of the principle that the initiation of force is the fundamental way to violate rights and how this principle must be applied to a theory of proper government?

Freedom is neither simple nor universally desired nor uncontroversial. It can not and will not be advanced by those whom Ayn Rand called "hippies of the right". Freedom is, however, both moral and practical. It deserves better promoters and defenders than Libertarians.

-- CAV

Updates

4-25-07: Several edits for clarification near end.

Crass and Class at George Mason University

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

Dr. John's Lewis' lecture last night at George Mason University on Islamic totalitarianism was one of the most surreal public experiences I have witnessed in all my years as an activist and advocate. It evidenced in no uncertain terms that rationality and common decency are under assault at even our most distinguished forums. Academic freedom means tolerating opposing views and countering them with reason and facts in an atmosphere of respect and civility. It is not an orgy of rude and abusive mindlessness—a description that defined the conduct of many in the audience that evening.

The philosophic theme of Lewis' talk was that individual freedom is a value and that the free have the right to protect themselves from the initiation of physical force. Lewis defended religious freedom on explicit grounds, including the freedom of those in attendance who stood up, turned their backs to him and attempted to shout him down to peacefully practice their respective creeds without fear of threats or physical coercion. Lewis contrasted the exercise of freedom in America with life in the totalitarian Islamic regimes, where there is no distinction between the power of the state and the practice of religion.

Quoting various Islamic theocrats in power today, Lewis showed how these theocrats define themselves as advocates for the initiation of force, including one chilling quote from the leader of the Indonesian Islamic fascists that called for Islamic control of the government and the ruthless imposition of Islamic law upon non-believers. Drawing upon the same right of self-defense that allows a woman to defend herself from her would-be rapist, Lewis argued that a free America has an unassailable right to defend itself by destroying the connection between Islam and the state. Lewis pointed to the example of post WWII Japan to show how fighting for such an enemy's willful surrender led to an era of peace, happiness and freedom, for both us, and the peaceful people who had previously suffered under totalitarianism's boot. War may be hell, but a quick and decisive war is far, far better than living in a state of permanent terror.

For this, Lewis was decried as a racial bigot and murderer, and was taunted with endless interruption, bile and obscenities. That Lewis was even able to keep his focus and not throw his hands up in despair was testament to his moral courage and his unwillingness to concede the floor to any heckler's veto.

The lowest point of the evening came during the Q&A, when a GMU campus administrator took the podium in an effort to settle the audience down. He chose his words poorly though, for he ultimately thanked the audience for their behavior, which was little more than failing to engage in an all-out riot. It is one thing to be thankful that there was no riot; it is another thing altogether to thank people for obeying the law and for (barely) respecting the rights of others in attendance. Furthermore, by thanking rude and abusive students for their thuggish behavior, this administrator all but guaranteed that the next controversial speaker will face a similar rude treatment from those who may happen to disagree with him.

The questions asked during the Q&A could hardly be described as that; rather then even attempt to challenge Lewis by a thoughtful or revealing question, many "questioners" simply grandstanded and repeated non-sequiturs that reflected their own refusal to consider any aspect of his thesis. And in a disgusting and contemptible display of arrogance and hypocrisy, an attorney from the Council on American-Islamic Relations frothed to Lewis that he was "too angry" and needed to "lighten up" a bit; it was this same gentlemen who had worked to press the university into denying Lewis a venue when his talk was originally scheduled for February.

Yet the most telling event of the evening was when Lewis, after being pummeled with interruptions and derogatory remarks implying that he was a lackey for the political status quo, simply noted that he did not support the current political administration in Washington on the grounds laid out in his speech. He was not without interruption long enough to be able to fully explain why he disagreed with Washington's current war fighting-strategy, but knowing Dr. Lewis, his position can be distilled as follows: the President's religious sympathies have blinded him to fully realizing the pernicious threat caused by the union of religion and state, thereby weakening his resolve to defeat the cornerstone of religious intolerance today, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather than propel him to lead America to victory against religious tyranny, Lewis argues that the President's philosophy undercuts his very ability to identify the enemy and fight him accordingly.

Such a statement criticizing the President's philosophy and policies may have challenged the ideas and comfort zone of many of the College Republicans in attendance, yet these College Republicans neither screamed nor howled, nor did they interrupt Dr. Lewis and yell that he didn't understand the President and his creed like others in the audience had done. Instead, the College Republicans were nothing but polite, respectful and thoughtful, even as their own thinking was being challenged by their guest and under less than ideal circumstances.

The politeness and thoughtfulness of the GMU College Republicans evidenced the key difference between the civilized and the savage in attendance that night. The civilized can tolerate differences of opinion and they seek to understand why these differences exist in the first place. In contrast, savages are simply unable to tolerate any thinking other than their own emotion-laden opinions. If the police had not been there to preserve order with their overwhelming presence, I am convinced that Dr. Lewis would have easily been strung up from the nearest tree. That from students at my alma mater.

It was not lost upon me, the event's organizers, or Dr. Lewis himself that our men and women on the battlefield have it far, far worse than anything we may have experienced last night. Our defiance and refusal to yield to any form of intimidation or heckler's veto is an act of solidarity with these men and women; it is our determined effort to say that we will fight for them just as they fight with courage for us.

And bravo to Dr. Lewis and the GMU College Republicans for standing fast in the face of intolerance. More than anyone last night, they earned the title of GMU Patriot.

How U.S. farm policy makes us fatter and sicker

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

“For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?”

A good article, except:

“The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won’t solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies.”

I wonder why we don’t have a plague of “overproduction” of iPods, staplers, or cars? Perhaps it’s because their prices are set by the market, not bureaucrats.

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John Lewis and the Battle of George Mason

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

Now that's it's done, that's how I frame John Lewis' talk tonight at George Mason on the need to confront Islamic totalitarianism. There were probably 250 people in attendance to hear Lewis speak (although I use the word "hear" loosely, for a re-invigorated "Students for a Democratic Society" turned their backs in protest the second Lewis took the podium, and even more were simply closed to any of the arguments presented, whatever they may have been).

Never in my life have I been witness to such a seething display of hatred and bile in response to a calm, sober and rationally presented argument. All this for a man who argues for religious and philosophic freedom and against religious tyranny. Lewis is a hero just for having been willing to speak before such a rude and hateful audience.

At the same time, the GMU College Republicans who hosted the event conducted themselves with such grace and class that I haven't the vocabulary to express how grateful I am to them for all their efforts. I'm also grateful to the campus police and local law enforcement who gave Lewis the VIP treatment and were probably all that stood between the mob and an all-out riot.

I'm utterly drained by the evening, so I offer this following account of the night that was posted earlier on the blog:

I just got back tonight from Dr. John Lewis’ lecture on state-sponsored Islamic-Totalitarianism at George Mason University. There were countless police officers around the building providing security. Needless to say an entire mob mentality broke out as “demonstrators” in the audience disrupted the entire event. Islamofacist groups and their Marxist dhimmi associates hurled invectives, howled, and spat as if in a possessed frenzy. The professor and his supporters, much to their credit, behaved with complete restraint and respect for different viewpoints during the Q&A session. The same absolutely cannot be said of his opponents. So much for tolerance and diversity. Their attempts to disrupt and shut down the talk were a disrespectful, uncivilized display of hate that supported the argument that you cannot reason with or appease this kind of enemy.

I'd be hard pressed to disagree with this assessment. It was not a great night for the civil discourse of controversial ideas. I'll have more to say when I can put my thoughts together tomorrow.

Cambridge University Adopts a Prayer Rug

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

In February this year, the general and guest editors of a Cambridge University newspaper, Clareification, were disciplined by the school's authorities for having published one of the Danish cartoons in a satire on religion, and were required to publish an apology to Muslim students.

Worse, the student/guest editor was "interviewed" by the local police for having putatively committed a "hate crime" (as defined under Section 5 of the Public Order Act), otherwise deemed, in hyperbolic British nomenclature, as an act of "harassment, alarm or distress." It was Muslim students who were said to be "harassed, alarmed and distressed" by the cartoon, not the general and guest editors. (FrontPage Magazine, April 18)

The apology was extorted from the student on pain of not only being expelled from Cambridge, but of possible arrest and imprisonment by the authorities for the alleged "crime." The student has had to go into hiding, à la Salman Rushdie.

If the student must go into hiding, isn't that an acknowledgement of - and concession to - the role of and sanction of physical force in the "belief system" by not only those who might want to kill or harm the victim, but by the university authorities and the British government? What would be required of the "harassed, alarmed, and distressed" Muslims to leave this individual's life untouched by their "anger"?

Asim Mumtaz, president of Cambridge's Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, said that he was "satisfied with the way the college [Clare College at Cambridge] had dealt with the situation." He said: "Religion teaches us that God is merciful and forgives, and we should forgive others as well, so long as this student realized the impact of their (sic) actions and that this was wrong. This student has a full life ahead of him and if he had been thrown out of the university that would have had a huge impact."

What are the implied alternatives in Mumtaz's statement? Assassination, Theo van Gogh style - unless the student "groveled" before his potential murderers with an apology, or a life on the run, or even imprisonment. What kind of "full life" has this student to look forward to now, or any student who dares speak his mind about Islam or any other creed? What "impact" will the cowardly resolution of this crisis have on this student's willingness in the future to exercise his freedom of speech or stand by his convictions?

Mercy and forgiveness are doled out only to the submissive - that's the Koranic way to let live or let die.

It is an error to think that the submission of Cambridge University to potential Muslim violence and its sanctification of alleged "hurt feelings" is a measure of Muslim power and influence. Evil by itself is impotent.

Instead, it is a measure of the abandonment of reason and objective values that gives the Muslims the appearance of power and influence to suppress freedom of speech. Any compromise between good and evil - or between reason and mysticism, or between the principle of freedom of speech and censorship - always will result in a victory for evil, mysticism, or censorship.

Ayn Rand made several crucial observations on the subject of compromise.

"Contrary to the fanatical belief of its advocates, compromise [on basic principles] does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to be all things to all men, end up by not being anything to anyone. And more: the partial victory of an unjust claim, encourages the claimant to try further; the partial defeat of a just claim, discourages and paralyzes the victim." ("The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'" - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 255, 1966)

A principle by its nature is what it is, a recognized truth requiring consistent action. Failure to act on it when it conflicts with its antipode can only result, by default, in the establishment of the antipode as an ingredient of policy. If a principle, especially a rational one, is not defended and upheld in such a conflict, then it may as well not be recognized, and the appeasers and compromisers responsible for defending and upholding it must concede to that principle's enemies: "We are open to any pressure, to any threats of violence, to any brazen thuggery in the name of...." In this instance, it is in the name of "diversity."

Ostensibly, Cambridge acted from the "principle" of diversity, of trying to be all things to all men. In reality, it was a pragmatic, veiled capitulation to fear of the mob - more noisy Danish cartoon protests - that required the sacrifice a lone individual to the mob's emotions.

"Diversity," as it is promulgated throughout Western culture, is the mantra of subjectivism, whim worshipping, and non-absolutes. In this instance, the violation of the policy of "diversity" can best be expressed from the Muslim standpoint: "You have mocked my icon, my particular ghost, and made him the subject of levity. My icon is sacred, and you must be punished. Never mind that he was a pedophilic, murderous, tyrannical bastard - the Koran and Hadith confirm these facts about him - Mohammed is my prophet and I will feel unworthy of his favor and of Allah's blessings unless I take umbrage to slanderous insults to or slurs on their persons."

"A Clare College spokesman said: 'Because of the gravity of the situation and the diversity of views expressed about the best way to handle it,'" the College settled for "'a course of restorative justice and reconciliation.'" Which meant the guest editor's apology and his mandated browbeating by "senior representatives of Cambridge's religious communities."

A noted outspoken foe of Islamism remarked: "Note that 'diversity of views' does NOT include the right to criticize Islam."

The Clare College statement said that a "note of apology was distributed to all college members. The college is now arranging a meeting for next term to discuss the problem of maintaining free speech while avoiding offence...."

The "problem" will prove to be insuperable. Freedom of speech and de facto censorship cannot be reconciled.

Rand stated three rules that govern the issue of compromise. Two of them are:

"In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins"; and "When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side." ("The Anatomy of Compromise," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 145, 1966)

In the Cambridge instance, it is the Muslims - the irrational group - who have won (again). The Cambridge authorities could be accused of collaborating with the Muslims to abridge freedom of speech. And, because the concept of "diversity" is not clearly defined, but hides and evades - or abandons - the idea of freedom of speech, it worked to the advantage of the Muslim students.

This makes it possible for Muslims to consider "diversity" a one-way street, or a policy from which they demand, and are granted, exemption.

Under a headline not wholly coincidental with the Cambridge cave-in or submission to Islam, "Universities 'targeted' by Islamic extremists," the Daily Telegraph(London) on April 17 reported that Prof. Anthony Glees, of the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University in Britain, warned a conference of university security officers that Islamic "extremists" have targeted British universities as recruiting grounds for terrorists. "We must accept this problem is widespread and underestimated," said Glees. "Unless decisive action against campus extremism is taken, the security situation in the UK can only deteriorate."

Cambridge is one of the universities Glees identified as infiltrated by an allegedly disbanded "extremist" group, al-Muhajiroun, in addition to Oxford, the London School of Economics, and the Imperial College. Prof. Glees stated that a rabble-rousing imam who preaches the Islamic conquest of Britain and death to infidels, and who was founder of al-Muhajiroun, contradicts the official government line that the group has been disbanded and claims it has a presence on several university campuses.

But, is it Islamic "extremism" that is widespread and underestimated, or is it the policy of "diversity" that poses the greatest danger, not only in Britain, but in the U.S., as well? Note the "extremism" which Cambridge took action against at the behest of its Muslim students: a student exercising his freedom of speech.

"Diversity" is an indiscriminate policy that treats as untouchable and exempt from criticism or rational scrutiny - and satirical cartoons are a form of criticism - any unsubstantiated belief or assertion. But since the nature of man requires rational, absolute evaluations and values in order for him to function and survive, a policy of "diversity" or of non-judgmental neutrality concerning those beliefs or assertions allows those with the most vocal assertions to fill the vacuum created by the abandonment of value judgments.

The Cambridge University authorities, like their diversity-bound, non-judgmental brethren elsewhere, refuse to condemn Islamic "radicalism" because it is too closely tied to Islam itself. Willingly or not, they must eschew any claim to neutrality and yield to the strongest, most vociferous pressure group.

A policy of "diversity" can only engender injustice, a pall of fear, and self-induced blindness. Ultimately, such a policy will impose the irrational by extortion or the point of a gun.

It would be unfair to single out a British university for adopting a prayer rug. When was the last time one heard of an American university or college newspaper offending Muslims? One could argue that fear-fueled political correctness and the prospect of official retribution for flouting it has moved Americans further along the path of moral decrepitude.

Avian Intelligence

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

Via Arts and Letters Daily is a fascinating article about an area of intense scientific study: the behavior of ravens.

Ravens ... have a long evolutionary process of espionage and counter-espionage to build on, in the course of which they became masters of deceit and problem-solving. They got better and better at guessing the intentions of others and concealing their own. "Ravens are cognitively equal to a two-year-old child," says Bugnyar.

The birds are highly sophisticated when it comes to assessing their adversary's degree of knowledge and considering it for the purpose of their deeds and misdeeds. They won't attribute much brainpower to a wolf, for example. "When ravens discover a wolf burying a piece of meat, they watch him openly, "Bugnyar reports. "And when he leaves, they just dig it up." But when it comes to their conspecifics, who are prepared for such tricks, they act demonstratively uninvolved, grooming their feathers and stilting about as if bored.

The birds apparently rival primates in some respects. Read the whole thing.

-- CAV

The Religious Right's Culture of Living Death

By Alex Epstein:

Applauding the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a ban on so-called partial birth abortions, President Bush called it a victory for "building a culture of life in America."

The idea of a "culture of life" has been a rallying cry for religious conservatives in their opposition to all abortion and embryonic stem cell research, and in their opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide. By doing everything possible to preserve embryos, fetuses, and the incurably ill or vegetative, they say, we will bring about a "culture of life." "The problem we face . . ." declares conservative icon Rush Limbaugh, "is . . . a culture of death. From abortion on demand . . . to embryonic stem cell research [to] assisted suicide . . ."

But what would life actually be like in their "culture of life"?

Consider a world in which abortion were illegal--which is the exact meaning of the President's pledge, following the Supreme Court's verdict, to "continue to work for the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law." Pregnant women who rationally desired to abort--whether because of accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, or danger to their lives--would be forced to undergo 20 years of enslavement to the needs of children they did not want to give birth to, or attempt dangerous, back-alley abortions, the kind that crippled or killed untold numbers of women before Roe v. Wade. To prohibit abortion would be to sentence countless women to spiritual--and sometimes literal--death.

Or consider another staple of the "culture of life"--a world in which euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal. Individuals with incurable and unbearable diseases would not be able to die with dignity at a time of their own choosing, but would be subjected to a protracted existence of often unspeakable agony. Their loved ones would have to endure torturous months or years seeing what was once a vibrant human being persist as a mass of pain or as a vegetable--just as, in the now-famous case of Terry Schiavo, her husband Michael had to see his wife for 15 years in a state incapable of emotion, memory, or thought.

Finally, consider a world without embryonic stem cell research. The stem cells that can be extracted from microscopic, 150-cell embryos have the potential to become any other type of human cell--and thus, say scientists, be used in therapies that could save or enhance millions of lives. To stop stem cell research would be to deprive every one of these millions--including those with heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's--of the possibility of a longer, better life.

To uphold these positions in the name of the sanctity of life is a colossal fraud. A "culture of life" would not benefit human life, but cause massive suffering and death.

What could possibly justify the religious conservatives' crusade for such a world? "God's will," they answer. Our lives belong to a supernatural being, they say, and He commands us not to end them "unnaturally," no matter how unbearable they become. He sanctifies bits of protoplasm, they say, and thus commands young women to abandon their ambitions in order to raise unwanted children, and commands everyone to abandon the breathtaking promise of a new field of research.

This is the rise of the same medieval mentality that demanded rejection of the life-enhancing developments of anesthesia, the dissection of corpses, and birth control.

The religious conservatives do not value actual human life; they are consistent followers of the Christian ideal that human life is properly lived in sacrifice to a supernatural being, and that suffering is proof of virtue. The worship of suffering is fundamental to Christianity, a religion whose central figure is glorified for dying a horrific death for the sins of mankind. Several years ago, a prominent religious conservative said of the Schiavo case, "Terry Schiavo . . . is suffering in obedience to God's will." He added: "Isn't suffering in pursuit of God's will the exact center of religious life?"

This is the culture of death--of living death.

Human life is sacred--not because of supernatural declaration, but because of the unique nature and glorious potential of the individual, rational human life: to think, to create, to love, to experience pleasure, to achieve happiness here on earth. A genuine culture of life would leave individuals free to pursue their own happiness--free from coercive injunctions to sacrifice themselves to religious dogma. Such a culture is what we must seek to create, as we do everything possible to fight religious conservatives' culture of living death.

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

California to Energy Producers: Not in Our State

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release:

After an intense four-year struggle, Australian energy company BHP Billiton's attempt to build a Liquefied Natural Gas facility off the coast of California has been effectively killed by the state's Lands Commission, which voted 2-1 that its "Environmental Impact Report" was unsatisfactory.

"When we in California experience our next energy crisis--or the next time we complain about our exorbitant gas and electric bills--we should remember the fate of BHP Billiton," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "That company wanted to build a plant that could satisfy up to 15 percent of Californians' energy needs--a plant that did everything possible to maximize safety and minimize pollution. And what did it get in return? Nearly half a decade of obstruction from California's endless constellation of environmental bureaucracies--and seething opposition from environmental groups that oppose every single practical form of energy production, from coal to oil to gas to nuclear power. The message California sends to any would-be producers of plentiful energy is obvious: Not in Our State.

"California and many other states are riddled with laws based on environmentalist hostility toward industrial energy. These laws must be replaced with a respect for property rights and an appreciation for the incomparable value that is industrial energy. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are the lifeblood of our civilization; without them, the average American's food, clothing, shelter, and medical care would be impossible. And, contrary to claims that we must abandon fossil fuels to protect against alleged weather disasters caused by global warming, fossil fuels are vitally necessary to build the buildings and power the technologies that protect us from dangerous weather.

"The anti-industrial mentality of environmentalists must be rejected, in word and in law, by everyone who truly cares about human life."

Theocracy in America

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I could not agree more with this post on theocracy in America from Mike of Primacy of Awesome. According to the Slate article on Monica Goodling (a DOJ attorney) to which he links, 150 graduates of Pat Robertson's evangelical Regent University currently work in the Bush Administration. Not one, not five, but one hundred and fifty -- from that one young college alone. Mike writes:

If you are an Objectivist and you don't think religion is a serious and rising threat to the country, consider this. What if one hundred and fifty graduates of the OAC worked in the President's administration? Objectivists would be dancing in the street. Victory would be at hand!

Indeed, yet some Objectivists dismiss the threat of theocracy out-of-hand, claiming that America's sense of life is a impenetrable barrier against possibility. That's sheer fantasy, as Ayn Rand would have known:

A nation's political trends are the equivalent of a man's course of action and are determined by its culture. A nation's culture is the equivalent of a man's conscious convictions. Just as an individual's sense of life can clash with his conscious convictions, hampering or defeating his actions, so a nation's sense of life can clash with its culture, hampering or defeating its political course. Just as an individual's sense of life can be better or worse than his conscious convictions, so can a nation's. And just as an individual who has never translated his sense of life into conscious convictions is in terrible danger--no matter how good his subconscious values--so is a nation.

This is the position of America today.

... If America drags on in her present state for a few more generations (which is unlikely), dictatorship will become possible. A sense of life is not a permanent endowment. The characteristically American one is being eroded daily all around us. Large numbers of Americans have lost it (or have never developed it) and are collapsing to the psychological level of Europe's worst rabble. (Ayn Rand, "Don't Let It Go")

And yes, although the rise of the Religious Right was little more than a gleam in Ronald Regan's eye at the time of her death, Ayn Rand clearly expressed concern about the trend in her final lectures at the Ford Hall Forum.

Also, via the article mentioned by Mike, I found this 2001 Time article about John Ashcroft. The man brought his fundamentalist Christianity to work, literally:

Ashcroft's devout Pentecostal faith, as expressed at the office, has disturbed some employees as well. New guidelines for documents bearing Ashcroft's signature bar the use of the word pride and the phrase "no higher calling than public service," both of which contradict the former Senator's religious views. Each morning at 8 he plays host to what he calls RAMP sessions--for Read, Argue, Memorize and Pray--in his office or conference room. From three to 30 participants chew over Bible passages, commit some to memory and finish with a prayer. Non-Christians are welcome, but many staff members consider the sessions inappropriate, given Ashcroft's position as guardian of the Constitution--including separation of church and state.

Ashcroft bristles at the suggestion that he's doing anything improper. "I don't think the fact that I might want to invite the wisdom of the Almighty into my decision making is a threat to anybody," he told TIME, leading his questioners into his conference room to point out a wall relief that long predates him, depicting King Solomon's deciding the parentage of an infant. "Wisdom in making good decisions can be inspired as well as acquired," he said. If others choose to practice different faiths in their offices, "that's not my business. I'm not part of any sort of prayer police."

Just remember folks, theocratic government is nothing to worry about... so long as you've got your blinders on.

God's Spokesman

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Have you heard of this Fred Phelps character? Being neither homosexual nor religious, I had not paid attention to these people before. His motto is "God hates fags," which he considers profound. I guess it's so profound that the profundity eludes my simple mind.

Phelps says that God controls the destiny of every human. If that is so, then didn't God create fags? Does God hate what He Himself is responsible for? (A form of the problem of evil.)

Doesn't Jesus talk about loving sinners and not passing judgment? How do these people justify the contradiction?

One of their signs says, "God Sent the IED's." They're saying that God sent terrorists to kill Americans because of homosexuality. Like Dinesh D'Souza, they are apologists for terrorism because they have a problem with America. If Phelps wants something really profound to read, he should try Leonard Peikoff's essay, "Religion vs. America."

These people are the best evidence yet that God does not exist. I mean, would an all-powerful God let these fools claim to speak for Him? Not only them, but also the peanut butter guy, not to mention terrorists killing innocent people in His name. If there were a God, then there would be a lot of people out there making Him look bad.

Happy (Life on This) Earth Day!

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

Ordinarily, Earth Day passes, only for me to realize a few days after the fact that, in its honor, I should've dumped a few quarts of motor oil into a pond somewhere and enjoyed the dazzling colors from the resulting oil slick. Hippies like rainbows, too, right?

But this year, it seemed like every stinking section of the paper had something annoying to say about this wannabe religious holiday for the Church of Gaia. In particular, a list of "Earth Day Tips" (See below.) from the print edition of the Houston Chronicle irritated me enough that I decided to dedicate the evening barbecue I was already planning to Earth Day. The festivities started with me using a crumpled up piece of that rag in my chimney starter to light off my charcoal.

First of all, for my Earth Day checklist, with my comments [in brackets]:

1. Turn off your computer. (Electronics on standby use 75 percent of electricity.) [Based on what? Besides, how the hell am I going to blog this without a computer? Damn the electrons! Full speed ahead.]
2. Get a programmable thermostat. [Our house comes with one. I like it only because it saves me money.]
3. Use compact fluorescent bulbs. [I prefer incandescents. Next.]
4. Go solar. [Go to hell. Next.]
5. Turn off the faucet. (A low-flow shower head along with faucet aerators can save nearly 8000 gallons of water a year.) [8,000 gallons of water costs me approximately oh, I don't know -- diddly-squat. I'll continue taking real showers. And, oh yeah, I own a few custom-made full-flow shower heads I can install should I find myself moving to some hippie enclave any time in the future. You know, all this low-flow shower malarkey reminds me of Ayn Rand saying something about hippies being able to pollute a stream simply by stepping into one.... But back to the point: I'll use whatever water I damn well please and I'll turn it off when I don't need to use it. Capisce? ]
6. Check your tires. (Improve gas mileage by 3 percent or more.) [I do this already, and not because of what some sanctimonious environmentalist twit (I may have misspelled that.) wants me to do. The life you save may be your own.]
7. Shop Smart. (Avoid plastic bags.) [Bugger off. Next.]
8. Eat Less Meat. (U.N. says the industry generates about 18 percent of greenhouse gases.) [And.... New Effin' York strip steaks, baby! Deeeeee-lish! Buh-bye, Kofi!]
9. Watch that packaging. (Recycle.) [Am I the only one left in America who finds being patronized and being addressed in the imperative mood extremely offensive? In any event, since recycling wastes the ultimate "non-renewable" resource, my time, it's not happening unless it happens to save me significant money to do so, as in when I wash clothes or dishes.]
10. Eat Local. (Avoid shipping costs.) [Also avoid: variety, a balanced diet, economies of scale, and above all, thinking for yourself. Newp!]

My mother-in-law, who is visiting, racked up mucho bonus points for buying individually-wrapped steaks! Each juicy, mouth-watering one had its own styrofoam cradle and shrink-wrap package! Who says you can't like your mother-in-law?

And I added to my carbon footprint by grilling with "filthy-burning" charcoal (You're only pretending to grill if you're using gas -- especially on Earth Day.) and by imbibing a tasty Maredsous 8 (as shown at right, including the special glass) as I waited for the coals to whiten and enjoyed reading what I like to think of as the "antidote" to "the right virus". You know, if these global-thinking, local-acting, life-hating Purityrannical morons ever did anything fun, they'd know that beer was carbonated and probably attempt to outlaw it.

Aside from not having a picture of this momentous occasion to post here for your enjoyment, I only regret that no matter what I did, my "carbon footprint" was probably still not big enough to blacken a substantial amount of the surface area of the seat of Al Gore's pants.

The Earth is valuable only to the extent that we can live happy lives on it. If we're going to have an "Earth Day", that's what it ought to be about. And that's why I fired up the barbie today.

-- CAV

PS: I feel (even) better, now!

Updates

Today: I completely forgot to mention this amusing and quite apropos article....

One finding from Fraser's research has already generated a national stir. The study found low but significant concentrations of fatty acids generated from cooking meat on an open grill. Driven by Houston's image as a barbecue hot spot, news reports citing the link between barbecuing and air pollution circulated nationwide.

Bwahahaha!

4-23-07: (1) One minor edit. (2) Added note on disposal of newspaper.

Islamic totalitarianism and academic freedom at George Mason University

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

NB: Below is the text of a letter that I submitted to the George Mason University's campus newspaper regarding Tuesday's talk by Dr. John Lewis on the defeat of Islamic totalitarianism.

To the Editor:

On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, I participated in a debate at George Mason University with Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs Richard Rubenstein over the propriety of the invasion. This debate, hosted by the campus Objectivist Club, was remarkable in that rather than yell past each other as is often the fashion in debate, Professor Rubenstein and I sought to explain our respective reasoning in calm, deliberate and principled terms.

Afterward, GMU President Alan Merten, who was in attendance during the debate, remarked that "this is the reason we have universities." I wholeheartedly agree with him and I have always been proud that an event that I participated in warranted such a complement, for it encapsulates a goal of my public advocacy. At root, I seek to identify and defend my values rationally. If one seeks to be persuasive (especially on a controversial moral question), I don't see how one can afford any less.

Fast forward to the present, and you can imagine my surprise when a speaking event that I was helping to organize at GMU was canceled this February in large part due to pressure from Mason's Islamic community. Dr. John Lewis, a classics scholar and military historian from Ashland University, was to address the campus on his strategy for subduing militant jihad and Islamic totalitarianism. In working to prevent Lewis from speaking, these Islamists attacked the very foundation of the university as a realm where controversial ideas can be discussed and debated.

First, it would help to understand just what Dr. Lewis advocates and why some wish that his voice be silenced. Paralleling today's battles with Japan's war against the United States in WWII, Lewis argues that today's conflict is between those who seek to preserve secular government and religious freedom and those who seek to impose the creed of Islam by force. As was the case with the Japanese and the emperor-worshiping suicide-cult of Shintoism, Lewis argues that the advocates for freedom must compel their enemy's total surrender, i.e. they must secure from the enemy the large-scale admission that his cause is utterly futile if freedom and peace are to be restored.

Furthermore, Lewis rejects the argument that Islamic totalitarianism is mere "terrorism" that lacks a distinct center. Instead, Lewis maintains that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the fountainhead of jihad against the West. As such, Iran must be defeated, and Lewis believes that such a defeat will only come as a result of a ruthless war against the Iranian government and the people whose tacit support makes that government possible.

At root, Lewis' argument is built upon a moral principle: the good have full right to their lives and full right to take the action necessary to defend their lives against evil and irrationality.

It is interesting (and ironic) that GMU's Islamic population believes that Dr. Lewis should thus be denied the opportunity to present his case on campus. After all, don't these same Muslims argue that those who seek to impose Islam by force are perverting their "religion of peace?" Shouldn't these Muslims then be just as appalled at the murder and brutality of the Iranian regime as is Lewis? Shouldn't these Muslims be just as concerned about the threat of a nuclear-tipped Iran--on the grounds that they have a firsthand understanding of the evils of the Iranian regime?

Or is it that some in GMU's Muslim community are more sympathetic toward Iran than they are toward America? Perhaps that is why they choose to ignore Lewis' actual thesis against totalitarianism and attempt to twist his argument into an assault against all Muslims, peaceable or not. And perhaps that is why these Muslims are implying that GMU students are simply too ignorant to make up their own minds about what Lewis has to say and that they should serve as censors for what is and is not discussed on this campus. Had members of Mason's Islamic community sought to engage Lewis in honest debate, I would have gladly supported it, yet they have not offered this. Instead, they have attacked the very premise of the university itself.

I am heartened to see that one group on campus has had the moral courage to do what is right and ensure that Dr. Lewis is able to present his arguments to students. Lewis' thesis is non-partisan, yet sensing the larger issue at stake, the College Republicans have risen up in defense of academic freedom and offered a venue for Lewis to speak. I admire them for it, because they have evidenced a better grasp of this issue than many of GMU's professors and administrators. No one has a right to bar anyone who seeks to peacefully discuss his or her ideas from speaking at this campus, and any attempt to do so is an attempt to hijack the mission of university in the name of a cause other than truth-seeking.

I hold that George Mason University has an important role to play in the upcoming debates that will challenge our nation. I hope that every one of its students and faculty, regardless of their philosophic leanings, will affirm their commitment to the academic freedom that is needed for Mason to successfully fulfill that role. Quite frankly, anything less is surrender to irrationality.

Nicholas Provenzo
Chairman
Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
GMU Alumni, BIS '05

Spencer on "Nice Guys"

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

Over at FrontPage Magazine is an article by Robert Spencer that makes a very good point about a number of "great guys" who turn eventually out to be Moslem terrorists:

Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? To their friends and family, they probably were. After all, they weren't interested in undifferentiated mayhem. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational and good, and the murders were a means to that goal. It was not just a noteworthy achievement, but a necessity, for them to remain "decent fellows," for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society. That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for -- in their view -- a goal that remained good.

Today's jihad terrorists are likewise the adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that teaches them that murders committed under certain circumstances are a good thing. And those murders, here again, are not committed for their own sake, but for the sake of a societal vision hardly less draconian and evil than that of Hitler, but one also that portrays itself as the exponent of all that is good -- as the Taliban showed us. But the continued reference to such people as "terrorists" pure and simple, and the refusal of the media and most law enforcement officials to examine their ideology at all, only reinforces the idea that these people are raving maniacs, interested solely in chaos for its own sake. The society they want to build, and the means besides guns and bombs that they are using to build it, so far remain below the radar screen of most analysts. These people are just "terrorists," interested only in "terror." And so we're continually surprised when they turn out to be nice guys after all. Decent fellows. Like the SS. [bold added]

This is an excellent point underscored by Seung-Hui Cho, whom nobody, apparently, mistook for a "decent fellow". What was so conspicuously absent in this case was an attempt, however warped or misguided to build something "good". The goal was simply destruction. This was a one-off event with limited consequences that could have easily been prevented. Having said that, Cho was a symptom of a deeper problem, of the real danger....

When first learning of the Blacksburg Massacre, I pondered whether this was somehow worse than the Islamist atrocities of September 11, 2001, and my conclusion is mixed. On a moral level, I regard both acts to be examples of the same level of depravity.

Psychologically, I think this is worse for most of us. Briefly: At least we had an easily-identifiable enemy and a course of action (to fight) that all but the most obtuse could see after the atrocities in New York and Washington. It is clear to me that we need cultural change after this atrocity -- but I knew that already and I also know that most people do not appreciate this fact. This horrid episode will be ugly, confusing, and hopeless to many.

And which ideology is worse in the sense of posing a greater danger to America? Islam, which animates so many modern terrorists, does provide them with a pseudo self-esteem that does help them "blend in" as nice guys, and so makes the average individual Islamofascist potentially far more dangerous than a modern nihilist like Seung-Hui Cho.

But nihilism, while its worst-afflicted individual is generally far less dangerous than an Islamofascist (and would usually be far less so, were we as a society to more confidently act on the warning signs they broadcast), represents a cultural rot that causes -- and is aided and abetted by -- our very failure to transmit the better aspects of our culture to later generations. If we cannot give our children good reasons to be moral, why should they seek to be moral or even believe that anything such as the good exists?

To the extent that people generally buy into the notion that there is no good and evil, or, as seems the case with Cho in particular, no good, they lose their motivation to achieve values, and to defend themselves from destruction. Totalitarian Islam and nihilism are both evil, anti-life ideologies, but nihilism is weakening our society from within as noted above, whereas we need only recognize totalitarian Islam for the evil ideology that it is and begin fighting its followers and presenting our civilization as the far superior alternative that it is. Nihilism is, hands-down, the greater danger of the two.

And this takes us to our greatest irony. Robert Spencer just sees the tip of the iceberg when he recognizes the value of pseudo self-esteem in helping a terrorist remain stealthy. This is true of most people who are physically dangerous, but what of the philosophers who unleashed the cultural rot in the first place? Immanuel Kant, for example, was by all accounts an eccentric, but pretty mild-mannered fellow.

The key to unraveling this seeming paradox is to realize that evil is impotent without the good. To most effectively destroy good men, one must be able to appear to be a good man in order to win their trust. To get them to destroy themselves, one must appear to offer guidance in order to win their minds. The good man's only defense is his honesty, his commitment to discovering the truth of any situation, and his willingness to act upon that truth. As Nick Provenzo put it so well, "[O]ne cannot tiptoe around evil or madness -- at least not if one seeks to live."

-- CAV

The Most Radically Disruptive Force

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Greg Mankiw gives us this snatch of a C-SPAN transcript of an interview with Hillary Clinton:

LAMB: There's a quote here. I want to ask you if you agree with this. This is from Alan Arenhault, author of "The Lost City" -- you put it in your book. "The unfettered free market has been the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation."

CLINTON: I believe that. That's why I put it in the book.

Mankiw provides a quote from Milton Friedman:

"What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself."

-- Milton Friedman, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 1961

That's Senator Clinton all over. She feels that she knows better than the common man what is good for him. She feels this because her intentions are altruistic. Wanting to do good for the collective is the ultimate proof that one is moral and right.

But the will of America's welfare state philosopher-kings has been thwarted by profit-seeking businessmen. These businessmen have worked with Republicans, who are morally inferior because they do not want to do good for the collective. The result is "the most radically disruptive force in American life for the last generation" -- the unenlightened spending their own wealth, unregulated and uncontrolled by those such as Senator Clinton, who have goodness in their souls.

I've said it before: the woman is a nightmare. She could be the next President -- and I very well might vote for her!

Muslim Milquetoasts to the Rescue?

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

Early on the morning of April 12th, a Norwegian-Somalian "moderate" Muslim woman was attacked in downtown Oslo by a group of seven or eight "extremist" Muslims for publicly criticizing imams who advocated female circumcision. As she was beaten unconscious, her assailants shouted "Allah-o-Akbar and recited the Koran." (FrontPage Magazine, April 15)

The question to ask is: Is this why we do not see much in the way of "moderate" Muslims opposing "extremist" Muslims, or jihadists, or Muslims who advocate the subjugation of the West to Islam? Is it merely a fear of violent retribution for rewriting the Koran or criticizing Islam's more barbarous practices?

On April 1st, The New York Times reported that the six imams, who were removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last November 20th because other passengers were alarmed by their praying and chanting before boarding the plane, are suing both the airline and the passengers whose complaints were documented. The passengers claimed that the imams praised Saddam Hussein, cursed the U.S., and when on the plane, asked for seat belt extenders.

A New York Muslim lawyer, Omar Mohammedi, is representing the imams, and claims that his clients were not praising Hussein, nor cursing the U.S., and that their regular seat belts did not fit. (Which poses a not irrelevant question: Where these imams so obese that they needed "extenders," and if so, why did the imams stow them under their seats?)

Of course, the lawyer can deny that the imams said anything that might have caused alarm in the other passengers. And, of course, a seat belt extender can be used as a weapon to throttle another person or gash his face with the metal end of it. This apparently does not concern the lawyer; he wants the passengers punished for exhibiting "prejudice" and the airline punished for acting on that "prejudice."

As a point of justice, "moderate," milquetoast Muslims deserve all the "prejudicial" flack they get. They have the option - call it volition - of repudiating the creed and discovering reason and individualism. They can neither swear to uphold the Constitution nor advocate a separation of church and state without violating central tenets of Islam, which are as irreconcilable with the idea of secular government as are Christian ones.

While the attack on the Norwegian-Somalian woman is regrettable, the incident simply underscores the problem with the creed; removing one facet of an irrational dogma will not address the fact that the creed sanctions such violence, and always will, until it is thoroughly and mercilessly debunked.

Presumably, the "flying" imams are "moderate" Muslims who just want to be left alone to behave bizarrely in public, and not be unfairly associated with the 9/11 hijackers who also prayed and chanted before driving planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and into a Pennsylvania field, shouting "Allah is great!"

On one hand, the U.S. has been targeted by jihadists of the violent and "civil liberties" suasions. On the other, the Christian religious right is gaining more and more power and influence in the U.S., and is allying itself with the environmentalists. It seems that the last vestiges of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment have been abandoned. Whether or not the West, and especially the U.S., will survive this triple onslaught, remains to be seen.

What will not help are articles such as Daniel Pipes' recent article in the New York Sun (April 17), "Bolstering Moderate Muslims," in which he reports and more or less endorses a RAND Corporation study, "Building Moderate Muslim Networks."

Before discussing the report and the goals of the individuals cited in it, Pipes writes:

"Moderate Muslims do exist. But, of course, they constitute a very small movement when compared to the Islamist onslaught. This means that the American government and other powerful institutions should give priority to locating, meeting with, funding, forwarding, empowering, and celebrating those brave Muslims who, at personal risk, stand up and confront the totalitarians."

Leaving aside the question of whether the U.S. government should be fund and "empower" such groups - which it most emphatically should not - what does he think the Bush administration has been doing for the last five years, but seeking out "moderate" Muslims at White House dinners to celebrate Muslim holidays and in other unlikely places?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won't meet directly with the shunned and murderous Muslim Brotherhood, but she will delegate that task to other American diplomats. (The World Tribune, April 12). Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, exhibits no fear by meeting with President Assad of Syria, an enabler of Iraqi "insurgents" who regularly slaughter American troops. One cannot make a fundamental distinction between these acts of appeasement.

I am no more interested in bolstering "moderate" Muslims than I am in encouraging "moderate" Christians or "moderate" environmentalists or "moderate" advocates of global warming. Islam and Christianity are certifiable creeds based on the notion of the unprovable, on the exempt-from-reason, on the irrational, on the belief of the existence of omnipotent, omniscient ghosts to whom one must account for one's actions. Both wish to exercise political power over all Americans. Environmentalism and "global warmism" are also fast becoming creeds, also founded on the rejection of reason, the instituting of irrationalism as a policy norm, and man hatred.

The authors of the RAND report, writes Pipes, "grapple intelligently with the innovative issue of helping moderate Muslims to grow and prosper.

"They start with the argument that 'structural reasons play a large part' in the rise of radical and dogmatic interpretation of Islam in recent years. One of those reasons is that over the last three decades, the Saudi government has generously funded the export of the Wahhabi version of Islam. Saudi efforts have promoted 'the growth of religious extremism throughout the Muslim world,' permitting the Islamists to develop powerful intellectual, political, and other networks."

Excuse me, but is the issue of which version of Islam is more "radical" or "dogmatic" relevant here? What religious creed is not "dogmatic" and "radical" in its fundamental tenets? All imams and mullahs are but Islamic Jerry Fallwells or Pat Robertsons, the one set wanting to be the messenger of Allah and the scourge of infidels, unbelievers and apostates, the other set starring "kinder, gentler" promoters of Allah, complete with good manners and winning, reassuring smiles.

The RAND study authors "review American efforts to fight Islamism and find these lacking, especially with regard to strengthening moderates. Washington, they write, 'does not have a consistent view on who the moderates are, where the opportunities for building networks among them lie, and how best to build the networks."

Networks? They mean ad hoc associations of "secularists, liberal Muslims, moderate traditionalists, and some Sufis."

"...The study proposes de-emphasizing the Middle East, and particularly the Arab world." It "urges Western governments to focus on Muslims in Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and in the Western diaspora, and to help make their ideas available in Arabic."

Pipes concludes,

"Although 'Building Moderate Muslim Networks' is not the final word on the subject, it marks a major step toward the systematic reconfiguration of Washington's policy for combating Islamism."

This is news to me. I was not aware, given the paucity of evidence over the last five years, that Washington was combating Islamism. And instead of proposing that "moderate" Muslims establish of network of talking heads, why doesn't the RAND Corporation take the Bush administration to task for, to name another instance of pragmatist lunacy, seeking to sell the Saudis "up to $10 billion in weapons, including new advanced platforms such as the F-15 and F-16. The negotiations," reports Geostrategy, "have been stuck over the Saudi refusal to accept any restrictions on the use of the U.S. weapons."

"Several U.S. newspapers said Israel has objected to the U.S. weapons sale to Riyadh. The Boston Globe and the New York Times said Israel has expressed concern that Saudi weapons would erode the qualitative edge of the Jewish state against its Arab neighbors."

Geostrategy went on to report that the U.S. "has moved to supply the PAC-3 missile defense system to Saudi Arabia," and that in 2006, "the administration approved about $10 billion in Saudi arms requests from the U.S....which included main battle tanks, combat vehicles, upgrades and aircraft systems."

Against whom is all this armament intended - paid for, by the way, by U.S. taxpayers through their gasoline prices? Israel? Iran? Or the U.S. itself? The Saudis are supporting the Sunni "militants" in Iraq, but then so is Iran, in addition to Iraqi Shiites. Remember that it is Saudi Arabia that is openly supporting the "extremist" Wahhabist movement in the U.S. through CAIR and other "moderate" Islamic organizations. Remember also that Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Israel. But, in the White House's view, Saudi Arabia is a "moderate" Arab state and an ally.

"We are committed to Israel's security," said Sean McCormack in the Geostrategy article. "We are also committed to our historical relationships, good, strong relationships with other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia."

You can't have it both ways. In this instance, you can't ensure Israel's security by giving its enemies the means to destroy it. Or do McCormack and his colleagues in the State Department wish that Israel would just go away and stop posing such moral dilemmas? Or do they even see it as a moral dilemma?

"Networking" will solve all our problems. Link up all the tepid, "moderate," ghost-worshipping Muslims in networks to combat an enemy dedicated to destroying the West in the name of a ghost.

If you believe that idea will stop the Islamic onslaught on the West, then you will believe that salmon thrive in Martian rivers and flowers bloom on Venus.

Where do reason, individual rights, freedom and the security of this country come into play in this network? The authors apparently never heard of such ideas.

A killer's clues . . .

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

More spot-on analysis on the Virginia Tech Massacre, this time from psychotherapist and psychologist Dr. Michael Hurd:

Here are three clues to what contributes to the attitude of a killer--chillingly, illustrated in the aftermath of the disaster.

The killer's roommate: "If I was told before he was depressed or suicidal, I definitely would have kept an eye open ... I definitely would have tried harder to be his friend or know a little bit better."

Dr. Hurd: You can't be friends with a nihilist hell-bent on destruction. Evil is not the same as emotional conflict. If you still don't understand this in the aftermath of the tragedy, then you're never going to understand it; and the way is paved for another one, and another one after that. Killers flourish in a psychological atmosphere where their potential victims think like this. This man didn't need counseling, and never would have benefited from it. He needed to be stopped, back when he was stalking women and making threats, and otherwise violating the individual rights of those on a campus.

The killer's creative writing teacher: "He was so distant and so lonely," she told ABC's "Good Morning America" Wednesday. "It was almost like talking to a hole, as though he wasn't there most of the time. He wore sunglasses and his hat very low so it was hard to see his face."

Dr. Hurd: Many people are lonely. They can't find people with whom to connect; they can't find people on their "wave length," if you will--that is, people who share their philosophy or sense-of-life. Yet they want this connection, and they generally seek it out. Cho didn't want it or need it. He only wanted and needed to destroy. Don't try to understand it; it's too irrational and sick to contemplate. But, at the same time, don't try to relate it to the realm of the reasonable, either.

The killer's poetry teacher: "I know we're talking about a youngster, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings," she said. "There was something mean about this boy. It was the meanness -- I've taught troubled youngsters and crazy people -- it was the meanness that bothered me. It was a really mean streak."

Dr. Hurd: Come on, professor. You can say it. Go ahead, I dare you. Say it. He was EVIL. He was BAD. He was not quantitatively different from your average, stressed out college student...he was qualitatively different. He acted with choice, no less so than the 9/11 killers, the Columbine killers, or the Oklahoma City killers. It's not mental pain or anguish. It's hatred and evil.

Yet as Hurd indicates, look just how reluctant these three individuals are to describe evil--that is, a substantive threat to the living and the good--as the thing it is.

If the take-way from this tragedy is that people like Cho--that is, the viciously amoral and depraved--are helpless victims who only need our "love," "compassion" and "understanding" to deter them from their path, I think we will only pave the road for the next unspeakable tragedy. There are people who choose to be utterly nihilistic, and it is our right to defend ourselves against them.

Struggling to make sense of the Virginia Tech Massacre

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

Like most, I am shocked and saddened by the news of the murderous rampage that left 32 innocent people dead and others injured on the campus of Virginia Tech. I am relived that I have heard back from the people I know personally at Virginia Tech and that they are safe; my heartfelt wishes go out to those who must endure the pain of hearing less fortunate news.

As I struggle to comprehend such a cruel and senseless tragedy, I cannot help but to notice how other people explain and comment on it. Much like the criticism surrounding Hurricane Katrina, some people are condemning the leadership of Virginia Tech for failing to lock down its campus at the first sign of trouble, the idea here being that institutions are expected to perform with prescient exactness even in the most unusual and paralyzing of emergencies. And as to be expected when any criminal tragedy of such a magnitude becomes known, some voices are already issuing the call for increased government regulation of firearms, the idea again being that it is our very freedoms that threaten our lives.

I am able understand these responses, even as I disagree with them. One of the more trying aspects of enduring such a tragedy is the invariable questioning that becomes part of the fallout. We all find ourselves asking how could a single man actually murder 32 innocent people. What perverted this man's mind to the point that he could commit so savage and brutal an act? What might have been done to prevent it all from happening?

I see that the newspapers in Europe are already blaming America's so-called "gun culture" for the rampage. I cannot help but think to myself that if only we had the culture that they describe. An undeniable fact in this tragedy is that one man confronted hundreds with his two pistols but was not confronted back in kind; not even one student or faculty member possessed the means to fight back in defense of their very lives. Monday's victims were not the victims of a "gun culture"--they were the victims of its polar opposite.

But why? Each of us knows that addled minds similar to that of Cho Seung-Hui walk among us and that we cannot rely solely upon others to safeguard us from their actions. What then explains the willingness of so many of us to leave ourselves vulnerable to outright murder, or worse, demand that others leave themselves vulnerable? I recoiled in my seat today as I watched the convocation at Virginia Tech where the Buddhist minister called for non-violence in her speech to the victims of this tragedy. Wasn't that just how yesterday's victims died--as non-violent pawns at the mercy of a raging gunman? Every student, faculty member and staff member was denied by rule of law the right to posses the tools necessary for self-defense on that campus. Is that not one of the horrors that we must now confront?

We must to be willing to stand up in defense of our own lives--we must be willing to take concrete action as we do it. And this case, we would have had to have been willing to arm ourselves as a matter of course--a position that is a highly contentious viewpoint, even in some Objectivist circles.

* * *

As this story unfolds, we are beginning to get a picture of the mentality of the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui. Ian MacFarlane, a former classmate of Cho's has posted two plays Cho wrote for a drama course they took together last fall at the news blog at AOL. MacFarlane, now an AOL employee, paints a chilling portrait of Cho:

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.

So here we are presented with a man operating with a disturbed and seemingly hair-trigger psychology. Yet it is MacFarlane's next words that I find to be the most troubling:

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.

Yet it seems Cho did more than write disturbing plays. The Chicago Tribune reports an anonymous source that says that Cho had recently set a fire in a dorm room and had stalked some women. If these allegations are true, I can only ask why wasn't Cho sanctioned for it? Why wasn't Cho expelled from campus and held accountable under the law (to include being institutionalized for mental heath treatment)? Why did the rights of the disturbed and unhealthy take precedence of the rights of the peaceable? This is not the kind of question that I think can be pointed at any one particular person or institution on the scene, but at our entire culture--and at ourselves.

MacFarlane continues:

While I was hesitant at first to release these plays (because I didn't know if there are laws against it), I had to put myself in the shoes of the average person researching this situation. I'd want to know everything I could about the killer to figure out what could drive a person to do something like this and hopefully prevent it in the future. Also, I hope this might help people start caring about others more no matter how weird they might seem, because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago.

Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department offers a similar account, saying that she read Cho's writing, reported its content to the authorities and even offered to take Cho to counseling herself if it would have helped him.

I thank MacFarlane and Rude for the courage it must have taken to offer such frank and obviously painful public statements, for these with the other reports begin to present us with the information we need to come to understand the roots of this tragedy. On so many levels people failed to assert their egoistic rights and responsibilities in defense against this deeply troubled young man. It was not to mere classmates, instructors and acquaintances to secure mental health treatment for Cho; either he or others with a more intimate relationships with the man ought to have recognized his issues and acted accordingly. Rather than patronize a seemingly violent person, people ought have asserted their right to be free of a man that obviously troubled and threatened them so. Rather than allow themselves to be victims of seemingly random and senseless violence, people ought have asserted their right to personally protect themselves.

It is not that I in any way blame the victims of this tragedy for their losses; they are and will remain wholly innocent and my heartfelt sympathy rests completely with them. It is that I cannot but help note the self-abnegation that seemed to infect people's thinking before this tragedy and that only served to exacerbate its fallout. I am reminded yet again that it takes egoism to live.

And for me, the failure of others to grasp this point (or even my own ability to grasp and apply it had I been in their shoes) is one of the hardest parts of this whole story to reconcile. Most if us understand that we each have a right to our lives--yet this truth requires both thought and action. It would not have violated any of Cho's rights to have held him to account for any of the warning signs he did give--even if the response was limited to merely saying that he could not act as he did and expect to be allowed to keep the company of peaceable men. Yet rather than confront his madness, people only tiptoed around it.

I can understand the error, for its one that I can see myself making. Would I, having been confronted with the likes of Cho, pressed the case like it deserved to be pressed? Or would I have been unable to imagine a tragedy like the one that unfolded and have let my guard down accordingly? Would I have allowed myself to be disarmed? I find it hard to offer a definitive answer that I am content with.

And therein lies the sad yet truthful moral of this story for both me and others: one cannot tiptoe around evil or madness--at least not if one seeks to live.

A string of failures

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

I just read a report saying that Cho had in fact been taken to a metal hospital by his parents on the grounds that he appeared to be suicidal.

The gunman blamed for the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history had previously been accused of stalking two female students and had been taken to a mental health facility in 2005 after his parents worried he might be suicidal, police said Wednesday. [ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer]

As I understand it, this hospitalization ought to have disqualified Cho from being able to legally purchase a firearm without a hearing under current law, so I can only imagine that somewhere there was a failure to keep the necessary records that would have made Cho fail his background test.

It also appears Cho was let off the stalking charge that had been made against him.

Cho Seung-Hui had concerned one woman enough with his calls and e-mail in 2005 that police were called in, said Police Chief Wendell Flinchum.

He said the woman declined to press charges and Cho was referred to the university disciplinary system. During one of those incidents, both in late 2005, the department received a call from Cho's parents who were concerned that he might be suicidal, and he was taken to a mental health facility, he said.

Like most disasters, it seems that the Cho massacre wasn't caused by just one failure, but by a string of failures. The root casue in my estimate remains

Quick Roundup 178

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

Obama, Democrat Whig Whim Candidate for President

Barack Obama won my nomination for most despicable panderer yesterday. Ben Smith reports on some remarks of his that exploit the Blacksburg Massacre as a starting point. And I do mean "exploit" in the lowest sense of the term.

[Obama] takes the massacre more as a theme than as a point of discussion.

"Maybe nothing could have been done to prevent it," he says toward the end.

So he moves quickly to the abstract: Violence, and the general place of violence in American life.

"There's also another kind of violence that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways," he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of "violence."

There's the "verbal violence" of Imus.

There's "the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country."

There's "the violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored,"

And so, Obama says, "there's a lot of different forms of violence in our society, and so much of it is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other."

Many politicians would avoid, I think, suggesting that outsourcing and mass-murder belong in the same category. [my bold]

Before going further, I must note Dr. Michael Hurd's excellent commentary on the murders.

The Chicago Tribune reported on its website that he [the Virginia Tech killer, Mr. Cho] left a note in his dorm room that included a rambling list of grievances. Citing unidentified sources, the Tribune said he had recently shown troubling signs, including setting a fire in a dorm room and stalking some women.

ABC, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the note, several pages long, explains Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this."

Assuming all of these facts are true, I see a connection between these two paragraphs. On the one hand, we have a young man who does outrageous things--set fire in a dorm room, stalking women--that in a more reasonable era would lead to immediate expulsion, if not legal prosecution. Since we're not in a reasonable era, with all the fear of crazy lawsuits and political incorrectness (let's not forget the "rights" of the mentally ill, including the violent), then of course there are excuses made all the way up the chain of command at the university. Then, from the point of view of this sick and twisted, evil young man, when he sees excuses made for him, what happens, psychologically speaking? His sense of being a victim, the mentality of all criminals, is massively reinforced. When he finally decides to end it all, what does he do? Blame others. "Others," after all, were supposed to give him a life. Others are responsible for all of his pain. Others must pay.

Others in Mr. Cho's life implicitly conceded this by not holding him accountable for his outrageous behaviors. When you appease a completely imbalanced, irrational person like this, he's prone to take his premise of victimhood to its logical conclusion....and, well, you can witness, with horror, the results.

Tragedies like this one don't happen in a vacuum. In all the months and years of "expert" commentary to come, decrying the existence of guns and the "lack of mental health services" even for those who obviously cannot be helped, I wish someone other than myself would focus on this. [bold added]

Barack Obama, before the corpses even get cold, is already evading the fact that these massacres are the logical, practical, and psychological culmination of the social and political philosophy he endorses! I have heard it said that he acts as if welfare state leftism is some new revelation, but this is astounding -- and revealing.

To label all one's ideological opponents with the guilt for this crime would make it impossible in a more reasonable world, to borrow Dr. Hurd's term, for someone who does it to remain in serious contention for any office, let alone the Presidency. But these aren't reasonable times. The only question, sadly, is "How unreasonable?"

Obama is labeling anyone who disagrees with his whims as "violent" and in the process, evading the fact that the only way to live by his whims is to initiate force against others.

Save the Humans "Does" Imus

I'm jotting this off from behind a firewall that blocks the site, so I can't post an excerpt, but I got a big kick out of this essay on the Imus imbroglio. It made some good points, as well.

More on Campaign Finance "Reform"

Guess who said this?

Eliminate all private donations to candidates or candidates PAC's. Make every donation to any political group (private firms, PACs, interest organizations, and the like) limited and transparent. Strengthen the firewalls between these groups and campaigns so that they are not in cahoots. Then, create a very nominal campaign tax (some studies estimate it would cost only $5 per taxpayer per year to cover all congressional elections) so that all candidates have a fund of clean money to use while running for public office. Finally, mandate equal and extensive free advertising on all public television, radio, print, and online media outlets so each candidate can express his platform to the public. Campaign finance reforms like these (and surely a few others), will create positively great changes in American politics.

Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams.

Fortunately, if there is anything good left to say about the conservative movement, it is that some of them still respect freedom of speech and have their wits about them.

More than simply being unfair to taxpayers, such a scheme is fundamentally foreign to the system of government that the Founders envisioned. As P.J. O'Rourke says: "You want to get elected to change the government and the only place you can go to get the money necessary to run for election is the government you want to change. Do you see something a little East German about that?"

Bradley Smith's column is pretty good at pointing out the deficiencies of Williams's proposal, but it fails to note explicitly that attempts to regulate campaign finance contributions also violate property rights, and so it does not do what it ought, which is to denounce as immoral and impractical all attempts by the government to regulate freedom of speech and the disposal of property that makes such speech possible.

-- CAV

TAX DAY

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Have you seen any tax day protests today?

FDA Approves Silicone Breast Implants

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

From a November 18th Wall Street Journal article, FDA Approves Silicone Breast Implants,

Nearly 15 years after banning silicone breast implants in most cases, the Food and Drug Administration approved revamped versions at a time of soaring demand for cosmetic procedures.

Many of the original marketers, who lost billions of dollars in lawsuits related to allegedly flawed silicone implants, are long out of the business. Still, the FDA's approval late Friday will accelerate a push into aesthetic medicine by two companies that are heirs to the U.S. breast-implant business: Allergan Inc. and Mentor Corp.

Dow Corning Corp., a subsidiary of my company, The Dow Chemical Company, was one of those "original marketers". Forced into bankruptcy by class action lawsuits backed by little more than arbitrary claims, and junk science, Dow Corning finally settled for some $13 billion to avoid litigation that it probably would have only partially won, even though it had solid science behind its case.

Such is today's environment when class action against large corporations need little more than accusations and a sympathetic jury to find in their favor. With the conventional wisdom predisposed to be suspicious of big business rather than respectful of it, its no wonder. The implant business at Corning was a small business generating little revenue, and Corning, in the end, did nothing wrong. Vindication comes a decade too late.

Goliath for Hire

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

One of the common justifications that I hear for government intervention in the economy, and specifically for regulation of enterprise is that the individual is exploited and pushed around by big corporations., that a large corporations has the ability to coerce the individual because of the power imbalance. This is what I fondly refer to as the David and Goliath syndrome, only in this case Goliath crushes David. You see this all the time in industries that are believed to be "essential" such as health care. The hospitals, the HMO's, the insurance companies... all "push the individual around". The individual "must have access" to health care, and so is in a tough position. Therefore, we must have controls on the industry.

This is hogwash.

Ignoring for a moment the fallacious claim that the individual must have access to health care, the posited scenario is a straw man. It ignores one fundamental mechanism that the market creates to deal with such a scenario: the agent. The concept of agency is the free market's mechanism for dealing with these sorts of issues. Merriam-Webster Online defines an agent as: one who is authorized to act for or in the place of another. An agent, therefore, is authorized to act on one's behalf in a given situation. What does an agent bring to the transaction? He may bring specialized knowledge, negotiating skills, time to spend on the issue, and even some of his own corporate leverage to engage during a negotiation.

Agents come in all forms, and may spend weeks or only minutes working on your particular issue. The easy ones to think of are people such as: real estate agents, doctors, lawyers, insurance agents. But agency takes many forms, and some are not so recognizable. A search engine such as Google is your agent, for a nano-second, providing you with information from its database. Consumer Reports or Underwriter's Laboratories is your agent, providing you with assurance on the safety or quality of particular products. Or one may think of new business models such as Lending Tree.com, the negotiating site for home loans. These agents serve the same purpose, by representing your interests, and bringing some sort of leverage to your side of the table.

Agency is the natural outcome of any division of labor society, and it is ubiquitous. The market's answer then is: you hire someone to represent your interests in a particular situation. You hire your own "Goliath" to fight your battles for you.

From a November 27, 2006 Forbes article "Only Suckers Pay Retail" comes a great example of how this works. As employees have been shifted to medical plans with higher and higher deductibles, companies such as My Medical Control have formed to meet the needs of the individuals now caught with larger hospital bills that they must deal with. The company has data on common procedures and rates charged across the country, and negotiates better billing rates on its clients behalf, saving the client an average of 22% off of their medical bills. The company, as many other agency's are, is paid out of the savings it obtains for its customers so the agency is accessible to everyone.

Such an agency is the obvious choice for those who need to keep their insurance premiums affordable by taking out high deductible plans. Such people take higher risk of incurring medical costs, but hire agents to act on their behalf if and when those costs materialize.

So stop whining for government to intervene. Find a "Goliath for hire"; they're everywhere.

Just Peacemaking

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

It was only a matter of time before someone would translate "turn the other cheek" into a military doctrine of preemptive surrender.

Fuller Seminary's Glen Stassen, has become a chief evangelical Left opponent of the U.S. war on terror. An advocate of "just peacemaking," and a board member of Jim Wallis's Sojourners, the ethics professor has suggested that 9/11 might have been avoided if only President Bush an offered an olive branch to al-Qaeda.

"Do you think they would have gone ahead with 9/11 or do you think they would have at least waited" if President Bush had publicly announced his commitment to "just peacemaking?" Stassen asked during a debate last fall at the American Academy of Religion. [links dropped]

Although, to his credit, author Mark D. Tooley of FrontPage Magazine, does realize that such a policy represents abject surrender, he (at best) mistakes the influence of the Enlightenment upon Christianity for evolution of same, when offering this retort to Stassen:

Historically, the Christian faith has drawn a distinction between the moral responsibilities of Christian believers, individually or collectively, and the governments under which they live. Where Christian individuals may be called to turn the other cheek, governments are called to avenge aggression in defense of the defenseless. But modern Christian pacifists, ignoring even the moral heritage of traditional Christain pacifism, are too often unable to recall these distinctions. In their minds, governments, especially Western ones, must perpetually turn their cheeks, no matter the provocation or the consequence. [bold added]

First of all, there is the whole question of whether Christian states were more concerned with protecting their citizens or the turf of the church. Not to belabor the point, but what difference is it to this atheist if he lives in a Christian state that "preemptively surrenders" to a Moslem caliphate -- or one that fights it off, only to establish a Christian theocracy?

And second, even if we grant that Christianity did historically "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's", what about now? At least on that matter, some of Tooley's fellow Christians in the Texas Republican Party might beg to differ with him (HT: HBL):

The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to "dispel the myth of the separation of church and state." And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge. [Link added. See page 21 of the PDF, under "Safeguarding Our Religious Liberties". --ed]

So long as people like Tooley are allowed to speak about Christianity as a benevolent political influence without challenge, they will be able to continue, whether they intend to or not, to be able to provide cover for the likes of the Texas Republicans, or at least to put the public at large off guard by pooh-poohing theocrats of various stripes as exceptions to the rule.

Unfortunately, even sects of Christianity that pay lip service to reason hold it as secondary to faith, and they correspondingly hold actions done with the afterlife in view to be of a higher caliber than those done for the sake of living on earth. To imply that Christianity inherently respects separation of church and state is to ignore the fundamental nature of religion, which is to instruct human beings living on this earth to act in accordance with ends not of this earth.

-- CAV

Paying For the Welfare State

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Matt Stoller is a liberal who is proud to pay his taxes. He argues that right wingers are unpatriotic because they don't want to pay taxes. Let's look at his piece, "Paying For America."

I just paid my taxes, and I have to say, I always take pride when I do so. I don't like having less money to spend, of course, and the complexity of the process is really upsetting. But I am proud to pay for democracy, and I feel when I do send money to the DC Treasurer and the US Treasury that that is what I am doing. The right-wing likes to pretend as if taxes are a burden instead of the price of democracy. And I suppose, if you hate democracy, as the right-wing does, then taxes are the price for paying for something you really don't want.

Not to make too fine a point of it, but the USA is republic, not a democracy. I assume by democracy you mean something like "representative government with free elections." But America didn't even have an income tax until the 20th century and it was a free country with free elections in the 19th century. Indeed, it was a much more free country then, and taxes were much lower. Taxes are not the price of freedom or democracy, but the welfare-regulatory state or mixed economy.

Your inference the the right-wing hates democracy because it hates taxes is wrong. The right hates the welfare state, which makes taxes "paying for something you really don't want."

Personally, I find banking fees, high cable and internet charges, health care costs, and credit card hidden charges much more abrasive than taxes, because with those I'm just being ripped off to pay for someone's summer home.

This is economic ignorance. You think rich people arbitrarily raise prices in order to purchase summer homes. If that really happened, then competitors would do without summer homes in order to charge less and win market share from the guys with summer homes.

In this list of services that you resent paying for is health care costs. These are high because of decades of government intervention and regulation of health care. If we had a free market in health care, prices would be a fraction of what they are and the product would be superior.

Patriotism is about recognizing that we are all connected in a fundamental moral and physical sense, that the war in Iraq is our war, that poverty in New Orleans is our poverty, that public funding to cure cancer comes from each of us and not just the scientists who have made it theirs.

Patriotism is not collectivism. My patriotism is based on the fact that America was founded as a nation of individual rights. FDR brought in a foreign idea, the welfare state, which originated in Bismark's Germany.

The tax burden we face is a very small price to pay for the privilege of taking responsibility for our own freedom and our own society. And the hatred of taxes on the right comes from a hatred for this responsibility. It's childish and immoral and unAmerican.

As I noted above, America had more freedom when taxes were lower. Today's tax burden is necessary only to pay for the welfare state, a foreign idea that FDR got from Bismark's Germany. Since America was founded on the principle of individual rights, the collectivist welfare state is truly un-American. It is not childish and immoral to oppose the welfare state, but it is childish and immoral to attempt to paint opponents of taxation as unpatriotic. Our Founding Fathers waged the Revolutionary War because they didn't want to pay certain taxes.

Now, what is a problem is the complexity of our tax system.

Right. So why do liberals oppose a flat tax?

Complexity is a tool that powerful elites can and do use to intimidate and control people without access to capital and connections.

So why do liberals oppose a flat tax, again?

With modern technology, there is just no reason for this complexity anymore except the business coalitions that push for specific tax breaks and the politicians who love them. This complexity not only upsets and disempowers people like us, it empowers the powerful to skip out on their tax burden.

If we got the government out of the economy, taxes would be lower and simpler. Complexity is a result of our increasingly fascist system, in which the state dictates the economy. Fascism is a type of socialism.

It's not a coincidence that Grover Norquist, the architect of the right-wing ascension to power, runs an organization called Americans for Tax Reform. People like Norquist, who are charlatans at heart and deeply unpatriotic and immoral, use the complexity in the tax code that they help to create to persuade Americans that taxes are bad. This is also true in states all over the country, where it is the unpredictability of property tax burdens and not the amount that causes schools to go wanting for funding.

If our tax code is a conspiracy of powerful elites and unpatriotic, immoral conservatives, why do liberal politicians support it?

Our tax code is the DNA of our nation's moral compass.

This is a mixed metaphor. Compasses are man-made devices and do not have DNA. It would be better to call our tax code the north pole of our nation's moral compass. Actually, it would be better not to use high-flying rhetoric that is meaningless.

I am proud to pay taxes because I take pride in America, and paying some tiny burden to keep our society running is an extremely small price to pay for being able to call myself an American citizen.

If America were a laissez-faire capitalist nation, you could call yourself an American citizen for free.

The old expression 'you get what you pay for' is apt for all sorts of
situations.

Yes, but money taken from people at the point of a gun is not money paid for anything, it is money stolen.

People tend to express what they value in how much they are willing to pay for it. I am willing and feel privileged for the right to pay for my country. The right-wing is embittered to do so, if they do so at all. And that, more than anything, says something about how much they value this experiment called America.

You're happy to pay for the welfare state. Those who oppose taxation value America, but not the welfare state.

It Ain't the Math

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

This somewhat rambling post is brought to you by the United States Department of the Treasury....

Tax day really snuck up on me this year! This was due in approximately equal parts to the fact that my wife usually does them, I have been very busy since the end of the holidays, and, academic that I am, I can be very absent-minded about some things. (I remembered to do them yesterday.) In the Van Horn household, I pay the bills and organize the records, but come April, I happily hand over the taxes to my wife. I don't know how she does it, but she must really love me.

This year was different, though. My wife is getting ready for an important exam, so I had to take over the tax chores. And boy! I'd forgotten how burdensome doing the taxes can be, even when they are relatively "simple" as ours still are.

Consider the instructions (p.33) one must wallow through just to determine whether one is eligible for a deduction on student loan interest:

You can take the deduction only if all of the following apply:

• You paid interest in 2006 on a qualified student loan (see below).
• Your filing status is any status except married filing separately.
• Your modified adhusted gross income (AGI) is less than: $65,000 if single, head of household, or qualifying widow(er); $135,000 if married filing jointly. Use lines 2 through 4 of the worksheet below to figure your modified AGI.
• You, or your spouse if filing jointly, are not claimed as a dependent on someone's (such as your parent's) 2006 tax return.

Use the worksheet below to figure your student loan interest deduction.

Exception. Use Pub 970 instead of the worksheet below to figure your student loan interest deduction if you file Form 2555, 2555-EZ, or 4563, or you exclude income from sources within Puerto Rico.

Qualified student loan. A qualified student loan is any loan you took out to pay the qualified higher education expenses for:

1. Yourself or your spouse.
2. Any person who was your dependent for the year the loan was taken out except that:

a. The person filed a joint return.
b. The person had gross income that was equal to or more than the exemption amount for that year ($3,300 for 2006), or
c. You, or your spouse if filing jointly, could be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return.

The person for whom the expenses were paid must have been an eligible student (see this page). However, a loan is not a qualified student loan if (a) any of the proceeds were used for other purposes, or (b) the loan was from either a related person who borrowed the proceeds under a qualified employer plan or a contract purchased under such a plan. To find out who is a related person, see Pub 970.

Got that? I somehow missed the punchline there at the end about determining who your own relatives are, but perhaps after several hours of reading crap like this, that was a good thing. I know that I wasn't in a terribly jovial mood last night. And oh yeah, I have to call my bank today to move some more money into my IRA to skirt a penalty for not withholding enough money this year. It really puts the tax man's panties in a wad, you see, when he can't play the hero and give you a "refund" of your own money each year.

Leaving aside the immorality of a redistributionist government that engages in mass theft of property as ours does, and accepting for a moment the premise that it is proper for our government to levy taxes on our income in the first place, should the process not at least be as straightforward as possible?

Yes. There will be some legalese, because questions of law require very precise formulations. But still, why do we not simply have a uniform rate of taxation, to be paid each month? I seem to recall that Ayn Rand once noticed that extremely complicated laws such as our tax code serve the nefarious purpose of making criminals out of anyone who makes an innocent misstep that the state cares to hunt down.

That is certainly part of it, but there's something in this sordid mess that applies to almost anyone, and what makes it work is precisely the deliberate obfuscation of the tax code. Read the above excerpt. No. Do not skim it. Read it. Wake up and keep reading. Make coffee if you have to. Brehem. You're still not reading. Wake up!

Yes. This junk is hard to read, and it brings to mind a cartoon my mother-in-law pointed out to me earlier in the day about doing taxes. The dad was explaining to his son why he hated tax time so much. He started out by likening it to a long, hard math test. That was somewhat funny at the time, but it's wrong. Any idiot can do the arithmetic on a tax form. What makes taxes hard is the fact that the tax code makes no sense.

Why are we not all simply paying a fixed percentage of our incomes to the IRS at the end of the year? Why is the "standard deduction" $3,300? Why should interest on student loans be tax-exempt? (And, ignoring that question, why does the government just not charge interest on such loans for such people it determines should be exempt, based on information in their applications? We do have computers for that, after all.) On what basis are married people filing separately somehow excluded from taking this exemption? You could go on and on and on. Trust me. I did. I think I nearly gave myself a headache.

The tax code is a rotting, evil-smelling stew made up of the arbitrary bones that Congress has at one time or another decided to cast towards various constituencies, the competing requirements of various aspects of the tax code that most filers neither know nor care about, and the legalistic phraseology made necessary by the fact that every single bit of this mess is encoded by law. And you, the tax payer have to read through all this -- or hire someone who you have to hope is competent to do so -- because Uncle Sam has a gun pointed at your head, demanding your money or your freedom based on what this mumbo-jumbo says you owe him, so you will pay attention to all of it.

This attending to interminable, nonsensical orders for the purpose of determining one's course of action is the exact opposite of common sense, the application of logic to data that is second nature to most Americans. (In my case: What the hell does Puerto Rico have to do with anything?) This garbage not only can easily make a criminal of almost anyone, it sometimes does a better job than even local politics of making people feel "unclean". Most people do not question the propriety of the government taking their money, so many will feel like they're being given a "break" from paying their fair share.

Depending on one's personal situation and moral stature, this feeling will range from a dull sense of relief at getting to pay slightly less in taxes, to gratitude for the break towards those who enacted it, to a criminal-like glee at someone else getting the shaft. Notice that all of these are wins for the Democrats who made the tax code so complex in the first place and for the Republicans who refused to eradicate it or even simplify it or even not play along -- during their dozen years in power as "champions" of capitalism and you getting to keep your own damned money.

The best one can hope for after wasting precious, irreplaceable hours of one's life in the process of filing one's taxes is a dim sense of relief that it is all over, that one has the government off one's back for another year, and that one can go back to thinking and acting based on one's common sense, upon the dictates of his rational mind. It is an ugly mess that one will want to confront once a year at most.

And this is why the tax code is so monstrously complicated. It keeps the welfare state entrenched, be it through the strong chance that an inconvenient opponent can be turned into an instant criminal, the manufacture of guilt (earned and unearned) concerning whether one is pulling his own weight, the clever ploy of buying votes with the voters' own money, or simply stupefying the most rational (and therefore productive and wealthy) members of society into not wanting to touch (or even think about) the very mess they should hell-bent on wiping from the face of the earth.

In a sense, I am glad I did my taxes this year. I needed the reminder. Why is tax time so awful? It ain't the math: It's the cognitive quagmire and the moral dung-heap we are confronted with in every single paragraph of the instructions.

-- CAV

PS: Check your federally-issued tax return envelopes! The same idiots who can cause you no end of trouble for not filing may have sent you a defective envelope. Mine was completely open at the bottom. Good thing I noticed that before I sent it in....

Updates

Today: (1) Minor edits. (2) Added PS.

Big OCON

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This is delightful news:

Past attendees at our Objectivist Summer Conference events know them to be an excellent way of immersing oneself in a benevolent and thriving community of rational minds. With that in mind, OCON is happy to report that Objectivist Summer Conference 2007 is shattering all of our previous registration records, having already attracted twice as many registrants as we had all of last year! The conference takes place from July 6 to 15, 2007, in Telluride, Colorado, with a broad array of lectures and events, highlighted by a six-lecture presentation by Leonard Peikoff from his forthcoming book, "The DIM Hypothesis." The conference will include ten general session lectures, sixteen optional courses, a panel discussion and a series of special events.

This will be an unforgettable conference, both for its content and for its beautiful setting. We hope to see you there!

I saw Dr. Peikoff give some of his lectures for Induction in Physics and Philosophy at my first OCON in 2003, when I was still unhappily involved with IOS/TOC/TAS. I've grown to appreciate his work so much more since that time, so I'm really looking forward to these "DIM" lectures.

Also in conference news:

Lodging Note:
Because of high attendance levels, OCON has arranged conference discounts at additional lodging facilities; see our Air Travel and Lodging page for details. Attendees should book lodging directly with the accommodation of their choice in the Telluride area. We strongly recommend making your hotel reservations as early as possible, as some facilities are already completely booked. If you choose any of the facilities listed on our Air Travel and Lodging page, be sure to give them the registration code "OCON 2007" to take advantage of their conference discount rates.

Schedule Update:
Jason Rheins' optional course, "The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (part 1 of 3): Kant's Theoretical Philosophy," is now available in both Session 1 and Session 2. (This course was previously available only in Session 2.)

To find out more about and register for the conference, click here.

Lin Zinser to Speak on Healthcare

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Tomorrow evening, April 17th, Lin Zinser will speak to the Colorado Springs Republican Women about the pernicious influence of government in healthcare and the current proposals for reform. The event is free and open to the public. For more details, see the announcement.

The State of North Korea

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Paul recently pointed me to this fascinating report from StrategyPage on the current state of North Korea:

North Korean Mass Diplomat Defections Nightmare

April 8, 2007: The North Korean regime has issued a strong "reminder" to its diplomats, and other personnel stationed abroad, that they are not to have more than one child with them on a foreign posting. This suggests North Korea is worried about possible defections by diplomats, consular officials, business agents, etc., who've got their wives and kids with them in some foreign country. If they can only take one child with them, those that remain home essentially become hostages to their good behavior. The North Korean government has become increasingly alarmed at the number of diplomats defecting and, even worse, those who stick around, but in the pay for American, South Korean and Chinese intelligence agencies.

The response to this order was startling; many of these parents have refused to send children back to North Korea. To old North Korea hands, such defiance to authority is startling. But these North Korea government officials know their country is a basket case, and are willing to risk losing their jobs, rather than send any of their children back to a home country that is, day-by-day, becoming a hellish parody of the communist "workers paradise."

Historians of communism consider North Korea the pinnacle of police state perfection. Josef Stalin would be envious, or maybe proud, because Stalin was one of the founding fathers of North Korea. The degree of state control in North Korea is far in excess of anything ever achieved in the Soviet Union. But this was achieved using a population already disciplined by centuries of efficient feudalism, and several decades of Japanese colonialism. The Japanese were very disciplined, very strict and very brutal. By comparison, the North Korean communist government was something of a relief. Moreover, the North Korean communists worked the nationalist and cultural angle successfully. Because of the total control of the media, the North Korean communists created an alternate universe for their subjects to live in.

As small numbers of North Koreans managed to escape over the years, and make their way to South Korea, usually via China, it was amazing to see the culture shock. The North Korean refugees were numbed by the degree of difference between the fantasy view of the outside world created by the North Korea communists, and the reality.

But in the last decade, reality has seeped into the Perfect Police State, changing the attitudes of the guards, as well as the inmates. True Believers have been gradually replaced by Practical Pretenders. What's happening now, with North Korean government officials openly defying their government, while pretending not to, is the best example of how North Korea culture is evolving. It's weird, it's wretched and, in a perverse way, wonderful.

Rome

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I watched the first season of HBO's Rome on DVD. It is a mixture of good and bad. Depending on taste, the bad might be too repulsive to make the series enjoyable. It has explicit sex and violence and much brutal naturalism. Typical of the modern approach, the filmmakers take great pride in showing naturalistic touches of ancient Rome that have been left out of more romanticized movies. "Hey, look - ancient Rome had shit and piss and graffiti and garbage!" Well, hallelujah.

The historical naturalism does have a certain value, as do Japanese movies or science fiction, because it's not the city next door, it's an exotic, different world. This can go a long way toward making a TV show visually interesting and fascinating, but it cannot replace the requirements of literature.

HBO's Rome is a world of gangsters, a world where might makes right. As such, there are no heroes in this story, just people clawing at one another in the pursuit of power. Rome was indeed a brutal culture, but it also had a certain nobility as the plays of Shakespeare and Corneille show us. Today's filmmakers are incapable of understanding or portraying nobility and heroism.

The best thing about the series is that it tells adventure stories about two legionnaires, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. These stories have moments of swashbuckling fun, like Conan the Barbarian. Such historical adventure stories are the last fading glow of the 19th century romantic novels of Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas. Their stories are unfortunately dragged down by a lot of naturalistic drama concerning Vorenus's family. Neither man is terribly admirable.

The worst thing about the series is Brutus. It just made me cringe how they made Brutus a sniveling neurotic with an Oedipus complex. I can see making him tragically conflicted, as Shakespeare did, but HBO's modern approach robs him of all dignity and stature and makes him a laughable, whining boy manipulated by a domineering mother. And it's such a cliche; if you wanted to satirize modern drama, you couldn't beat this Brutus.

No famous character is allowed much nobility or dignity in this series. Cato is a crotchety old man, Cicero a second rate grumbler, Marc Antony a cynical gangster, Cleopatra a power-seeking slut and so on.

All in all, Rome is about what you'd expect from historical drama today. Asking for tightened plots, elevated characters and even, ye gods, a theme nobler than "Rome was a dog eat dog world" is asking far too much from today's filmmakers.

Do politicians know more about space exploration than rocket scientists?

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

Are politicians more knowledgeable than rocket scientists when it comes to planning the next U.S. moon shot?

House and Senate appropriators have pushed back against NASA’s proposed termination of a planned 2011 robotic lunar lander mission, directing the agency to spend $20 million this year to continue work on a follow-on to the 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

…we do not agree with your decision to terminate the LPRP program at this time pending a further examination of program requirements, design, cost and viability,” the letter reads. “Therefore we direct that $20 million be provided to continue planning for a potential LPRP mission during the remainder of [2007].”

“I do not need a robotic lander to reduce risks for the human landings,” [NASA Administrator Mike] Griffin said. “Everybody who has carefully looked at that has said you don’t need it.”

Politicians may have a number of reasons for preserving missions that teams of NASA specialists deem unnecessary: the media from moon rovers is a cheap thrill, it preserves funds promised to constituents ($105.8m in ‘07), and it competes with similar missions from half a dozen other nations, which will “end up with lots of pictures of the same place.”

Good publicity, certainly, but not an efficient way to run a space program.  But what else can you expect when you mix science and government?

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The Virtue of Obedience Versus Moral Responsibility

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm presently reading the excellent history of the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman. I have much to say about the matters discussed in the book, but for the moment, I'll confine myself to one tangential but shockingly blunt tidbit.

Toward the end of the chapter on "The Ascetic Odyssey," Freeman observes that "one can never know whether one is truly saved" in Christianity because "there is no way to judge objectively just how guilty one is in the eyes of God." Consequently, "the only true way to secure a rest from tension on earth is to escape completely from the exercise of moral responsibility; here the 'virtue' of obedience becomes crucial." He then quotes the first paragraph of the following passage from an account of moral responsibility in the life of a Jesuit monk found in William James' Varieties of Religious Experience:

One of the great consolations of the monastic life," says a Jesuit authority, "is the assurance we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you obey, because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you received, and if you can furnish a clear account in that respect, you are absolved entirely. Whether the things you did were opportune, or whether there were not something better that might have been done, these are questions not asked of you, but rather of your Superior. The moment what you did was done obediently, God wipes it out of your account, and charges it to the Superior. So that Saint Jerome well exclaimed, in celebrating the advantages of obedience, 'Oh, sovereign liberty! Oh, holy and blessed security by which one become almost impeccable!'

"Saint John Climachus is of the same sentiment when he calls obedience an excuse before God. In fact, when God asks why you have done this or that, and you reply, it is because I was so ordered by my Superiors, God will ask for no other excuse. As a passenger in a good vessel with a good pilot need give himself no farther concern, but may go to sleep in peace, because the pilot has charge over all, and 'watches for him'; so a religious person who lives under the yoke of obedience goes to heaven as if while sleeping, that is, while leaning entirely on the conduct of his Superiors, who are the pilots of his vessel, and keep watch for him continually. It is no small thing, of a truth, to be able to cross the stormy sea of life on the shoulders and in the arms of another, yet that is just the grace which God accords to those who live under the yoke of obedience. Their Superior bears all their burdens... A certain grave doctor said that he would rather spend his life in picking up straws by obedience, than by his own responsible choice busy himself with the loftiest works of charity, because one is certain of following the will of God in whatever one may do from obedience, but never certain in the same degree of anything which we may do of our own proper movement." (Alfonso Rodriguez, S. J.: Pratique de la Perfection Chretienne, Part iii., Treatise v., ch. x.)

After quoting the first paragraph, Freeman concludes the chapter with the apt comment: "Here, the abdication of the power to think for oneself is complete." Exactly.

Yet Another Attack On Freedom of Speech

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Ayn Rand Institute gave me permission to post their latest press release:

The U.N. Human Rights Council's War on Human Rights

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

IRVINE, Calif.--The U.N. Human Rights Council recently passed a resolution urging nations to pass laws prohibiting the dissemination of ideas that "defame religion." It appears that the resolution was partly a response to last year's Danish cartoon crisis, where hordes of angry Muslims rioted in violent protest of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

"The advocates of this resolution perversely equate those who drew the Danish cartoons with those who rioted and threatened to murder the cartoonists," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Both, they say, are guilty of a crime and should be restrained and punished by the government -- with the unstated caveat that the cartoonists are guiltier, since they allegedly incited the violent mobs by defaming Islam.

"To morally equate the Danish cartoonists with the Muslim rioters is to wipe out the distinction between speech and force. It is to declare there is no essential difference between the filmmaker Theo van Gogh,and the Muslim who murdered him for producing a film that 'defamed Islam.'

"Freedom of speech means that individuals have the right to advocate any idea, without the threat of government censorship, regardless of how many people that idea may offend. To silence individuals in order to protect the sensibilities of mullahs and mobs is to wipe out this crucial right -- and it is to whitewash the blood-stained hands of killers by declaring that they are no worse than those who peacefully criticize them.

"Yet this disgraceful moral equivalence is a symptom of the larger moral equivalence that pervades the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is based on the gross pretense that its members -- including belligerent regimes such as Iran and Syria, and oppressive dictatorships such as China and Cuba -- are champions of peace and individual rights. As a result, its main function is to provide a forum for thugs and dictators to criticize free nations such as the United States and Israel, while pushing their anti-freedom agendas.

"The United States should condemn this resolution -- and the morally corrupt organization that produced it."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Evan Sayet recently spoke about how being indiscriminate leads the left to opposing freedom. We can see that on display in the U.N., which is a sort of egalitarianism of nations. When they do not discriminate between free nations such as America and Israel and dictatorships, they end up adopting the standards of unfree nations such as Cuba and Iran.

In light of the recent Imus firing, we now have the U.N. advocating gross violation of freedom of speech. I regard this as another assault from the left on a critical right, free speech.

If rights could be separated and arranged in order of importance, then the freedom of speech would have to be the number one, most important right we have today. Changing the world for the better -- advancing the cause of freedom and individual rights -- depends on changing our culture’s philosophy. It means persuading people with ideas, and this can only be done in a nation with freedom of speech.

Like the religious right, the nihilist left begins by attacking the least defensible speech. The right attacks pornography; the left attacks racism, hate speech, and politically incorrect speech -- speech that I identify as inegalitarian. That is why I defend Imus, even though his speech is wrong. Ideas that “defame religion” are, by the standards of conventional morality and religion, among the least defensible. In olden times such ideas were called “blasphemy” and “heresy.” This move by the U.N. might actually appeal to the right as well as the left -- to Dinesh D’Souza and Jerry Falwell as well as multiculturalist professors. Who knows, this could be the beginning of a bipartisan assault on our freedoms!

Mexican magnate becomes world’s second richest man

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

… and unlike the world’s richest man, his insight may extend beyond business:

 Slim, 67, has added a staggering 23 billion dollars to his personal fortune over the last 14 months, thanks largely to a strong Mexican economy and a stock market that jumped nearly 50 percent last year.

He accrued four billion dollars of that just since Forbes unveiled its annual rich list in early March, giving Slim the equivalent of roughly seven percent of Mexico’s annual economic output, according to Forbes.

The tycoon has brushed off criticism that his Telmex company is effectively a monopoly, saying earlier this year: “When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.”

He has derided Gates and Buffett for giving away so much of their wealth, reportedly saying: “Poverty isn’t solved with donations,” according to Forbes.

Building businesses, he reportedly said, did more for society than “going around like Santa Claus.“

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Only Egalitarian Speech Allowed

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In my day job I hear a lot of "shock jocks," usually the morning hosts on alternative rock stations. Their shtick is to be outrageous and funny, saying the things people do not say in polite conversation. They flout the taboos of both the left and the right by daring to be politically incorrect and to talk about sex.

Their justification, if you ask them, is that they are just being honest. Howard Stern dwells in the gutter, and he does so proudly because that's who he is: a guy who wants to talk about bodily functions and the lowest kind of gossip. Enough Americans share his view of life that he has become a wealthy man by talking about sex, body parts, flatulence, strippers, drunkenness, and so on. Whenever I listen to Stern, I feel unclean, as if I have been in the presence of cretins who live in a sewer and revel in it and mock anyone with pretensions higher than a sewer. I dismiss Stern's huge audience with contempt: they get what they want.

The shock jock is a kind of comedian. Listeners do not go to them for serious, elevated, informed opinions. They listen to the shock jocks for a comic take on the news from someone who happily admits he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground on any issue, but will give his opinion anyway.

Shock jocks can be mean and unfair. If a caller is stupid, the shock jock is not afraid to say so. And celebrity stupidity gets the most savage treatment. When Britney Spears shaved her head, I heard her called a "crazy bitch" -- exactly what listeners want shock jocks to say. Listeners can hear psychologists on reputable programs talk about Britney Spears's "emotional crisis" or whatever, blah, blah, blah. From the shock jock they want crazy bitch. Again: listeners get what they want. Those who do not want this do not listen.

The shock jock can exist only in a free society. Tyrants do not like being laughed at. In the USSR, instead of Howard Stern or Mancow, they had Pravda -- the truth as approved by the state. Shock jocks depend on the freedom of speech; if they can't say what they want no matter whom they offend, then they cannot function.

Now Don Imus has been fired by CBS for calling the Rutgers girls basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Usually I agree with Andy at Charlotte Capitalist, but I cannot applaud CBS's action because Imus's statement was collectivist.

Jokes are often collectivist and racist. There's a long tradition of jokes about drunken Irishmen. Not only is this unfair to the Irish, but it is humor about alcoholism, which is in reality tragic and not at all funny. So, should we fire anyone who jokes about a drunken Irishman? A stupid Pollack? A lazy Mexican? A surrendering Frenchman? Italian men who pinch women's rears? What about blonde jokes? Surely, they are unfair to intelligent blondes.

Tom Joyner, who has the most popular morning show on urban radio, jokes every day about white people. As a white person, I find it hilarious. Every time Tom's buffoon, J. Anthony Brown, just says the words "white people," I laugh. White people, you see, do crazy things that black people are too sensible to do. The jokes stem from a long tradition of humor that goes back to the time of slavery in the 19th century. It's all good fun -- and thoroughly racist.

What is the difference between Tom Joyner's racism and Imus's? In our egalitarian, altruist culture, one can joke about the powerful, but not about the weak and oppressed. Some collectivism is respected, some collectivism will get you fired from CBS. Imus was not attacked and fired because he was collectivist, but because he was inegalitarian.

Imus's listeners know that all black women are not prostitutes. Humor depends on twisting logic. Imus saw a similarity between the Rutgers players and prostitutes and, being a curmudgeonly, mean-spirited shock jock, he voiced it. He said something that is indeed racist, collectivist and not nice.

If media corporations were to fire all buffoons who make collectivist statements, then all buffoons would be fired. Indeed, some broadcasters who are not considered buffoons, such as Tom Joyner, would be fired.

I realize that CBS has the right to fire any employee for making racist statements and that this is not a violation of their freedom of speech. Only the state can abridge our freedom of speech. Only state action is censorship in the full meaning of the word. The problem is that in our mixed economy, with the FCC regulating broadcasters, we have to ask: did CBS fire Imus because they feared state action? Did the FCC factor into their thinking at all? And if it did, is not censorship from fear of regulatory action in fact censorship?

The FCC reviewed the Imus case and concluded, for now, that racist statements are protected by the First Amendment. Apparently, for now, broadcasters have more freedom to be racist than the EEOC would allow employers. The FCC, for now, focuses on sexual speech -- but how long before regulators arbitrarily decide that such insensitive remarks are beyond the bounds of what broadcasters should say? How long before "decency" is extended to non-sexual matters?

Imus's firing was driven by Al Sharpton, a statist who came to fame in the Tawana Brawley case, in which he knew she was lying but proceeded anyway to destroy an innocent policeman's life. Sharpton said about the Imus affair,

It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves.

Permitted by whom? Corporations under attack from pressure groups? Or does Sharpton want government regulations on speech? If "hate speech" is a crime, why should broadcasters be allowed any more freedom than the rest of us?

Does anyone think the left will stop at Imus? Or will they be emboldened and energized to go after more broadcasters? Now that Imus has been slain, who is next?

Now that radio talk-show host Don Imus has been banished, it's time to clean up the rest of talk radio, says a partisan media watchdog group headed by David Brock.

Next in the crosshairs for alleged expressions of "bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity" are, according to Media Matters for America, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, John Gibson and Michael Smerconish.

What are some of the statements that Media Matters finds offensive?

This:

Limbaugh: "The government's been taking care of [young blacks] their whole lives"

And,

On March 1, 2005, Limbaugh said "[w]omen still live longer than men because their lives are easier."

And,

Savage was also taken to task by Media Matters for advocating a ban on Muslim immigration into the U.S., banning the construction of mosques and making English the official language.

This one is similar to the Imus case:

On the March 31, 2006, broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Neal Boortz said that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) "looks like a ghetto slut." Boortz as commenting on a March 29 incident in which McKinney allegedly struck a police officer at a Capitol Hill security checkpoint. Boortz said that McKinney's "new hair-do" makes her look "like a ghetto slut," like "an explosion at a Brillo pad factory," like "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence," and like "a shih tzu." McKinney is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia.

Why should Imus be fired, but not Boortz?

The premise behind the left's attack on Imus, Limbaugh, Savage and Boortz is: inegalitarian speech is bad. And make no mistake, the left will use such statist tools as the FCC and the Fairness Doctrine to combat speech they find offensive.

The Marie Antoinette of North Carolina

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The story of Elizabeth Edwards's distrust of her neighbor is revealing of the statist mindset.

RALEIGH -- Elizabeth Edwards says she is scared of the "rabid, rabid Republican" who owns property across the street from her Orange County home -- and she doesn't want her kids going near the gun-toting neighbor.

And,

Edwards views Johnson as a "rabid, rabid Republican" who refuses to clean up his "slummy" property just to spite her family, whose lavish 28,000-square-foot estate is nearby on 102 wooded acres.

Johnson, 55, acknowledges his Republican roots. But he takes offense to the suggestion he has purposefully left his property, including an old garage he leases for use as a car shop, in dilapidated condition.

Johnson said he has lived his entire life on the property, which he said his family purchased before the Great Depression. He said he's spent a lot of money to try and fix up the 42-acre tract.

"I have to budget. I have to live within my means," Johnson said. "I don't have millions of dollars to fix the place."

Her attitude is typical of how rich people are supposed to scorn the poor - and yet her husband has made his political career as a defender of the poor!

Although collectivist-statists are egalitarian, in reality their policies create and strengthen class differences. Government intervention in the economy results in a privileged political class and then the rest of us. The Soviet Union, based on a radical egalitarianism, had a Nomenklatura ruling class and the masses that were, in reality, their slaves.

Most societies throughout history have had small ruling classes and masses of peasants. Capitalism was the revolution that saw the growth of the great middle class, what the Marxists sneer at as the "bourgeosie." America has always been and still is a nation of a vast middle class; as such, it is the least class conscious nation in history. The middle class is a product of freedom.

There are rich people in America, and some "old money" types have been snobbish toward the poor, but many wealthy people began poor or middle class and never stop thinking of themselves as such. Andrew Carnegie started poor, but became fabulously wealthy and he was always on the lookout for competent young men to promote in his steel business, regardless of their class origins. Charles Schwab, for instance,

...started as a stake driver in Andrew Carnegie's steelworks and in 1897 rose to become president of the Carnegie Steel Company at the age of 35. In 1901, he negotiated the secret buyout of Carnegie Steel by a group of New York-based financiers led by J.P. Morgan. After the buyout, Schwab became the first president of the U.S. Steel Corporation, the company formed out of Carnegie's former holdings.

Andrew Carnegie is a classic example of a rich man's attitude toward the poor in a free country. All that mattered to him was competence and character.

With the growth of the state, we are seeing the beginnings of new class consciousness in America. Our rulers in Washington think they are different from the unwashed masses. Elizabeth Edwards offers a glimpse into the thinking of our nascent ruling class.

THE Mistake to Avoid

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

Anyone who understands that the only legitimate purpose of government is the protection of individual rights -- and yet remains somehow under the illusion that he has a home in the conservative movement -- need only visit Townhall.com a few times a week to disabuse himself of that quaint notion.

Today's bitter pill comes in the form of perhaps the most ironically-named column I have seen in ages: "Mistakes to Avoid in the Global Warming Fight", by Steve Chapman. The entire column is devoted to making the biggest mistake anyone can possibly make in any discussion of the role of government, which is to forget the proper purpose of government.

Chapman's argument is easy to summarize: (1) The Bush Administration now regards man, and specifically, carbon emissions, as the reason for global warming. (2) It is the proper role of the government to do something about this. (3) Central planning has been tried and has failed for other tasks. (4) A "carbon tax" will reduce greenhouse emissions by discouraging consumption of fossil fuels under a "market-based" scheme. (5) This will permit government to remain "small" (whatever that means) by apparently avoiding central planning and by allowing other taxes to be reduced, and therefore, it is a good idea.

Here's how Chapman himself puts it.

[A carbon tax] also has the advantage of keeping the government role as small as possible. When the government gets directly involved in controlling energy use -- by fiddling with mileage rules, handing out grants and tax incentives, and underwriting particular energy sources -- it invites boondoggles and special-interest gimmicks that benefit politicians without doing much to temper climate change. We'll all be better off if Washington merely levies a tax and gets out of the way, leaving producers and consumers to search out the cheapest means of minimizing emissions.

As if by not taxing anything, the government could not be even smaller. As if a carbon tax somehow does not represent the government getting "directly involved in controlling energy use". As if the market distortions introduced by the government's de facto price-setting are not invitations to boondoggles. As if it is the government's job to "minimize emissions" and levying a tax (i.e., stealing money from those who use certain types of fuel) does not already constitute "getting in the way".

For those who observe the huge amount of momentum in favor of "doing something" about climate change and worry that by not getting a "market-based" or "small-government" proposal out the door, they will lose even worse, note that Chapman never once challenges the absurd idea that governments were instituted among men to ... save the planet. How the hell can anybody expect to win by not even trying?

And guess what? When this style of clothing for our nanny state goes out of fashion, another will come, and the Steve Chapmans of the world will give up even more ground. The answer is not appeasement. It is to understand the principles behind the government of a free country, to proudly and uncompromisingly state them, and to defend them.

It is only in this way that others who are aware of these principles will know they are not alone, the confused can gain clarity, and the enemy will at least know that he is being watched, and will therefore be less sure he can get away with posing as a moral crusader. Any and all of these would slow and eventually reverse the tide of history that Steve Chapman seems content to impotently "stand athwart", powerlessly, screaming "Stop!"

Had Steve Chapman remembered why men have governments, he would have realized that the scientific answer to the global warming debate is totally irrelevant because even if the answer is that man is causing radical climate change, it is not the purpose of government to address the problem.

Of course, as I have noted many times lately, the conservative movement has long ago ceased being about dismantling the welfare state, and all about coopting it. If I have made any error here, it has been in assuming that Steve Chapman really does oppose the global warming-induced drive to expand the government. Regardless, his contention that carbon taxes can in any way be part of a truly "free" market is totally wrong.

-- CAV

Daily Health Check

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This NY Times article "Lessons of Heart Disease, Learned and Ignored" has some really valuable information on the common confusions about heart attacks that lull people into complacency, such that they don't avail themselves of the proper treatment options. It's well-worth reading, particularly if you have family history of heart disease, as I do.

A few days ago, Paul told me of a woman who failed to check out chronic belly pain for months until it became unbearable. At that point, the CT and MRI scans showed colon cancer, already spread to the liver. That's not good: a friend of ours died about 18 months after a similar diagnosis. (She suffered no symptoms until she fainted on the subway.)

On hearing the story, I suddenly struck by an indirect health benefit of my daily course of vigorous exercise: I would never endure such pain for more than a few days (if that) -- not just due to general worry about the cause of the pain but also due to very specific annoyance with my inability to exercise as usual. The same is true of the fatigue that often comes with heart attack mentioned in article above: the problem surely wouldn't be quite so clear or so pressing to me if I were a couch potato.

In other words, exercise doesn't promote health merely by making the body more fit; it's also an important daily test of one's health. That's kinda cool, I think.

P.S. Happy Friday the 13th! It's my lucky day... I was born on Friday, December 13th, 1974.

Another Question for NoodleFood

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Paul Revere (not the original one, obviously) asks:

Objectivism states that, among the purposes of government, it acts as an objective arbiter between men by enforcing contracts and laws. Individuals as such are free to make any contract between them, the integrity of which is ensured by the courts. I'm a little foggier on laws.

Here's an example: for whatever reason, your city has zoned a specific section of road with a low speed limit compared to those before and after it. Is it moral to disobey the speed limit if you choose? It would seem trivial, but you'd be breaking the law regardless.

My thinking is: laws are instituted by some objective process, and by living in this city with other men you've agreed to abide by them. Of course, some laws are unjust (e.g. speed limits apply to public roads, thus being based on another unjust law) but since laws are objectively decided, an individual man cannot morally, or legally, spurn those he disagrees with. Clear enough, right?

Now, what if the law in question would be dangerous to obey? (Assume for this example that there is no alternative route and you're forced in some way to make this choice, by previous ignorance or whatnot.) Say this section of low-speed road comes right after a high-speed one, around a blind corner for kicks. Following it would surely, to your reasoning, result in a rear-ending. Is it moral to obey the law then? If you've misjudged and it really isn't as dangerous as imagined, does that change anything?

And if it would be moral to disregard the law in those circumstances, based on your own judgement, why does the degree of danger matter? (From no ill effects, to losing your job for being late, to being rear-ended, to dying in an accident.) Where is the line at which it becomes an "emergency situation", if at all?

Finally, does the logic here change with isolated and harmless lawbreaking, such as drinking booze during the 1920's Prohibition? What about harmless, but mutually agreed lawbreaking, like performing banned sex acts (e.g. sodomy in Texas)?"

First, a warning: It's my understanding that it's a crime to advocate breaking the law. So please keep that in mind as you post in the comments.

Now onto the substance of the question:

The Objectivist view is not that "laws are instituted by some objective process, and by living in this city with other men you've agreed to abide by them." Laws in this country are instituted by pull-peddling majority rule, with scant respect for individual rights, even those explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. The resulting laws are often grossly non-objective -- in the sense that you cannot know in advance whether you are breaking them or not. (The worst example is antitrust law, although I'd say that tax and regulatory law is too bizarrely complicated to be knowingly obeyed.) Moreover, a person does not consent to the laws of a given government simply by choosing to live within its territory -- particularly not when significantly better alternatives are nowhere to be found. He never agreed to abide by the laws; he may have even resolved to do the opposite in some cases.

Moreover, the Objectivist ethics would never endorse the command "obey the law" as a binding normative principle, as the question suggests. Barring metaphysical emergencies, we are obliged to respect the rights of others. That respect for the independent judgment of others is a matter of self-interest: it is a means of advancing our lives. (For a detailed discussion of what counts as a metaphysical emergency, see Tara Smith's new book Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics.)

In a fully free society, respecting the rights of others means obeying the law, precisely because those laws are just protections of rights. However, when laws violate rights, they can imperil the fundamental values of life, e.g. health, wealth, happiness. In that case, a person cannot be morally obliged to obey them. Of course, it may be prudent for him to obey them nonetheless, given the likelihood of detection and punishment. Yet it would be incoherent say that a person must sacrifice his highest value, i.e. his own life, for the sake of the ill-conceived and unjust products of majority rule.

However, that doesn't morally justify disobeying every unjust law. Not every wrong law threatens your basic values. Moreover, in a basically free society, the rule of law is an important principle to respect and uphold, particularly when free to agitate for the repeal of those laws. (Tara Smith spoke persuasively on the importance of rule of law in her lecture How "Activist" Should Judges Be?.) Unfortunately, campaign finance laws dramatically limit the freedom to agitate for the repeal of bad laws in this country today.

So where is the line between justifiable and unjustifiable law-breaking properly drawn? I don't have any more of an answer to that question than found in Leonard Peikoff's course "The DIM Hypothesis." (It's available for free to registered users of AynRand.org.) In lecture 8, he discusses the question of the obligation to obey unjust laws twice: first during the lecture itself (about 14 minutes into it) then during the Q&A (about 10 minutes from the end). Undoubtedly, more work remains to be done on this topic: Dr. Peikoff's remarks are only an outline of an answer. They're a good beginning though.

Thoughts, NoodleFoodleDoodlers?

Socialized Medicine in Colorado -- An Open Letter to Colorado Physicians

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Socialized Medicine in Colorado -- An Open Letter to Colorado Physicians
by Paul S. Hsieh, MD (paulhsiehmd@gmail.com)

[The original version of this letter is located at the FIRM website.]

Dear Colleagues:

My name is Dr. Paul Hsieh, and I am a physician practicing in the south Denver metro area.

I am deeply concerned that socialized medicine may be imposed on Colorado by our state legislature within the next year or so under the guise of "comprehensive health care reform". I'm morally opposed to this because I believe it would be devastating to our patients and to our medical practices, and I'd like your help in speaking out against this ominous prospect.

The political process which could lead to socialized medicine is already underway, but most working physicians I've spoken with have been unaware of it. Hence, I want to sound the alarm before it's too late.

As some of you may know, in June 2006 the Colorado state legislature authorized a special 24-person Commission (called the "208 Commission" after Senate bill SB208) to generate proposals to restructure the health care system in Colorado, and submit them for legislative approval. The Commissioners were chosen by politicians from both political parties. Currently, there are only two doctors on the 208 Commission; the other 22 are representatives of various special interest groups.

The basic premise of the 208 Commission is that the government must guarantee health care for all Coloradoans. During their public meetings, a significant number of the Commissioners have expressed support for some form of socialized medicine. Although they frequently use euphemisms such as "single payer" or "universal mandatory coverage", similar language has been used in other US states and other countries to justify government-mandated socialized medicine.

Simultaneously, the Colorado Medical Society (CMS) has developed an official position in which they urged that health care in Colorado should be "universal, continuous, portable, and mandatory".

On January 25, 2007, the CMS submitted those "Guiding Principles" to the 208 Commission, portraying them as the consensus of the doctors of Colorado. They have also stated that the "CMS believes, after extensive vetting and a unanimous vote at the 2006 House of Delegates, that the Guiding Principles represent a compelling consensus of Colorado physicians".

When I first learned of this, I was angered and appalled, because that position does not reflect my views or the views of many other physicians that I've spoken with. The CMS does not speak for me on this issue, and I am not part of this "compelling consensus".

I completely oppose any form of socialized medicine, regardless of whether it is called "single payer", "mandatory universal coverage", or anything else, because I believe it would be bad for both patients and doctors. Years of experience in the US and other countries have shown that these programs will hurt patients and cause unnecessary patient deaths. As costs inevitably spiral upward, bureaucrats will ration medical services. Eventually, physicians will be forced to practice against their best medical judgment. This is a violation of the fundamental rights of both doctors and patients.

As a result, in states like Tennessee (which in 1994 implemented its own version of mandatory universal coverage called TennCare), many doctors find the practice climate intolerable and are either leaving the state or quitting medicine entirely. I do not want that to happen in Colorado. States like Massachusetts and California, which are also attempting to guarantee universal health care for their residents, will soon face similar problems.

Although I completely agree that there are genuine problems with the current system, more government interference in medicine can only make things worse, not better. One basic principle we all learned in medical school was, "First, do no harm". This applies as well to politics as it does to clinical practice. Most of the problems of the current system have been the result of bad government policies. Adding more government bureaucrats to the mix will only make things worse.

In my opinion, it is not the government's role to guarantee health care for all Coloradoans, any more than it is the government's job to guarantee all citizens a car, or a job, or a great haircut. It is morally wrong and economically unsustainable. It is precisely the attempts by the governments in Canada and Great Britain (or states like Tennessee) to guarantee universal "cradle-to-grave" coverage that has led to the runaway costs and inadequate health care in those places.

I recognize that not everyone will agree with me here, and this is part of my point. This is a very contentious issue amongst doctors. Based on my discussions with numerous physicians, I don't think one can accurately say that there is a "compelling consensus" of the doctors of Colorado.

So if you oppose socialized medicine on the grounds of medical conscience (as I do), then please contact both the Colorado Medical Society and the 208 Commission, and let them know where you stand. The CMS is speaking in your name on this issue, so if you disagree with their position (or if you believe that their position should not be portrayed as the physician "consensus"), then they need to know. The CMS has requested feedback from doctors including those who disagree with their current position, so I urge you to take them up on this.

The 208 Commission is a public body, and has also asked for input from all citizens of Colorado. So if you want to protect your right to practice good medicine and protect your patients' best interests, they need to hear from you. As doctors, we have a lot of credibility with the public, so speaking out now is imperative, before the 208 Commission submits their proposals to the state legislature for a vote. Even a one line e-mail like, "I oppose universal, mandatory coverage or any other form of socialized medicine, because it will be bad for me and my patients", could have a tremendous impact.

For your convenience, I've included links to the e-mail addresses of the relevant parties of both the CMS and the 208 Commission.

To contact the CMS, go to: http://tinyurl.com/2ez4mo.
To contact the 208 Commission, go to: http://tinyurl.com/yv2o4m.

One excellent resource is the website www.WeStandFIRM.org, a non-profit group of Coloradoans devoted to freedom and individual rights in medicine. I especially recommend the article, "Health Care is Not a Right" by Dr. Leonard Peikoff. If you wish to stay informed on this topic, I also encourage you to sign up for their mailing list or read their blog.

Also, please feel free to forward this open letter to any other Colorado physicians that may be interested. A copy of this letter is also available online at: http://www.WeStandFIRM.org/docs/Hsieh-01.html

Sincerely,

Paul S. Hsieh, MD

E-mail: paulhsiehmd@gmail.com

Disclaimer: I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but an independent voter. My objections to socialized medicine go beyond party politics.

References

Here are some references for those who want more information on these topics. (I do not necessarily endorse every item in full):

"Health Care is Not a Right" (HTML format or PDF format):
[Online essay] This essay was written by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, a philosophy PhD living in Colorado Springs. The original essay was written in the 1990's after Hillary Clinton proposed her infamous national health care plan, and has been updated by Lin Zinser and Dr. Peikoff for 2007. He argues that a cradle-to-grave "right" to health care does not exist and that any attempt to create one runs antithetical to the genuine rights that were recognized and codified in the Constitution by the American Founding Fathers.

"A Short Course in Brain Surgery":
[Video] This astounding 5-minute video tells the story of an Ontario man with a brain tumor who couldn't get the care he needed under the Canadian system because the waiting lists for an MRI scan and for a neurosurgeon were too long. Fortunately, he was able to get appropriate treatment in Buffalo, NY.

"The History of Health Care Costs and Health Insurance":
[Online article] This is an excellent report by Linda Gorman, who is a health-care economist at the Independence Institute in Golden, CO. In this article, she covers the history of spiraling health care costs and government control of medical care, and shows how bad laws and other government interference in medicine have led to the current problems. She also offers some positive market-based alternatives to socialized medicine which have been proven to simultaneously increase patient outcomes and decrease costs, including Health Savings Accounts (HSA's), insurance deregulations, etc.

"Your Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism About National Health Care":
[Book] This book by Jane Orient, MD, is an illuminating and provocative analysis of the immorality and impracticality of government interference in medicine in general, and single-payer systems in particular. Dr. Orient is the Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

"The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care":
[Book] This book was written by Dr. David Gratzer, a physician who has practiced in both the US and Canada, and has first-hand experience with the pros and cons of both countries' medical systems. His documentation of the long waiting lists in Canada and the higher mortality rights for treatable conditions is chilling. He also provides excellent historical background on how health insurance became linked to employee benefits as a result of bad IRS policies, with all the resultant problems. His basic conclusion is that capitalism, not socialism, is the way to address the problems. He offers a number of practical, concrete proposals to fix our current problems, all of which are based on decreasing government interference in medicine.

Podcast interview of Dr. David Gratzer at Instapundit.com:
[Podcast] A 30 minute interview by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com with Dr. Gratzer on the problems and solutions to America's health care problems.

"Universal Health Care -- Call It Socialized Medicine":
[Online essay] Lawrence Huntoon, MD, PhD, discusses why "universal health care" is synonymous with "socialized medicine". He also observes:

Indeed, "universal coverage," nationalized health care, or socialized medicine, regardless of what you choose to call it, is not the same as medical care. All of the citizens of Canada, for instance, have "universal coverage." What they often don't have, however, is the medical care that they need when they need it. That is why we see Canadians crossing the border into the United States in droves to obtain the health care that they can't get when they need it in their own country. Their government rations access to health care and thus attempts to control costs by making MRI scans, radiation oncology, bypass surgeries and many other health services largely unavailable to their own people.

Dr. Huntoon is a former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and is a practicing neurologist in New York state.

"Universal Health Care's Dirty Little Secret":
[Online article] Trying to provide universal coverage doesn't actually result in better care, just rationing.

"No 'Crisis' of Uninsured":
[Online article] Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Rosen debunks the myth that there is a "vast army of people... who are permanently unable to obtain health insurance".

"Why Are Health Costs Rising?":
[Online article] A nice short analysis on why health care costs have risen so much. Again, the basic problem is government interference in normal market mechanisms. As anyone who has bought a cell phone or a DVD player recently knows, the natural course of the marketplace is higher quality goods for lower prices over time. Even in the medical field, this has been the pattern in LASIK and cosmetic surgery, i.e., in the types of medical care where patients pay for themselves and are therefore incentivized to be prudent shoppers.

"Colorado Medical Socialism":
[Online article] A harsh critique of the CMS position on universal mandatory health care by Boulder Weekly writer Ari Armstrong.

There is no health care crisis in Colorado:
From Lin Zinser's 3/28/2007, "Report on the 208 Commission" (scroll down to her "second point"). She notes, "According to Colorado voters there is no crisis of health care in Colorado. According to Colorado voters polled in December 2006 for the Denver-Metro Chamber of Commerce, 77% of Colorado voters believe their own health care is good or excellent and 60% believe the quality of health care in Colorado as a whole is good or excellent. More to the point, only 7% describe the situation in Colorado health care as a crisis."

Problems with Tennessee's universal health care system, TennCare [online articles]:
"The Price of Seduction"
(A devastating criticism of TennCare from family practice physician, Dr. Sydney Smith.)
"Tennessee: Lesson for California"
"TennCare: A model for how American socialized medicine will fail"

Problems with Massachusetts' universal health care system [online articles] :
"Universal Healthcare Boondoggle"
"Universal Health Care: Proceed with Caution"
"Intensive Care for RomneyCare"
"Bad Medicine: What's Wrong With RomneyCare"

Problems with California's proposed universal health care system [online articles] :
"One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back: How California Will Make Health Care Much More Expensive"
"Schwarzenegger's Folly"
(Analysis by John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20".)

Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine:
[Organization] From their website:

Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) promotes the philosophy of individual rights, personal responsibility, and free market economics in health care. FIRM holds that the only moral and practical way to obtain medical care is that of individuals choosing and paying for their own medical care in a capitalist free market. Federal and state regulations and entitlements, we maintain, are the two most important factors in driving up medical costs. They have created the crisis we face today.

I encourage all physicians interested in staying informed on these issues to sign up for their mailing list. FIRM also runs a weblog.

The Colorado Medical Society and some key officers:

• Alfred Gilchrist (Executive Director): Alfred_Gilchrist@cms.org
• Chet Seward (Director of Health Care Policy): Chet_Seward@cms.org
• Lynn Parry, MD (President): nurvdr@mac.com
• David Downs, MD (President-Elect): David_Downs@cms.org
• Mark Laitos, MD: mlaitos@comcast.net
• Ben Vernon, MD: wbvernon@qwest.net

The 208 Commission official website: http://www.colorado.gov/208commission

The full list of the 208 Commissioners and the publicly available e-mail addresses:

• William N. Lindsay III, Chairman: 208commission@comcast.net
• Erik Ammidown: erik.ammidown@qwest.com
• Elisabeth Arenales: earenales@cclponline.org
• Clarke Becker: unknown
• Carrie Besnette: cbesnette@gmail.com
• David Downs, MD: David_Downs@cms.org
• Steve Erkenbrack: unknown
• Lisa Esgar: lisa.esgar@state.co.us
• Linda Gorman: Linda@i2i.org
• Julia Greene: jgreene@seiu105.org
• Allan Jensen: allanjensen@earthlink.net
• Grant Jones: grant@caahealth.org
• Donna Marshall: cbghealth@aol.com
• Pam Nicholson: pamnicholson@centura.org
• Ralph Pollock: ralph@apaccess.com
• David Rivera: unknown
• Arnold Salazar: Arnolds@chnpartners.com
• Mark Simon: mbsimon@juno.com
• Dan Stenersen: unknown
• Steven Summer: steven.summer@cha.com
• Mark Wallace: unknown
• Joan Weber: unknown
• Barbara Yondorf: byondorf@rcfdenver.org

Will Texas Mess with Marriage?

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

Texas state representative Warren Chisum caused a stir awhile back when his proposal to ban gay marriage (which, unfortunately, passed) was found to be so poorly-worded that it could be interpreted to be a ban on all marriage.

Well, now he's back in the news, only it's not as funny and what he proposes really will affect all new marriages.

Debate over government's role in matters of love, marriage and divorce begins today when the Texas House considers a bill doubling marriage license fees to $60 unless couples take premarital classes.

Couples agreeing to eight-hour courses in conflict management and communication skills would get their marriage licenses free under the bill sponsored by Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, a leading House conservative.

Given that many (if not most) such classes are offered by religious institutions, this amounts to the government promoting religion. But that's not all.

Chisum's bill, with its carrot-and-stick approach, is part of the Texas Conservative Coalition agenda to ease the demand for poverty programs by reducing divorce rates that can financially hurt the newly single.

The package could create voluntary "covenant" marriage contracts with tougher conditions to discourage divorce and lengthen waiting periods for no-fault divorces unless couples undergo marriage crisis classes.

"It's in the state's interest for marriages to be saved," said John Colyandro, the coalition's executive director. "A lot of single-parent households are in poverty. Once they're in poverty, that makes them eligible for a whole host of programs they might not otherwise be involved with." [bold added]

So much for the idea that we should abolish welfare (or even cut it back) because it depends on the theft of money from countless individuals. But don't take my word for it....

Chisum's bills requiring premarital classes and crisis classes for marriages in trouble include a separate funding proposal for low-income Texans.

It would tap into nearly $10 million in a federal welfare block grant to help pay for the classes.

"We're saying families are important to us," Chisum said Tuesday. "If that's the nanny state, then so we are. We're very pro-family." [bold added]

You know the Republicans have ceased to be in any respect champions of individual rights when a it takes a leftist journalist and a pack of Democrats to make the following correct appraisal of GOP legislation:

[C]ritics say the proposed measures -- especially those lengthening waiting periods for divorces -- amount to government intrusion into private lives. While Republicans have long decried the "nanny state" of liberal social safety nets, some House Democrats now complain about GOP meddling into highly personal decisions they say are best left to individuals.

I once had to get divorced, and I was lucky, because it was about as "good" as a divorce can get. It was still one of the hardest things I ever had to do, and I hope I never have to go through anything like it again. How dare some Bible-thumper presume -- on the basis that divorce is somehow "easy" -- to force everyone else to swallow his snake oil before getting married!

And, far more despicable, how dare Chisum presume that we are all somehow wards of the state.

-- CAV

Faith or Sleep?

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

Not long ago, I got a good guffaw at the expense of a bunch of Buddhist monks who were in the process of losing a battle royale with ... a bunch of fire-ants. Noting the ridiculous measures the monks were employing in an attempt to rid themselves of the pests without simply killing them, I said the following:

Well, faith may not be able to "move mountains", as some like to imagine, but behold its power to level the playing field between an intelligent being capable of space travel and a lowly social insect!

Well, no sooner do I get a good laugh at one group of insect victims than I learn that, thanks to our national religion, the Church of Gaia, I may soon get to join another such group, even though I myself am not afflicted with that particular superstition.

Nearly eradicated in the United States 50 years ago, resistant strains of "super" bedbugs are infesting mattresses at an alarming rate. In what's being touted as the biggest mystery in entomology, all 50 states are reporting outbreaks of the blood-sucking nocturnal critters.

Pest control companies nationwide reported a 71 percent increase in bedbug calls between 2000 and 2005. Left alone, a few bedbugs can create a colony of thousands within weeks.

"We never treated bedbugs until 2002. Now we have a dedicated bedbug crew working on this every day," said Luis Agurto, president of Pestec in San Francisco.

Agurto's arsenal includes a vacuum, steam heat to cook the bedbug eggs and targeted spraying of insecticides. It takes three, eight-hour visits and about $500 to $750 to exterminate one room. A whole house would cost closer to $5,000.

My goodness! We nearly eradicated the bedbug a half-century ago, and yet now are seeing infestations in every state and may have to pay a cool five grand to rid our homes of the bugs if our number comes up? How on earth did this happen? It's buried in the article and reported as if it were an unalterable fact of nature rather than the man-made -- and easily addressed -- outrage that it is:

Bedbugs were nearly eradicated after World War II, when exterminators and homeowners used DDT to get rid of the pests.

Not mentioned is why we banned DDT in the first place or the fact that we could just start using it again. Suzanne Fields recently attempted to jog the memory of the body politic.

After Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, DDT was banned nearly everywhere. Most of her "evidence" later turned out to be all wrong, but 2 million poor Africans die every year of malaria that DDT was on the way to eradicating. [my bold]

This outrage would be called "genocide" were it not motivated by a pet cause of the left.

Oh well. Perhaps if lefties can't see fit to make overturning this ridiculous ban a cause in the face of this horrendous yearly death toll, then perhaps when enough of the rest of us lose sleep because of it, we will consider the idea.

And should that occur, we will see "base" self-interest save countless lives in the name of a good night's rest, ending a needless slaughter caused by an altruistic crusade.

-- CAV

What's Wikipedia Good For?

By Greg from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

"For conservative computer users who find the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to harbor too many values that conflict with their own, a new site awaits," says an NPR interview with the founder of Conservapedia, a 'conservative alternative' to Wikipedia.

Sure, we can talk all day about the egalitarian, distributed, unowned nature of Wikipedia that translates to inconsistent coverage, errors forever being introduced and corrected, encouragement of a chopped up style, how all this is discouraging of work by top experts, how that all complicates effective use of the site. But none of that is Conservapedia's beef. No, they think that Wikipedia has a liberal bias while they prefer an encyclopedia with a conservative bias. And note that bias per-se isn't in fact a sin to be avoided, as some of their rhetoric would imply -- no, bias is wonderful according to Conservapedia. Just so long as it is conservative bias.

Looking at Conservapedia's entry for "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" (note that spin on the sin), there are endless examples of errors and oversights which Wikipedia's fundamental principles would guide treatment of (in particular, writers must always cite sources and in cases of disagreement 'present the debate’ from a 'neutral point of view'). Even their anxiety over the demographic composition of Wikipedia writers (lots on the Left, lots who are not Christian or theistic or whatever) is no big deal because Wikipedia's fundamental operating principles point to an obvious solution: anybody can be a writer, so go get more of the "right" people to pile on and make sure your perspective is accurately presented when there is disagreement.

In that NPR interview, however, Conservapedia's founder didn't give any whiff of appreciating how these principles relate to the issues he cites. If there were a genuine bias problem for Wikipedia, he would be talking about an inability or refusal to recognize a dispute or to accurately represent the sides, and he would be calling for Wikipedia to simply adhere to its fundamental principles. So this fellow's real trouble lies elsewhere: if I had to guess, I would say his authority-based epistemology recoils at the idea of letting competing views sit side-by-side with The Answer as he sees it, as if people might have to do some work to know reality rather than simply hear the Truth and be enlightened.

Which brings us to appreciating Wikipedia for what it is. As best I can tell, Wikipedia is not really about capturing objective knowledge, but about chronicling the current beliefs of mankind. In any given topic, to the degree people have decent epistemologies and are grounded in reality, it will point toward useful facts -- but to the degree that people don’t and aren’t, it will reflect their confusion. Such a chronicle is certainly useful, but even at its most excellent it would not make people more rational or knowledgeable. Merely seeing what other people hold to be true only constitutes knowledge of what is held to be true, and having access to accurately-presented positions in disputed cases will not automatically improve anyone's epistemology: rational people will focus and sort the facts out, and irrational people will evade; second-handed minds will look for something to faithfully follow (whether it is an authority like Billy Graham, the Institute for Creation Research, or simply tradition or the majority opinion) -- while independent minds will look for grounded approaches to engage, without regard to tradition or majority status. Consider Conservapedia's founder: Wikipedia has certainly not made him more knowledgeable or rational regarding, say, biology. And indeed, easy inspiration for him to create Conservapedia is found in the (appropriate) double fear that people who are not as steeped in his authority-based style of thinking could wander from the flock if exposed to those competing views, while others who are as authority-based might stumble into trusting the wrong authority and likewise wander.

In short, peoples' epistemologies are the cause of how they use Wikipedia, not the other way around.

This is why think of Wikipedia as primarily an effect rather than a cause -- as descriptive rather than prescriptive -- much like dictionaries. Dictionaries primarily tell us how we do use words, not how we should use them. And realizing this profoundly shapes how we confront their contents. When we see something conceptually horrid in the dictionary, our natural reaction isn’t to twist the arm of the editor or to go off and start our own competing dictionary: we understand that it is a reflection of the culture, so we go spread a better concept or usage via education and so on. Likewise with Wikipedia, our natural reaction to something horribly confused in it should be to make sure our perspective is clearly presented and to get to work in the culture, enjoying Wikipedia's utility in indicating when the confusion has shrunk to a meaningless minority of minds.

So Wikipedia can be valuable as a cultural barometer for those in the know, and as a starting place for those who aren't. It is not primarily a substitute for thinking or a repository of knowledge, even though the Conservapedians -- and apparently even some Wikipedians -- wish that it was.

Eric Daniels to Speak in Boston

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Eric Daniels will be speaking at Tufts University on Monday, April 16th on "The Morality of Capitalism." Eric is an excellent speaker, so I recommend attending if possible. Here's the official announcement:

The Morality of Capitalism

Who: Dr. Eric Daniels, speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute

What: A talk explaining why capitalism is the only moral social system

When: Monday, April 16, at 7:30 PM

Where: Tufts University, Barnum 104, 163 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA 02155

Admission is FREE.

Description: Despite the enormous success of American capitalism at producing material abundance and political freedom, critics continue their assault on the system, calling it immoral. In this lecture, Dr.
Eric Daniels makes the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. He also examines the conventional defense of capitalism, which relies on the practical, economic argument, and illustrates why only a defense of pure laissez-faire capitalism can succeed.

Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a visiting scholar at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He taught for five years at Duke University, in the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, and at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate in American history. He has lectured internationally on the history of American ethics, American business and legal history, and the American Enlightenment. Daniels's publications include a chapter in "The Abolition of Antitrust" and five entries in the "Oxford Companion to United States History."

The Jewish War

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm currently listening to Flavius Josephus' classic work The Jewish War. It's a history of the Jewish-Roman war fought from 66 to 73 AD, with substantial background. Although I originally wanted to read it as historical context for the development of early Christianity, I'm finding it a very interesting and engaging work in its own right. (I'm in Book 2 right now; the war has yet to begin.)

The work vividly portrays the dangerous political instability of that time -- not just in the highest political offices of Rome, but also the regional and local powers. (That sheds light on the enormous challenge faced by the American Founding Fathers in their quest to create a stable system of republican government.) Moreover, even today's most experienced soap opera writers could learn a thing or two from the lengthy story of King Herod's treacherous family life. (Lies, murders, manipulations, treacheries, paranoia, and more!)

The work also offers much of interest regarding religious fanaticism. For example:

Now there followed after this another calamity, which arose from a tumult made by robbers; for at the public road at Beth-boron, one Stephen, a servant of Caesar, carried some furniture, which the robbers fell upon and seized. Upon this Cureanus sent men to go round about to the neighboring villages, and to bring their inhabitants to him bound, as laying it to their charge that they had not pursued after the thieves, and caught them. Now here it was that a certain soldier, finding the sacred book of the law, tore it to pieces, and threw it into the fire.

Hereupon the Jews were in great disorder, as if their whole country were in a flame, and assembled themselves so many of them by their zeal for their religion, as by an engine, and ran together with united clamor to Cesarea, to Cumanus, and made supplication to him that he would not overlook this man, who had offered such an affront to God, and to his law; but punish him for what he had done. Accordingly, he, perceiving that the multitude would not be quiet unless they had a comfortable answer from him, gave order that the soldier should be brought, and drawn through those that required to have him punished, to execution, which being done, the Jews went their ways.

Sound familiar? It should: it's awfully similar to the "pissing on the Koran" story that dominated the news a few years back. These fanatical Jews, like today's Muslims, demand death for blasphemers. (That is the punishment required in the Hebrew Bible, Leviticus 24

Josephus' lengthy description of the Essene sect in Book 2, Chapter 8 was also of great interest to me, particularly for the parallels between the doctrines of the Essenes and those of Christianity. To take a small example, Josephus describes the Essenes as follows:

They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace; whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury for they say that he who cannot be believed without [swearing by] God is already condemned.

Similarly, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonishes:

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, "Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord." But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your "Yes" be "Yes," and your "No," "No"; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. (Matthew 5)

If Jesus actually taught this view of oaths, he might have gotten it from the Essenes. (It's less likely that it was a common Jewish teaching at the time, since Josephus is concerned to explain all the strange and unique practices of the Essenes in this chapter.) Alternately, early Christians might have imputed this view of oaths to Jesus based on some familiarity with Essene teachings. From all I've read, I'd have to say that tracing the historical lineage of that idea into Christianity would be impossible: our knowledge of what Jesus actually taught is too uncertain to judge such matters. In fact, I'd say that we really can't know that Jesus taught anything at all -- or even that he existed as anything like any of the various men portrayed in the Gospels. Still, it's interesting that the idea has some historical precedent in Judaism.

Of course, the full meaning of Jesus' command against oaths is widely ignored by Christians today. They routinely swear on this and that and the other thing. I'd like to know: How do Biblical literalists justify such selective obedience to Scripture? It's as if -- so long as you renounce reason to make room for faith in Jesus -- the commands of a truly merciful God become mere suggestions. Yet other commands, like the injunctions against homosexuality in the Law of Moses, are somehow still in full effect. So what do contemporary evangelical Christians say about that?

Mormonism and Christianity

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Paul and I had a short discussion a few weeks ago about Mormonism. After I posted my entry on Mark Skousen's essay on Ayn Rand, Paul discovered that Skousen is Mormon. He suggested that I change the entry to reflect that, but I replied that Mormonism is a form of Christianity, so my description of him as Christian was fine. Paul mentioned the new covenant of Mormonism. I suggested that Mormons accepted the Apostles' Creed, so that made them Christian, whatever silly stuff they added to it. Neither of us cared too much, nor knew too much, so that was pretty much the end of the discussion.

Three questions:

• Do Mormons consider themselves Christians? (I'm pretty sure the answer to that is yes.)
  
  
• Do other Christians consider Mormons Christians? (I suspect that varies greatly. Some Protestants probably don't consider Catholics Christian and vice versa. That's the fallacy of the frozen abstraction, I think.)
  
  
• Most importantly: Are Mormons properly classified as Christians? In other words, do their core doctrines vary fundamentally from those of Baptists, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Quakers, etc, such that their religion should be considered an alternative to Christianity rather than just a form of it? (I don't know enough about Mormonism to say.)

I don't care much about the particular case of Mormonism, but I am interested in the conceptual classification of systems of belief, as well as the core principles and boundaries of Christianity.

The Fatal Art of Turning the Other Cheek

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

In my last commentary, "The Spreading Desert Sands of Islam," I discussed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1898 novel A Desert Drama: Being the Tragedy of the Korosko, and concluded with:

"Doyle's Colonel Cochrane was worried that the Mahdists might reach the shores of the Mediterranean and swallow Egypt. Over a century later, their desert sands have spread as far north as Germany and Norway, not only in Europe's legal systems, but in men's minds, as well."

I should have included Britain, as well. And the U.S.

What can account for the difference in Western policies concerning Islam between the 19th century and the present? Is there some integral relationship between a blind toleration of Islamic fundamentalism and the West's own drift toward statism and totalitarianism? Even in the 19th century, which was governed, as Ayn Rand observed, by an "Aristotelian spirit," the moral sanction men repaired to was Christianity and a derivative form of secular moral altruism that spawned the elements of statism. This was evident in Doyle's novel; it is a phenomenon that occurs in most 19th century literature.

I also referred in my "Desert Sands" commentary to the West's polices of vacillation, conciliation and accommodation when dealing with Islamists and virtually every other brand of totalitarianism, including Vladimir Putin's Russia, Kim Il Jong's North Korea, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran.

Iran has seized fifteen British sailors and marines. What has been Prime Minister Tony Blair's response to it other than a faint baring of teeth? In a recent TV interview, he stated that he doesn't understand why Iran keeps doing these things, because such actions are only making Iran unpopular. The only "justice" he can think of in the way of an ultimatum or retaliatory response is to apply economic sanctions against Iran - with the approval of the U.N. and the European Union, of course. That, and "quiet," behind-the-scenes "diplomacy" or compromise to "tone down the rhetoric."

God forbid that he propose unilateral action, such as ordering the British Navy in the Gulf to defend itself and remove a few Iranian ships or other military targets by way of persuasion.

God forbids? Or "world opinion"? With Blair's urging, Britain has progressively surrendered its sovereignty to the bureaucrats and parasites of the European Union, which explains Blair's tepid and arguably impotent "anger."

Ahmadinejad has called "arrogant" Britain's refusal to "apologize" for the alleged violation of Iran's waters. He knows, however, that it is the arrogance of a cream puff and a "has been" paper lion.

What has been the U.S.'s response to the piracy and hostage-taking? A "show of force" in the Persian Gulf, close to where the Britons were taken, wasting thousands of gallons of aviation fuel in planes from two aircraft carriers. That really impressed the Iranians. Yesterday, President Bush waved his rubber sword in the air, called the Iranian piracy "inexcusable," and insisted that Iran free the Britons. "Snake Eyes" Ahmadinejad must have laughed and remarked to his fellow thugs, "Yeah, right! Hey, guys! Look at me! I'm unpopular! I'm sad! Gee!! I'm so scared!"

Excuse me, Mr. Bush, but you excused Iran five years ago by not taking direct military action against that one member of the "Axis of Evil." Can you blame the tyrant for taking leave to commit more depredations? The Britons did "nothing wrong"? But it's your word against Ahmadinejad's about what is "right" or "wrong."

Last week, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a so-called ally and special hand-holder of President Bush's, opened the Arab Summit in Riyadh by calling the American presence in Iraq an "illegitimate foreign occupation."

The White House's response? In another instance of a surrender of sovereignty, this time America's, a timidly worded disagreement that cited the approval of the U.N. Security Council. Perhaps even worse, with the administration's knowledge, great gobs of Saudi Arabian oil money are being funneled to a multitude of subversive, Wahhabist or Islamic organizations in the U.S., ranging in fields such as "civil rights" (CAIR) to educational textbooks that explain to helpless, indoctrinated American schoolchildren the blessings of Islam.

These actions - or non-actions - are evidence of turning the other cheek, a solely Christian virtue that goes far to account for the present state of the world.

Robert Mayhew underscored this point in his article, "The Rise and Fall of Greek Justice: Homer to the Sermon on the Mount" (The Objective Standard, spring 2007). In point seven in his explication of Christian morality, "Accept Divine Judgment," he notes in regard to Christian justice:

"The willingness to apply divine justice does not make Christians better or more admirable; it makes them much more dangerous."

The Christian virtue of turning the other cheek - of not resisting evil but refusing to judge certain men and their actions as evil - in especially our foreign policy over the last half century, has created a passel of parasitical, hostile states that can exist only by grace of semi-free Western nations, especially by grace of American non-judgmental pragmatism. Ayn Rand noted this in her notes for Atlas Shrugged:

"This is just like totalitarian economies that can exist only on the energy stolen from the free economies, who thus create their own Frankenstein monsters." (The Journals of Ayn Rand, p. 453)

Frankenstein monsters such as Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Iran, Putin's Russia (and before that the Soviet Union), Castro's Cuba, Hugh Chavez's Venezuela, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, the Sudan, and many, many more parasite states - including Iraq. Are these states in themselves dangerous, or is it the premises of Western leaders?

For example, is Islam a corrosive that possesses an indefinable but ineluctable power to suborn and ultimately destroy Western values, turning them and men's minds into wind-blown sand? Why does New Testament Christianity seem to be no match against an apparently virulent Islam? (Has a Moslem ever turned the other cheek?) What is the difference between the moral certitude of Christianity and that of Islamic fundamentalists? Should we blame the nihilistic subjectivism of pragmatism and multiculturalism, which inculcates in men a fear of defending themselves or their values?

In her Journals, Rand observed:

"The reason why people who start out with many virtues and a few flaws grow progressively worse, with the flaws winning, is the fact that an evil cannot remain stationary; it must either be eliminated or it will grow (like "a few" controls in a free economy). The question I ask myself here is: but what, then, happens to the virtues, which I consider indestructible (in the sense that a truth, once perceived, cannot be eliminated and replaced by an error)? (pp. 625-626)

Grasping the truism that flaws in a man's moral character - a character largely governed by reason - will win out if not checked and eliminated, one can say the same about a culture, as well. Christianity, or its partner, secular altruism, if unchecked and eliminated as an operative moral code, is bound to enfeeble the West in its conflict with Islamic jihad.

Rand stated in her Journals that unchallenged and uncorrected flaws are the result of either errors of knowledge, or a refusal to acknowledge a fact. In the second instance, a man "has closed the door to knowledge, therefore closed it to correction, and therefore his error (and his evil) will grow worse and worse." (p. 626)

Both Bush and Blair have refused to acknowledge the irrational nature of Iran, of Iraq, of Saudi Arabia - of virtually everything that imperils Western civilization, because they refuse to acknowledge the irrationality of their own policies. They have closed their minds to correction. Witness Bush's willingness to "stay the course" in Iraq, as though loyalty to an irrational, fruitless policy will somehow transform a quagmire into victory. This is how they jeopardize the existence of the West and allow Frankenstein monsters to exist, and be sustained, and set the terms of our existence.

It is not Ahmadinejad and Putin and Mugabe who are dangerous. It is the premise of Western leaders that the best morality is to be non-judgmental, to "love" (or tolerate as a difference in opinion or culture) totalitarians and sanction every brand of irrationality, including religious doctrines, and to surrender pro-life values in exchange for non- or anti-life values, such as "peace at any price," or environmentalism, or wealth -consuming foreign aid.

Arthur Conan Doyle, in his later years, after becoming famous for creating his evidence-gathering, reason-governed Sherlock Holmes, became an overt mystic, believing in spiritualism. He was an agnostic on the question of the existence of God (reason is impotent to answer the question of His existence, there is no "evidence" of it one way or another). That agnosticism logically allowed him to believe in the existence of a "lesser" realm of wandering souls of the dead who could communicate with the living.

The West has followed and continues to follow the same course, of abandoning reason in favor of the "spiritualism" of non-judgmental pragmatism/altruism. Reason is not an automatic governor of or check on one's actions. It requires conscious application in every action of one's life, including foreign policy. The West has systematically abandoned reason for over a century. We have political leaders whose minds are closed to correction, who refuse to acknowledge the disastrous facts of their policies.

The perilously bizarre results are plain to see to everyone but those who are comfortable with being blind.

Proles Follow Orders, Loot House

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

In a society whose residents are routinely discouraged from exercising their common sense and who are becoming increasingly afraid to take any initiative for fear of being sued, is the following -- mass looting by "permission" -- really at all surprising?

Someone with cruel intentions placed a fake ad on Craigslist, inviting people to take whatever they wanted for free from a Tacoma home.

Homeowner Laurie Raye says there's little left now of the house. The outside of the home is trashed, the inside is nearly gutted and covered in graffiti. ...

... A phone caller alerted Raye to the destruction. She walked through her garbage strewn front yard to find her house dismantled.

"Including the front door," said Raye. "This used to be a very nice vinyl window here."

From the light fixtures to the hot water heater, everything is gone - including the kitchen sink.

Her neighbors later reported seeing strangers hauling stuff away from her home, seemingly looking for salvage material.

The "ad" was posted on Craigslist last weekend.

"In the ad, it said come and take what you want. Everything is free," said Raye. "Please help yourself to anything on the property."

Not to absolve the person who placed the ad, but....

What kind of mental passivity does it take to believe such an ad? What mean stature to be so ready to believe it? And what low threshold for theft or vandalism to use such an obviously lame excuse to commit a crime?

In a culture transitioning from a norm of personal responsibility to a norm of parasitism, one starts to see a low cunning all over the place. This time, we saw it whenever someone read the ad and calculated that public officials would probably take their claim that they were suckered by the ad at face value, absolving them of all legal responsibility for what they did.

I know this is the Pacific Northwest we're talking about, but let's hope they're wrong.

-- CAV

Chertoff the 'Crime Czar'

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

The strongest evidence that the U.S. is not only losing the "war on terror," but will be struck again with perhaps greater force, is the siege mentality of those charged with protecting the nation. Instead of destroying the states that sponsor terrorism, the U.S. is conducting the "war" as though the enemy was some kind of super-Mafia gang whose members had to be detected and deterred. All we need do, goes the thinking, is identify the bad guys and keep them from entering the country. It elects to fight enemies dedicated to destroying this country with the methods suitable to Eliot Ness in his pursuit of bootleggers.

The Daily Telegraph (London) on April 4th offered an insight to this mentality in an interview in Washington of Michael Chertoff, Director (or Secretary) of Homeland Security, "Briton 'could stage another September 11'," pending his visit to Britain for talks with John Reid, the Home Secretary.

"We need to build layers of protection," said Chertoff in the interview, "and I don't think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here."

"Layers of protection"? Is the U.S. to be turned into "Fortress America"? At what price? And with what consequences?

Chertoff told the interviewer, Toby Harnden, in an unintended but revealing admission of his ignorance of the nature of Islam and Islamic jihad:

"Our Muslim population is better educated and economically better off than the average American. So, from a standpoint of mobility in society, it's a successful immigrant population. To some degree, the whole country is a country of immigrants, and therefore there's no sense that we have insiders or outsiders. In some countries (Europe), you had an influx of people that came in as a colonial legacy and may have always have felt, to some extent, that they were viewed as second-class citizens, and they've tended to impact and be kind of clustered in some areas."

It is arguable whether or not "our" Muslim population is better educated and economically better off" than Britain's or any other European country's. Most of the 9/11 hijackers came from the educated elites of their countries - most prominently from Saudi Arabia - and the Madrid and 7/7 London Tube bombers were university students or graduates.

Post-colonial era "resentments" have little or nothing to do with Islamic jihad. Most Islamic suicide bombers and advocates of an Islamic conquest of the West are generations removed from the colonial era of the early 20th century, and as ignorant of that period as are most non-Islamic individuals. That history is irrelevant to them. Chertoff, an alleged expert on terrorism, ought to know better than to utter such a transparent misconception.

Further, being an "insider" or an "outsider" in any Western country has nothing to do with whether or not one subscribes to an ideology that sanctions mass murder and destruction. How many American Muslims work under the guise of "civil liberties" to convert this country from a secular one to an Islamic one?

Chertoff wishes Britain and Europe to let the U.S. know who is flying into the country from abroad, and to treat all visitors to the U.S. as potential criminals, complete with fingerprinting and the transmission of everyone's personal histories before flights depart from European airports. That will somehow will prevent the enemy from committing acts of terrorism and keep the country safe.

"We can do a good job with the known terrorists," said Chertoff, "if we have their name (sic), or if we've previously arrested them and have their fingerprint on file."

This is a crime-deterring mentality, not one committed to defeating the enemy or even acknowledging that it is recruited, funded and directed by states that sponsor terrorism. That is, Chertoff can determine that certain money is coming from Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, but like his chief's, his mind blanks out those facts and refocuses on the recipients of that money, the "bad guys." (Orwell called this brand of mental gymnastics "doublethink.") Chertoff's policies perfectly complement President Bush's approach to national security, which is to defeat "bad guys" who have "hijacked" a religion by fighting fruitless police actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not an ideology.

That ideology is intimately linked to a "great religion," and to attack the ideology would be to implicate the religion and slander its adherents. That is a politically correct prohibition. God forbids it, and so does Allah.

Neither Bush nor Chertoff (not to mention much of this country's political leadership) will allow himself to think of the enemy in terms of states or ideologies. That would be too intellectual, too taxing of their skewed epistemologies and their eclectic notions of cause and effect, and too politically risky.

If one proposed to either of them that instead of turning the U.S. into a police state, in which ordinary, productive citizens must undergo government scrutiny and submit to frisks and searches in the name of national security, the U.S. blast Iran and Syria, and turn the Kaaba in Mecca into a smoking hole of glass and likewise Mohammad's tomb in Medina, one would be answered with either blinks of incomprehension or of horror.

More of the Harnden interview of Chertoff can be found on Harnden's blog. In it, Chertoff remarked on the fact that 9/11 has not been repeated in five years:

"The ideological enemy here has one particular advantage over Western society - they have very, very long memories. They still get worked up over stuff that happened seven or eight hundred years ago. That persistence is the one thing we have to be mindful of, because if we as a society in the West lose interest or become impatient or allow wishful thinking to overcome reality, that is when we will drop our guard, and that is when they will strike again."

Which means that Americans must live in a state of perpetual crisis, and never hope to stop worrying about Islamic terrorists because their government will not deal properly and permanently with that ideological enemy. The molecularization of Mecca and Medina alone would disprove Islam, leaving Islamists and their self-sacrificing soldiers without a ship to sail, and the rank-and-file "moderate" Muslims the task of discovering, among other things, freedom and individualism.

Michael Chertoff looked nicer and more approachable with a goatee and moustache, when he was an assistant U.S Attorney General and a judge on the Third Circuit U.S Court of Appeals. The goatee and moustache are gone now, and his face is one that one would not want to open one's door to in broad daylight, never mind encounter in a dark alley. One can only speculate that the removal of his facial hair was a calculated ploy to look frightening.

Chertoff's career in law is checkered, if not shady. He is the archetype, amoral "careerist" who can rise in political appointments as federal powers expand. He was comfortable as an assistant U.S. Attorney General during the Clinton administration (and may have turned a blind eye on the Vince Foster cover-up and the Whitewater scandal) and is equally comfortable under the Bush administration. Today, he is viewed as a neo-conservative. Under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani he prosecuted with equal vigor the Mafia and Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm, leading to its collapse during the Enron episode. As Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, he was in charge of FEMA when hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

As head of Operation Green Quest, created in October 2001 by Bush to run down Islamic money-laundering activities, Chertoff contributed to the enfeebling of the country's intelligence gathering capabilities by exacerbating existing agency rivalries. And, he was one of the chief drafters of Title III of the Patriot Act, which forces most Americans to account to the federal government for their financial dealings.

And, there is talk that he may replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales if the latter is forced to resign as a result of his role the U.S. attorney general firings, about which Gonzales apparently lied.

A very frightening prospect, indeed. As Attorney General, Chertoff would view all Americans as potential "bad guys" until they could prove their innocence. He would feel very comfortable with that "crime fighting" approach, as well.

Quick Roundup 169

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

Equality of Outcome and Fiat Credentials

Theodore Dalrymple at City Journal recently looked at some unfortunate changes in how selections are made for places in the British medical and educational sectors.

The government also announced a new policy on university admissions: henceforth, when selecting students, universities must enquire as to whether applicants' parents have university degrees themselves, in order to discriminate against them and favor applicants whose parents do not have degrees.

... [I]t is far easier, of course, to admit students from poorer and less educated homes to university by administrative fiat than it is to raise standards in the high schools that they attend so that they might actually benefit from a university education.

This whole approach in treating educational attainment as if it were bestowed by "society" rather than earned through hard work by the students themselves will end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy, with Britain cranking out graduates whose nominal qualifications are rightly dismissed as "pieces of paper".

Interestingly, I remember hearing this very notion spouted off long ago by a fellow student I went to high school with, and who was a "beneficiary" of just this sort of placement program.

Equally interesting is Dalrymple's account of an attempt to socially engineer a medical placement process by substituting scripted interviews for credentials in order to prevent "prejudice". And was medicine discussed -- or did candidates spout off fashionable political views? That idea was scuppered, at least for now, by an old guard of physicians from better days.

Attempts to improve the lot of the "disadvantaged" by government pronouncement are worth the words used to legislate them, at best. In all such programs, however, we see an increasing disregard for the truth and a greater respect for their animating dogmas. This is directly a result of the fact that it is now government that doles out the coveted credentials. Unfortunately, government did not create the value of those credentials just as it does not create the value of a single government bank note. The society that makes this farce possible will learn as much on its own hide in time, unless it quickly reverses course.

If you thought fiat currency was the only thing subject to inflation, just keep an eye on Britain's fiat credentials.

Article on Evangelicals

There is an interesting article by a conservative on the rising phenomenon of media reports on evangelical Christians adopting political views traditionally associated with the left. The thrust of the article is to pooh-pooh the whole trend, but it is interesting for several other reasons.

First of all , the article reminds us (but for reasons different from author Paul Chesser's) that, as Rush Limbaugh so often says (as he echoes Ayn Rand), "Words mean things." Chesser then goes on to claim that an essential part of the meaning of the phrase "evangelical Christian" is support for a variety of political positions he deems "conservative".

Aside from the fact that conservatism was never a consistent political philosophy to begin with and that it is, itself rapidly losing its elements of respect for individual rights, this is incorrect. Evangelicals are Christians, and radical ones at that. That -- not political affiliation -- is their essential characteristic. This is why, when the free market gives us such dubious offerings as a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction during a nationally-televised event, so many immediately begin discussing what the government "ought to" do to prevent a repeat. When protecting individual rights conflicts with keeping their faith supreme "in the public square", guess which will win out.

Second, Chesser's definition-by-nonessentials of evangelicals not only causes him to fail to see why evangelicals are by nature not friends of individual rights, it causes him to dismiss as inconsequential fringe elements those pioneers within the movement who actually embody its animating spirit: "The list of signatories to the statement [by an association of evangelicals on US detainee policy in the GWOT], unsurprisingly, is no 'Who's Who' of recognized conservative Christian leaders; it’s more like a 'Who's That?'"

Finally, we see the ultimate source for Chesser's over-generosity in his own words:

One historical credo for traditional evangelicals is that they stand on the truth, first grounded in the Bible, and secondarily in measurable, incontrovertible evidence. Human-induced global warming doesn't pass either test....

On his last sentence first: What of the Biblical notion of "stewardship"? And what of the ongoing scientific debate over global warming?

The idea that one can know things based on faith directly contradicts the idea that one must use reason and evidence to gain knowledge. Most Christians attempt to hold both notions at once, but evangelicals are more prone to accept the dictates of faith over reason than most other Christians. Chesser strikes me here as a more "reasonable" Christian who is seeing what he wants to see (i.e., himself) in the evangelicals.

In other words, Chesser in his own way epitomizes the problem Christianity in general poses for the public discourse: Its adherents claim to respect facts and logic precisely until they encounter unpleasant facts or conclusions that they do not want to hear, including any to the effect that Christianity might actually pose a danger to their freedom. At that point, they blank it out and simply have faith in what they want to believe.

This is why commentators like Paul Chesser will be blindsided by the emergence of a "Religious Left": They do not fully appreciate the fundamental nature of religion in general and Christianity in particular, and their own inconsistent embrace of Enlightenment values makes them unable to objectively evaluate mounting evidence of same.

Journo on the Latest Iranian Hostage Crisis

Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute writes a good press release on the recent Iranian capture of British naval personnel.

While the British may hope that their timid, deferential approach will avoid inflaming the crisis and antagonizing Iran, they are accomplishing the opposite. The spectacle of Western nations bowing in submission is an encouragement to Iran and Islamic totalitarians worldwide.

Iran and other evil regimes grow stronger and more threatening precisely because the morally good nations, who should defeat Iran's regime, are cowardly, apologetic, and meek. [bold added]

In other words, what "provokes" Iran is deference, which its leaders, being barbarians, do not read as courtesy, but as weakness. Until we stop showing weakness to savages, we will all be Iranian hostages to the extent that that nation feels it can threaten us and thereby cause us to take its immoral desires into any consideration whatsoever. (HT: Amit Ghate)

-- CAV

Goldberg: Where's our Taft?

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

Jonah Goldberg's latest at Townhall.com is the most perceptive assessment of the Republican's field of presidential candidates I have seen by a conservative so far. He draws an interesting parallel between the upcoming election and the one in 1912 in the process.

[W]e might be in another progressive moment in American politics, where both parties represent the same basic assumptions about the role of government, leaving conservatives out in the cold.

What is progressivism? For our purposes, let's just say it's the belief that the government "runs" the whole country, imposing its values on the group, the way a teacher runs a class or a drill sergeant runs a platoon (this actually describes the differences between Wilson and [Theodore Roosevelt]. quite nicely).

...

The front-runner in the Republican field is Rudy Giuliani, who certainly seems like a progressive. Coming up behind Giuliani are McCain and Mitt Romney, both of whom champion, on domestic policy, their competence at running government, not their conviction to trim it back.

In this much, he is right. But where things get interesting is the lesson he draws from this.

Given all of the hullabaloo about how Republicans are doomed and conservatism is discredited (witness Time magazine's disingenuous weeping Reagan cover), you would think that the Democratic front-runner would do better in matchups against the Republicans. But Americans say they would vote for McCain and Giuliani over Clinton in the general election. Some of this undoubtedly has to do with Clinton's status as a polarizing figure. But it also might demonstrate that the differences between the two parties - and their constituencies - are smaller than the news coverage and the partisans would have us believe.

When I first read this, I thought Goldberg was saying that the American public might be more "progressive" than in the recent past, but his final question ("Where the heck is our Taft?") makes little sense in such a context. Instead, I think that Goldberg is convinced that a "real conservative" would do very well.

Goldberg is partly correct, at least in the sense that he seems to take "conservative" to vaguely mean pro-individual rights. To understand how, we must consider his observation that "most pundits see all this as an unsubtle referendum on the perception that the problem with Bush isn't his philosophy but his incompetence "-- in light of what has most dominated the Bush Presidency, the war.

Indeed, the war, at least until this administration put forward a massive humanitarian boondoggle in place of a policy of actual self-defense, was a "conservative issue". Or, to be more accurate, most Americans not part of the pacifist left favor fighting the war more vigorously, if anything. See Yaron Brook and Elan Journo for a critique of the "Forward Strategy for Freedom" and John Lewis for what an actual war would look like. And then consider this analysis of the blogger "Zombie" of polls that indicate merely that the war is "unpopular":

Most polls ask the misleading question, "Do you approve of the way Bush is conducting the war?" and they get a 60% to 65% "Yes, I disapprove" response. But those polls are purposely designed to NOT ask the follow-up question, "Do you think the war is being waged [too] forcefully or too lightly?" I've seen just a handful of polls that did ask follow-up questions of that sort, and they all revealed that half of the disgruntled respondents were [more pro-war than] Bush.

Unfortunately, what this administration has done -- and Goldberg misses this -- is exactly what Craig Biddle indirectly predicted would happen before the last election:

The crucial issue of the day, however, is the war we should be waging but are not; so let us return to that.

Here, in essence, is what Bush has done. By packaging a permission-seeking, capitulating, restrained, dovish foreign policy with lip service to an independent, firm, do-what-needs-to-be-done, hawkish one -- he has removed the concept of the latter from the foreign policy debate. Kerry, unwittingly, would put it back on the table; this is why I will vote for him.

In other words, the war is not really an issue in this election since Bush has lowered the threshold for what his successor must do to be regarded as "pro-war" -- which is not that different from what we could expect the Democrats to do in their place. Thus, in the most crucial difference that should exist between the two parties in this election, there isn't much of one. (And the Democrats' pulling out of Iraq would arguably be a less harmful option than us remaining there, entirely by accident, of course.)

It speaks volumes for where the war debate is now that Goldberg never really discusses the war and focuses instead on domestic policy, where it is far more clear to far more people that the candidates of both parties are similar. For one thing, there really isn't much of a war debate. (Continue digging toilets in Iraq or de-fund them?) For another, Goldberg himself, a conservative pundit , isn't arguing that Bush dropped the ball on the war.

I think that, as with the issue of prosecuting the war, a more explicitly pro-capitalist candidate could do well in this election. (And I suspect that on this, at least, Goldberg would probably agree.) I do not have the time to elaborate on this further, but I will say that, as we are already seeing in the debate over socialized medicine, the conservatives themselves -- including the allegedly "free market" ones) are really not so different from the Democrats even there. Is it really any wonder we aren't seeing a pro-individual rights candidate out of the Republican Party? (Taft is a mixed bag there, from what I know of him.)

So with the conservatives "waging" a half-war, half-foreign aid campaign and tinkering around with "market-based" ways to save Medicaid, perhaps the best question to ask isn't "Where's our Taft?" Perhaps it is, "Where is our pro-freedom political movement?" I think that there will not be one for a long time, but the longer people fail to realize that conservatism is not it, the longer it will take to achieve the meaningful cultural change that will make such possible.

-- CAV

ARI presents a new Web site for students

Thanks largely to the success of ARI's programs, more students than ever are now reading Ayn Rand's novels--so ARI is proud to introduce aynrandnovels.com, a resource site designed to provide students with important information about Ayn Rand and her works. The site is a helpful tool for students who want a better understanding of the novels--or for anyone else who is a fan of Ayn Rand's fiction.

The Pope: Enemy of Prosperity

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release:
In his forthcoming book, the Pope claims that the West, in its pursuit of earthly prosperity, has "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions. "We see how our lifestyle, the history that involved us, has stripped them naked and continues to strip them naked," he writes.

"Contrary to the Pope's statements, the Third World is not impoverished because of Western 'exploitation,'" said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is impoverished precisely because it has failed to embrace Western ideals--the very ideals rejected by Christianity.

"The root of the West's prosperity is its distinctive values of reason, science, and capitalism. Rational minds, free to pursue material prosperity, have produced an explosion of wealth and technology--from electricity to automobiles, from medicines to personal computers--that has improved our lives and extended our lifespan.

"It is obvious that the third world has failed to embrace these values, and has instead remained mired in mysticism and tribalism. But Christianity rejects them as well; it teaches us to scorn science and earthly success in favor of prayer and religious asceticism. As Jesus counseled his followers, 'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.' It is bizarre to suggest that the solution to the third world's rampant poverty is a philosophy that idealizes poverty.

"In rejecting the preconditions and goal of prosperity, the Pope makes it clear that his aim is not to see the Third World advance--it is to condemn the West for its commitment to improving and enjoying life on this earth.

"Those who desire better lives for themselves and their families should reject the Pope's immoral message and embrace the values of reason and freedom."

Modern Art

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Originally, this was a short post from Paul. However, the short comment I wanted to add to it turned rather long, so I made it my own post. Paul originally wrote:

Here are some strange statues from around the world. A few are actually clever and/or cool; others portray human beings in odd or grotesque ways.

The link is now to a different page. Apparently, the post was so popular that they've now moved it to its very own web site.

Many of the sculptures are so bizarre as to be rationally incomprehensible, e.g. the space cow and the square head. Most are recognizable human figures deliberately made grotesque, primitive, and deformed, as is characteristic of the lower forms of naturalism. Interestingly, a few of the bizarre statues do show some serious talent. The running knot of legs (no longer available, apparently), for example, really seems to be in motion.

The few better statues are a higher form of naturalism: they are refreshingly ordinary-looking people well-blended into their surroundings, as in the elegant woman on the bench and the photographer peering around the building. They are so realistic that the viewer often does a double-take in recognizing the sculpture as such. The more imaginative ones are even funny, as in manhole prankster. These kind of double-take statues seem more common these days; I expect that people like them far better than the alternatives offered. However, it goes without saying that the purpose of art is not the surprise of realizing "Oh, that's a statue!"

The voluminous comments on the now-defunct page were very revealing of people's views of art today. Here are a few that stood out to me. (Each paragraph is a new comment.)

What a collection! All sorts of adjectives could apply, in my opinion: beautiful, moving, weird, ugly, shocking, obscene, hugely imaginative, humorous, thought-provoking, depressing, and so on. It all depends on one's point of view. This collection is a good illustration of the fact that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty IS in the eye of the beholder..and to criticize any type of art form, well, just shows your narrow mindedness. Just say you don't understand and be done with it! Human sexuality, and all it entails, is a beautiful and wonderful thing. Maybe if people were more open minded & less self centered, the world would be a better place to live in.

Two observations: Beauty (and/or art) is in the eye of the beholder, and judge not lest you be judged (yes, you can be judged by your judgement). All artists make an emotional or intellectual statement through their medium, so only the artists know if they have made that statement and thus made art. Only the art dealer knows whether he or she thinks it will sell or not. Only the buyer knows if he or she likes the work enough to pay out money for it. Or not. Only you know whether you like it or not. It's dull, it's disgusting, it's not "highbrow," it's juvenile. It's fun, it's fascinating, it's provocative, it's art. Who cares?

Utterly and gloriously wonderful ! The art stimulated an amazing range of emotional spectrums from me …from a full throated laugh of pleasure to a gasp of surprise and a thousand other feelings ! Some of the comments here surprised me…some people seem personally affronted as if the artist has set out to provoke them specifically .Art does affect each viewer in a very personal way BUT the important thing to remember is that other people will respond completely differently to you and that is is the beautiful and incredible experience of viewing ANY art(from the simple sketch a child may draw with it's toe in the sand to the traditional oil by a master) ! Some people also seem to take the unusual view that *art* must be both beautiful and pleasing…it may be both of these and more …and it may not. Sometimes art may shock and startle but this isn't a bad thing (in my opinion) .I personally will look at this site often and feel inspired and amazed .(p.s I would love to add some photoghraphs of some incredible statues if anyone can provide the email address in order to submit them)

I love "public art". It is an emotional high for me. The artist feels inspired and makes a statement. We either like it or not, but anyhow, we have to admire and respect talent, magnificent or not. We need this kind of exposure. It opens our minds, develop new ideas and help us understand diversity better. Thanks for this collection. It gives us a chance to "better explore the world."

after struggling with the many definitions of art put forward, the only one that seems to function in all situations for me is that art is art when the artist declares it to be so. We might disagree, but our disagreement is one step removed from creation… Course I've seen things that seem artistic that the creator didn't think were, but still think the creator's definition trumps my own:)

Excellent collection. Every piece thought provoking and able to engender some sort of gut reaction. We all need more whimsy in our lives, not to mention more public displays of oversized genitalia.

From the sublime to the ridiculous…..it's all there. Some great, some ordinary even pedestrian, but all art. Maybe a little more discrimination in the choice of work. Soooo many images, many kinda repetitious, but let's face it, its certainly ALL art. It gets your brain up and running after all. Bravo for undertaking so ambitious and brave a project.

Some are funny, some are gross, some show great talent, some are abstract, some are novel, some are unique, some are artistic, some are not, some show greatness, some are shallow, some are ideal, some are stupid, some are of humans, some are of animals. But all are of humanity.

Just a wonderful collection! Inspiring, frightening and stimulating. Some fine work from Australia, but disappointed you missed the leaping sheep from the Melbourne Performing Arts Centre. Just remember, Ginger and other nay-sayers that art is MEANT to confront us! Take a good hard look at the world around you-it's much uglier than the sex organs of human beings

It is a shame that your shallow perception only permits you to see things such as "A man on an upside down horse." That your prudish upbringing has stunted your abilities to perceive beyond the simple surface reaction. If you are unable, or unwilling, to seek the artistic in what may initially appear to be un-artful to you, as it may not fit in with your predefined notions of what art is, then perhaps you are best to stick to soap operas and american tv.

Someday, I'll no longer be amazed by how quickly the staunch defenders of grotesque and bizarre modern art resort to belligerent and nasty insults. The practice does fit their souls... like a damn ugly glove over a monstrousouly defective hand.

FCC Extortion Racket

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

From a February 26, 200 Wall Street Journal Article, "FCC May Try to Scrub Kids' TV"

Last week, Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. agreed in principle to pay an unusually steep $24 million fine for violating the Children's Television Act, which requires broadcasters to show three hours of educational programming a week, Federal Communications Commission officials said. In exchange, the FCC will approve Univision's sale to a consortium of private-equity groups for $12.3 billion. Univision declined to comment on the proposed consent
decree.

It's the largest fine assessed by the FCC against a company, far exceeding the $9 million fine slapped on Qwest Communications in 2004 for violating FCC rules and the $3.6 million indecency fine proposed against CBS and its affiliates last year for an episode of the crime drama "Without a Trace."

There is one word describing this action: extortion. It is illustrative of the type of arbitrary power that so-called government regulatory agencies exert and that is prominent in most instances where private-sector companies need to seek approvals for actions such as mergers. There is no statutory relationship between the Children's Television Act and the FCC's power to sign off on mergers in the communications industry. But it makes the connection by arbitrary fiat.

And the action is arbitrary. Does one know what particular statute will be used to hold up merger approval? Your guess is as good as the guess of the executives at Univision. As the article states, "The FCC has rarely taken action against broadcasters for not meeting educational requirements for kids' television." Now, however, it sees fit to levy it's largest fine in history over a statute that it has rarely enforced. That is the very definition of arbitrary.

A Tale of Three Sectors

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

Mike N and Amit Ghate have harrowing tales at their respective blogs about the folly of having the state run two different sectors of the economy. Mike makes the following astute observations about the use of an inadequately-tested material that ultimately proved inferior by the Michigan government to build bridges.

Had roads been privately owned it is highly unlikely the private owner would have used a new cement mixture without testing it for a number of years and only on a small number of bridges to make sure it holds up. His incentive of course would be the profit motive. Standing to lose a lot of money in law suits over crumbling cement not to mention higher insurance cost and the loss of subscribers to his roads due to bad press, there is no way he would use an untried mixture for 8 years on 1300 bridges.

But the state? No one in government stands to lose a nickel so the incentive to do it right isn't there. [bold added]

And Amit points to a story about the gross mismanagement of New Jersey's state pension fund, rightly noting that a private firm would never have gotten away with the same behavior and echoing Mike's observations on the government's lack of accountability:

As far as I can tell, no one's ever answered the question of why people should be considered evil, incompetent and requiring oversight if engaged in private business, but beyond question if working for the government. If anything it should be the opposite as market forces tend to ensure competence, while lack of accountability encourages incompetence and fraud. [bold added]

In the meantime, we have good news from another sector of the economy that, unlike transportation and retirement planning, is not (yet) automatically regarded as a proper function of the government and remains relatively free from its interference. A private medical firm, in the process of greedily pursuing profits may be only three years away from saving countless lives and making it cheaper to do so!

An international team of scientists announced that it has found a way to convert Types A, B, and AB blood into Type O -- the universal donor blood group that can be given to anyone -- and the American company that commissioned the research said such "universally transfusible" blood has the potential to solve problems associated with storing, transporting and transfusing blood.

...

It is costly to ship blood where and when specific types are needed, Mr. Clibourn said. If the new process proves to be safe and cost-effective in clinical trials, "it will allow all red blood cell products to be transfused to anybody, so it will significantly reduce blood shortages," said Samira Johnson, a spokeswoman for ZymeQuest, based in Beverly, Mass.

...

Mr. Clibourn said his company has also devised a tool for keeping the blood units produced sterile.

The concept of stripping antigens from red blood cells to repel immune response dates back to the early 1980s, when an enzyme was discovered in coffee beans that removed B antigens. Early clinical trials showed the converted blood could be safely transfused. However, the approach was far too costly and inefficient to be used on a large scale.

Mr. Clibourn hailed Jack Goldstein, one-time head of cell biology at the Lindsley Kimball Research Institute at the New York Blood Center, for "laying the foundation" for what the European researchers and his firm have achieved. He said use of this technology in blood banks is at least three years away. [bold added]

And yet, one of the major issues of our upcoming presidential election is whether we should run our medical sector more like we do our transportation systems and our retirement plans! Amit explains why this is so and what we need to do to begin rectifying this life-threatening problem.

The sad truth is that under altruism results don't matter, only motivation counts. So private businessmen who are pursuing their own values are evil by definition while conversely every bureaucrat can simply wave his "for the public good" wand to avoid any further questions.

To right this wrong requires nothing less than challenging the morality of altruism.

In other words we are letting dolts endanger our lives and threaten our future quality of life simply because they can claim that their hearts are in the right place and that they are good simply because they are not acting in their own selfish interests.

Myrhaf recently stated a profound truth when he noted how difficult it can be to argue in favor of capitalism, given the conceptualization required to grasp why it is good, versus the fact that even the mentally-deficient can latch on to a socialist slogan.

But that is only half of the story. After all, while the comparisons I make above do not constitute an iron-clad defense of capitalism, they are evidence that most people could grasp in favor of at least giving freedom a fair hearing. The other half of the story is that so many turn their minds off so quickly once that "public good" wand has been waved, and so prone to take advances like universally-transfusible blood for granted. Both of these problems are a direct result of the idea that morality is all about serving others and has nothing to do with furthering one's own life.

-- CAV

Marine opposed to war ordered discharged

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

I came across this story on the AP wire:

A Marine lance corporal who said he had an aversion to killing and participating in war must be released from the military as a conscientious objector, a federal judge ruled.

The Marine Corps Reserves must discharge Robert Zabala, 23, by mid-April, under the ruling.

Zabala said he was troubled during boot camp in 2003 when a fellow recruit committed suicide and a superior used profanities to belittle the recruit. Zabala said he was "abhorred by the blood lust (the superior) seemed to possess," according to a 2006 court petition for conscientious-objector status.

Another boot camp instructor showed recruits a "motivational clip" showing Iraqi corpses, explosions, gun fights and rockets set to a heavy metal song that included the lyrics, "Let the bodies hit the floor," the petition said. Zabala said he cried, while other recruits nodded their heads in time with the beat.

"The sanctity of life that formed the moral center of petitioner's life was being challenged," his attorney, Stephen Collier, wrote in a court filing.

U.S. District Judge James Ware, who served 13 years in the Army Reserves, said he was convinced of Zabala's sincerity about his struggles to "reconcile the demands of duty with the demands of conscience."

Zabala, a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who followed some Buddhist-related traditions, was previously denied conscientious-objector status after applying in 2004, court records show.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this story. The fact that Zabala's Drill Instructor thought that he had the right to engage in a profanity-laden diatribe against a dead recruit in front of a literally captive audience is appalling. The display of the "motivational clip" set to heavy metal music is equally appalling; it is an attempt to engender an emotional frenzy rather than develop the calm and professional demeanor that is the hallmark of the Corps.

At the same time, I think Zabala misses the forest for the trees. If you value your life, you must confront those who seek to take that life from you; the Marines are simply America's premiere institution dedicated to this principle. And while individual Marine leaders may do things that one may rightfully find appalling, the institution itself serves a clear moral purpose. Zabala says that "the sanctity of life" is his moral center, yet he ultimately blanches at what the Marines must do to protect that sanctity.

At the most fundamental, the enemy lives by a death code and we do not. In the face of this truth Zabala has elected to become a pacifist. He has taken a stand that if practiced by all in the West would allow evil to win without so much as a fight. Of all the evils presented in this story, it is this one that I find to be the most vicious.

God's Energy Field

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Paul and I recently listened to Dave Harriman's course The Philosophic Corruption of Physics. We found the course enormously interestingly. Although I'm pretty well familiar with Kant's metaphysics and epistemology, I wasn't aware of the myriad ways in which those ideas, in various modified forms, have played themselves out in fundamental physics. It was yet another important lesson in the power of philosophy. (I should note that Harriman posted an update to that course regarding his positive comments about Lewis Little's "Theory of Elementary Waves" therein.)

After listening to that course, I found a good example of bad physics providing cover for mysticism. Here it is:

In my experience, most Christians haven't the faintest clue what the Holy Spirit is. That's hardly surprising: it really makes no sense. It's not a semi-comprehensible divine "person" like the Father and the Son, yet it's somehow on par with them in the Trinity. It's an active force in the world in the Christian scriptures, so it can't just be ignored. But what the heck is it?

In the Teaching Company course Jesus and the Gospels, the lecturer Luke Timothy Johnson routinely describes the Holy Spirit as "God's Energy Field" to make that mysterious whatever-it-is comprehensible. That's a great explanation. It might not make full sense of the Holy Spirit's place in the Trinity, but it does fit well with the Holy Spirit doings in the scriptures. In fact, I'd say that it makes the Holy Spirit seem perfectly ordinary and reasonable!

There's a catch though: that's only true if you think of fields as modern physicists and most people now do, i.e. as abstract, non-physical, and mysterious sum of forces. If you think of them as having some definite physical basis, then it makes no sense to describe the Holy Spirit as "God's Energy Field." In other words, bad physics provides a veneer of rationality to particularly stupidly irrational theology.

Of course, Johnson's description is still helpful to me: I now think of the Holy Spirit as "God's Energy Field, as Fields Are Wrongly Understood Today, Also Somehow a Distinct Person" That works well enough.

Scarcity as Tutor

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

At TCS Daily is a column by Jerry Bowyer that is worth a read. He writes on a subject I have considered off and on for some time: how life experience (or lack thereof) can aid or hinder the development of one's moral character.

Charles Koch built the largest private corporation in the world, and then wrote a book about it. His publicist mailed it to me this week. It's a great read. It just so happens that at the same moment I was reading about how Koch and J. Howard Marshall banded together to take control of Great Northern Oil Company, a newsflash appeared in my in-box announcing that Marshall's widow is now known to have died of a drug overdose. The book in my lap contained the story of how J. Howard Marshall's great fortune was created in life. The PDA in my hand told the story of how that great fortune destroyed a life. Then I realized something: Anna-Nicolle Smith died of a sudden and massive injection of unearned wealth. [bold added]

I cannot read Bowyer's mind, but I suspect that he over-simplifies to make a point here. Be that as it may, human beings have free will. Neither dead, wealthy woman was determined by the mere possession of great riches to take her own life or otherwise to behave foolishly while still alive.

Nevertheless, Bowyer has a point, although with the profusion of seductive "virtuous cycle" arguments floating around out there, it is in risk of being lost. The mere possession of wealth cannot make or break anyone. One's trajectory in life will be guided by his philosophical ideas, be they implicit or explicit.

Our culture presents everyone with an overwhelming mixture of numerous choices and good and bad ideas. To the extent that one must act in order to achieve any measure of wealth however small will require that person to accept at least implicitly many of the better philosophical influences floating around in our culture. And to the extent that someone has met challenges in life and succeeded, he will see the pleasure of being in control of his life and will be happy. He will probably not feel a strong need to escape temporarily (or permanently) through drugs.

The severing of having to act from staying alive observed in two wealthy women by Bowyer is also a big part of why our government-dependent underclass -- despite its poverty -- sees more than its share of deaths related to drug overdoses. These unfortunates often start out around the worst cultural influences, end up with much less than the normal amount of experience in exercising virtue to overcome adversity, and are consequently less happy. They are not determined to end up this way, and many can and do become successful adults, but the lack of experience can make it harder for them.

This is a valuable point, which could only be improved upon by a more explicit linking of morality to philosophy and of both to the requirements of life on this earth. But do credit the man with pointing out that wealth creation requires virtues!

The thing about wealth creation is that it requires certain virtues, like patience, thrift and diligence. Jefferson taught us about this. It's why he wanted a nation of owners. There are certain tests an entrepreneur has to pass in order to go from mild affluence to millionaire status.

Our society seems too often obsessed with the trappings of wealth and not with how to create it, as evidenced by its enthusiasm for various schemes of wealth redistribution. We would do well to have a few more people in the know pointing out that wealth doesn't grow on trees.

Better still would be for the basis of our nation's success, the better elements of its implicit philosophy, to be explicitly identified and made much more commonly known. Then its beneficial influence would be available on a less haphazard and incomplete basis than through mere cultural osmosis, which as we have seen with the British, can be of very limited value. "Virtuous cycles" cannot last indefinitely without the guidance of explicit philosophical ideas that correspond to the requirements for man's life.

-- CAV

What constitutes "good news"?

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

Over at RealClear Politics is an editorial that reports on the debate within the GOP on how to counter the Democrats' latest attempt to socialize medicine. Although it strikes an optimistic note -- and, I suppose that after observing the antics of Governors Romney and Schwartzenegger, we should be thankful that there is a debate at all on the GOP side -- what it really does is bring up the question, "What constitutes 'good news'?"

Three things stand out about the article.

First, author Kimberley Strassel notes that the initial skepticism among Republicans concerning health savings accounts when that idea was first introduced over a decade ago eventually gave way to broad acceptance.

Conservative health-care guru John Goodman remembers going to Washington in the early 1990s to get Republicans interested in individual health savings accounts, and "only about five guys would even meet with me," he recalls. Now, HSAs "are a religion" among the right, he notes, and Republicans used their last years in the majority to significantly expand access to these accounts. In the past 15 years, the GOP has also planted the roots of Medicare reform, looked at interstate trade in health insurance, and got behind competitive Medicare reforms in their states.

This sounds encouraging at first blush, and certainly, it is a sign that capitalism has gained somewhat broader public acceptance over the years, or politicians, who are notoriously timid about actually taking principled stands, wouldn't touch HSAs with a ten-foot pole. But is it not troubling that even this tiny first step towards a freeer medical sector has not gained more ground than it has, and that furthermore, GOP reform of the medical sector hasn't gone much further than half-hearted support for this measure?

Second, other reforms of the welfare state that most people regard as "free market" reforms have gained acceptance even among Democrats.

... When Republicans railed about welfare queens, they were viewed as the heartless party. When they turned the debate into one about the vicious cycle of dependency and poverty that welfare causes, they captured voters' imagination--they captured even Bill Clinton's imagination--and pushed through entitlement reform. Today, even the left agrees welfare-recipients should work.

The problem is, we still have welfare recipients, the government is "encouraging" them to work, and the moral premise behind welfare remains unchallenged. Indeed, the motivation for the reforms is not unequivocally the protection of property rights, but the moral improvement of the erstwhile recipients. In other words, even the welfare "reformers" take as a given that the government exists to take care of us. (And maybe the Democrats like the idea because they know it is not a threat to the welfare state.)

Third, in a move touted as a major advance (and which is Strassel's point of departure), a supposedly free-market alternative to "Hillarycare" is being proposed by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. It is interesting to read both of Strassel's descriptions of this plan.

... Coburn released a big-ideas blueprint for restructuring the entire health-care system--the tax code, Medicare, tort liability, insurance laws--along free-market lines. Dr. Coburn's plan builds on the White House's own bold proposal in January to revamp tax laws so as to put consumers back in control of their health-care decisions. Both plans are about fundamental, bottom-up health-care reforms, cast in the language of markets, consumers and individual control.

This will sound good enough to many fiscal conservatives, although not to me. The only way to "reform" Medicare (or any other welfare program) is simple: to abolish it. There is nothing "free market" about the government forcibly redistributing income.

But the kicker is Strassel's own alternative phrasing later in the article, which comes after she cites Mike Franc of the Heritage Foundation urging the Republicans to get outside their "intellectual comfort zone" when thinking about medical reform.

Those on the free-market side are starting to understand the need for a new language, especially if they are to coax more nervous elements of their party into embracing radical change. When President Bush unveiled his health-care tax overhaul in the State of the Union, he stressed that health-care decisions needed to be made by "patients and doctors," not government or insurance companies. Mr. Coburn's bill summary is littered with the words "choice," "empowerment," "competition," "flexibility," "control"--which is not only an honest assessment of what his proposal would provide, but one with which Americans can identify. [bold added]

That bit about health savings accounts being "like a religion" from earlier in the article is starting to sound very profound, if unintentionally so, right about now. Why? Because it is clear that if the Republicans are feeling the need to "re-frame" (i.e., euphemize) their side of the debate, they do not really understand how capitalism works or, therefore, why freeing the medical sector entirely from government interference would be a good thing. But then, if the did, they would present any proposal for "reform" of our "health care system" as part of a broader campaign for a fully free economy. Instead, they accept on faith that the trappings of a free market will somehow make the welfare state "work" better, while simultaneously "selling" these "reforms" to voters who actually might support moving to a freer economy.

And if I sound too paranoid, compare this to the following passage from C. Bradley Thomposn's seminal essay on "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism":

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. [bold added]

Which beings us back to our underlying question: Is a "free-market" scheme for "health care reform" necessarily good news? In the sense that proposing such a scheme reflects broader public acceptance of capitalism, it does. But given that the GOP is more interested in taking over the welfare state than doing away with it, and that this understanding of capitalism is muddled to the point that many on the right regard such statist schemes as carbon credits as "free-market", it is bad news.

What I fear we will get instead of true free market reform is a new, Lakoffian "language" with which the GOP can dupe voters into believing it is in the business of freeing the medical sector from government control, while in practice, the Republicans merely perform a few minor cosmetic changes to a fundamentally immoral and impractical system. This will not only fail to end the "health care" crisis, it will set capitalism up as the scapegoat for the next round.

This is not to say that it is inconceivable that Coburn's proposal is better than I think it is (To be fair, this is the first I've heard of it.), or that some worthwhile ideas for reform will surface over the next few years, but advocates of capitalism must be very clear that the ultimate goal of any economic reform is not a "reformed" welfare state, but a welfare state consigned to the ash bin of history. Otherwise, we risk allowing proponents of the welfare state to speak for capitalism.

No matter what concrete measures (if any) one advocates during the ongoing debate about the role of the government in the medical sector, one must always be explicit about why one advocates it, one's actual principles and goals, and the qualifications, if any, of one's support.

-- CAV

Thoughts on the Mystery of Shakespeare

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Lines are due today, so I’ve been working hard on them. The best way to learn lines is to work on them every day over the course of weeks or even a month. When you work on lines, then sleep on them and then go back to them the next day, you really cement them in the subconscious mind. The worst way is to do what college students do and wait until the last minute and cram. But even if you work over the course of weeks, there will be some cramming come the last moment, especially on the scenes at the end of the play that you have not gotten to in your previous study sessions.

I have a big role in Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff; he is the central character in the story and he has a LOT of lines. I don’t know if I have ever played a role that gives me so much opportunity to clown around and do funny things. Falstaff is a character of seemingly infinite comic freedom.

I also have a small role in Julius Caesar, Titinius; he has one big scene at the end of the play. I did not anticipate getting too excited over Titinius, but as I work on these lines, I am discovering a fabulous part. If you want to know what I mean, get out your Shakespeare – you have a Shakespeare, right? – and look at Act V, sc. iii of Julius Caesar.

For example, on discovering Cassius’s dead body, one of Titinius’s lines is “Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.” In other words, he is saying, “Cassius killed himself because he thought I would screw up.” The line has guilt, grief and vulnerability. Any actor would kill to say this line – and I get to say it!

****

Shakespeare was not a writer to agree with Nietzsche’s line, "It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book." No, when his pen started moving, it seems he had to fight to stop it. Ben Jonson commented on Shakespeare’s speed and ease of composition:

I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech.

He continues,

Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, "Caesar, thou dost me wrong," he replied "Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause," and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

Shakespeare was an artist of abundance, but not, perhaps, the best editor of himself.

Tolstoy hated Shakespeare. It would take a whole essay to analyze his provocative thoughts fairly. Some of his points might be valid, but they must be disentangled from his mysticism. Essentially, Tolstoy thought Shakespeare had nothing to say:

All his characters speak, not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearean pretentious and unnatural language, in which not only they could not speak, but in which no living man ever has spoken or does speak.... From his first words, exaggeration is seen: the exaggeration of events, the exaggeration of emotion, and the exaggeration of effects. One sees at once he does not believe in what he says, that it is of no necessity to him, that he invents the events he describes and is indifferent to his characters -- that he has conceived them only for the stage and therefore makes them do and say only what may strike his public, and so we do not believe either in the events or in the actions or in the sufferings of the characters.

He alone can write a drama who has got something to say to men, and that something of the greatest importance for them: about man's relation to God, to the Universe, to the All, the Eternal, the Infinite. But when, thanks to the German theories about objective art, the idea was established that for the drama this was quite unnecessary, then it became obvious how a writer like Shakespeare -- who had not got developed in his mind the religious convictions proper to his time, who, in fact, had no convictions at all, but heaped up in his drama all possible events, horrors, fooleries, discussions, and effects -- could appear to be a dramatic writer of the greatest genius.

But these are all external reasons. The fundamental inner cause of Shakespeare's fame was and is this that his dramas corresponded to the irreligious and immoral frame of mind of the upper classes of his time and ours.

It is fascinating that Tolstoy attributes Shakespeare’s popularity to German philosophy. One wonders – if modern philosophy gave way to a more rational philosophy, would Shakespeare’s popularity wane? But then, how do we explain Shakespeare’s popularity during the Enlightenment, before modern philosophy?

Philosophy aside, I think Tolstoy shows an inadequate appreciation of poetry and theatricality. Shakespeare was a first-rate poet and a first-rate theatre professional, and the combination makes for powerful playwriting, even if he had nothing to say.

George Orwell responded to Tolsoy’s attack. The most interesting thing in his essay to me is how much he concedes to Tolstoy:

Shakespeare is not a thinker, and the critics who claimed that he was one of the great philosophers of the world were talking nonsense. His thoughts are simply a jumble, a rag-bag. He was like most Englishmen in having a code of conduct but no world-view, no philosophical faculty. Again, it is quite true that Shakespeare cares very little about probability and seldom bothers to make his characters coherent. As we know, he usually stole his plots from other people and hastily made them up into plays, often introducing absurdities and inconsistencies that were not present in the original. Now and again, when he happens to have got hold of a foolproof plot — Macbeth, for instance — his characters are reasonably consistent, but in many cases they are forced into actions which are completely incredible by any ordinary standard. Many of his plays have not even the sort of credibility that belongs to a fairy story. In any case we have no evidence that he himself took them seriously, except as a means of livelihood. In his sonnets he never even refers to his plays as part of his literary achievement, and only once men-tions in a rather shamefaced way that he has been an actor. So far Tolstoy is justified. The claim that
Shakespeare was a profound thinker, setting forth a coherent philosophy in plays that were technically perfect and full of subtle psychological observation, is ridiculous.

George Bernard Shaw, who coined the term “Bardolotry,” was another Shakespeare hater. I believe he called Shakespeare a coward, afraid to take a stand, but I can’t find the passages online. I suppose I’ll have to read his book on Shakespeare and report back later.

Aside from poetry, I think Shakespeare’s greatest genius was in his observation of human character. I would disagree with Orwell: Shakespeare's plays are full of subtle psychological observation. As an actor, I am astonished time and again by little moments in his lines that show acute psychological insight. Characters say the exact thing one would say in a situation.

I suspect, although I cannot prove, that his genius is something particularly British. As Orwell wrote above, "He was like most Englishmen in having a code of conduct but no world-view, no philosophical faculty." Britain has a long philosophic tradition of empiricism stretching back at least as far as William of Ockham. Having “nothing to say,” as Tolstoy held, fits the empiricist mind. Shakespeare could depict characters in specific situations and could show all sides, but he did it without ideology. Modern critics, in our age of naturalism, think this is a virtue. I don’t know if I would go as far as Tolstoy and Shaw, but something central in Shakespeare does seem to be missing.

50th Anniversary of Atlas Shrugged Celebration Day

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This NYU event -- "50th Anniversary of Atlas Shrugged Celebration Day" -- looks promising! (Note the revised schedule from my posting this morning: Dr. Milgram will be speaking before Dr. Bernstein.)

The 50th Anniversary of Atlas Shrugged Celebration Day in New York City

Who: Dr. Andrew Bernstein, Dr. Shoshana Milgram, Dr. Harry Binswanger, Dr. Allan Gotthelf... and you!

What: A day-long celebratory event in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged.

When: Saturday April 7th 2007, ALL DAY

Where: Kimmel Center, Room Shorin Auditorium (8th Floor), New York University, 60 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012. Also, the Empire State Building (!)

Registration: Non-NYU guests must register by e-mailing nyu@objectivistclubs.org.

Admission: The club is asking for a suggested donation of $20 from non-students in order to cover our expenses. (Also, please note that all meals and the Empire State building tour are to be paid on your own.)

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

9am - 10:30am: Dr. Milgram, "Writing and Re-Writing Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand's Mind at Work"

10:30am - 11:30am: Snack Break (provided by the Club) and The Atlas Shrugged Trivia Game

11:30am - 1pm: Dr. Bernstein, "Atlas Shrugged as the Culmination of the Romantic Novel"

1pm - 2pm: Lunch Break (on your own)

2pm - 3pm: Open Mic: come up and share your favorite passage from the novel and/or your reason for wanting to come celebrate Atlas Shrugged.

3pm - 5pm: Drs. Binswanger and Gotthelf, "General Q&A on Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, and Objectivism"

5:30pm: Dinner and Drinks at the Heartland Brewery, Ground Floor, The Empire State Building

9pm: Trip up to the Observation Decks of The Empire State Building

FURTHER DETAILS

Dr. Milgram's lecture, Writing and Re-Writing Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand's Mind at Work: "In this lecture, as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged, we will go back in time to the years before the novel became fixed and final. Ayn Rand's manuscripts demonstrate -- in the words of Richard Halley, a character in her novel -- "what discipline, what effort, what tension of mind, what unrelenting strain upon one's power of clarify are needed to produce a work of art." After a survey of her philosophical and literary preparations, we will examine, selectively, her small-scale and large-scale editing, with special emphasis on sequences of romantic relationships and philosophical discourse."

Dr. Bernstein's lecture, Atlas Shrugged as the Culmination of the Romantic Novel: "Romanticism champions free will, holding that men can transform their lives by choosing proper principles and values. This is certainly true of the three greatest Romantic novelists: Hugo, Dostoyevsky, and Ayn Rand. Each -- in Les Miserables, The Brothers Karamazov, and Atlas Shrugged, respectively -- seeks to dramatize the world-changing potential of his particular philosophy. But only Ayn Rand presents a triumphant vision. In the other novels, the good, by the author's own standards, is not embraced. The power to choose the right ideas thus seems illusory in the very works of the advocates of volition. What, then, are the deeper premises held by Ayn Rand, but not by the others, enabling her to fully project man's capacity to shape his own soul?"

Dr. Binswanger and Dr. Gotthelf were both friends and associates of Miss Rand and are recognized leading experts on her philosophy. Dr. Binswanger has been professor of philosophy at the Objectivist Academic Center of the Ayn Rand Institute since 1994 and is currently writing a book on the causal nature of consciousness. Dr. Gotthelf is a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh where he holds a fellowship for the study of Objectivism, and he is also an authority on the philosophy of Aristotle.

In Memory of Stephen Speicher

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

Today I learned that Stephen Speicher, founder and moderator of the Forum for Ayn Rand Fans passed away over the weekend due to complications from a recent heart attack.

It goes without saying that Stephen passed before his time. My heartfelt wishes go to Betsy, Stephen's wife, as well as his son Matthew.

I am reminded of this sculpture of Memory by Augustus Lukeman (photo by Lee Sandstead). This work was made in honor of Isidor and Ida Straus who lost their lives during the Titanic disaster. The statue of Memory does not ponder the tragedy of the Straus' loss. Instead, she thinks of the good lives that they lived and their continual love and warmth for each other while alive. It is a monument dedicated to fondness, and not suffering and sadness.

It is my hope that over time, such a sentiment can warm the hearts of those affected by Stephen's passing.

Update: Memorial info for Stephen may be found here.

Practice What You Preach

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

Just as I find myself wondering, tongue in cheek, about what the animal "rights" activists think of the animal experiments that precipitated a massive pet food recall, saving countless pets' lives at the cost of those of a few laboratory animals, Peter Singer pops up out of nowhere to give his two cents' worth on ethics. (I was mildly surprised that he didn't advocate that pet owners start sampling pet feed before setting out meals from now on. Perhaps he thinks it too obvious to mention.)

Posing as a champion of reason in a short piece, Singer discusses choices made only in highly abnormal situations -- all of them involving being forced to kill people or watch others die -- and ends by pronouncing all human lives as intrinsically valuable, and unabashedly embracing the logical, absurd extreme that results when one ignores such vital questions as, "What is a value?" and "Of value to whom?"

Blowing up people with bombs is no better than clubbing them to death. And the death of one person is a lesser tragedy than the death of five, no matter how that death is brought about. So we should think for ourselves, not just listen to our intuitions.

Singer never elaborates upon whether there is an option to kill the person who forced the subjects to make such horrid choices in the first place. Or, to be less facetious (and simultaneously closer to real, actual life than the sophomoric "Moral Sense Tests" he cites), what if you could save the life of one stranger by killing five other strangers you reasonably thought were unjustly trying to kill him? If the one stranger were a countryman and the five Islamofascist terrorists? Before you accuse me of not giving Singer enough credit, consider the only reasonable inference we can draw from his sanctimonious mention of bombs. (It is also worth noting that he clearly isn't going to reach the Palestinians or the Iranians any time soon with that message and probably realizes this.)

And in the more metaphysically normal case of warfare, which Singer treats as being beneath serious consideration -- and this man is an ethics professor, of all things -- there is the whole matter of individual rights, the most fundamental of which is the right to live. Sometimes we are forced to choose to kill people when those very people threaten our rights as individuals. That happens when, by threatening or harming us, other people endanger our lives, making themselves, in the process, inimical to our lives and thus not valuable.

There is a hell of a lot more to the calculus of deciding to harm or kill others than making arbitrary choices or counting people like so many beans. And believe it or not, it can be moral to kill large numbers of people, some innocent. It's called fighting a war of self-defense with the goal of achieving victory. For starters, it might be worthwhile to consider what man is (a living being), what values are (the requirements for him to live and prosper), and why man needs ethics (because he must learn what he must do to survive). This is why, with my title, I reply to Peter Singer's arrogant one, to "Reason with yourself".

--CAV

PS: I haven't the time to discuss this at any length, but the similarities between this piece by Singer and the recent discussion of what moves people to alleviate suffering by one Paul Slovic are interesting.

For example, both authors examine the natural ways human beings react to difficult situations in the abstract/general versus the concrete/particular without considering man's nature beforehand. Instead, each takes some variant of altruism as a given, and concludes that man is "deficient" (Slovic) or too poorly evolved (Singer) to cope. (A commenter to that post brought up the further point that, in addition to the problems I pointed out, altruism is a poor motivator.)

Bush Narrows Gap with Gore

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

Oh, the irony!

Way back in the 2000 election, which George Bush won by a razor-thin margin, I refused to vote for President because I saw little difference between the candidates. In particular, I was concerned that environmentalism was about to make a big political impact and that Gore would push such an agenda, while Bush would ineffectively pretend to oppose it. The proper thing to do, as I now realize, would have been to vote for Gore. Be that as it may, I was correct about what each man would do with respect to the environment.

Fast forward to the present. Just as Al Gore's chickens are coming home to roost, President Bush is doing his best to make sure the public can still see as little difference as possible between himself and the former Vice President (and, by extension, the moral difference between the two sides in this debate). How? By emulating some of the worst aspects of the green politicians -- with a big assist from his fellow Republicans.

Recall that recently, I asked, concerning the Delaware governor's desire to strip her State Climatologist of his title because his scientific opinion differed from her policies:

Setting aside whether there should even be such a thing as a "state climatologist", just what the hell is a "consultant" supposed to do? According to [Democratic State Representative] Brad Avakian, it is apparently to serve as a yes-man. Global warming is, after all, "so important" that it trumps any evidence or theory to the contrary.

Not to be outdone, the Bush Administration has just been called on doing essentially the same thing: attempting to silence a scientist whose opinion differs from its policies:

James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, took particular issue with the administration's rule that a government information officer listen in on his interviews with reporters and its refusal to allow him to be interviewed by National Public Radio.

"This is the United States," Hansen told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. "We do have freedom of speech here."

But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) said it was reasonable for Hansen's employer to ask him not to state views publicly that contradicted administration policy. [bold added]

Oh, but Issa isn't done yet! Observe the gall.

"I am concerned that many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy and that some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is a political gain to be found on issues like stem cells, teaching evolution and climate change," Issa said.

Hansen said the Bush administration was not the first in U.S. history to practice information management over government scientists, but it has been the most vigorous. He deplored a "politicization of science." [bold added]

If your policy position is correct, then defend it, if not, change it. But in either case, to silence someone for simply doing his job to the best of his ability is inexcusable and damaging to one's credibility, not to mention, hypocritical. Bush could by now be contentedly watching Al Gore's credibility melt down while his remained intact -- except that he had to stoop to the same level as the global warming hysterics.

No, wait. It's worse. the GOP is busy smearing evolution and stem cell research by equating them with global warming hysteria.

In the meantime, observe what serious trouble we are in. The Left wishes to use the respectability of science to sell a political agenda that will destroy our economy, while the Right wants to destroy science itself.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Stephen Speicher, RIP

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Stephen Speicher died in the hospital after recently suffering a heart attack. I send my condolences to Betsy Speicher and all of Stephen's family and friends.

When I first got on the internet in 1996 I found my way to the usenet forums, alt.philosophy.objectivism and then humanities. philosophy.objectivism. I discovered a lot of libertarian types there who made the forums exasperating and unpleasant, but there were also some Objectivists arguing their side. Among the Objectivists there was none so doughty and courageous as Stephen Speicher. He would fight back against any irrational opinion, any smear of Ayn Rand or other prominent Objectivists, or any distortion of the philosophy. He single-handedly made hpo interesting and kept me reading it as long as I did.

Stephen called hpo a "cesspool," which it certainly was, and eventually left it with Betsy to create a happier, more rational place for Objectivists to exchange opinions on the internet, the Forum for Ayn Rand Fans.

We communicated via email about an interest we share -- or I guess I should now write shared -- the Aristotelians of Renaissance Padua, Pomponazzi and Zabarella. Very little has been written about Renaissance Aristotelians in English, and I mentioned how frustrated I was because I could not find William F. Edwards's dissertation, The Logic of Iacopo Zabarella on the internet. Stephen got it for me through a service for academics.

I never met the man. I hoped I would meet him and his wife at an ARI speech in Southern California someday, and I planned to introduce myself and thank him in person for sending Edwards's dissertation. I did not get around to it and now it will never happen.

It would be inaccurate, perhaps, to say that a man I never met was a friend, but I feel as though I have lost a friend. You can learn a lot about people just by reading their words. He was an internet friend, you could say. Stephen Speicher's death is a great loss to internet Objectivism.

UPDATE: Betsy Speicher on Stephen.