The Return of Dr. Kevorkian

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dr. Kevorkian gets out of jail on June 1. Dr. Kevorkian has been a leader in the fight for the right to suicide. If a person doesn’t have that right, then he doesn’t own his own body, the state does. As the play title asks, “Whose Life Is It Anyway?”

Writes Thomas Bowden of the Ayn Rand Institute:

"What lawmakers and judges must grasp," added Bowden, "is that there is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent an individual from choosing to end his own life. Our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that we need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct our efforts to achieve personal happiness. But if happiness becomes impossible to attain, due to a dread disease or some other calamity, a person must be able to exercise the right to end his own life."

"To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give us permission to commit suicide--is to contradict the right to life at its root," said Bowden. "If we have a duty to go on living, despite our better judgment, then our lives do not belong to us, and we exist by permission, not by right.

"For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing--not forced--to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way."

When statists object to suicide I get the impression their real reasoning is: who are you to dispose of the state’s property? You have no right to deprive the state of one of its slaves.

Dr. Kevorkian has always brought out the worst in mixed-bag conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh. We should thank the Dr. for helping us see more clearly that conservatives are no friends of liberty. The religious right lusts to enslave man’s soul just as much as the socialist left wants to enslave his body.

Big Changes for John Lewis

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

John Lewis told me that I could post this announcement about some significant changes in his life. He writes:

I received tenure, and promotion to Associate Professor of History, at Ashland University. I will be on academic leave next year at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center of Bowling Green State University, to complete my book Nothing Less than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History under contract with Princeton University Press. I will participate in graduate seminars, including one on Political Economy that includes a section on Ayn Rand.

Casey is taking a job at Duke University Medical Center, North Carolina, in IT, to implement patient records systems in some 90 outpatient clinics. I will join here there in May of 2008. I have resigned Ashland effective May, 2008 (after my leave); my days dealing with small people at a small school are over. If anyone owns a University in NC, and needs a History professor, they should contact me.

As you might imagine, these tidbits are just the tip of the iceberg. The details are culturally significant, so I hope that John writes about them at some point.

Speaking of culturally significant, Nick Provenzo has two posts (one brief and one long) on John Lewis' initially-canceled-then-rescheduled lecture at George Mason University on Islamic totalitarianism. It was... er... exciting. You can hear that for yourself in the audio recording of the lecture.

The Right to Assisted Suicide

By Thomas A. Bowden

Here's a quiz: During the eight years Dr. Jack Kevorkian languished in a Michigan prison, how many state legislatures reformed their laws against physician-assisted suicide? Answer: none. Oregon remains the only state to have provided clear procedures by which doctors can end their dying patients' pain and suffering while protecting themselves from criminal prosecution.

For ten years now, Oregon doctors have been permitted to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient who makes written and oral requests, consults two physicians, and endures a mandatory waiting period. The patient's free choice is paramount throughout this process. Neither relatives nor doctors can apply on the patient's behalf, and the patient himself administers the lethal dose.

Elsewhere in America, however, the political influence of religious conservatism has thwarted passage of similar legislation, leaving terminal patients to select from a macabre menu of frightening, painful, and often violent end-of-life techniques universally regarded as too inhumane for use on sick dogs or mass murderers.

Consider Percy Bridgman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, at 79, was entering the final stages of terminal cancer. Wracked with pain and bereft of hope, he got a gun and somehow found courage to pull the trigger, knowing he was condemning others to the agony of discovering his bloody remains. His final note said simply: "It is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself."

What lawmakers must grasp is that there is no rational, secular basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives use secular laws to enforce their idea of God's will, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth--which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself--is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

Religious conservatives' opposition to the Oregon approach stems from the belief that human life is a gift from the Lord, who puts us here on earth to carry out His will. Thus, the very idea of suicide is anathema, because one who "plays God" by causing his own death, or assisting in the death of another, insults his Maker and invites eternal damnation, not to mention divine retribution against the decadent society that permits such sinful behavior.

If a religious conservative contracts a terminal disease, he has a legal right to regard his own God's will as paramount, and to instruct his doctor to stand by and let him suffer, just as long as his body and mind can endure the agony, until the last bitter paroxysm carries him to the grave. But conservatives have no right to force such mindless, medieval misery upon doctors and patients who refuse to regard their precious lives as playthings of a cruel God.

Secular and rational state legislators should regard the occasion of Dr. Kevorkian's release from jail as a stinging reminder that 49 of the 50 states have failed to take meaningful steps toward recognizing and protecting an individual's unconditional right to commit suicide.

Thomas A. Bowden practices law in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Monty Python Does Intelligent Design

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

[From the Science Notes blog.]

Customer: Hello. I wish to complain about this so-called 'scientific theory' what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very establishment.

Salesman: Oh yes, 'Intelligent Design'. What, uh... what's wrong with it?

Customer: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. Its vacuous, that's what's wrong with it!

Salesman: No, no, uh... what we need now is to 'teach the controversy'...

Customer: Look matey, I know an empty 'argument from incredulity' when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

Salesman: No, no, it's not empty: it's just being elaborated. Remarkable theory, 'Intelligent Design', innit, eh? I mean, just look at all these books and articles: millions and millions of words...!

Customer: The verbiage don't enter into it, my lad. It's stone dead. It's a non-starter. Empirically untestable, it belongs in metaphysics. This 'theory' makes no predictions; has no contribution to make beyond extended polemics; and can't even be honest about who it thinks the 'Designer' was. Bereft of all logical and epistemological credibility, it has no scientific status! If certain right-wing and fundamentalist pressure-groups hadn't hit upon it as a way of opposing decades of uncomfortable scientific and social progress, it'd be pushing up daisies! It's off the table. It's kicked the waste-paper bucket. THIS IS A NON-THEORY!

Salesman: Well, I'd better replace it then. [takes a quick peek around] Sorry, squire: looks like that's all we've got...

Customer: I see, I see. I get the picture.

Salesman: I've got a piece of coal that looks quite a bit like a human tibia, if you squint at it...

Customer: Pray, is it part of a theory that unifies the paleontological and biological sciences and leads to a powerful understanding of observed homologies and the nested hierarchy of life?

Salesman: Not really.

Customer: WELL IT'S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT FOR DARWINISM THEN, IS IT?

Goodbye, Cindy Sheehan

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Cindy Sheehan has written her resignation statement as the face of the peace movement. It is the bitter, spiteful work of a bitter, spiteful woman. She lashes out at Democrats and the peace movement in addition to the country she loathes, America.

…I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

This I believe is accurate. There are many in the Democrat Party who hate the Republicans more than they oppose war or America. If a Democrat were president, no doubt many on the left would support this war. Likewise, some in the Republican Party would find reasons to oppose the war in Iraq, simply because it is a Democrat war. (Perhaps they would oppose it for a good reason: that Iraq is a waste of time and we should be going after Iran and Saudi Arabia.) That’s party politics.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

What is the country that she loves? Canada? France? Venezuela?

Is she really gone for good? Don’t count on it. This letter marks the beginning of her money-making period. Now she will write books and give speeches, all for a fee.

The leftist idea that the American people are mindless sheep, manipulated by the lies of the corporate media -- an idea Gore expounds in his latest book -- lends itself to this kind of defeatism. Leftists do not think reason works with people blinded by capitalist greed. They think crusades such as Cindy Sheehan’s are doomed to fail and deep down they are certain that only force will work. Power is the only path to change in the leftist imagination. Crusades and protests are merely noble, Byronic gestures that at best illustrate the hopeless corruption of America. Cindy Sheehan’s failure serves as further justification to the left for expanding the power of the state -- as long as leftists do the expanding.

The Unjust Imprisonment of Dr. Jack Kevorkian

Assisted-suicide practitioner and advocate Jack Kevorkian will be paroled on June 1 after eight years of imprisonment for assisting in the suicide of a terminal patient suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.

"Dr. Kevorkian's imprisonment was a great injustice," said Thomas Bowden, a practicing attorney and a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. "He would never have been convicted of murder if Michigan law had allowed a defense based on irrefutable, objective evidence of consent. Dr. Kevorkian should be honored for his courageous stand in defense of the right of individuals suffering from devastating terminal diseases to end their lives with the assistance of a trusted doctor."

Before his conviction, Kevorkian claimed to have assisted in the suicide of 130 patients. Now he has vowed to work for the legalization of assisted suicide across the country while not practicing it himself.

"Hopefully," said Thomas Bowden, "Dr. Kevorkian will be successful nationwide in promoting the right to commit suicide with voluntary physician assistance. Currently, only Oregon has set forth clear procedures by which doctors can insulate themselves from criminal prosecution while easing their dying patients' pain and suffering."

"What lawmakers and judges must grasp," added Bowden, "is that there is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent an individual from choosing to end his own life. Our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that we need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct our efforts to achieve personal happiness. But if happiness becomes impossible to attain, due to a dread disease or some other calamity, a person must be able to exercise the right to end his own life."

"To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give us permission to commit suicide--is to contradict the right to life at its root," said Bowden. "If we have a duty to go on living, despite our better judgment, then our lives do not belong to us, and we exist by permission, not by right.

"For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing--not forced--to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way."

Great Letter to the Editor on Healthcare

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Hannah Krening's excellent letter to the editor was published in yesterday's Denver Post. (It's halfway down the linked page.)

Proposals to reform health care in Colorado

As a Colorado taxpayer, breast cancer survivor and one whose first husband lost a long battle with cancer, I want to say that the state 208 Commission's recent choices of proposals to evaluate all add up to one thing for me: I hope I never have a life-threatening condition again in Colorado if any of these proposals become reality. And I hope that nobody I love has to be subjected to the rationing, waiting and other debilitating results of what they evidently believe are the best of intentions.

Bringing more government involvement into health care "reform" is not a solution. It

is a recipe for disaster. Of the proposals considered, only one reflected my views: the "FAIR" proposal, which has been cast aside. Only by reducing government involvement in health care will we get the kind of justice that will bring about the best care for all at the best possible price. We must remember that health care is not and cannot be free: the skills of doctors, researchers and technology companies must be fairly compensated. The alternative is slavery of the few taxpayers who will foot the huge (unworkable) bills and of the providers of health care who will ultimately leave the profession in order not to be enslaved by it.

This is not regulation on some dispensable part of our lives. This concerns everyone's survival, to some degree; nobody will be untouched by the outcome of this process. We have a lot to lose.

Hannah Krening, Larkspur

Hannah's experience with cancer gives her special credibility in the current healthcare debate in Colorado. Similarly, that Paul is a practicing physician gives his voice tremendous weight. Lin is gaining ever-more traction as a genuine health care policy expert in Colorado, thanks to her diligent study of the nuts and bolts of the subject over the past few months. Brian Schwartz (of WhoOwnsYou.org) has standing in the debate because he submitted a proposal to the 208 Commission.

When Lin began FIRM, I don't think that any of us appreciated the importance of that kind of special credibility. Yet it makes sense: people are more swayed by the opinions of people with experience and expertise than the random opinions of unknown persons.

So in your own activism, don't just rely on your general knowledge of the relevant philosophic principles. That's boring, to both yourself and others. Instead, ask yourself what unique perspective you can contribute to the debate. Focus on the issues (or subissues) in which you have some notable experience or expertise. Appeal to that when you write, as Hannah's letter did. Even if your particular issues or subissues aren't the most exciting or sexy or crucial in the total context, you'll do better in the fight. You'll likely be far more motivated to write and speak at all. And if you speak as someone with some special knowledge, insight, and concern, your words will carry more weight.

So if you're having trouble motivating yourself to write and speak, even though you know that you should fight for the future of this country for your own sake, think about what you as an individual can bring to the debate. I've been struggling with just that kind of inadequate motivation on the health care debate this week, but I know that I'll be excited to jump into the fray once I clearly answer the question of how I can use my expertise as a moral philosopher, as the wife of a physician, as the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, and so on to give myself an angle in the debate. If you're feeling unmotivated, perhaps you might ask yourself the same kind of question.

Hillary: Freedom is slavery

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

Hillary Clinton wants to replace our “ownership society” with a society of “shared prosperity.”  Sharing normally refers to voluntarily sharing some of your property, but Hillary clearly has another definition in mind:

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

In case she wasn’t clear, Hillary isn’t offering to “share” her millions with you - she wants government goons to “share” your income with her constituents.

Not content with obliterating one word, Hillary goes after another:

“There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed,” she said. “Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”

Translation: Freedom is best - except when it isn’t.  The right “policies” are necessary to replace free markets with a government-imposed state of “fairness.” “Freedom” normally means the absence of government coercion - Hillary defines it as the presence of force.

Socialists like Hillary have accepted the nominal failure of socialism - and decided to rebrand their ideology with a “market-flavored” version of the same.  You find any principled ideology here - except the promise that unless you’re “in it together” with Hillary, she’ll “share” some of your property using the “the right government policies” when she considers it “fair.”

Hillary isn’t promoting a “society of sharing” at all - she wants a society of looting.

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"Demoting" a Relationship

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

I started listening to Peikoff's Love, Sex and Romance Q+ A session in my car this morning, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Peikoff makes many insightful points on subjects ranging from homosexuality to masturbation, fantasy to opposite-sex friendships. However, I disagree with Peikoff (and apparently Rand) on the possibility of "demoting" a relationship.

In his discussion of "menage a trois," Peikoff expresses his doubt that this is a healthy sexual practice, because including a stranger is problematic and including a friend would end the friendship. His reasoning for the latter is that relationships "cannot be demoted," they can only be "promoted." In other words, once you have had a romantic or sexual relationship with a person, you can never "demote" your relationship with her to a friendship again. Peikoff notes that Rand emphatically agreed.

I do not wish to deal with the "menage a trois" issue at this point, but I would like to take up the issue of "promotion" and "demotion" of relationships. This interests me because I have been able successfully to "demote" several romantic relationships -- I have remained good friends with most of my ex-girlfriends. I have also been in situations where I was in love with a woman who did not return my love, and I was able to forcefully revise my psychological perspective on the relationship so that I could preserve the friendship.


Please note: I am not a psychotherapist. I am speaking from my own experience. Apply any advice I offer in this article at your own risk!

Now that that's out of the way: I developed a method for "demoting" a relationship that has worked very well for me. The primary challenge, as I see it, is to force oneself to no longer experience his former lover as an object of sexual desire. Romance is intimately tied to sex. If you are close to a woman whom you do not desire sexually, that's a friendship. For me, much of the pain associated with being around a former lover is the unfulfilled desire to be physically close to her. Once that desire is (mostly) gone, then my love for her becomes purely platonic. Conditioning oneself not to think of a former lover in a sexual way can be exceedingly difficult. It is worth the effort only if the potential for an extraordinary friendship exists.

The first step is to temporarily cut off all communication with the former lover. No hanging out together, no phone calls, no e-mails, no instant messenger, nothing. The times I have done this, I made it very clear to the ex that I was doing it for the express purpose of reorienting my perspective on the relationship -- in order to preserve a friendship. This process can be very painful (but not, in my opinion, nearly as painful as continuing to have romantic feelings for a person with whom a romantic relationship is no longer possible).

During this "catharsis" period I allow myself to dwell on the tragedy of the failed relationship for a period of time, and I try to linger on the details long enough to determine if there are any unresolved internal conflicts I need to deal with. Once I am reasonably certain that there are no major internal conflicts that need resolving, I try to push thoughts of the former lover completely out of my mind for a while. Whenever I start to think of her, I stop myself, and force my consciousness to focus on something else. This is most emphatically not a form of evasion, but an honest recognition of the fact that it is no longer productive to dwell on the failed relationship. The time required to move from one step to the next is different for each person, and different for each relationship, but I have found that a few months is long enough for me to get through the roughest part of a break-up.

Once there is sufficient distance between us, we gradually begin to reform a relationship on a "just friends" basis. At this point, I allow my mind to think about the former lover in every way, with one important exception: no romantic or sexual thoughts. I resist the urge to think of her as a sexual being. I do not allow myself to fantasize about her sexually, particularly during masturbation. These kinds of thought always come up with a former lover, it's the nature of human consciousness, but I try to keep it to an absolute minimum. The reason I do this is that, as soon as I start to think of an ex in a sexual way, the romantic feelings immediately follow, no matter how many times I tell myself it's over. I may not realize the feelings are still there until I'm crushed by the news that she has taken a new lover.

If you think of someone sexually, particularly during masturbation, you are telling your subconscious that this person is an object of love, desire, and romance. It doesn't matter how many times or how emphatically you stress in your focal awareness that a romantic relationship with the person is no longer possible. If you think of her sexually, your subconscious will respond with romantic feelings. Most rational people see sex and romance as intimately related. There's no way to tell your subconscious, "In this one case, I want to separate love and sex." Unless you want to completely sunder the two, your subconscious will continue to respond to them as an interrelated pair.

Once I have automatized looking at my former lover in a purely platonic way, then a close friendship is possible. In some cases, it can be trouble to get too close, especially when neither person is in another romantic relationship. It's always easiest when both former lovers are in another relationship. But in any case, some kind of friendship is possible.

I have found these friendships to be very fruitful because a woman that has shared my bed knows me more intimately than a non-lover ever could. My ex-girlfriends are often the best friends to discuss current relationship issues with, and I serve that purpose for them. I know a lot about what they are looking for in a relationship, and sometimes it is easier for me to identify in what way their current lover is frustrating their needs. I have learned a lot about how to be a better boyfriend by consulting former lovers.

So, there you have it. I know it is possible to "demote" a relationship because I have done it, and I have friends who have done it. It is not only possible, it is often very desirable. Every woman I've ever fallen in love with was very special, and I fell in love with them for a reason. I saw great value in them. I always thought it peculiar to think that someone could fall in love with a woman, but not want to be friends with her. Not every woman I have dated is my ideal woman: that title belongs to Kelly alone. However, a woman does not have to be my ideal in order to have a wonderful, lifelong friendship with her.

I dedicate this article to the beautiful, intelligent, virtuous women whom I have loved in my life. Even though it didn't work out, part of me will always love you, and I will always value our friendship.

--Dan Edge

Edge of Reason and Beyond

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I've discovered quite a few new blogs through my OBloggers mailing list, but I'm particularly delighted to see Dan Edge blogging at The Edge of Reason. Check out my blogroll for some other new additions.

In other news...

ARI has a new web site for students: www.aynrandnovels.com.

If you haven't already seen them, you absolutely must watch the Mr. Deity. They are fantastic! (I think the first one is still my favorite, however.)

AEI has a video of Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaking on her book Infidel. I've never heard her speak before: she's very captivating. (Click on the "video" link on the right of the page.) Via Amy Nasir.

The Big Picture

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Leonard Peikoff gave a speech called “A Picture Is Not An Argument.” It was aimed primarily at anti-abortionists, who use pictures of fetuses instead of logical arguments. His point also applies to this famous picture from Vietnam:



The girl in the picture, who was burned in a napalm attack (by the South Vietnamese, not American forces) is Kim Phuc. This picture became a famous symbol for the antiwar faction during the Vietnam Conflict. People looked at the picture and wondered, “Why are we napalming little girls in Vietnam?” The picture was used as evidence that the American cause was immoral.

In order to keep the picture in context, which many to this day are unable to do, one would have to remember that we were in Vietnam to stop the country from being conquered by the worst form of tyranny in history, communism. One would have to understand the value of liberty. One would have to understand that communism is the complete, systematic opposite of freedom: it is state control of every aspect of the individual’s life, or totalitarianism. These distinctions are beyond the understanding of the left, which seeks to destroy freedom and capitalism and erect state control of the individual in the west.

Further, one would have to understand that in a war between a free country and a dictatorship, the free country has the moral right to use whatever means it deems necessary to win. If victory necessitates bombing civilians, as it did in Japan and Germany in WWII, then bombing is moral. The aggressive dictatorship, which seeks to destroy the freedom of its enemies, bears the moral blame for the civilians who die in its war.

But Kim Phuc’s subsequent story gives us the big picture, and speaks more eloquently than any photograph.

As an adult, Phúc was removed from her university and used as an anti-war symbol by the Vietnamese government. In 1986, however, Phúc was granted permission by the government to continue her studies in Cuba….

After receiving permission, she then moved to Cuba, and met Bui Huy Tuan…. Kim Phuc and Bui Huy Tuan married and, in 1992, they went on a honeymoon. During an airplane refueling in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, they got off the plane and defected to Canada and asked for political asylum there. They now live in Ajax, Ontario and have two children.

Kim Phuc was used as a propaganda tool and enjoyed nomenklatura status in Vietnam -- but even so, she defected to the west! That should give anti-Americans pause, as they honestly reflect, if they are still capable of doing so, on how wretched life under communism must be that even its celebrities run away at first chance. Kim Phuc’s full life justifies our cause in fighting communism. We had every right to be in Vietnam (although we should not have been there as it was a purely altruistic, sacrificial venture from which America had nothing to gain).

As I watch America wage our current fight against militant Islam -- with our ridiculous rules of engagement, our lawyers on the battlefield approving who can be attacked, our dropping food on our enemies, our cowtowing to the UN -- I wonder how much our military is haunted and hobbled by this picture. How much have our present policies been twisted and shaped by the fear of another such photo showing up on CNN?

It is impossible to censor photographs. If we tried to keep all photographers out of war zones, we would end up failing in today’s world of digital cameras and the internet. What we need instead of censorship is education. We need Americans to understand the morality of our cause and the morality of total war in defense of freedom. We also need people to understand that a picture is not an argument. Only then can they get the big picture.

The Marxist Origins of Political Correctness

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Strategikon has a great video up on the origins of political correctness and the New Left in the Frankfurt School.

The New Left’s cultural critique of capitalism has been a fabulous success compared to the Old Left’s economic emphasis. Marxist economics was demolished by the Austrian economists and Marxist politics was ruined by its own bloody history of totalitarianism. But the New Left is now our cultural ideal and is indoctrinated into children in government schools. It has infiltrated every aspect of our culture to the point that it is hard to see because there is nothing else to distinguish it from.

The New Left was able to evolve so easily from the Old Left because they shared the same goal: the destruction of capitalism. It should be remembered that the first faction to fight for that goal was the religious conservatives. Marx secularized their arguments against capitalism. A big story in the coming decades could be the rapprochement of the New Left and the religious conservatives as they find common ground in their struggle against selfish, worldly capitalism.

Quick Roundup 199

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

Good Article and a Case to Watch

George Will writes an article -- well worth reading in full -- about the economic distortions brought about by government regulation of the number of cab drivers through licensing schemes in such cities as New York and Minneapolis. He then mentions a rare victory in the cause of removing government interference from the economy.

But all this is merely en route to his describing a very interesting and important legal case that has been filed as a result of said victory.

In response, the [state-created taxi] cartel is asking a federal court to say the cartel's constitutional rights have been violated. It says the cap -- a barrier to entry into the taxi business -- constituted an entitlement to profits that now are being "taken" by government action.

The Constitution's Fifth Amendment says no property shall be "taken" without just compensation. The concept of an injury through "regulatory taking" is familiar and defensible: Such an injury occurs when regulation reduces the value of property by restricting its use. But the taxi cartel is claiming a deregulatory taking: It wants compensation because it now faces unanticipated competition. [bold added]

So poor is the general appreciation of the concept of individual rights that it is the abolition of a special favor granted by the government -- and not the government's being able to take property in the first place -- to which objections are raised! Needless to say, this is a case to watch, and I am grateful that George Will brought it up.

It is worth noting further that, in addition to the economic distortions wrought by this government trampling of rights, the very laws Will discusses are among those that made possible the recent attempts by Moslem cab drivers in Minneapolis-St. Paul to impose their religious beliefs on others by refusing service to anyone who wanted to bring alcohol on board their cabs.

As Software Nerd pointed out in a comment, "[T]hey should abandon the tag system altogether, and let the muslims refuse service if they want." Indeed. Under capitalism, riders would have many other options available to them -- like refusing money to superstitious, control freak cab drivers who won't carry alcohol.

A Round of thanks ...

... should go to the unsung heroes in a story (image from the Associated Press) I read about yesterday morning in San Antonio.

Heavy rains caused a Greyhound bus to hydroplane on a freeway, nearly causing the bus , loaded with passengers, to plummet straight into the flood-engorged Guadalupe River. Amazingly, everyone lived and there were no major injuries.

The focus of this news story was on the weather and the terror of the occupants before they escaped from the rear windows of the vehicle. In fact, an official is quoted as saying that, "They were very lucky. The river was right underneath them."

But this wasn't dumb luck! This was an example of human genius in action, but the clue was mentioned only in passing: The bus "broke through the railing of a bridge." That railing impeded the bus enough to save all on board, and the engineers who designed it never came up. Were it not for the men who thought about how to make that highway as safe as it turned out to be, that bus would have plunged into the river and we'd have been reading about fatalities.

We owe those men a word of thanks -- and especially since their effectiveness is so much a part of our daily lives as not to be regarded by most as newsworthy.

An Example of "Soft Paternalism"

From time to time, I see various pundits, including libertarians, floating the notion that it is somehow okay for the government to enact Orwellian programs so long as they are sneaky about it.

Now, via Matt Drudge, I see that this concept is being put into practice.

The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting the patients' permission.

The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts [for whom? --ed], it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say.

The project has been endorsed by many trauma experts and some bioethicists, but others question it. The harshest critics say the research violates fundamental ethical principles. [bold added]

The article goes on to discuss how difficult it would be to obtain informed consent under the conditions during which one might become "eligible" for the study, and ends with the following quote from Myron Weisfeldt, one of the organizers of this "study":

Some people object to the whole concept of doing any study whatsoever without permission. We try to explain all the layers of approval we've gone through and that this is the only way we can do the kind of research that could save many more lives in the future. [bold added]

No mention is made, as the "difficulty" of obtaining consent is used as a distraction, of how "difficult" it might be for a loved one to lose someone who might have lived had he been able to avoid one of the experimental treatments. Furthermore, Weisfeldt seems particularly hopeful that his "layers of approval" will disguise the fact that the crucial one is still missing: that of the Guinea pig -- I mean, the patient!

Even without disentangling the state from scientific research and medicine, I can come up with one very simple (if inconvenient) way to get informed consent for these studies: by asking in advance. By, say, cooperating with insurance companies that might offer rate discounts as an inducement to study participants (who might have to wear an ID bracelet or anklet or even an embedded microchip), it would be possible to avoid making you or me into a laboratory animal at a time when, as they say, "every minute counts".

To "save lives" by attacking individual rights is a contradiction in terms. I find it quite disturbing that such blatant violations of our rights cause little indignation, while being discussed in completely nonessential terms.

-- CAV

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

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

I remember a student asking this question in my intro philosophy class back in school. It sounds like a silly question, but it has fueled vigorous theological argument. The question can be analyzed on several levels:

Superficially, the problem is that belly buttons are a scar remaining from the detachment of the umbilical cord, and since Adam and Even were fully-formed in their adult form, they would have no trace of such a scar. So the answer is no.

Not so fast. “God created man in His own image”, so if every man has a belly button, God must have one too! But belly-buttons are unnecessary to an immortal being, so if God took on the shape of a mortal being, he must have formed Himself in man’s image! (Perhaps men formed God in their image?)

Would God create a fictional ancestry for man, or provide demonstrative proof of his creation but also show than mortal men are not made in his image after all?

A related debate has been held in the field of astronomy.

The speed of light was first measured in the 17th century by observing that the orbit of Jupiter’s moon Io took slightly longer when earth moved away from Jupiter. The delay of 16 minutes and 40 seconds was caused by the longer time the light reflected from Io took to reach earth. Since that time, we have much more sophisticated methods for measuring the speed of light - such as a microwave lined with marshmallows.

In 1838, astronomers were able to use the motion of the earth to measure the distance to stars, and realized that some of them were very far away. This can be confirmed visually by observing that the position of stars within constellations do not change between summer and winter, despite the fact that earth moves to a different position within the solar system. In fact, the stars are so far away, that the starlight we see in the night sky might have started out thousands, millions, or even billions of years ago! If that’s true, then how can the earth’s age be the biblically-correct value?

A similar question has been posed by geologists, biologists, nuclear physicists, cosmologists, molecular biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, and other assorted heathens and skeptics regarding the age of the earth. How can God-fearing folk reconcile so many observations with the Holy Word?

One response is to say that God created the universe in its current form to make it appear old. Why would He do this? Perhaps it’s a test of our faith. If we could see the evidence of the creation miracle firsthand, it wouldn’t be called “faith,” would it? The idea that God is fooling us may be hard to grasp, but so is the idea that Noah tended to a T-Rex on the Ark, men rode triceratops, and a flood carved the Great Canyon.

But if God is fooling us, is there any point to science at all? After all, the universe may have been created 5,000 years - or 5 minutes ago in its present form, with memories of things that never happened. On the plus side, there would be no point in trying to prove how old the universe is, since the evidence would be conveniently set up to mislead us. On the down side, it would be just as futile for creationists to prove how young the earth is, since they would be trying to find gaps in the illusion of an infallible being.

So did Adam have a belly button? If he did, then God is deceiving us about the origin of the universe, and any search for evidence of the divine is a futile challenge to His omnipotence. One would have to rest one’s beliefs entirely on faith and abandon reliance on reality. If he did not, then the evidence must be all around us – making faith entirely superfluous.

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Finding Objectivism

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In September of 1977 I was a 20-year old airman stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base near San Angelo, Texas. I was training there to become a Chinese linguist/analyst. West Texas was sultry and slow, with not a lot to do other than fish and drink beer. I had some time on my hands so I picked up a used, yellowing paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

I was not a great reader of serious literature. Mostly I liked comic books and science fiction. I had read some Hemingway and Steinbeck and I loved Shakespeare, which I had discovered in high school drama classes. The hardest novel I had read was The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in which I read several hundred pages before I figured out that Alexei and Alyosha were the same person.

With a big, serious novel I was prepared to invest several hundred pages of boredom before the plot grabbed me. Atlas Shrugged had me hooked within 100 pages. I experienced the thrill I used to feel when I read comic books as a child; I was reading about heroes in an exciting, suspenseful plot. I read the book in four days. I did not read it well, skimming the long speeches, as I had done in Dostoyevsky and I think even in Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I was more interested in the plot than in serious ideas. I have since gone back to read the long speeches many times.

When I finished the novel, I did not understand the ideas well, but what I did understand, I agreed with. The book rocked my world. I knew it was true and revolutionary. I thought, “Wait till they hear about this back home!”

Well, what followed was the great disillusionment of my life. It turned out that my family and friends were familiar with Rand and they had all rejected her. Most of them were liberals, a few were Christians. I was told that Rand was just a phase intelligent young people go through and once I got older I would see that life is not like it is in her novels. One teacher told me to come back and talk to her when I was 25. It was most unsettling to hear the people I had loved and respected most saying things like, "There are no absolutes" and "Life is not black and white" and "You have to compromise to get along in society" and "How can you know for sure? How can anyone know anything for sure?" After Atlas Shrugged I never looked at those people quite the same again.

As I explored Ayn Rand’s non-fiction and came to understand her philosophy of Objectivism, I realized that I could reject it and conform to the tribe or accept it and put some distance between me and those who were closest to me. There really was no question of how I would decide because Objectivism is true. I got a lot of sneers, smears and half-formed dismissals of Rand, but never a logical refutation of her ideas.

Leonard Peikoff has described his philosophy before discovering Ayn Rand as “chaos.” I would say that describes me as well. I was an atheist and had been since around the age of eight, when I decided God did not exist. I had very little interest in philosophy, politics and economics before reading Ayn Rand because I thought it was theoretical blather unconnected with real life. I was something of a liberal by default, but certainly not a leftist.

The one quality I had that made me receptive to Objectivism was intellectual honesty. I had no strong attachment to any philosophy or political position. My self-esteem was not threatened by Ayn Rand’s radical ideas. I was willing to read her arguments and see if they conflicted with the facts of life I had observed; they never did conflict with reality.

Discovering Objectivism was a thrilling intellectual odyssey because I learned that ideas are important and that intellectual premises actually move the world. The realization that philosophy was of life and death importance was like a portal to the vast universe of ideas. Before Atlas Shrugged I had been satisfied with comic books; after it, I was reading Peikoff, Mises, Aristotle, Hazlitt, Bastiat, Marx, Nietzsche, Menger, Gibbon, Windleband, Durant and so many others. Suddenly I was interested in philosophy, politics, history and economics. My higher education began in September of 1977.

The idea that ideas are important and have consequences is a like a secret potion Objectivists drink that makes them smarter than most other people. Really, how much sustained interest in ideas can a linguistic analyst or postmodernist have, when he believes that philosophy is an ivory tower game detached from day to day living? Modern philosophy does not motivate people to pursue knowledge. Modern philosophy turns ideas into an elaborate game in which one learns the right techniques designed not to discover knowledge of reality, but to impress one’s colleagues who also play the game. Life becomes compartmentalized: there’s modern philosophy and the world of ideas in one box, and the real world, family, friends, job, movies, oil changes and stubbed toes in another box. Objectivism shows how ideas and daily life are very much in the one big, fascinating box that is the world.

September of 2007 will mark my 30th anniversary as an Objectivist. It has been a long trip but not a strange one as in the Grateful Dead song. Unlike the hippies, I don’t need drugs to make life interesting. Seeing the world with clear, focused eyes and understanding the world with philosophy and acting to achieve goals that integrate with one’s knowledge is the best high because it is the functioning of man’s nature as a rational animal. It is a human doing what a human should do to survive and find happiness.

30 years is a long time, but I still see myself as in the middle of my journey. In spirit and mind I’m ready to go for another 30. The only question will be when this aging body of mine wears out. But in my soul I am still, though much smarter now, that 20-year old young man who sat down to read a battered paperback with small print.

An Elaborate Ruse

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

No sooner do I hear about and blog an amazing research tool than I wish I already had it at my disposal! I recall from somewhere that Ayn Rand very succinctly summarized the case against lying and it is driving me crazy that I can't remember exactly how she put it or where she said it. So I'll have to summarize....

When one lies, one sets himself up in opposition to the honesty and ability of anyone one hopes to deceive due to the fact that the way men discover the truth of a proposition is through gathering all available evidence and integrating it by means of logic with the rest of their knowledge. Thus, one ends up having to construct other lies to corroborate the initial one, remember to whom one said what and when, and so on, "waging", as I think Rand put it, "a war against reality", because one cannot just confabulate a free-standing lie and expect not to get caught.

I thought of the Objectivist case against lying this morning because I encountered, through Arts and Letters Daily, a link to a New York Times story about a propaganda effort that makes Michael Moore seem like a piker, and something its author found quite bemusing: a Creationist "Museum":

It is a measure of the museum's daring that dinosaurs and fossils -- once considered major challenges to belief in the Bible's creation story -- are here so central, appearing not as tests of faith, as one religious authority once surmised, but as creatures no different from the giraffes and cats that still walk the earth. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah's flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark.

...

There are 52 videos in the museum, one showing how the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah's flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days. There is a special-effects theater complete with vibrating seats meant to evoke the flood, and a planetarium paying tribute to God's glory while exploring the nature of galaxies.

Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry’s views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the "Jaws" and "King Kong" attractions at Universal Studios in Florida.

For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection. [bold added]

When one considers the actual nature of the Christian story of creation, the fact that this story caused me to think about the argument against lying should seem odd at first. Why? Because this creation myth, being arbitrary (i.e., asserted in the absence of all evidence), has even less relation to the truth than an actual lie. In other words, the story of Genesis can not (and need not) be disproved. It should, like any other baseless claim, be rejected out of hand because the burden of proof lies with the person who makes a claim.

The various purposes of this museum, as the last line of the above excerpt would indicate, strike me as darkly interesting to contemplate, but I think the central one is to enable Creationists to pretend that there somehow is "evidence" for their wild claims about the universe being created in six days only a few thousand years ago.

In a sense, it is heartening that some Christians saw a need to make such elaborate efforts to "back up" their cosmological views. This provides us with some evidence that the influence of the Enlightenment on our culture, though waning, remains strong enough that they do not feel able to get away with just demanding blind acceptance of their myth or, by extension, of their religious views.

On the other hand, this "museum" is also a staggering display of willful ignorance and an implacable hostility to reason. It is, in fact, so staggering that author Edward Rothstein seems unable to fathom its actual evil:

In the museum's portrayal, creationists and secularists view the same facts, but come up with differing interpretations, perhaps the way Ptolemaic astronomers in the 16th century saw the Earth at the center of the universe, where Copernicans began to place the sun. But one problem is that scientific activity presumes that the material world is organized according to unchanging laws, while biblical fundamentalism presumes that those laws are themselves subject to disruption and miracle. Is not that a slippery slope as well, even affecting these analyses? [bold added]

He makes a good point, but he is wasting his time if he thinks he is going to give pause to any Creationists out there. Nobody capable of creating such a museum would be concerned with its approach constituting a "slippery slope" because it was precisely his intention to build a slippery slope!

To comprehend the full evil of this institution, one must recall the purpose of a real museum -- education through the presentation and some synthesis of evidence -- and its target audience. America, although becoming more religious, is still a society that respects reason. It is also a society that has, for several generations now, been poorly-educated in terms of material and, more importantly, method (i.e., how to think).

Although most Americans remain implicitly rational on some level, the ability of many to think on a very abstract level at all has been severely stunted. To such adults -- and to many children who have not yet learned how to think and perhaps never will -- this museum's overload of sensory data and facile explanations plausibly linking a few facts together might seem convincing.

The payoff, of course, is that, in the same manner Christians have done for centuries, this perceptual "evidence" will succeed in eliciting obedience and support for the various religious dictates packaged with it.

Once again, it pays to recall the words of the Fountainhead's arch-villain Ellsworth Toohey: "Don't bother to examine a folly -- ask yourself only what it accomplishes." This museum is no attempt to win an argument. It is an attempt to pretend that there is an argument behind Creationism at all, an attempt made in the hope that the American public is finally dumbed-down enough to fall for it.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected some typos.
5-26-07: The Inspector saves the day, perhaps two or three, in fact.

“Lost” and Clueless

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

Instead of politics, Islam, and current events: a review, for a change of pace.

In the 1970’s, I always made sure I made time to watch The Prisoner, a British series that appeared on “public television” and which was an unofficial sequel to another British import, Secret Agent Man. Both starred the then incomparably debonair and deadly Patrick McGoohan. In terms of subject matter, casting, dialogue, plots, and overall style, nothing else on television could match The Prisoner. Only the last two episodes of the series were disappointing. They were bizarre, pointless and resoundingly off-putting.

As it progressed to its conclusion, it became more and more deterministic and existentialist in theme and tone. Perhaps if British broadcasting rules were not so egalitarian in nature – a successful, popular series at that time was not permitted to extend itself beyond a set number of episodes – The Prisoner might have concluded on a more satisfying note. I learned later there were production problems and internal conflicts that contributed to the series’ eclectic denouement, but I judge it was chiefly because the writers and producers did not know how to end the series.

Another series I have watched recently, less from enthusiasm and more from professional curiosity, is ABC’s Lost. Since my time is more or less budgeted, it was a choice between spending it to watch that or Fox’s 24. The latter I gave up on when the series lost both its moral and story-telling focus. That left Lost.

The two-hour finale of Lost’s third season aired the evening of May 23rd. On the basis of that finale, I do not plan, even from professional curiosity, to watch any of the fourth season in the fall. I would caution the reader here about plot spoilers to follow, but there is no plot to spoil.

Lost, according to ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson in May 2007, will end its run in its sixth season in 2009-2010. Its executive producers, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, stated that they had “always envisioned Lost as a show with a beginning, middle and end.” The implication is that the series has a plot.

But a beginning, middle and end are not the defining attributes of a plot. They are a consequence of any literary effort that attempts to tell a story, whether it is finely crafted or a random regurgitation of emotions. Any naturalist, modernist or Romantic novel or play can boast those attributes, from the unintelligible, stream-of-consciousness compendia of James Joyce to the plays of Terence Rattigan or Victor Hugo’s novels or the Mike Hammer novels of Mickey Spillane. A plot, as defined by Ayn Rand, is “a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax.”

As a writer who has labored to produce fifteen plotted novels, and who knows how difficult a task it is to write an integrated, no-loose-ends detective or suspense novel (never mind a six-volume historical epic), it is my assessment that the writers and directors of Lost are simply making up the story from season to season, tailoring each episode and season to what they think the public likes, expects or demands, and combining it with their own whimsical predilections and fancies. While the producers promise that the sixth and final season finale will be a “shocker,” it is likely that they will be as much surprised by it as will be viewers.

In short, I doubt they or their writers know how to end the series.

So, there are no logical connections between any of the series’ episodes. Ergo, there is no plot.

Lost’s basic story is that some forty-odd passengers, flying from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, survive a plane crash somewhere in the South Pacific and are marooned on an island. The series mixes elements of “realism” with elements of the magical or fantastic. The “realism” is represented mostly in the flashbacks of the principal characters’ lives before the plane crash. These are mostly naturalistic, anecdotal snippets, and the characters are burdened with some form of guilt that governs their actions on the island and their relationships with other survivors.

There are some shreds of plot in these conflicts, much like snatches of identifiable entities in a canvas of slashes and gashes. I suppose the writers will attempt to iron out a handful of these by series end. But, perhaps not.

The survivors’ first big conflict is with the island itself. They are immediately confronted with mysterious phenomena, such as a polar bear, a wild stallion, and the impossibility of radio contact with the outside world.

Characters who died earlier in the series or who were simply dropped from it appear and disappear before some of the living characters like the Virgin Mary to Bernadette at Lourdes. The island performs other miracles. One survivor of the crash, wheelchair bound because of his paralyzed legs, can suddenly walk. Minor injuries and wounds heal in a fraction of the normal time.

However, it is suggested in the third season that the island itself somehow caused Oceanic Flight 815 to break up in midair and crash into the surf.

In the original episodes, the survivors are menaced by a roaring unseen force manifested only by the path it takes through the jungle in the trees and plants it brushes aside. I suppose that later the writers decided it needed an identity. I half expected them to introduce a T-Rex, but the next time the force appeared, it was in the form of a roaring, predatory, volitional tornado or cloud.

The survivors’ other nemesis is a group called the “Others,” who may or may not be connected with evidence that the island was the site of a socio-scientific experiment managed by an organization, called the Dharma Initiative, which may or may not be a government operation. The “Others” raid the survivors’ beach camp for women and children and are generally and unaccountably inhospitable. While the “Others” are hostile to the survivors and make it clear they are not welcome on the island, they also act to prevent their rescue. It is revealed that women who become pregnant on the island die, but that the procreation potential in men soars.

None of this is explained, and I have not touched on a fraction of the strange phenomena that occur in the series. Now, from a story-telling perspective, it is appropriate to introduce the attributes of intrigue, suspense and mystery. But these must have a rational, logical basis and at some point in a story point to a rational explanation. Lost boasts an avalanche of intrigue, suspense and mystery, but none of it points to anything but the supernatural or the occult or the metaphysically impossible.

I must not forget the role of numerology in this series, as well. Numbers somehow possess magical powers to influence events and actions, usually for the worse. Also, one character, Desmond, has occasional “visions” of what will happen to other characters in the near future. He is not able to explain why he has these visions. They just happen.

Evidence of the series’ anti-reason theme can be found in the development of some of the better characters, who turn out to be straw men. For example, the formerly wheelchair-bound character, Locke, initially displayed an admirable, unapologetic virtue of self-sufficiency, exploring the island and even hunting wild boar. But his character was slowly chipped away, so that by the third season he mystically “bonds” with the island and becomes an unbalanced threat to the rest of the survivors on some mysterious mission of his own.

In the finale, he murders someone who was helping to rescue the survivors. He commits this action after having been fatally shot and left for dead in a pit atop a pile of decomposed corpses, his legs paralyzed again. One of the written off characters appears at the edge of the pit and orders him to climb out. Somehow, we do not see him actually climbing out, but presumably he rises like Christ from the dead, and, not knowing beforehand where the survivors are or what they are doing, emerges from the jungle, and finds them to commit the murder.

The next most appealing character is Sayid, a former Iraqi Republican Guard officer and expert in interrogation. Incredibly, he is the most consistently rational character in the series, offering correct assessments of crises and proposing proper courses of action. But, since the series’ writers hold a specific animus for rationality – aside from their playing fast and loose with viewers’ metaphysics and epistemology – I fully expect them to turn him mad, as well.

Wikipedia, in its long entry on Lost, reports on one of the producers’ and writers’ goals, which is to create a “mythology”:

“In parallel to its character development, episodes of Lost include a number of mysterious elements which have been ascribed to science fiction or supernatural phenomena. The creators of the series refer to these elements as composing the mythology of the series, and they form the basis of fan speculation.”

I do not think the use of the term mythology is accidental or arbitrary. Myths are usually founded on the actions of supernatural or imaginary beings from another realm who treat mortals as pawns or playthings for their own incomprehensible reasons. However, it is doubtful that Lost's writers are borrowing from Greek or Roman mythology to justify the hocus pocus events in Lost. Its aim is to treat existence or reality itself as a “myth.” Perhaps a better term would be hallucination. That puts it in the modernist, Kant-Hegel axis. It is the modus operandi character of the entire series.

Under the heading “Thematic motifs,” Wikipedia notes:

“There are several recurring thematic motifs on Lost, which generally have no direct effect on the story itself, but expand the show’s literary and philosophical subtext….There are also many allusions to philosophy, demonstrated most clearly in the distinct naming of certain characters after famous historical thinkers, such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, David Hume, Mikhail Bakunin and Richard Price.”

On the contrary, the thematic motifs are governed by Kant and Hegel. Things are not what they appear to be to the survivors’ epistemology, which is incapable of allowing them to see the “true” reality of their predicament. And the island itself is in a state of becoming “something else.” The historical names of Locke et al. are simply red herrings intended to decoy viewers from the con being played on their minds.

That, briefly, is Lost. The series won an Emmy in 2005 and numerous other television awards over the years. An otherwise fine cast lends some substance to the careening, haphazard story. The series has millions of fans worldwide and has produced cults and numerous spin-off games, “fanzines,” special websites, tie-in novels, and even “action figures.”

(It would require a separate commentary to speculate on why the series is so popular, and to perhaps delve into the psychology of cults and those who are drawn to them.)

To date, Lost has a core cast of about twenty, and a “guest” cast of over two hundred. A platoon of writers is responsible for the scripts, which are handed over to one or more of nine directors listed on the TV Guide website for the series. Doubtless the directors have the freedom to contribute their own little twists of “creativity” to the series.

Given this evaluation, I contend that neither the producers, nor the directors, nor the writers of Lost can say with any certainty how the series will end. If certainty is what they wish to destroy, they can hardly claim they “know” what they will do in the future, or even what they are doing now. Collectively, the series character they most resemble in philosophical and literary terms is Ben, the sadistic, “intellectual” leader of the “Others,” who refuses to tell the survivors what it is all about. That is because it is likely he does not know himself.

Why dwell on the esthetic and philosophical pitfalls of Lost? Because the series is a perfect mirror of the state of all the arts today. It has exhausted my professional curiosity.

When a program practically poses the question every five minutes – “What’s reality got to do with anything?” – that is when I tune out.

Wicked, Hurtful Words

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

Pat Condell, A British stand-up comedian, regularly excoriates religions of all suasions on his own blog. In a recent video, he took Islam to the cleaners and, among other things, called Mohammed a desert nomad "with a psychological disorder" and said that women who wear the veil are "mentally ill." (See The Dougout blog, May 19.) He characterized average Muslims as "hysterical, murderous, carpet-chewing, book-burning muppets."

His atheistic humor may not be to everyone's taste - too often he is more outrageous than funny - but his monologues and observations have appealed to many of the non-faithful around the world. His YouTube videos have been broadcast just about everywhere. He reported that this particular video earned him 16,000 hits and a few death threats.

His latest monologue was sent to the Berkeley, California, city council. Members of that sorry enclave's "peace and justice commission" (more Marxist nomenclature you would need to conduct a search for) took grave exception to Condell's scathing critique of Islam and Muslims. "It's not about free speech," said Elliot Cohen, one of the commissioners. "It's hate speech." This commissioner also called it "racist."

Excuse me, Mr. Cohen, but, yes, it is about free speech. If we excluded what you deem "hate" speech from any protection, what would be left that you would permit to be spoken? Some vapid, meaningless, "balanced" exchange of views?

It is obvious that Condell's critique emanated from a hate for religion; in this instance, for Islam. And his contempt for adherents of that creed cannot be disputed. Conclusion: Condell "hates" Islam. So what?

However, Condell was not encouraging other atheists to go out and slay Muslims and torch mosques. He did not behave like American or British imams who advocate slaying infidels, torching churches and synagogues, and killing any Jews behind them; those genuinely "hateful" rantings are protected because they are founded on "religious" convictions. Condell's statements simply expressed an antipathy for Islam and were formatted in the vehicle of humor.

By some sleight of rationalization, however, Condell's statements should not be protected because they are not founded on any religious belief. Or, at least there are those who wish his statements were not protected by the First Amendment or the British equivalent of it because they are fantasy-free, ergo, unexplainably immoral and wicked.

Watching Condell's video, I could not help but notice that as he ripped Islam to shreds, he did not sport a balaclava, the preferred headgear of those brave executioners and killers of Hamas and Hezbollah. Rather than looking like a wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth crusader against the ghosts, phantoms and goblins of all faiths, he struck me a fiftyish, mild-mannered accountant or software engineer.

Cohen's "racist" charge against Condell is more serious. Given that Islam appeals to members of all kinds of races (remember Richard Reid, the foiled shoe-bomber?), black, white, Asian, Semite, non-Semite, this accusation makes no sense. To equate a serious or humorous critique of Islam with "racism" points to a very suspicious ulterior motive of the commissioner's, to wit, a desire to squelch all criticism of Islam. On the face of it, the "racism" charge is ludicrous. Condell has subjected Catholicism and Anglicism to the same treatment. Would the humorless commissioner call that criticism "racist," as well? On what grounds?

Condell was flaying a religion which is not so much a creed as it is an ideology. Ideologies, especially totalitarian ones, are as color blind as religions. Ask Castro, or Robert Mugabe, or Mao, or Stalin, or Hugo Chavez, or Vladimir Putin.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamic organizations also equate criticism of Islam with racism, which is why they are so happy that the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act. It would make such "hate" speech a federal and punishable offense.

(On ABC News the other night, in special reporting on the recent death of Jerry Fallwell and the rise of religion in politics in the Reagan years, Charles Gibson noted that the Christian right is beginning to take up the cudgels on behalf of global warming, poverty, and AIDS. Well, there's intellectual bankruptcy for you.

In the same spirit of bankruptcy, the left is forming a kind of tacit, conditional alliance not only with Christians, but with Islamists, as well. Why would Cohen and Comrades care what anyone says about Islam, unless they saw something in it for them? It is reminiscent of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. They are all for imposing universal, collectivist power over the country as a shared goal. If they ever attain that goal, the falling out between them should be interesting, just as the Nazis and Soviets fell out, and be just as bloody.)

Further, what would Cohen propose to do about the likes of Condell and such "insulting, degenerating and racist" spewings? ("Degenerating"? Not "denigrating?" But, never mind, that's Cohen's vocabulary.) Advocate a government entity to police the Internet to keep it "clean" and "non-offensive"? And, why was Condell's video sent to Cohen and Comrades in the first place, and by whom? Was it sent to raise the good Marxists' hackles, to get them into a comical lather in the best Keystone Cops tradition? Or was it to provoke the bull with a red cape, to see if Cohen and Company could form a posse to lynch Condell from a distance of six thousand miles?

If the FBI or NSA confiscated Cohen's computer, they could track down the culprit, and determine his motive. I'm willing to bet the Internet cops would learn it was sent by the California chapter of either the Muslim Public Affairs Council or CAIR.

I am reluctant to let Condell monopolize "hate." Why is such speech called "hate speech"? What are the alternatives to that term? "Mildly resentful" speech? "Awfully irritated" speech? "A tad ticked off" speech? "Tepidly tactful" speech? The candidates are almost numberless. I will leave development of that kind of levity to Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin, and Pat Condell.

I imagine that Cohen and Comrades could just as well seethe with anger at someone who exercised his freedom of speech by reciting in person or in a video, for example, the Declaration of Independence. Surely, Jefferson's language could be deemed "hate speech," directed against George the Third and Parliament, intended to move men to take action against those who shared the king's and his legislators' most profound beliefs. And, remember, they were all Anglicans, members of a state church, so the Declaration could be said to indirectly slur their religious beliefs, as well. Doubtless, George and many Englishmen found that language to be insulting, denigrating, and patently offensive. Also, radical. Perhaps, fearfully incomprehensible. Certainly hurtful.

After all, tyrants and dictators have feelings, too.

And everyone knows what happened as a result of that kind of speech: the violence of the American Revolution. Well, practically everyone would know whose minds haven't been turned to mush by a politically correct public school and college education.

Why have the advocates of censorship settled on the term "hate" to designate the kind of speech they disapprove of and wish to regulate? "Hate" is a powerful term, denoting an emotion rooted in fear. They presumably associate "hate" with action that is "likely" to be taken against that which is feared. Well, one can fear something without taking criminal action against it. Not everyone is an emotional, hate-saturated basket case like Cho, the student who gunned down 32 people at Virginia Tech. Most people will not act on their fears, which they usually cannot articulate except perhaps in the form of expletive-salted exclamations.

And what is it that the gauleiters of speech fear about "hate speech"? The truth. Ridicule of the indefensible. Disrespect for the fallacious. Not being taken seriously, after serious scrutiny or unmitigated hilarity has deflated their arguments. And communication by the offender of the truth, ridicule and disrespect to a wide audience whose members' minds are not controlled by the "offended."

For example, observe the peculiar outrage directed against anyone who questions the delusional fraud of man-caused global warming.

Speaking of hate speech, that globetrotting, church-going, odd couple, professional altruists and former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, addressed the graduating class of the University of New Hampshire last weekend.

"...Putting politics aside Saturday," they urged " graduates to focus on helping others both in their communities and around the world....'I can't tell you the selfish pleasure I get out of working with President Clinton,'" said Bush. . (The Daily Press, Newport News, May 21)

Bush told an audience of 2,650 graduates "that they don't have to run for office to become leaders. 'All you have to do is care, roll up your sleeves and claim one of society's problems as your own.'" This is said in the state whose motto is "Live Free, or Die." The New Hampshire men who risked death at Bunker Hill to be free would slap Bush silly, if they could, for spewing such collectivist, anti-freedom claptrap.

If you ever doubted that the left and the right could ever meet in the middle to become an indistinguishable glob of collectivist politics, Bush Senior and Clinton will serve as a nonpareil symbol.

Adopt one of society's problems as one's own? Become a "caring," selfless minion of fascism, by obeying Kant's categorical imperative? Just like Elliot Cohen? And Jimmy Carter? And, don't forget Bill Gates, and anyone else who feels a guilt-driven compulsion to "give back" to society.

The double billing of Bush and Clinton in New Hampshire is an instance of a pair of idle, purposeless nonentities preaching altruism, and at taxpayer expense, as well. They both have Secret Service protection 24/7, at a cost of about $10,000 a day. The Secret Service goes with them even on their speaking engagements, from which these retired political millionaires each collect stupendous fees, in addition to their presidential retirement pay. One can only wonder how much the University of New Hampshire shelled out to them.

Unlike Voltaire, I won't defend someone's right to say things with which I disagree. I won't act to stop him, either, but try to answer him on my own dime and time. However, I bear a special malice for unrepentant frauds with careers of destruction who contribute to the diminution of my freedom, and I am forced to pay for it, as well.

There, dear readers, is another instance of "hate speech."

So, sue me.

Good Stuff and Awesome Stuff

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Registered users of the Ayn Rand Institutes's web site now have access to...

The Ayn Rand Multimedia Library

Thanks to an exclusive permission generously granted by the Estate of Ayn Rand, aynrand.org is now able to offer its registered users, free of charge, an expansive collection of Ayn Rand audio and video recordings. This unprecedented selection includes lectures, interviews, and the complete series of Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum lectures.

The ARI Lecture Series: The Complete Video Collection

On September 12, 2002, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, inaugurated the ARI Lecture Series before a crowd of 600 with a lecture titled "9/11--One Year Later: Why America Is Losing the War!" Since then ARI speakers have delivered about six free public talks per year on topics ranging from ethics to foreign policy to history. As a registered user of aynrand.org, you now have access to the lecture portion of each of these talks. A complete selection of full-length video and audio recordings, including the Q-&-A sessions that followed, is available at the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

The second is cool, but the first is simply awesome. I've listened to most of the recordings of Ayn Rand already. I particularly enjoyed the Ford Hall Forum lectures, for the reasons explained here. Even those well familiar with the in-print Objectivist corpus will likely find interesting tidbits to tweak their brains in these recordings. And, as I said about the Ford Hall Forum lectures, "those who wish for some small first-hand glimpse of the real Ayn Rand, undistorted by ax-grinding critics, will find these lectures to be an invaluable treasure."

208 Farce

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Colorado's 208 Commission for Health Care Reform has chosen its four proposals to evaluate. Basically, after a pro-government-medicine biased analysis by some consulting firm, the Commission will recommend one plan to the Colorado legislature. As expected, the selected plans range from awful to disastrous. Lin Zinser has posted a helpful analysis of them to the FIRM blog.

On Sunday, I dashed off the following letter to the commissioners:

Dear 208 Commissioners,

I wish to express my profound disappointment with the Commission's choice of healthcare reform proposals to evaluate. All four proposals are basically the same: all would significantly increase the already-overwhelming burden of government regulations, mandates, and entitlements in medicine. If implemented, the results would be exactly the same as in other countries and states, i.e. runaway costs, rationing of services, and declining quality. The only difference between these four proposals is the speed with which each would destroy the high quality of medical care now available in Colorado.

You could have chosen to give a serious hearing to something genuinely different, namely the free-market approach of Brian Schwartz's "FAIR" proposal. Instead, you've decided that only plans that inject tons more government force into medicine will be considered.

What a farce.

Diana Hsieh
Sedalia, CO

Obviously, I cannot hope to change the decision of the Commission at this point, but clear and strong opposition can convey the message that their "idealistic" plans for reform would be serious political risk.

What to Do About Rising Gas Prices

By Alex Epstein

With gasoline prices at their highest point in recent years, the knee-jerk response of many is to call for the government to "do something" to force prices lower. But no matter what the price of gasoline is, such calls are wrong. All market fluctuations in the price of gasoline, up or down, are a good thing--and none of the government's business.

When customers' demand for gasoline increases relative to the supply, the sellers of gasoline raise their prices. As the producers and owners of gasoline, this is their right--and we should be glad that they exercise it. Not only do price increases encourage future production, but without such price increases, we would very quickly see shortages as customer demand for cheap gasoline far outstripped the available supply. Thanks to price increases, we can ensure our continued access to gasoline to the extent we are willing to pay for it--i.e., to the extent we value it. Most of us are willing to pay $3 a gallon for a 15-mile office commute--but might not be for a 15-mile drive to our pet's beauty salon, and so our personal consumption voluntarily decreases as prices increase.

In the realm of business, a higher price means that firms will only purchase oil or gasoline to the extent that they can make profitable use of it at those prices. An efficient airline will still be able to offer low prices while using high-priced jet fuel; a less efficient airline may not be able to. A company in China or India that uses oil to run highly efficient factories can make profitable use of oil at $70 a barrel; their laggard competitors may not be able to. Since nearly every product we use involves oil at some stage of production, we all gain vast benefits from oil being directed toward its most profitable uses.

There is no moral or economic justification for any politician or consumer to declare market prices "too high," and to use the government to coerce lower prices. To do so violates both the rights of gasoline producers and their productive customers to set voluntary prices--and, in doing so, causes destructive shortages. When shortages exist, how much gasoline one is able to get depends not on one's willingness to pay a mutually agreeable price, but on one's political pull to secure rations, or on whether one has time on one's hands to wait in endless lines (as in the 1970s).

There is only one sense in which we are entitled to tell the government to "do something" about gasoline prices: insofar as these prices are made artificially high by the government's many regulations on oil and gasoline production.

Consider oil refining regulations. Various state governments impose the absurd mandate that companies refine nearly 60 different "blends" of gasoline--despite the fact that cars using today's standard unleaded gasoline, even with the overall increase in driving, pollute very little by historical standards. Additionally, endless red tape and "environmental impact studies" forced by regulators hostile to industrial development, make new construction dramatically less profitable. The costs of such regulations are huge and raise the price of gasoline; according to the American Petroleum Institute, "the refining industry has spent over $47 billion over the last decade to comply with environmental and fuels regulations--expenditures that generally yield little or no return on investment."

Another costly set of regulations are those prohibiting domestic drilling on plentiful sources of oil. In the name of safeguarding a portion of the caribou habitat in an Alaskan wasteland, drilling is prohibited in ANWR--a potential source of 1 million barrels a day. Also off-limits is the entire Outer Continental Shelf of the United States--a far larger untapped source of oil. Chevron's recent discovery of an estimated 3 to 15 billion barrel reserve in the Gulf of Mexico invites the question: How many such troves are currently off-limits?

The government is right to take action if an oil company provably threatens or harms a person's property. But to impose huge costs on oil companies and their customers in the name of preserving untouched nature is unconscionable.

What should the government do about gasoline prices? Get its hands out of the market--and keep them off.

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Rachel Carson's Genocide

Carson's environmental ideology demands opposition to DDT despite the millions of malaria deaths its use could prevent.

By Keith Lockitch

On May 27, environmentalists will celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson, the founding mother of their movement.

But Carson's centenary is no cause for celebration. Her legacy includes more than a million deaths a year from the mosquito-borne disease malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance because DDT, the most effective agent of mosquito control, has been essentially discarded--discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma advanced by Carson.

The crusade against DDT began with Carson's antipesticide diatribe "Silent Spring," published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide antimalaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence--Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson's book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT's crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.

Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation--alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.

But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began--with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT--yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." Indeed, in a 1956 study, human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.

Abundant scientific evidence supporting the safety and importance of DDT was presented during seven months of testimony before the newly formed EPA in 1971. The presiding judge ruled unequivocally against a ban. But the public furor against DDT--fueled by "Silent Spring" and the growing environmental movement--was so great that a ban was imposed anyway. The EPA administrator, who hadn't even bothered to attend the hearings, overruled his own judge and imposed the ban in defiance of the facts and evidence. And the 1972 ban in the United States led to an effective worldwide ban, as countries dependent on U.S.-funded aid agencies curtailed their DDT use to comply with those agencies' demands.

So if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today's malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with a million deaths every year. If this enormous toll of human suffering and death is preventable, why do environmentalists--who profess to be the defenders of life--continue to oppose the use of DDT?

The answer is that environmental ideology values an untouched environment above human life. The root of the opposition to DDT is not science but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to "tamper" with nature.

The large-scale eradication of disease-carrying insects epitomizes the control of nature by man. This is DDT's sin. To Carson and the environmentalists she inspired, "the 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy." Nature, they hold, is intrinsically valuable and must be kept free from human interference.

On this environmentalist premise the proper attitude to nature is not to seek to improve it for human benefit, but to show "humility" before its "vast forces" and leave it alone. We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead "a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves." If the untouched, "natural" state is one in which millions contract deadly diseases, so be it.

Carson's current heirs agree. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman writes: "Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria and half a dozen have died. This is the life-or-death consequence of viewing pestilent insects as a "necessary" component of a "vibrant biosphere" and seeking a "reasonable accommodation" with them.

Rachel Carson's birthday should be commemorated, not with laudatory festivities, but with the rejection of the environmental ideology she inspired.

Keith Lockitch is a PhD in physics and a resident 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.

Quick Roundup 197

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

Denial is Not a Strategy

Caroline Glick is, as usual, devastating in her analysis of the ineffectiveness of the Israeli government in the face of the latest round of attacks by its hostile neighbors.

[And then t]here is the issue of the goal of the current campaign. As was the case last summer towards Hizbullah, today the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has not set for itself the goal of defeating Hamas. Rather the goal of the current operations in Gaza is to send Hamas a message. Like last summer, today the government hopes that by killing a sufficient number of Hamas terrorists, it will induce the organization to stop attacking Israel.

But of course, by limiting its goal in such a way, the message that Israel is sending is not that Hamas should stop attacking Israel. By refusing to fight to victory, Israel is telling Hamas that it cannot lose, which is to say, it can go on fighting forever.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the government's refusal to understand the lessons of the last war and to apply them in the current battle is that Israel has far more options for defeating its enemies in Gaza than it had in Lebanon.

Gaza is a small territory and in contrast to Lebanon, Israel has the ability to take control of ingress and egress from the area. So too, Israel's intelligence capabilities are far greater in Gaza than in Lebanon. Then too, in Gaza, the enemy Israel confronts is not as well-armed or well-trained as Hizbullah.

Aside from all that, Israel controls Gaza's economy. Israel sells Gaza its water and electricity. Were Israel to decide to stop selling water or electricity to Gaza, its enemies would be hard-pressed to function.

All of these relative advantages that Israel can bring to bear in Gaza would enable Israel to cause long lasting damage to all of its enemies operating in the area while minimizing losses to its forces and civilians. But to take proper advantage of any of its strategic and operational assets, the government must first learn the proper lessons of the last war. Its refusal to do so bodes ill for the future.

This is, in microcosm, the whole problem with the way the West is "engaging" its Islamofascist enemy: We have forgotten what war is and, perhaps, never fully grasped what it is for. The goal of a war of self-defense is to do whatever it takes to remove an enemy people as a threat. Glick hints at what could and should be done in the case of Gaza: Completely blockade it and attack it mercilessly until its people die or unconditionally surrender.

Good Luck, Coach Graham!

Rice Baseball Coach Wayne Graham first came to my attention several years ago when Rice won the College World Series. I particularly remember thinking that he was exactly the kind of crusty old man I hope to become some day, when having been ejected from one of the games for, I believe, disputing a call, a television film crew caught him watching the game from what looked like a broom closet somewhere in the stadium.

Graham, who coached at the Junior College level before taking the helm at Rice, has never had a losing season in 25 years of coaching and was honored as "Coach of the Century" by the National Junior College Athletic Association. He is thoroughly familiar with the feeder schools in Texas, and once said that he liked coaching Rice players because "they're smart". Two years ago, at the age of 68, he was signed on for another six years at Rice.

Coach Graham was in form Sunday, when my wife and I watched the final game of the regular season, which the Owls were winning handily 7-2 until they got a little sloppy defensively and let Memphis back into the game with two runs. Then a Memphis batter made a couple of funny steps after a bad pitch, and the catcher immediately started pointing at him and saying something.

The officials conferred and walked the batter, who the catcher was claiming deliberately stepped into the pitch. I have no idea whether this was a good call, but Coach Graham stormed out of the dugout to go toe to toe with one of them after the call. I think that seeing their coach sticking up for them reminded them to focus on winning the game again. That team perked up immediately afterwards, and rest of the game was basically a formality.

So why am I suddenly taking about baseball here? Well, I like this article on Graham's coaching philosophy from the Houston Chronicle preceding today's start of its Conference USA title en route, I hope, to another appearance in the College World Series.

A student of myriad subjects beyond baseball, Rice coach Wayne Graham recited a quotation to reflect the perspective that reserve players should embrace when playing time is scant and patience wears thin: "I will study and prepare and perhaps my chance will come."

That bit of wisdom, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, caused Graham to harken back to his playing days and condemn his own impatience, a condition that perhaps cost Graham a lengthier stay in the big leagues. In retrospect, Graham (who appeared in 30 games with the Phillies and Mets in 1963-64) wishes he'd have utilized this Zen-like approach, which is why he shares that perspective with his players.

"I learned it from my own experiences as a player, because if I had made myself more useful in general -- in other words tried to have a perfect attitude towards whatever my role was that day -- I'd have probably played longer in the big leagues," Graham said. "So that's where I learned it. I realized I had made some mistakes from the other angle, from being the player, so I tried to share my reasoning with the players as a player in that position." [bold added]

These aren't just platitudes for the former major leaguer. He's practicing what he preaches. What's he doing every time he gives such advice to one of his players?

Not that you need it, Coach, but good luck, anyway!

Societal Evolution and Tipping Points

Bill Whittle makes some interesting points, using gaming theory (specifically, the Prisoner's Dilemma) as his point of departure, about how society in general can evolve. A glaring deficiency is that he does not discuss the role of philosophical ideas in motivating individuals, but I found it worthwhile as far as I read, which is where he started talking about something he calls "the Remnant". (HT: Rachel Lucas)

Weird Fatwa

About the only thing that can be said for Islam is that it is sometimes entertaining. Little Green Footballs quotes from the Jerusalem Post:

Ezzat Attiya ... issued a fatwa, or religious edict, saying adult men could breast-feed from female work colleagues as a way to avoid breaking Islamic rules that forbid men and women from being alone together.

In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers. It means the child could not marry the nursing woman's biological children.

Attiya - the head of Al-Azhar's Department of Hadith, or teachings of the Prophet Muhammad - insisted the same would apply with adults. He argued that if a man nursed from a co-worker, it would establish a family bond between them and allow the two to work side-by-side without raising suspicion of an illicit sexual relation.

Ooookaaaay!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edits.

Quick Roundup 198

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

Downsize Me My State

Instapundit reader Wagner James Au, whom Glenn Reynolds excerpted from email, mentions the medical costs associated with obesity, and claims that "one of the biggest costs on US health care is... people like Michael Moore." Reynolds follows up with a quip: " Maybe Moore's next film can be called Downsize Me!"

I am just as happy to make fun of Michael Moore as the next guy, but this post has things just as backwards as Michael Moore himself does. For the sake of argument, let's supersize Au's estimate of the costs associated with obesity and say that his figures underestimate the costs associated with obesity by half.

But what difference would this make to me if I didn't have the state reaching into my pockets -- be it through taxation or regulation of industries related to medicine -- every time someone who didn't take care of himself needed medical care. Indeed, I would suspect that without the implicit assumption that there is a social safety net -- which might falsely appear to many to be capable of infinite expansion -- that more people would be far more careful about their own health. These costs would shrink overall, and would be borne only by those who incurred them.

Obesity -- like any number of other myriad risk factors in personal health -- is "our" problem only because the bloated welfare state is making it into anyone else's problem besides that of the afflicted individuals. The solution isn't to increase government involvement in the medical sector of the economy or to have the government dictating to us what to put into our own mouths. It is for the government to stop separating us from the effects of our own actions by underwriting -- and hence rewarding -- everyone's shortsightedness.

Having said that, it is useful in many contexts to consider medical costs in aggregate. The problem arises when we forget that, like any other tabulation, we are looking at the economic behavior of numerous individuals.

Rachel Carson's Genocide

Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute has a fitting thought for how we should commemorate the centenary of Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring.

But Carson's centenary is no cause for celebration. Her legacy includes more than a million deaths a year from the mosquito-borne disease malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance because DDT, the most effective agent of mosquito control, has been essentially discarded--discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma advanced by Carson.

...

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria and half a dozen have died. This is the life-or-death consequence of viewing pestilent insects as a "necessary" component of a "vibrant biosphere" and seeking a "reasonable accommodation" with them.

Rachel Carson's birthday should be commemorated, not with laudatory festivities, but with the rejection of the environmental ideology she inspired. [bold added]

If only half the people who read Silent Spring would read this editorial, we'd be far closer to undoing the damage to our habitat accomplished by the banning of DDT.

Texas Close to Allowing Courses on Religious Texts

The Texas legislature is not done by a long shot with this year's assault on freedom in the Lone Star State. The latest bad idea that will probably soon be codified into law is a provision that will permit groups of students to demand the teaching of courses about religious texts at government expense.

The Senate easily passed and sent to the governor a bill Wednesday to teach Bible classes to high school students, but lawmakers immediately disagreed on whether the measure would make the courses mandatory.

Legislative leaders differed on whether school districts may offer the religion studies course, or whether they are obligated to do so if 15 or more students sign up for it. Both "may" and "shall" show up in different sections of the House bill that the Senate passed 28-2 without changing.

Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, said his legislative intent clearly is to require school districts to offer the Bible course if at least 15 students sign up for it. [bold added]

And if you wonder why the "secular" Democrats were AWOL, blame pragmatism and multiculturalism:

However, Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, noted that the House Public Education Committee specifically removed "shall" from the original legislation, House Bill 1287, which, he said, allows local school districts to decide whether to offer the course, intended to give students a fuller appreciation of religion's role in society.

...

Estes and other supporters got little disagreement from critics that people could benefit from more knowledge about Hebrew scripture, the Christian Bible and the Islamic Quran.

"People need to know both the good things and bad things that have happened in history in the name of religion," Estes said. "There's lots on both sides to go around, and an elective course like this is a wonderful forum to discuss those issues."

And it would be nearly impossible for students, he said, "to understand the writings and speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." without a basic knowledge of the Bible.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, asked Estes whether the legislation would obligate school districts to offer a study of the Quran if at least 15 students requested such a course.

Yes, Estes answered, explaining that non-Muslim students may want to study the impact of the Quran "because of the present problems that we have with the war on terror because of people's misrepresentation of the Quran." [bold added]

Notice the Republican -- they're pro-victory, right? -- shamelessly pandering to the pro-Moslem left in that last paragraph so he can have the Bible introduced into public schools.

There is nothing inherently wrong with teaching courses about religion. In fact, I agree that some study of religion is a necessary compliment to the study of history and of philosophy. The problem here is the obvious potential for these classes to become indoctrination sessions coupled with the fact that the state should not promote religion.

We see, once again, another reason to get the state out of education entirely. If some parents want their children to have religious instruction, fine. Just don't make me pay for it or make me send my children to a school where they might feel pressured to take such classes. Unfortunately, this bill opens the door wide open for both such abuses and, in doing so, once again exposes the Republicans as enemies of capitalism, who are willing to sell out freedom whenever the opportunity to promote religion arises.

Searchable Ayn Rand Archives

Via HBL, I learned of a commercially-available CD compilation of the published works of Ayn Rand packaged with a browser and search software. Harry Binswanger is quoted at the site's information page:

Phil Oliver has made and is selling a CD-ROM containing all of AR's published writings, Dr. Peikoff's two books, plus Journals of Ayn Rand and Letters of Ayn Rand. I have been using his "beta-test" version of the CD for a couple of years, with great pleasure, and I have now installed the commercial version, which I highly recommend. At last--the entire corpus of Ayn Rand's writings, including the novels, on one CD. Through a super-speedy search facility, I can find any half-remembered quote in about two seconds. For instance, where is that passage in which Dagny reflects about the clarity of a thought named in words? I searched for "thought named in words," and, within a second, I had the page of Atlas on-screen, with the key-words highlighted"She did not know whether he understood it with that full, luminous finality which is a thought named in words; but she knew that what he felt in that moment was understanding."And, at the top of the screen it shows the source--in this case Atlas Shrugged, Part II, Chapter 1, The Man Who Belonged on Earth. The page number (347) of the paperback edition shows up in brackets in the text. Another example is there any discussion of philosopher Willard v. Quine in the Objectivist literature? In two seconds, I found the only reference page 284 of The Ominous Parallels. Or where is integration discussed in relation to the subconscious? Just searching for "integration" would give far too many hits, mostly about conscious conceptual integrations. So I searched for subconscious NEAR integration, and came up with hits from Journals of Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, The Art of Nonfiction, and The Ayn Rand Letter. This CD is a "must have" tool for anyone seriously interested in Ayn Rand. [minor formatting changes]

Related, be sure to stop by Noodle Food for Diana's announcement regarding a treasure trove of materials recently made available online by the Ayn Rand Institute.

-- CAV

The Worst American President In History

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Since Jimmy Carter said, “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” a remark he has since backed away from (but not retracted), calling it “careless,” there has been some opining among the right that Carter is in fact the worst president in history.

Carter was not the worst president in history, not even close. Being a typical Democrat, he was just incompetent, and mere incompetence cannot get really bad things done. For real, competent evil, one must turn to the Republicans. The worst president in history is Richard Nixon.

I’m not referring to his most famous failure, Watergate, which was just your average political dirty trick blown out of proportion by the left. Watergate is significant only as the high water mark of the liberal media. The media destroyed a Republican president and for the last three decades aging liberal baby boomers have been desperately trying to repeat the great victory of their youth without success. It has not happened again and with the growth of alternative media, it will never happen again.

A comprehensive account of Nixon’s failings would require a book, not a blog post. Here are just a few of his worst moments.

What liberals count as Nixon’s best moment, his going to China, was a terrible sell-out of communism’s victims. Nixon spat on the tens of millions of Mao’s victims by treating Mao as morally worthy of meeting instead of as the monster he was.

At home Nixon imposed wage and price controls, a purely socialistic intervention in the economy that bumbling Jimmy Carter never could have attempted. He created the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Health and Safety Administration, two assaults on liberty that to this day create anti-capitalist regulations that violate rights and hamper the economy. He expanded the welfare state, creating Supplemental Security Income and indexing Social Security to inflation. He created the Drug Enforcement Agency, probably the biggest move in America’s idiotic war on drugs.

But none of these evils is Nixon’s worst moment. He is responsible for the single most destructive act in the history of the American presidency, an act that has destroyed more wealth and worsened more lives than anything before or since. In 1971, as Wikipedia puts it, he “eradicated the last remnants of the gold standard.” This created the inflation crises of the 1970’s and affects us with “moderate” inflation to this day. The high interest rates that Republicans blame Carter for are actually the result of Nixon’s policies.

Henry Hazlitt explained inflation thus:

…inflation is nothing but a great swindle…. This swindle erodes the purchasing power of everybody's income and the purchasing power of everybody's savings. It is a concealed tax, and the most vicious of all taxes. It taxes the incomes and savings of the poor by the same percentage as the incomes and savings of the rich. It falls with greatest force precisely on the thrifty, on the aged, on those who cannot protect themselves by speculation or by demanding and getting higher money incomes to compensate for the depreciation of the monetary unit.

Why does this swindle go on? It goes on because governrnents wish to spend, partly for armaments and in most cases preponderantly for subsidies and handouts to various pressure groups, but lack the courage to tax as much as they spend. It goes on, in other words, because governments wish to buy the votes of some of us while concealing from the rest of us that those votes are being bought with our own money. It goes on because politicians (partly through the second- or third-hand influence of the theories of the late Lord Keynes) think that this is the way, and the only way, to maintain "full employment," the present-day fetish of the self-styled progressives. It goes on because the international gold standard has been abandoned, because the world's currencies are essentially paper currencies, adrift without an anchor, blown about by every political wind, and at the mercy of every
bureaucratic caprice. And the very governments that are inflating profess solemnly to be "fighting" inflation. Through cheap-money policies, or the printing press, or both, they increase the supply of money and credit and affect to deplore the inevitable result.

Watergate was a misdemeanor compared to this enormity. By taking the final step of detaching the dollar from gold, Richard Nixon made the great swindle possible. Government spending will continue to grow as long as politicians know they can get away with this hidden tax while at the same time lecturing petroleum companies and other corporations about rising prices -- and then using the high prices that the state caused with inflation to further expand the power of the state! Jimmy Carter is a street corner hoodlum compared to Nixon, the Al Capone of American presidents.

John Lewis on the Mike Rosen Show

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

Dr. John Lewis talks in-depth with Mike Rosen about his April 24 speaking engagement at George Mason University and the disruptions of the talk by SDS and Muslim students and their supporters.

Audio here (free, registration required).

In Praise of the Hero's Hike

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

After several weather delays, the first Hero's Hike of the year is taking place this weekend, Saturday, May 26!

Several times each year, an Objectivist group makes the arduous journey up Breakneck Ridge in Cold Spring, NY. Some participants race to the top, and are covered in sweat and grime before they are halfway there. At the summit, we have a picnic and socialize then (usually) Andy Bernstein delivers a prepared talk. After that is the "Celebrate Self" portion of the event, during which Heroes have the opportunity to stand up and share their personal accomplishments and goals with the rest of the group. Finally, everyone treks back down the mountain and meets at the local diner, where more eating and socializing ensue.

I always look forward to these events, more so than any other Objectivist gathering. I have developed friendships - a few of them very close friendships - with many of the regular participants. There's a common spirit within this group, and it's not just the fact that they're Objectivists. There's something about the philosophy of the Hero's Society (which sponsors the Hero's Hike) that attracts those who are integrated in mind and body. Here is the mission of the Hero's Society, as articulated by its founder, Robert Begley:

"The New York Heroes Society celebrates human achievement and stature, consistent with Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, through lectures, physical activities, and cultural events for all who worship heroism and aspire to it in their own lives."

Note how he places a stress on the physical aspect of heroism. This kind of stress is uncommon, and it is part of what makes the Hero's Society special. Many Objectivists think of virtue as a thing totally within the mind. Rationality is the primary virtue, we are told, and it is a function of consciousness. So why place any focus on the physical?

Because man is a being of integrated mind and body.

One's body is a value, and striving for physical excellence is a virtue. One's body supports his life, and one's physical condition determines in part the range of activities that are open to him. Not everyone can make it to the top of Breakneck Ridge - and that's the point. Trudging up that rocky trail to the summit is a painful experience for some, but it's something to be proud of. That our bodies are capable of doing this is something to be celebrated and worshiped.

Even better, pushing one's body to its physical limits puts one in the mindset to push his mind to its spiritual limits. My mind is rarely as open and active as it is for Andy's summit talks. By the time we get around to the "Celebrate Self" portion of the event, I am primed to dream ambitious dreams.

A Hero's Hike exercises one's mind, body and soul. Those who seek this integrated form of exercise are my kind of folks. That's why I've found so many friends there. A Hero is as fit physically as he is mentally. He discusses ideas with his friends, then climbs a mountain with them. He shares his thoughts with a lady, then takes her out dancing. He reads other people's essays, then writes a few of his own. He is a rational man of action. That's the kind of men and women you'll find at the Hero's Hike. And that's why I'll keep going back.

--Dan Edge

New Age Altruists

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Instapundit posts on the health dangers of a vegan diet.

Bill Quick responds:

Vegans are whackjobs. Humans evolved as meat-eaters. Our guts are almost indistinguishable from those of pure carnivores. Modern vegans (who aren’t very smart to begin with - probably because of calorie shortfall) have problems with understanding that the ripe, juicy strawberries, the huge, sweet apples, the mountains of fluffy bread, the savory carrots and the fat potatoes they love so much didn’t exist while man was evolving as a meat-eating animal.

Hunter-gathers hunted almost exclusively. What little gathering went on might have, on rare occasions, contributed as much as 200 calories per capita of shriveled roots or sour, shrunken berries to the foodstocks of the family or tribe. Fat is a much more efficient storehouse of energy., and for humans living in the wild, a high calorie intake was a necessity - a necessity that could not even remotely be met by a vegan lifestyle, which was impossible anyway.

A human living on a meat-only diet will survive just fine. A human living on a vegan diet will sicken and die. The one tiny bit of logic possessed by vegans is their purported desire to leave a “light footprint” on the face of the earth. And pure, unsupplemented vegans will leave the lightest footprints of all - as premature corpses.

Veganism, animal rights and environmentalism are movements that result from the decline of reason in our culture meeting the moral imperatives of altruism. New Age types think in unfocused emotions, not logic. They see humans eating animals, a practice that is without question selfish, and in their inability to distinguish between rational and non-rational animals, conclude it is immoral. Or perhaps they don’t think rigorously enough to denounce it as immoral, they just get a vague emotional reaction that meat eating is wrong. Vegans, like environmentalists, are not driven primarily by any practical purpose, but by the moral purpose of sacrifice.

Unfortunately, they are not just a danger to themselves. If animals have equal rights to humans, then humans are no better than animals. Animals have nothing but force to use against other animals. The more consistent New Agers, not understanding man’s nature as a rational animal, will end up advocating violence to men if such is justified by an altruist-collectivist end. Consistent environmentalists have already come to this in their yearning for the “right virus” to wipe out billions of humans.

New York's Public Madrassa?

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

New York, the same city that already sports a "social 'justice'" high school, may soon have what amounts to a publicly-funded madrassa, as Daniel Pipes reports in the New York Sun.

[An Arab-language school] appears to be a marvelous idea, for New York and the country need native-born Arabic speakers. They have a role in the military, diplomacy, intelligence, the courts, the press, the academy, and many other institutions -- and teaching languages to the young is the ideal route to polyglotism. As someone who spent years learning Arabic, I am enthusiastic in principle about the idea of this school, one of the first of its kind in America.

In practice, however, I strongly oppose the KGIA [Khalil Gibran International Academy, serving grades six through 12 --ed] and predict that its establishment will generate serious problems. I say this because Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage. Some examples:

Franck Salameh taught Arabic at the most prestigious American language school, Middlebury College in Vermont. In a column for the Middle East Quarterly, he wrote: "even as students leave Middlebury with better Arabic, they also leave indoctrinated with a tendentious Arab nationalist reading of Middle Eastern history. Permeating lectures and carefully-designed grammatical drills, Middlebury instructors push the idea that Arab identity trumps local identities and that respect for minority ethnic and sectarian communities betrays Arabism."

Pipes cites other examples as well as the general expectation among many Arab language instructors that their students are interested in converting to Islam. He then discusses a few of the individuals involved in this new school, in particular, its designated principal.

"Arabs or Muslims, [Dhabah] Almontaser says, are innocent of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: "I don't recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims." Instead, she blames September 11 on Washington's foreign policies, saying they "can have been triggered by the way the USA breaks its promises with countries across the world, especially in the Middle East, and the fact that it has not been a fair mediator."

At a community meeting with the New York Police Department commissioner, she berated the NYPD for using "FBI tactics" when informants were used to prevent a subway bombing, thereby polarizing the Muslim community. For Ms. Almontaser, it appears, preventing terrorism counts less than soothing Muslim sensibilities.

Rewarding these views, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a foreign-funded front organization, in 2005 bestowed an honor on Ms. Almontaser for her "numerous contributions" to the protection of civil liberties.

I have stated numerous times here my objections to public education, but the idea of forcing the people of New York City -- which was attacked by Moslem Arabs in 2001 -- to pay human refuse like like Almontaser to educate children there is particularly obscene. It seems that every time I think public education has bottomed out, it finds a new low.

The Sun includes other related articles here.

-- CAV

Blowing it in Baltimore

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

The city of Baltimore hopes to curb its outrageous murder rate by preemptively transforming some of its troubled neighborhoods into prisons.

A city council leader, alarmed by Baltimore's rising homicide rate, wants to give the mayor the power to put troubled neighborhoods under virtual lockdown.

"Desperate measures are needed when we're in desperate situations," City Council Vice President Robert W. Curran told The (Baltimore) Sun. He said he would introduce the legislation next week.

Under Curran's plan, the mayor could declare "public safety act zones," which would allow police to close liquor stores and bars, limit the number of people on city sidewalks, and halt traffic during two-week intervals.

Police would be encouraged to aggressively stop and frisk individuals in those zones to search for weapons and drugs.

Baltimore has tallied 108 homicides already this year, compared to 98 over the same period last year. Police and prosecutors also say they are facing a "stop snitching" culture [More on this later. --ed] that discourages victims and witnesses from cooperating with investigators trying to get criminals off the streets. [bold added]

There are so many things wrong with this proposal that I hardly know where to begin. For one thing, minus the calling in of the National Guard we saw in New Orleans and almost saw in Jackson, Mississippi (both majority-black, like Baltimore), this proposal throws out the baby of liberty with the bathwater of ineffective law enforcement, not to mention inviting massive abuse by policemen and perhaps other government officials.

And, as we are seeing with global warming hysteria and the just-mentioned cases of inappropriate responses to crime, the excuse for such massive new government intrusions is that there is an "emergency". As I have said before:

So because the government -- by failing to punish criminals adequately and thus creating an "emergency" -- has proven unable or unwilling to protect individual rights, it is thus entitled to run over individual rights and install military troops? For what other pedestrian reasons will we have government officials declaring "emergencies" and what will they capriciously decide to do about them? This trigger-happy willingness to declare "emergencies" seems like the real emergency to me.

In addition to presenting the threat of unwarranted government intrusion to anyone who happens to live in one of these neighborhoods, there is also the inconvenient fact that many high-crime neighborhoods -- especially where there is what is euphemistically called a "'stop snitching' culture" -- are black neighborhoods.

Just wait until the NAACP notices that most of the locked-down areas are heavily black. Baltimore will either have to abandon its plan or spread the misery in the name of racial equality! In neither case will it be protecting the freedom of its law-abiding citizens. (Although, at least if the plan gets shot down, freedom will have been served by accident. Sort of.)

None of this is to deny that Baltimore has a serious problem and that its government must change aspects of how it addresses crime. I suspect that some of these changes would be similar to those I mentioned at the previous link, so I will not go into them again here. The specific problem of uncooperative witnesses sounds daunting, but instituting neighborhood lockdowns is not the way to address it.

Nevertheless, the mention of the "'stop snitching' culture" alludes to the more fundamental problem, faced by cities like Baltimore (and by black Americans generally) which I recently read a column about. After noting such deleterious influences as rap music on black youths, the column ended as follows, with the following allusion to the anti-snitch culture:

"In this war we have to decide which side we're on: the side of the law, or the side of the gangs. If that means turning our back on a family member, so be it.

We have to make ending gang and gun violence our movement and our cause.

The column further reminded me of a particularly stupid comment awhile back by a popular rapper to the effect that he would not cooperate with the police, even to turn in a serial killer next door.

Where I come from, once word gets out that you've co-operated with the police, that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence.

That is a dark reality in so many neighbourhoods like mine across America. I'm not saying it's right, but it's reality. [bold added]

Does this concern for one's image even over one's continued existence not sound juvenile? Is it any wonder that so many kids growing up in such neighborhoods see it less likely that they will suffer for committing a murder than for turning someone in for a crime? How the hell can someone grow up into a responsible adult, much less one who thinks long-range, in such a milieu?

What I find ironic about the Baltimore proposal is that it threatens to reinstate almost exactly the kind of poor policing that helped cause many blacks to become wary of cooperating with the police in the first place, back when the police were part of the state apparatus for enforcing Jim Crow laws. To be sure, the police would not be enforcing segregation, but they would once again represent an oppressive state rather than simply acting as guardians of public order.

Now that I think of it, the notion of massive lock-downs of neighborhoods itself strikes me as a reprise of other aspects of Jim Crow. And this provokes another thought: Just as any culture can slowly become accustomed to tyranny over time, I suspect that many of the problems in black culture today are a sort of "hangover" from the long period of servitude and second-class citizenship during which it developed.

That being the case, I see such lock-downs as a horrible impediment to black youths breaking with the dysfunctional aspects of their culture. Living like this will make it harder for them to learn how to live with the personal responsibility called for by freedom -- or to appreciate why it is better to help a cop rather than to cover up for a crime.

Black Americans face a life-and-death cultural problem that can be helped or hindered -- but not solved for them -- by government action. Ultimately, blacks must develop a culture of individualism like other Americans before they will realize the value of rule of law. All the government can do is makes its best effort to protect their lives and their freedom while they learn.

-- CAV

Updates

5-18-07: Corrected two typos.

The Genesis of Thought Crime

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

In discussing the invalidity of the notion of "hate crimes" in "The Democrats' Assault on Freedom of Speech" (May 10), in connection with the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 passed by the House of Representatives (H.R. 1592), I remarked: "A motive is not a crime, but an action is."

To elaborate on that observation, a motive cannot be a crime, but an action founded or based on it can be a crime. In a court of law, a motive can explain an action, but can no more be punishable than denying the existence of God, or man-caused global warming, or the link between actual violent crime and simulated violence in television programming and in movies. In a court of law governed by objective law, determining a motive for a crime is merely a means of explicating the otherwise inexplicable.

A competent trial lawyer can establish a motive and link it to evidence of murder, assault or even fraud (and this can include intent or conspiracy to commit it), but his key task is to prove a defendant's criminal actions, not his motivation or character. He would not end his summation to a jury by asking it to find a defendant guilty of committing murder because he hated the victim's looks or religion or odd behavior, but rather by asking it to find the defendant guilty of murder, based on the evidence he has presented to the court.

Under objective law, a prosecutor must prove the initiation of physical force. In the end, for the jury to decide on the validity of the evidence that the defendant was responsible for proven actions, the motive as established by the prosecution should be contributory for context setting purposes, but remain extraneous to the verdict.

One may feel the same level of contempt for a person who has committed a crime based on his hatred of his victim's race, gender, religion and so on, as one might feel for someone who has not committed a crime but who holds the same irrational premises.

Objective criminal law, based on proving the initiation of force, is the best guarantor of justice. Although it was long in coming, stalled in part by the news media's encouragement of lynch mobs and giving free publicity to notorious advocates of hate crime law, the exoneration of the three lacrosse players in the Duke University rape case in North Carolina is an instance of reason and reality trumping emotionalism and wishful thinking. Former District Attorney Nifong should not only be disbarred, but he should be indicted for conspiring to frame innocent men for political "hate crime" reasons.

On the other hand, remember what happened to Imus, the radio personality, who made some disparaging remarks about a women's basketball team, remarks that hate crime law advocates blew out of proportion to their significance and, also with the cooperation of the news media (which played them on air repeatedly), made them a national issue. I am no fan of Imus, and I doubt that either I or the members of the basketball team or the nation would have known about his "insulting" remarks, had not some aspiring gauleiters decided to test the waters.

This commentary will examine the phenomenon of "hate crime" a little more closely.

The first and most crucial thing to grasp about what can be deemed a "hate crime" is that it is, essentially, a political crime. If this country were still ruled by objective law; if Congress fulfilled its proper role as a protector of individual rights; and if the Supreme Court acted to uphold the legitimate individual rights-based philosophy of the Constitution; then pressure and special interest groups would have no chance of having laws enacted that favored them at the expense of others. In short, they would have no political power to instigate the passage of fiat legislation.

The only crime that could legitimately be called "political" would be treason, that is, actions taken to aid and/or comfort the enemies of the United States.

But every piece of "public policy" legislation in this country, from Social Security, to Medicare, to banking laws, to disability laws, to anti-discrimination, racial and gender quota laws - the list is long and growing longer - is a consequence of political pull and a measure of the corruptive influence of collectivism.

George F. Will, in his May 13th column in The Washington Post, "No end to hate-crime laws," observed:

"The federal hate-crime law, enacted in 1968, enhanced punishments only for crimes against persons engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting. H.R. 1592 would extend special federal protections to persons who are crime victims because of their race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability."

Will goes on to cite a statistic:

"Hate crimes are seven one-hundredths of one percent of all crimes, and 60.5 percent of them consist of vandalism (e.g., graffiti) or intimidation (e.g., verbal abuse)."

Will does not dwell on it, perhaps because he does not see it, but in that statistic lies the peril. Given the rate of disintegration of objective law, what is to stop pressure groups and legislators from extending the range of "hate crime" from the vandalism of graffiti on the door of a synagogue or church, and intimidation by "verbal abuse," to unflattering or disparaging portrayals of "protected" groups in movies or on television, and to intimidation or disparagement of them in the printed word?

What will stop the blurring of distinctions between disparagement, defamation, slander and libel? What federal, state or local judge will uphold the conceptual lines between them at the risk of being politically incorrect and inviting the wrath of the liberal left and pressure groups?

Well, nothing and no one. Rational jurisprudence is unraveling apace with freedom of speech.

Fox Television's "24" toned down its anti-jihadist plots at the behest of CAIR. No major American newspaper or public figure came to the defense of the Danish cartoonists. And Dr. John Lewis last month was subjected to actions of intimidating thugs at George Mason University for daring to criticize Islamists. Do not forget that other courageous individuals, such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and other critics of Islam, can appear at universities and other public forums only after the most stringent security measures have been taken.

All this occurred while H.R. 1592 incubated in the House.

But Muslims would not be the only beneficiaries of H.R. 1592. What rankles conservatives more than its potential to further abridge the First Amendment is that it singles out for special protection homosexuals, the "trans-gendered," and "cross-dressers," all "sinners" by conservative moral criteria. Do not expect conservatives to defend the First Amendment with any important, fundamental arguments.

For example, the possibility that H.R. 1592 would have any connection to the abridgement of the First Amendment is nowhere mentioned in George Will's column. He skirts the issue - "Hate-crime laws...mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed because of thoughts that government especially disapproves."

In fact, Christian activists no more like seeing God's or Christ's name besmirched or hearing it taken in vain than do Muslims Allah's or Mohammad's. It is a certainty that they, too, will avail themselves of the power of H.R. 1592, if it becomes law, to punish or gag anyone who dares offend their religious feelings or sensibilities, as well.

And if you bruise the feelings or "violently" injure the "self esteem" of the obese, the elderly, the disabled, the under-achievers, the Indians, the "challenged" of any persuasion, or of any of the other gangs of protected ciphers and manqués, they would have the "right" to take a crack at you, too.

In the film "Twelve Angry Men" (the superior 1957 version), one of the deliberating jurors, a last holdout against acquittal, is certain that the young defendant (of apparent Hispanic origin, there is a single brief shot of him in the whole film) brutally murdered his father, because such behavior, he asserts, fits "his type. You know. Their type." Most of the other jurors turn their backs on him in disgust.

Half a century later, the implicit moral code of those fellow jurors has undergone an inversion. The revolting irrationalism of the racist juror may be legislated into a federal code that explicitly sanctions the primacy and supremacy of a score of "types" - of every "type" but the individual.

If H.R. 1592 is made law, mind what you say about anyone. Better yet, don't even think of saying anything, lest you risk the accusation of thought crime. It would be a political crime, whether or not you ever acted on it.

That is thought control. Exercise your First Amendment rights as a private individual or as a public commentator at the peril of committing a crime.

I, for one, will not submit to it.

Jerry Falwell

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Rev. Jerry Falwell died on Tuesday after being discovered unconscious sometime in the 1980's.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

As far as I'm concerned nothing good came from the man. Making religion a pressure group that has enormous power on the Republican Party is the worst thing that ever happened to the party. He did not stand for freedom and individual rights but for using government to restrict freedom in the name of religion. He was at least as bad for America as the SDS and the New Left he loathed.

Some of the Reverend's greatest hits:

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions."

(re: 9/11 attacks) "...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.""

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters."

"The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc."

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

"There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution."

Here's a quiz that asks you to tell which statements were made be Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or Osama bin Laden.

Scientists Shifting Allegiances

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

According to the web site of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, a fair number of scientists who had once accepted the idea that global warming was occurring due to human activity have changed their minds after a deeper consideration of the evidence or after new research came to light.

These scientists are beginning to offer counterarguments to the doomsday scenarios being served up by such luminaries as Al Gore -- scenarios that are being used to justify massive government controls on the economy and to circumvent careful debate about said measures via mass panic.

Thirteen scientists are listed, along with their credentials and brief explanations for why they have changed their minds. Here's one example:

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. "I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself," Murty explained on August 17, 2006. "I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously," Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary."

The site claims that this is just the "tip of the iceberg" and that a "more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report."

This is good news, but it would be better news if we had a similar parade of politicians changing their minds about the proper purpose of government -- like Boris Yeltsin once did -- and taking firm public stands against the continued existence of the welfare state.

It is the notion that the government should be doing anything besides protecting individual rights that makes it even possible for the mess that is global warming hysteria to exist. Had the general public the degree of suspicion of intrusive government that it ought to have, Al Gore would have been laughed back into obscurity the moment he ran to Washington. Indeed, even if the scenarios portrayed in An Inconvenient Truth were completely correct, it would be improper for the government to dictate solutions for any of them.

If the scientific tide really is turning against anthropogenic global warming, the efforts of such scientists may help in the short term, but until people no longer seek government solutions for everything, we will remain vulnerable for the indefinite future to what the government might do to us after similar episodes of public hysteria. The only proper purpose of the government is the protection of the individual rights of its citizens.

-- CAV

Follow up on my Down syndrome post

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

Here is a response to some of the comments in my last post in Q&A format. (Some of the comments come from responses to my comment to other's posts arguing against genetic screening for DS. )The questions are classified by two categories - the morality of abortion as such, and the morality of "eugenics."

Abortion:

"You are pretty emphatic that a fetus is not a baby. Why?"

The essential issue here is whether a fetus has the rights of a human being. My answer is no for two reasons:

• Pro-lifers confuse the potential with the actual. An actual human being is a physically distinct being who survives by the use of reason. (Yes, babies are helpless after birth, but their very existence does not impose an obligation on the mother -other are capable of taking care of them.)
• There is no right to be a parasite. The fetus is essentially a parasite because its very existence imposes an obligation on the mother. A fetus has no more "right" to live of the mother than a thief has to live on other's wealth.

"[You make] the common mistake of thinking that the unborn are not human persons because they are so small... Does your personhood derive from your size? Is Arnold Schwarzenegger more of a person than Gary Coleman?"

No, the essential issue here is metaphysical independence.

"[Don't] infants with trisomy deserve to live just like any other infant does?"

Yes, once they are born. Prior to that, they to human beings what an apple seed is to an apple tree, or an egg is to a chicken. Most people don't claim that eggs are chickens - why do they make the same error with a fetus?

"Under current law, protected life begins at viability. Is that a bad idea?"

Actually, since Roe vs. Wade, it mostly does not. To the extent that it is protected, the law is wrong.

For further reading on this issue, I suggest visiting http://www.abortionisprolife.com/

Eugenics:

Have you "embraced eugenics?"

Eugenics is a vague term. If we view it as selective breeding on an individual level, then every parent advocates and practices it, since we all choose partners with certain genetic traits (a particular appearance or personality) rather than practice completely indiscriminate sex. If we define birth control as eugenics, then everyone also practices that also, since we choose when to have sex even when we don't use technological aids. If we define it as the selection of particular combinations of genes, rather than the selection of the partner from whom those genes will come, in the form of genetic and prenatal screening, then I advocate that too, when feasible.

A different definition of eugenics is that which is practiced on a social level, as the voluntary or coercive selection of prevention of certain human genes from being expressed. I, like most people, advocate that only in a very limited basis, that being inbreeding between siblings and the cloning of human beings using current technology.

As it applies to Down syndrome, my belief that choosing to have children with DS is immoral is actually the opposite of eugenics. DS severely retards fertility, so having kids with DS does not increase its incidence as a hereditary trait. On the other hand, having less kids with DS does make room for those parents to have more normal kids with dormant DS genes, so it may actually increase the incidence of DS.

"Down syndrome is not a disease. It is not an illness... We all have our special needs, don’t we?"

Actually, it's universally recognized as a genetic disorder. "Disorder" means a condition which is unhealthy or detrimental to life as a human being. The specific problems related to DS are "cognitive impairment, congenital heart disease, hearing deficits, short stature, thyroid disorders, and Alzheimer’s disease. Other less common serious illnesses include leukemia, immune deficiencies, and epilepsy..and "an average lifespan of 49 years." This is qualitatively worse the medical problems the average person encounters.For example, I have a genetic tendency for hypertension, which I counter with regular exercise.This is very different from a disorder which severely impairs most functions of everyday life.

"Just because a child is born with DS, [does that] mean that they are unhealthy or going to suffer for the rest of their lives?"

Not for their entire life. If someone were really going to endure constant suffering for the rest of their life, then I would suggest that they commit suicide. (Not murder, as some comments imply.) However DS does significantly affect the overall quality of life relative to a healthy personal. Some of the reasons for this are mentioned in my response above. If you still doubt this, then I would ask - how valuable would a cure for DS be to you if you or someone you loved has DS? Only someone who embraces human suffering could turn such an offer down.
One analogy to the quality of life of a DS person is wealth. Money does not guarantee happiness, but extreme poverty is an impediment to it by limiting our opportunity to pursue things that make us happy.

Do you advocate "playing God?"

Yes, in the sense that humans should strive to transform their environment and themselves in the image of their values.

"If there was a test for expecting mothers that predicts the IQ of their baby, every mother should have it done?"

If there was a test for mental retardation, then yes. If I could easily have a smarter child, then sure. Since abortions are expensive (not just financially), I only advocate them in cases where the child's standard of life would be significantly impaired.

"If you don't like the test results, [are] you going to keep on aborting the pregnancy until you're happy[?]"

If I were a woman, and with the disclaimer above, yes.

"Good luck finding a woman that will do that for you."

Thanks, I did.

"As the Bible says, the wisdom of man is foolishness to God. Those who think that they are so clever and know so much about medicine and science are like children to God, the creator of the universe."

And you, of course, have a personal line to his office.

"You are the individual who was probably the fattest, ugliest, most learning delayed person in school, and now that you discovered that a even a complete moron such as yourself can keep a blog, you have found your answer to getting back at everyone else you can."

"You, sir, are destined to smoke turds in hell with Satan!"

Ad hominem.

Sports Nut

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

File this post under "Getting to Know Your Edge Blogger." :)

As anyone who knows me knows, I am and always will be a sports nut. Football, basketball, baseball, boxing, UFC, soccer, tennis, ice skating -- you name it, I love it. (Curling is a notable exception). Since Ancient Greece, athletes have symbolized the height of man's physical potential. We cheer for them, give them trophies, and put the best of them literally up on a pedestal.

The fun of watching a sporting event is magnified by rooting for your team. If you give a damn about the outcome, you have a reason to cheer for one side or the other. A fan's reasons for choosing a side may be seemingly arbitrary (e.g., based on geographical proximity) or deeply philosophical (e.g., pulling for Rocky). But once a fan chooses a side, he usually sticks with it. Only fair weather fans abandon the local team after a down season.

Watching your favorite team (or player) compete live - along with thousands of screaming fans who emphatically agree with your preference - can be an elating experience. There's just something about the roar of the crowd, cheering on the home team in unison, that lifts up one's spirits. There's more action, suspense, and drama in a good NFL football game than in most blockbuster movies. Live sporting events are the original "reality shows."

I would encourage anyone to take the time to get into at least one sport. It's not something you just fall into; you have to take the time to watch a sport, learn the rules, and get to know the players. Then all you have to do is pick a favorite team and cheer!

To help you along, here are some of my favorites. Feel free to respond with smack talking:

Football - This is truly my sport, particularly the Pro level (though I love college, too). I have written a season preview entitled "Praise Galt for Football" each year for the past 4 years.

• NFL - Carolina Panthers - Super Bowl winners in '09!
  
• NCAA - University of South Carolina Gamecocks - my alma mater; with Steve Spurrier at the helm, we'll be competitive in the SEC for years to come. I also pull for SEC teams and ACC teams in general.
  

Basketball - The NCAA tournament is always exciting, and the Pro ballers are amazing in their athleticism.

• NBA - New York Knicks - I've adopted the home team of my new home, New York. Besides, they wisely took a SC Gamecock in the first round of last year's draft.
• NCAA - SC Gamecocks (of course) and the NC teams (Tarheels, Wolfpack, Deamon Deacons) - College basketball is huge in the Carolinas, and I go with the flow.

Baseball - I've only recently gotten into baseball - my soon to be in-laws are big fans. It's a slower paced game, and a lot of people like that. The coordination of the defense is impressive, like watching an athletic chess match.

• MLB - New York Mets - If I picked the Yankees instead, my soon-to-be-Father-in-law would kill me first, and then after that, he would refuse to let me borrow any of his Objectivism lecture tapes.

Boxing - This was the sport that got me into sports. The first time I saw Angel Manfredy fight Arturo Gatti, I was hooked for life. Unfortunately, heavyweight boxing is in a slump due to a lack of talented boxers. Hopefully that will change soon.

• Marco Antonio Barrera - my favorite boxer. He's getting up in years, but still very competitive. His fights with Erik Morales were some of the greatest sporting events of all time, in my opinion. Not only is he an amazing athlete, he's a gentleman and a professional. The lower weight divisions (Featherweight, Lightweight, Welterweight) are the most exciting divisions in boxing right now.
  
• Muhammad Ali - possibly the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time (Muhammad himself certainly thought so). He's the only champ ever to win the Heavyweight title three times. Watch some of his fights on ESPN Classic and you'll see why he's so highly revered.

UFC - I just recently got into watching the Ultimate Fighting Championships, and I'm absolutely hooked. Very little rules, barely any gloves, just two men inside a cage doing everything they can to knock each other out. Brutal, but very exciting.

• "Big Daddy" Joe Stevenson - An up and coming lightweight fighter, he's still somewhat untested. But like Barrera, Joe is a gentleman, a family man, and a professional in addition to being a big time butt-whipper. He won his last fight in about 30 seconds.
• "Iceman" Chuck Liddell - This is about the scariest guy I've ever seen. In a sport where most of the better fighters win using wrestling and jujitsu, the "Iceman" knocks guys out cold with his fists. Old school!

And that's just a sampling of my sports nuttiness. Any fellow sports nuts reading this who also live in the NYC area, drop me a line. We can go nuts together!

--Dan Edge

Road Bump in Illinois

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

Socialized medicine, according to Glenn Reynolds, has "crater[ed]in Illinois".

But has it cratered in America? I am afraid not.

The Democratic House in Springfield killed the proposal [to finance socialized medicine], 107-0, after [Democratic Governor Rod] Blagojevich came out against his own idea when it became clear he was going to be humiliated. Only a month earlier he had said he was prepared to wage "the fight of the century" in defense of his plan to impose a $7.6 billion "gross receipts tax" on Illinois businesses.

...

But a funny thing happened on this road to Canadian health care. The state's more rational Democrats revolted, arguing it would drive businesses out of Illinois. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was an early opponent, and Democratic Lieutenant Governor Patrick Quinn was cool to it. House Speaker Michael Madigan very publicly withheld his support and last week came out against the tax hike.

...

"To describe every major CEO in Illinois as fat cats is a mistake," said Chicago Mayor Daley. "They don't have to be here. They can go to Wisconsin. They can go to Indiana. They can go to India. They can go to China. So if you want to beat up businesses, go beat 'em up, and when they leave, just wave to 'em and they're going to wave back to you." Even Jesse Jackson disowned the Governor's plan, noting that "We all want health care. But business closer is not good health." [bold added]

Call me crazy, but to claim that any Democrat is "rational" in this day and age is a stretch. This episode will not end calls for socialized medicine for the same reason my college physics professor had bullet fragments in his back from his successful attempt to flee Communist rule in Hungary.

To understand this, you must think like a Democrat for a moment. Socialized medicine is a "moral imperative" -- despite the fact that it entails making physicians and others into slaves -- and the ability of those who provide it (in this case, by footing the bill) to flee Illinois is what stopped this from happening.

Clearly, then, freedom, even the de facto kind accidentally produced by States' Rights, is the "problem". Illinois can't "go it alone" because of all those other, pesky, freer states. In the minds of the Democrats, we must have national socialism of medicine in order to "make it work" -- by making going out of state an impossible option. Besides, international trade, and therefore the protectionist measures that will prevent businesses from going overseas, can only be regulated at the national level anyway.

So mark my words. Socialized medicine has not really been defeated in Illinois. Anyone who takes this reversal as unqualified "good news" -- and today's issue of a certain newsletter was FUBAR, so I couldn't satisfy my morbid curiosity by checking it -- is delusional. This defeat buys us time -- perhaps -- and that is all. And we will lose even that if we allow ourselves, complacently, to think that the Democrats have suddenly gained a new respect for the value of freedom.

If a statist is thwarted by the ability of the people he wants to enslave to move, he will look for a way to keep them from moving. This is why my professor had metal fragments in his back, and that is why national socialist -- pun intended -- medicine is not dead. Statists close their borders for a reason. Illinois merely showed us what that reason is.

-- CAV

Marriage Bill "Accidentally" Passed

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

A marriage bill sponsored by Warren Chisum that was designed to send prospective couples to marriage counseling classes (and that would add a two-year waiting period for divorces for those who don't take the classes) was passed by accident by the Texas legislature yesterday -- if you believe the politicians who did it.

"It just got past me. It got past us all," said Rep. Robert Talton, R-Pasadena, who said he still opposes the fee hike and would change his vote if he could.

"I admit that. We're all busy doing conference committees, doing amendments or whatever the case may be," he said. "I know a lot of people weren't paying attention."

The bill had previously, in a move that reportedly would kill it, been amended to exclude its mechanism of "enticement," a higher fee for couples who do not take the class.

Now, all that has to happen for this blatantly theocratic bit of foolishness to become law is for our social conservative governor to sign it.

Awhile back, I lamented the non-principled method by which this bill was being fought. That was bad enough, but I see that I can add carelessness, and possibly underhandedness to the list of what's wrong with today's politicians.

No news story I could find on the passage of this bill said anything about the two-year wait for divorces, but I am sure after all this that it's a safe assumption that the measure remains in place.

-- CAV

Study of Troops' Mental Health, Ethics Indicts Bush's Selfless War

By Elan Journo:

A recently disclosed Pentagon study on the impact of the Iraq war on U.S. combat troops suggests that many are stressed and hold views at odds with official ethics standards. Critics view this as evidence that more must be done to ensure troops comply with those standards. But in fact the study provides evidence for a searing indictment of Washington's immoral battlefield policies--policies that entail the sacrifice of American troops for the sake of the enemy.

The study reports, for example, that less than half of the soldiers and Marines surveyed would report a team member for unethical behavior. It also finds that "soldiers that have high levels of anger, experienced high levels of combat or screened positive for a mental health problem were nearly twice as likely to mistreat non-combatants" as those feeling less anger and screening negative for a mental health problem.

Although many military personnel may support the Iraq war, and although war is inherently distressing, Washington's immoral policies necessitate putting our troops in an impossible situation. The reported attitudes of combat troops in Iraq can be understood as the natural reaction of individuals thrust into that situation.

U.S. troops were sent, not to defend America against whatever threat Hussein's hostile regime posed to us, as a first step toward defeating our enemies in the region; but instead the troops were sent (as Bush explained) to "sacrifice for the liberty of strangers," putting the lives of Iraqis above their own. Bush sent our troops to lift Iraq out of poverty, open new schools, fix up hospitals, feed the hungry, unclog sewers--a Peace Corps, not an army corps, mission. Consistent with that immoral goal, Washington enforced self-sacrificial rules of engagement that prevent our brave and capable forces from using all necessary force to win, or even to protect themselves: they are ordered not to bomb key targets such as power plants, and to avoid firing into mosques (where insurgents hide) lest we offend Muslim sensibilities.

According to the report: "More than one-third of all Soldiers and Marines continue to report being in threatening situations where they were unable to respond due to the Rules of Engagement (ROE). In interviews, Soldiers reported that Iraqis would throw gasoline-filled bottles (i.e., Molotov cocktails) at their vehicles, yet they were prohibited from responding with force for nearly a month until the ROE were changed. Soldiers also reported they are still not allowed to respond with force when Iraqis drop large chunks of concrete blocks from second story buildings or overpasses on them when they drive by. Every group of Soldiers and Marines interviewed reported that they felt the existing ROE tied their hands, preventing them from doing what needed to be done to win the war."

When being ethical on Washington's terms means martyring oneself and one's comrades, it is understandable that troops are disinclined to report "unethical" behavior. When they are in effect commanded to lay down their lives for hostile Iraqis, it is understandable that troops should feel anger and anxiety. Anger is a response to perceived injustice--and it is perversely unjust for the world's most powerful military to send its personnel into combat, prevent them from doing their job--and expect them to die for the sake of the enemy. Our troops are put in the line of fire as sacrificial offerings--and it would be natural for an individual thrust into that position to rebel with indignation at such a fate.

The study not only indicts the self-crippling rules of engagement that liberals and conservatives endorse; it brings to light the perversity of the moral code of self-sacrifice on which those rules of engagement are based.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (www.AynRand.org) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.

The Democrats' Assault on Freedom of Speech

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

"Fight the doctrine which slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual." (Ellsworth Toohey, The Fountainhead, p. 669, Centennial edition.)

The gloating, drooling avarice with which the Democrats took possession of Congress should have shocked no one. They took over the House and Senate like a spendthrift heir who had finally won a long-contested lawsuit over the distribution of a decedent's estate. All their plans for expanding the welfare state and government powers were put on hold for the longest time - they thought - and now they were going to have a feast redirecting the nation's private wealth and abridging its remaining freedoms as they saw fit - with government force.

They were ready and eager to bulldoze everything to make way for Hillary's "Village," declaring political eminent domain over the whole country.

The irony is that the man who blocked their agenda for seven years, Republican President George W. Bush, is responsible for having expanded government powers and enlarged the federal debt on such a scale that his administration's record would turn Franklin D. Roosevelt green with envy. Bush pulled a rabbit out of his hat, in the name of "free enterprise" and other "conservative" values, and did what the Democrats would have given their eyeteeth to do in the name of explicit collectivism, only wholesale. Bush's social, economic and moral values are certainly not those of the Democrats; they are just different forms of the same things, different expressions and applications of statist and collectivist policies.

It is no accident of political history that the campaign for the White House has begun so prematurely, either. In their hurry to ensure that they win occupancy of it, several of the Democratic Party, notably "Billary" Clinton, announced their candidacies early in the year. The Republicans have responded in kind. Now there are about as many stance-modeled aspirants for Pennsylvania Avenue in each of the parties as pins at the end of a bowling alley.

This is because everyone, Democrat, Republican, Independent, seems to sense - I do not say "know," because that would be giving candidates of either party too much epistemological credit, their "knowledge" is more feral than objective - that the next presidential election will be a make-or-break election: Whichever party seizes the White House, and has a friendly, compliant Congress to work with, will set the future course of the nation. Under the Republicans, the nation has been creeping toward statism and de facto totalitarianism. Under the Democrats, it will gallop towards them and political and economic disaster.

The Republicans have always wanted to experiment with censorship, but what has stymied them is not being able to find a nicer, less scary term for it. In fact, freedom of speech over the airwaves and in some newspapers has allowed them to criticize the liberal left. The abandonment of the "Fairness Doctrine" on the airwaves, instituted by the FCC in 1949 and dropped in 1987 - the failure of government power to coerce a radio or television station to carry "opposing " or "conflicting" viewpoints - has been a boon to especially conservative radio talk show hosts. Until the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, many stations preferred to remain silent on issues rather than attempt to perform the "public service" of presenting opposing positions.

As Adam Thierer observed on the Cato Institute's TechKnowledge site:

"...The Fairness Doctrine actually stifled the growth of disseminating views and, in effect, made free speech less free. As the FCC noted in repealing the doctrine in 1987, it 'had the net effect of reducing, rather than enhancing, the discussion of controversial issues of public importance.'" (April 20, 2004)

The Democrats, however, are not so shy about what they want to impose. They want to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" as a means of silencing or muting popular talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity. Why? Chiefly because these men make more sense to the average listener or viewer and seem to be on the side of reason and right. They give voice to the rational or semi-rational values that many people hold, especially working, productive people who certainly do not hear themselves defended by Democrats, politicians or bureaucrats.

These talk show hosts are as a rule non-politically correct, willing to tackle issues that the politically correct dare not discuss. They are often acerbic and controversial. They practice what the Democrats and liberal lefties claim they want to encourage - debate and the airing of issues. They are competition the Democrats cannot match, not in intellectual content, not in personality.

In short, conservative talk shows are an alternative to and a relief from a news media and intellectual establishment dominated largely by the liberal left. These shows are not mainstream - the liberal left is - but they are a kind of escape from that mainstream, that is, from The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and the major news networks.

The Democrats wish to lock and bolt that door of escape in the name of "diversity" of opinion, and to punish anyone for daring to pry it back open. The Democrats' charges against "right wing" radio and television ignore two important facts: one, that the liberal left has a virtual monopoly on the news media, and this monopoly of "viewpoints" reaches all the way down to prime time sitcoms; and two, that the liberal left simply hasn't the same appeal as "right wing" news media.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat, sponsored a bill (H.R. 4069, according to the Human Rights Council site, H.R. 3302, according to The Raw Story site) in the House introduced in 2004 called the "Media Ownership Reform Act," which is also sponsored in the Senate by Vermont Senator and Democrat Bernie Sanders. The bill would compel especially radio broadcasters to allow "dissenting opinions" to be aired, whether or not those opinions can find a sponsor and whether or not a broadcaster wishes to air it. But, even if a broadcaster was willing to underwrite, at its own cost, an opinion that dissented from, say, Rush Limbaugh's viewpoints, what liberal lefty spokesman has the same charisma and forcefulness of delivery as Limbaugh?

The bill claims its purpose is to "amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prevent excessive concentration of ownership of the nation's media outlets, to restore fairness in broadcasting, and to foster and promote localism, diversity, and competition in the media."

Section 3, 2(a) of the bill reads:

"Public Interest Obligation to Cover Publicly Important Issues - A broadcast licensee shall afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance. The enforcement and application of the requirement imposed by this subsection shall be consistent with the rules and policies of the Commission in effect on January 1, 1987."

That is the most important wording in the bill. The rest of it is largely complaints about how the broadcast industries reorganized themselves after the lapse of the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987, and much gobbledygook Congressional patois about "vertical integrations" and the like.

The next most important section of the bill is Section 5: Invalidation of Media Ownership Deregulation, which abrogates the new broadcasting rules adopted in 2003. It reads like Directive 10-289 in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and even uses 2003 as the "base year."

Further, the bill also hints that the print media - newspapers, magazines, and the like - may be the focus of another bill to regulate reading material, having committed the same "sin" of unregulated "vertical integration" and not serving the "public interest." The desire to break up those "monopolies" is all too apparent in the bill's language.

The primary, unstated object of the bill is to consign all "opposing" viewpoints to the purgatory of the subjective, to diminish the importance of ideas ("My opinion is as true as yours, but we must let the government decide what is right for the public good"), while the government assumes absolute power over freedom of speech to decide, for example, whether Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are performing a "public service."

The Democrats, in short, wish to control what Americans hear and say, and to erase all "competition" in ideas. And the best way of ensuring that Americans have no choice is to regulate the means by which they speak and listen.

"All that stuff will end," said Rep. Hinchey at a recent National Conference for Media Reform, reported Insight magazine on May 1st in its May 1-7 online edition. Hinchey and his political ilk are noted for claiming there is a conspiracy to impose fascism on the U.S., a fascism coming from the right. He would strenuously protest any claim that his bill would advance fascism from the only direction it could come: the left.

(The curious thing is that conservative publications such as Insight object to the bill more because it would purportedly champion liberal causes that oppose "traditional," religious ones, than because it would be a further infringement on freedom of speech. "God" is not present in any of the liberal left's causes; ergo, it must be evil and anti-American. This observation also applies to the second freedom of speech-repressing bill discussed below. One wonders if the First Amendment would fare any better if the country was under the thumb of the Christian right.)

The simplest solution to the "problem" of "media concentration" is for the Federal Communications Commission to auction off the whole broadcasting spectrum to the highest bidders, then be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and abolished. As the government should be got out of the economy, it should be prohibited from entering the realm of freedom of speech.

The second major threat to the First Amendment is a bill that has already passed in the House, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R. 1343, according to The Traditional Values Coalition site, or H.R. 1592, according to the Human Rights Council site), sponsored by Democrat Rep. John Conyers of Michigan.

This bill would empower the Justice Department to assist local law enforcement agencies in investigating and combating "hate crimes," that is, "violent bias-motivated crimes."

"Federal support, in the form of grants for training or through direct assistance, will ensure all bias-motivated violence is adequately investigated and prosecuted," reports the Human Rights Council site.

Of course, any "violent bias-motivated" crimes should be treated as crimes, period, not as "hate crimes." If one assaulted a Muslim, or a Catholic, or a Baptist simply because that person was a Muslim, Catholic or Baptist, one should be charged with assault on the individual, not on his race or religion. The character attributes of the assailant and victim, including the contents of their minds, are irrelevant. A motive is not a crime, but an action is.

To the statists in our midst, however, that is too simple an idea, too logical, and certainly not collectivist. But since group or tribal collectivism has gained ground in this country - of individuals identifying with a group, race or other collective for their own protection against other groups, or simply as an empowering political expedient - secondary attributes such as gender, creed or "sexual orientation" have entered not only our law courts but political considerations, as well.

American individualism has given way to cipherism.

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of this bill, stalled in Congress since 2001, has been the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). It might be curious that an Islamic organization would endorse a bill that protects homosexuals and other groups that are an anathema to the Islamic creed, such as women, Christians and other religious sects. But the bill would serve to stifle critical commentary of Islam itself.

"Violence," according to CAIR and similar Islamic organizations, includes hurt feelings or offended sensibilities. It would also include "discriminatory" actions against Muslims, such as the removal of the "flying imams" from a Minneapolis plane because other passengers were suspicious of their pre-flight and onboard behavior.

"Support for this legislation is overwhelming," reports the Human Rights Council site, citing law enforcement organizations, the Attorney General, churches, mayors, disabilities advocates, and numerous polls. JihadWatch reported, "The Council on American-Islamic Relations today congratulated the U.S. House of Representatives on its passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act." (May 1st)

Well, of course CAIR would be jubilant. Congress will give it the means to gag all critics of Islam and an invaluable tool for advancing its agenda of submission.

There is no reason to doubt that organizations such as CAIR will sooner or later attempt to include the printed word that criticized Islam as an instance of a "violent bias-motivated" hate crime.

These two bills, if enacted into law, would form a pincer movement that would squeeze the last shred of meaning from the First Amendment.

Eric Daniels on Jamestown

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Particularly in light of the increasingly common claim that America was founded on Christian principles, I very much enjoyed this ARI op-ed by Eric Daniels on the meaning of Jamestown:

Jamestown: Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal
By Eric Daniels

On May 14, America will commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The occasion provides us with an opportunity to understand and celebrate the distinctive, secular ideal underlying America's freedom and prosperity.

Although many Americans recognize that Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in North America (predating the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts by over a decade), too many mistakenly view the religious ethos of the New England colonies as the impetus for America's flourishing. But the religious colonists, whose moral outlook stands opposed to our ideals of intellectual and political liberty, merely transplanted Old World ideas to new soil. The New World that promised opportunity and progress had begun in Jamestown, where the defining spirit of American individualism was born.

The Jamestown settlement project began, not as a Puritan escape to pursue and enforce a dogmatic faith, but with a group of profit-seeking investors in London pooling capital in a joint-stock company, a forerunner of our modern corporations. Members of the Virginia Company had organized with the goal of uncovering economic opportunity in North America by finding precious metals and possibly a water route to the Pacific.

The intrepid band of 104 adventurers who survived the Atlantic journey, braved a forbidding wilderness, established Jamestown, and faced extreme peril. In its first fragile decade, Jamestown lost hundreds of settlers to disease, starvation, and war, with casualty rates in one harsh winter reaching 80 percent of the colony. Eventually, under the deft leadership of Captain John Smith, the colony weathered these trials to emerge with renewed resolve. Smith himself had risen from modest circumstances in England to lead these adventurers, and he saw America as a land where his kind of self-reliance could flourish.

Though the Virginia Company found little gold and no sea route to Asia, they soon discovered something vastly more important--that economic opportunity lay wherever men were left free to work and create new wealth. In contrast to the rigid class structure and static economy of Jacobean England, America promised rewards based on individual merit. It was this spirit, and not the Puritan belief in cosmic predestination and unthinking duty to God, that attracted men to pursue their own earthly success in the New World.

"Here every man may be master and owner of his own labor and land," Smith noted in one of his many promotional books intended to attract new settlers to America. "If he have nothing but his hands," he boasted, "he may set up his trade, and by industry quickly grow rich." For Smith and the other early settlers of Jamestown, the profound significance of America lay in the possibility that a man could choose, pursue, and realize his own destiny--it lay in a new ideal of individual liberty.

By the late eighteenth century, under the growing influence of that ideal, the colonists began to resist and protest against British imperial controls on their economic and political freedom, which led to the American Revolution. In framing our constitutional government, the Founders put individualism into political practice by protecting individual rights against the claims of any cleric, monarch, or legislative majority. The new nation's founding ideals had emerged in opposition to the religious morality that entailed obedience to Biblical teachings and authority, conformity to the group, and condemnation of worldliness and material success.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the individualist spirit born in Jamestown brought countless millions to America, each looking to create a better life for himself. Through the years, that spirit has fostered untold prosperity by encouraging self-reliant innovators like Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, or James J. Hill. Its legacy lives on in America today, in anyone who believes that each individual owns his own life and has an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness.

In the centuries since Jamestown, America has thrived because of this distinctive ideal--an ideal in marked contrast not only to America's religious colonies but also to the rest of the world today, where duty to the group or to divine command still subjugates millions.

Americans should pause to celebrate the full significance of the Jamestown anniversary as an opportunity to appreciate and rededicate themselves to America's noble spirit of individualism. Doing so will help remind us of the need to defend this value from those who would compromise or attack it. Doing any less would be an act of injustice to those brave men who helped to shape our most important institutions.

Eric Daniels, PhD, is a Visiting Scholar at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University, and a guest writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Taking Prayer Seriously

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you're not of strong mind and body, you might wish to skip these May 3rd remarks by President Bush on our "National Day of Prayer":

As Shirley mentioned, since the days of our founding, our nation has been called to prayer. That's exactly what our first President did, George Washington. "It's the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor." It's interesting that the first President said those words.

For two centuries, Americans have answered this call to prayer. We're a prayerful nation. I believe that makes us a strong nation. Each day, millions of our citizens approach our Maker. We pray as congregations in churches and in synagogues, and mosques, and in temples. We welcome people of all faiths into the United States of America.

We pray as families, around the dinner table, and before we go to sleep. We pray alone in silence and solitude, withdrawing from the world to focus on the eternal, spending time in personal recollection with our Creator.

We pray for many reasons. First, we pray to give thanks for the blessings the Almighty has bestowed upon us. We pray to give thanks. We give thanks for our freedom. We give thanks for the brave men and women who risk their lives to defend it. We give thanks for our families who love and support us. We give thanks for our plenty. We give thanks for our nation.

Second, we pray for the strength to follow God's will in our lives, and for forgiveness when we fail to do so. Through prayer, each of us is reminded that we are fallen creatures in need of mercy, and in seeking the mercy and compassion of a loving God, we grow in mercy and compassion ourselves.

We feel the tug at our souls to reach out to the poor, the elderly, the stranger in distress. And by answering this call to care for our brothers and sisters in need, our hearts grow larger and we enter into a deeper relationship with God.

Third, we pray to acknowledge God's sovereignty in our lives and our complete dependence on Him. This is probably the toughest prayer of all, particularly for those of us in politics. In the humility of prayer we recognize the limits of human strength and human wisdom. We seek the strength and wisdom that comes from above. We ask for the grace to align our hearts with His, echoing the words of Scripture, "Not my will, but thine be done." We ask the Almighty to remain near to us and guide us in all we do, and when He is near we are ready for all that may come to us.

Finally, we pray to offer petitions, because our Father in heaven knows our cares and our needs. We trust in the promise of a loving God: Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find. Inspired by this confidence we pray that the Almighty will pour out His blessings on those we love. We ask His healing for those who suffer from illness, for those who struggle in life. We ask His comfort for the victims of tragedy, and that the injured may be healed and the fallen may find comfort in the arms of their Creator. We implore His protection for those who protect us here at home and in far away lands. We pray for the day when His peace will reign in every nation and in every land until the ends of the earth.

The greatest gift we can offer anyone is the gift of our prayers, because our prayers have power beyond our imagining. The English poet Tennyson wrote, "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Prayer has the power to change lives and to change the course of history. So on this National Day of Prayer, let us seek the Almighty with confidence and trust, because our Eternal Father inclines his ear to the voice of his children, and answers our needs with love.

May God bless America. (Applause.)

Isn't it comforting to know that the leader of our nation and of the free world is guided by thought-beams to and from his imaginary god? Seriously, I'm flabbergasted that modern people who drive cars, listen to iPods, and send e-mail actually take prayer seriously as a real means of changing the world. Yet it's undeniable that they do.

Perhaps because my childhood was 99.9% devoid of religion, that was a fairly recent discovery for me. It wasn't even a serious possibility to me until I read the booklet "30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus" last fall. (I acquired that when I attended Sunday services at the evangelical "Faith Bible Chapel" megachurch.) Each page of the book gives a few paragraphs of information on the religion of some country, with specific recommendations for prayers at the bottom. For example, the page on Syria recommends:

• Pray for the publishing and distribution of relevant evangelistic materials, and for the provision of finances to fund these materials.
  
• Pray for minority groups, such as the Alawites, Druze, Shiites, and Yazidis, to be reached with the Gospel.
  
• Syria has been in an economic slump for about six years. Pray for the poor, that God would provide for their needs, and also open doors for them to hear the Good News.
  
• There have been many reforms under the new President, Dr Bashar al-Assad. Pray that there would be further modernization and true religious freedom. (Currently, those who are born into Muslim families may not legally change their religion.)
  
• Many churches are afraid of Muslim-background believers and do not want them to come into their churches, fearing that they are spies or that they want to marry a Christian girl. This is a difficult problem which does not have simple answers. The Apostle Paul had a somewhat similar experience (Acts 9:10-16). Pray for Muslims who trust Christ to be able to find fellowship with others of similar background within their cultural context.
  
• There are few Muslim-background believers in Christ. Pray that each one could remain firmly in their cultural context, and would be used to win their friends and family.

The page for the Congo recommends:

• Each January a large Pastors conference takes place in Kinshasa, the capital. Pray that the pastors will continue in the unity of Christ for the good of the country and outreach to the Muslims.
  
• A constant prayer request from the Pastors conference is for Bibles! Pray that bible organizations would hear and that large shipments of French bibles would come to the Congo. Pray too that corrupt customs officials would allow the bibles into DRC without exacting any tolls or bribes.
  
• The theft of resources continues, while Congo still lacks the infrastructure to provide its people with food, clean water, health care and education. Pastors desperately want to help practically as well.
  
• In the Congo, rape is a cheaper weapon of war than bullets, also among Muslims. Pray that young women will not associate this horror with "Christian" Rebels.
  
• Church radio networks are growing, but the state-controlled broadcasting network has the greatest reach. Pray that church radio would increase without denominational competition and that state broadcasting would use Christian content.

These prayers are thoroughly religious. The sole overarching goal is to win more converts for Christ, not to solve any real-life, this-worldly problems, not even serious ones like repression, rape, and corruption. In other words, these prayers are not like those of a desperate kid who wants to do well on an upcoming exam or a distraught wife of a soldier who wants her husband to come home safely. These prayers are serious devotions to Christ, performed with full belief in their power to physically change the world, with the sole aim of winning more devoted converts to Christianity. In the modern age, that's damn scary.

Tufts Islamic University

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

Yesterday, I criticized an article by Neal Boortz that called for satellite radio stations to appease their would-be censors in Congress by voluntarily purging themselves of all shock jocks. Among my problems with this approach was that these stations would have to act upon the broadest possible meaning of the term "shock jock" to even be able to claim that they'd cleaned up their act: "[B]y what standards should someone be deemed a 'shock jock'? [Consider] what some leftist and religious constituencies manage to find 'offensive'..."

Well, it turns out that Tufts University, a private institution, has provided us with an excellent example of what can happen when the irrational demands of certain groups are allowed to dictate policies on what kind of speech is considered acceptable by an organization that claims to support open debate. From Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE, via Instapundit):

Today, FIRE announced the decision by a disciplinary panel at Tufts to find the conservative student newspaper, The Primary Source, guilty of "harassment" for, among other things, publishing a satirical ad that listed less-than-flattering facts about Islam during Tufts' Islamic Awareness Week. You can see the ad here, and Eugene Volokh has also published it with excellent commentary over at his blog, but, just to make sure people see the ad for themselves, I have reprinted the full text....

...

So does this paint Islam in a nice light? No. Is it one-sided? Yes, but that was kind of the point. The students were responding to what they thought was a one-sided and overly rosy depiction of Islam during Islamic Awareness week. But is it unprotected harassment!? One certainly hopes not, or else "harassment" just became a truly lethal threat to free speech -- an "exception" that completely swallows the rule.

This is perhaps the most troubling and far-reaching aspect of this case. The Primary Source published a satirical ad filled with factual assertions and because this angered people it was ruled to be unprotected harassment. If what the complaining students wanted to say was that the TPS facts were wrong, then -- while this still would not be harassment -- that could have been an interesting debate. But instead, in sadly predictable fashion, the students plowed ahead with a harassment claim that, based on the hearing panel's decision, appeared not even to raise the issue of whether or not the statements in the ad were true, but turned only on how they made people feel. A panel consisting of both faculty and students found the publication guilty in flagrant abuse of what harassment case law and regulations actually say, and demonstrating total ignorance of the principles of a free society. Even in libel law (one of the oldest exceptions to the rule of free speech is that you can be punished for defaming people) truth is rightfully an absolute defense. Here, the fact that TPS printed verifiable information -- with citations -- was apparently no defense, nor was the fact that the ad concerned contentious issues of dire global importance. Such an anemic conception of free speech should chill anyone who cares about basic rights and democracy itself.

Eugene Volokh adds the following at The Volokh Conspiracy:

Welcome to the new freedom of speech at the new university. No, the Committee's actions don't violate the First Amendment, since Tufts is a private university. But they violate basic principles of academic freedom and public debate on university campuses, especially when the top university administrators claim to "fully recognize freedom of speech on campus." Appalling.

A roundup of related posts appears at the end of another post of his on this subject.

I agree with Mr. Lukianoff that a word with the college president is in order:

Since those students and faculty obviously did not think about the ramifications of this decision, we put it to you, President Bacow: do you think the publication of factual assertions should be a punishable offense if they hurt the wrong people’s feelings, regardless of whether or not they are true? I hope he will think hard on what the U.S. would look like if that was the law of the land. It’s not a country that most of us would recognize or even want to live in. We ask again for President Bacow to live up to the best principles of a liberal university in a free society and overturn this dangerous decision.

All a government can do is guarantee freedom of speech by preventing its citizens from being threatened or harmed for simply speaking their minds. But the value of this freedom depends on its being used, which requires a forum (i.e., the use of someone's property) to be effective. If private individuals do not use this freedom, and if private institutions that purport to offer forums for free speech do not understand its nature, such governmental guarantees will be for naught.

At least in the meantime, students who do not wish to endure four years of Islamic censorship have the choice of attending other universities, where the value of free inquiry is appreciated enough to enjoy more than just the lip-service of their administrations.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added last line.

John Allison Interview

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I haven't yet listened to this EconTalk interview with John Allison, but it looks interesting:

John Allison, CEO of BB&T Bank, lays out his business philosophy arguing for the virtues of profits, self-interest and production. His definition of justice, one of the core values of his firm, is that those who produce more, get more. He argues that Bill Gates would do more for the world improving Microsoft than running his foundation and giving away money. Allison praises Atlas Shrugged and refuses to let his bank make loans to companies that use eminent domain to acquire property. Is this any way to run a company? Does Allison really run his company this way? How does he deal with the gap between his philosophy and our popular culture's view of business and profits? Listen as Allison and host Russ Roberts discuss BB&T's unusual business strategy.

Letters to the 208 Commission

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Today is the last day for public comment to Colorado's "208 Commission on Health Care Reform." If you're already written, thank you! If you live in Colorado but haven't yet written, please please please do so. You can make a difference! Even just a quick paragraph advocating free market reforms would be fantastic. If you have more than a spare moment to craft a letter, you should look at Lin Zinser's We Stand FIRM blog post about writing the commission. Below, I've included the letters from Lin Zinser, Paul Hsieh, and myself.

From Lin Zinser:

Americans can freely choose where to live and what kind of housing we can afford. We can choose whether to buy a car and, if so, what kind, size and price we want to spend. We can choose what kind of food to eat and whether we want it ready-made, as in restaurants or fast food joints, or whether we want it partially made, or from fresh ingredients -- where we do the preparation. We can choose what kinds of entertainment we seek, including movies, CDs, books, or whether to attend live events like wrestling matches, theater, concerts or the opera. We can choose what kind of work we do, our place of employment, and some can choose what hours to work, and whether to work from home, an office or outdoors. These are among thousands of other choices Americans make in our lives -- and because we live in America we have more choices than most other people in the rest of the world.

We can choose to live simply, without electricity -- as a friend's 93 year old grandmother chooses to do because she thinks simple is better, or with as much technology and space as Bill Gates can buy. We can choose to buy clothes at second hand shops -- as many of my financially well-off girl-friends do, or we can choose to spend hundreds of dollars on a haircut as Presidential Candidate John Edwards does. We can shop for groceries at Walmart, 24 hours a day, or at Whole Foods, where we pay more for organic foods. Our economic choices are not forced on us by our political status or our government.

These are the kinds of choices that people from around the world come to America to experience -- for a lifetime. People from around the world also come to America to get the latest medical technology, the newest life-saving drug, and some of the most radical treatments available, even if incompletely tested or proven -- in order to save their lives.

Think about one astonishing fact -- the people in countries with universal, mandatory health coverage -- including the Europe, Great Britain and Canada -- even if taken together, have not created the wonderful, magnificent changes that we have seen over the past 40 years in medicine in America even though their population is more than 3 times the American population. In most of these countries, such wonderful life saving treatments, even if adopted from America, are restricted or rationed.

Why has America led all of these countries in medical advancements that have enhanced the quality of life of all, including premature infants, people with failing organs, cancer victims and aging Americans? Why is there no rationing in America? Why do people come to this country for advanced treatment s for cancer and other diseases? The answer is Capitalism -- the social, economic and political system which allows men and women to use their minds in freedom, thus providing creators and producers the financial incentive -- the profit motive -- to investigate new (hence unproved and untried) technologies and new science, even at the risk of failure.

Government controlled health insurance and medicine do not foster change and innovation. They foster the status quo. One reason is that any government program, looking at unproved and untried methods or strategies, cannot spend taxpayer dollars on them for political reasons -- the risk is too great. Additionally, Government tends to enforce one standard of doing things -- one way of treatment -- whether it's the post office or health care. It took Fed Ex and UPS to provide choice in how fast a package could be delivered. There is one Medicare part A for all Americans 65 or older. Medicaid participants don't have choices -- they have limited options. But, how many choices do Americans make with regard to food, clothing, housing, transportation and entertainment every day of our lives.

The only reasonable principle for health insurance and medicine is the principle uniquely forged by the founding fathers. It is the principle enshrined by the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution -- that all are created equal with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those inalienable rights require a social-economic-political system that promotes freedom of action -- the freedom that allows Americans to make all of the choices I mentioned -- and more. In Colorado, we need American health insurance and American medicine with its innovation and enhancement of the quality of life -- not another European government program of the status quo.

Lin Zinser
Executive Director
Ideas Matter!, Inc.
www.WeStandFIRM.org

From Paul Hsieh:

Dear 208 Commission:

Here are my responses to the two questions on which you have requested public input, regarding the health care proposals under consideration:

"(1) What are the one or two most important features that you feel must be included in any Colorado health care reform?"

The most important feature would be reduction or elimination of mandates on individuals, insurance companies, and employers. This will allow patients, doctors, and payers to negotiate the best agreements for themselves without being constrained by government force. Mandates on employers and insurance companies (such as mandatory benefit packages, guaranteed issue and/or community ratings) drive up costs without providing better care. Mandates on individuals violate the freedom of contract between patients and their doctors and force one set of patients to subsidize the health care of another set of patients. Individuals can and should be allowed to decide for themselves how to most wisely spend their health care dollars.

"(2) What is the most important principle that should be considered in any reform effort?"

The most important principle is that only free market capitalism can guarantee good quality health care at the lowest prices for patients. Countries and US states in which allocation of health care resources are left to the government inevitably spend more money for poorer-quality care. Plus the decision making become irreversibly politicized, which harms patients who don't have powerful political friends. The free market is the only way to protect the individual rights of patients and doctors. Hence, we must avoid more government mandates, or mandates disguised as limited "choices" within a set of government-selected options.

Patients, providers, and payers working within a free market will come up with innovative and cost-effective solutions that would never occur to central government planners. To deprive patients of that opportunity violates their basic rights and will cause them harm.

Reference: The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care, book by Dr. David Gratzer, a physician who has practiced in both the US and Canada. Among other points, he shows how the government-run medical system results in higher mortality rates for treatable conditions in countries like Canada vs. the USA. Any government-run system of health care will result in more deaths of Colorado patients from to treatable diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc.

Thank you very much,
--------------------
Paul Hsieh, MD
Sedalia, CO
paulhsiehmd@gmail.com

From Diana Hsieh:

Dear 208 Commissioners,

I am writing to encourage you to uphold free market principles in your deliberations about health care reform proposals. A free market in health care -- as opposed to the current system of massive regulations, mandates, and entitlements -- is the only moral and practical option. All the problems from which medicine currently suffers (such as high prices for medical care, non-portable insurance, and the over-use of emergency rooms) stem from government interference in the free market.

Only free markets permit doctors, nurses, and other medical providers to act for the best interests of their patients. Only free markets allow patients to choose how to best spend their hard-earned money to secure and promote their own health. Any other system -- meaning any system with regulations, mandates, and entitlements -- injects bureaucrats into what ought to be wholly private decisions. Patients are told that they must wait months for critical care -- or they are simply denied care altogether. That kind of government meddling is inevitable. When government pays for medical care, neither doctors nor patients have any incentive to use the available medical services judiciously. Then, to prevent total financial ruin from runaway costs (and fraud), the government must step in to limit the use of medical services, whether by rationing care or denying care. Unless the system is scrapped, people will suffer and people will die. That's what the supposedly noble ideal of "universal coverage" means in practice.

The 208 Commission has a wonderful opportunity to help repeal the mandates, regulations, and entitlements that currently burden medical care for the doctors and patients of Colorado. If you do that, you can make Colorado a genuine leader in health care reform!

-- DMH

Diana Hsieh
Sedalia, CO

Please feel free to post your letter to the 208 Commission in the comments.

Privatize the Airwaves

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

Over at Townhall.com is a column by Neal Boortz which says almost everything except what needs to be said (i.e., the title of this post) about the Opie and Anthony controversy. (A particularly vile example of the crude exploits of a now-unemployed pair of shock jocks has been making the rounds.) And not only does Boortz fail to "connect the dots" of his good points, his answer to the threat he rightly perceives will do nothing to head it off.

In sum, it seems that the the Democrats are quietly continuing their attempts to re-tighten the federal noose around talk radio and that the show in question, being particularly vile, has given them the excuse to include satellite radio in their plans.

Here is Boortz's take on how the Democrats will use this show to further their agenda, along with an update on a serious threat to talk radio that is brewing in Congress.

By the end of the day today you're going to hear liberals in congress and the media referring to these two morons as talk show hosts. Comparisons will be drawn between them and people like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and myself. You’ll hear the phrases "hate speech" and "hate radio" over and over again as these leftists push their Stalinist-inspired plans to destroy conservative and libertarian talk radio. By the time the dust has settled the majority of the people in this country --- who don't by the way, listen to talk radio --- will absolutely believe in their hearts that this Opie and Anthony stunt is representative of all talk radio, and these people will be eager to support their politicians in their goal to shut us all down.

Right now we have a little gem called H.R. 3302, the "Media Ownership Reform Act," in the congress. H.R. 3302 is a project of DC Democrats who know that conservative talk radio constitutes a real threat to their plans for total victory in 2008. If H.R. 3302 were to become law, talk radio as you know it would be dead inside of nine months. Period. Thanks to the antics of these two idiots there will be more congressmen who will be willing to join in this and other efforts to control broadcast radio and, incidentally, to control satellite broadcasting as well. [bold added]

Shortly after this, Boortz explains the basis for these efforts, rightly characterizing said basis as a "fiction".

[B]y the time broadcasting came around politicians were savvy enough to find a way around the First Amendment in their goal of controlling broadcast content. [They] created this ridiculous fiction of "the public's airwaves" and have exploited that asinine idea to their benefit for years. Now they're working to increase that control through H.R. 3302 and, at the same time, considering ways to spread their censorship agenda to satellite radio. After all, don't those satellite signals come through those very same airwaves that the politicians claim are owned by the people? [bold added]

So is Boortz getting ready to launch a massive PR campaign about the importance of freedom of speech and how it depends on consistent government protection of property rights? No. Does he plan to hold Opie and Anthony up between his thumb and index finger as an example of how free speech is so important that we must accept the existence of such shows? No.

He is instead calling for a boycott of shock jocks like Opie and Anthony and public pressure on their employers to fire them in order to remove this particular excuse for censorship of satellite radio before the Democrats use it! To his credit, Boortz at least notes how this differs from government censorship when he does so.

[F]ree speech does not mean that you have the right to say anything you please on any radio station or any private satellite cannel. Whoever owns and controls that station and/or satellite has every right in the world to control content. Opie and Anthony are content. XM ought to show some responsibility ... now ... today.

Exercise control.

Get rid of them --- before their virus spreads. [bold added]

Unfortunately, Boortz plays right into the hands of Democrats who want to kill talk radio as well as those of religionists who want to censor broadcast content with this proposal. First of all, this course of action will not stop someone from hiring even Opie and Anthony once the fanfare dies down. Second, by what standards should someone be deemed a "shock jock"? Considering what some leftist and religious constituencies manage to find "offensive", this idea sounds like a very closely-related "virus" to me.

Furthermore, so what if satellite radio were somehow to clean itself up to the satisfaction of all the wannabe censors out there? Their response will not be to retreat in the face of massive evidence of "corporate responsibility", but to frame such behavior as a cynical ploy and call for the government to take over satellite radio anyway to make sure things "stay clean". After all, if it got into this mess once when left unattended, it can do so again.

Worse still, and this is what permits the above scenario to remain possible indefinitely, Boortz fails to explicitly call for the privatization of our airwaves or even to offer a serious moral challenge to the idea that the government "owns" them. "Whoever owns and controls that station and/or satellite has every right in the world to control content." The Democrats see themselves doing just that -- in the name of "the public", who they think is the "real" owner of satellite radio, anyway.

There is nothing wrong with boycotting garbage like Opie and Anthony, but doing so in order to deter government censorship is no substitute for making a direct, moral challenge to the fundamental premise behind what makes government censorship possible. In this case, it is the fiction of public property that ought to be challenged.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a factual error and related passages.
5-12-07: Corrected a typo.

Move over Hank Rearden...

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

Steelmaking has been around for over a century and a half. Good thing that there is still innovation going on in the industry. From a September 18, 2006 Forbes article,

Hismelt has invented a new way of making iron that is supposed to cut production costs by 20%, reduce pollustion and convert billions of tons of currently uneconomic iron ore into a valuable commodity.

If you think that "old" industry doesn't innovate, think again. Everything that has a use can be improved and even old industries like steel, oil and chemicals have innovation occuring in them every day.

This new process for pig iron (the raw carbonized iron that goes into steel) termed "direct smelting" saves money by

• using crude inputs (coal instead of coke, including high sulfur coal)
• allowing use of crude ores (high phosphorus ore)
• using an efficient high temperature furnace
• allowing efficient economics at smaller scale plants

The project drew investors with particular interests in seeing the process become reality, and is on it's way to becoming operational at full scale. Investors are drawn by the desire to see part of the 20% cost savings go into profits. This is how innovation is driven, by investors who can create value in the form of profits from technological improvements. And you get the ultimate benefit in cheaper goods.

Don't Extend the "Hate Crime" Law--Abolish It

IRVINE, Ca.--Last week the House passed a measure that extends the federal "hate crime" law to include attacks motivated by the victims' gender or sexual orientation.

"Congress should not extend the federal 'hate crime' law," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It should abolish the law.

"The government's job is to punish criminals for initiating force against other citizens; objective laws that ban the use of force and fraud are its means of doing so. But 'hate crime' laws undermine objective law at the root by punishing criminals, not for their actions, but for their ideas.

"According to 'hate crime' laws, a murderer deserves a greater punishment if his crime is motivated by an idea such as racism or sexism. If the government assumes the power to punish on the basis of 'unacceptable' ideas, it has assumed the power to exonerate and offer leniency to favored ideas. If anti-abortion religionists hold sway in government, on the premise of 'hate crime' laws, a zealous Christian who guns down an abortion doctor could receive a lighter sentence or be exonerated--on the grounds that such an act is evidence of noble 'idealism.'

"Once the government starts punishing criminals for acting on 'unacceptable ideas,' it has assumed the role of arbiter for which ideas are acceptable or not. If whoever wields power can shape the law to advance an ideological agenda, then it cannot be long before merely holding unorthodox or unconventional ideas becomes a crime that the government punishes.

"The government has no business punishing people for their ideas, no matter how repugnant. By demanding the government do precisely that, 'hate crime' laws threaten our freedom of thought--and undermine the system of objective law that protects it. Such laws should be abolished."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute

Correcting the Politically Correct on Jamestown

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

8 May 2007

To the Editor
The Daily Press
MP 120
7505 Warwick Boulevard
Newport News, VA 23607
(letters@dailypress.com)

Editor:

Bentley Boyd made several statements in his May 6th article, "Why Jamestown Matters," that need correction.

The overall problem with his article is that he does not take into account the role of philosophy - an adolescent role of reason in the early Enlightenment - in the settlement of North America by a culture that was beginning to discover individual rights and capitalism. These ideas, including the importance of the separation of church and state, were identified and systematized later in the 17th century by English philosopher John Locke. The Declaration of Independence is written in Lockean language.

Boyd writes that "Modern, secular Americans don't realize how big a role religion played in the thinking of Europeans four centuries ago." Well, that might be thanks to our failed education system, but the drive for individual rights was fueled by secular ideas of liberty, not religious ones. The Wesley and Whitfield religious phenomena were basically revolts against Anglicism, or the state church of Britain.

Boyd takes a swipe at the political thinkers of the 18th century by asserting "slave labor gave American gentlemen such as Thomas Jefferson the time to work out a free and democratic society for themselves." It was not a "democratic" society that the Founders thought about and later fought for, but a republican form of government. "Democracy" and "republic" are not synonymous political terms. Then, slavery and the slave trade were key elements of the British mercantilist system, which the American colonists protested against throughout the 1760's and 1770's. The Crown collected a revenue on the slave trade, and especially in Virginia slaves by British law could not be emancipated. Also, the Founders had to win their own political freedom before turning to the matter of freeing the slaves.

Boyd also repeats the mantra of the colonists' alleged rapacious treatment of the Indians. Somehow, the vanguard of an advanced civilization was supposed to defer to and treat as an equal a people who had not yet emerged from the Stone Age, had not discovered the wheel or even metals, had been slaughtering each other in internecine tribal warfare for thousands of years, and would have remained in that primitive state had not the Europeans colonized the continent.

The Europeans discovered the New World; the Indians discovered nothing but their own cultural inferiority, which is why most of them sided with the French, who were not interested in civilizing the continent and turning it into a haven for those who wished to escape state power.



Sincerely,

Edward Cline
Yorktown, VA 23690


(Author: "First Prize," "Whisper the Guns," and the "Sparrowhawk" series of novels set in England and Virginia in the decades preceding the Revolution.)

Just When you Thought You Needed State-Funded Science

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

I hate state-funded science. It is a product of welfare-state mentality, and advocated by statists on both the right and the left. While the choice of research targets differs depending on what side of the political aisle one is one, the fundamental idea that basic research is a province of the government goes unchallenged.

Fundamental research is much better directed by private, entrepreneurial and corporate interests, than it is by the government. The profit motive drives better research than does the arbitrary whim of government beaurocrats, open to political pressure.

So it was with mixed feelings that I read the August 16th, 2006 Wall Street Journal article, "Donors Sustain Stem-Cell Effort In California Amid Funding Battle",

Amid court challenges from groups opposed to the state effort, private donors have contributed more than $100 million in recent years to prop up the new stem-cell research agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as well as research programs at state universities, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal. Among the donors are Ray Dolby, the founder and chairman of Dolby Laboratories Inc., who has devoted $21 million to stem-cell-research programs in the past two years. Los Angeles real-estate developer Eli Broad has given at least $27 million. Venture capitalist John Doerr, bond-fund manager Bill Gross, and Qualcomm Inc. founder Irwin Jacobs have also been major contributors.

Such donations underscore the strong support for the controversial research in some corners of the philanthropic world, even as a larger debate rages about the role of government funding. Without these private contributions, the state might have been forced to sharply curtail operations. At the same time, the money has raised concern about the potential for private individuals influencing the direction of the research.

While I wholly disagree with state-funding of medical research, there in the midst of a beaurocratic log-jam was a perfect example of what would happen if the such research was abandoned to private interest. They'd step in, that's what; faster, better, and with more money than that state could provide by raiding its tax coffers.

If only those on the right who claim they favor limited government could dam the log-jam permanently, and redirect basic research to its rightful caretakers.

al-Benedict Strikes Again

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

Quick. A cleric makes death threats against political figures who refuse to use government power to enforce edicts based upon his religion, and yet calls his opponents "terrorists" when they take reasonable steps to counteract his influence. Who is it?

Osama bin Laden? Not this time. Try Pope Benedict, who is threatening politicians with excommunication unless they toe the line in his crusade against the reproductive rights of women:

Pope Benedict on Wednesday warned Catholic politicians they risked excommunication from the Church and should not receive communion if they support abortion. [link added]

In other words, unless a pro-choice politician repents to the Pope's satisfaction before he dies (or better yet, starts opposing legalized abortion), the Pope may decide not to allow him to receive sacraments. This act will pretty much expedite the trip of said politician's immortal soul to Hell, where it will reside forever, as far as this former Catholic understands.

Yes, the soul and the afterlife are imaginary, but such things are more important than real, actual life on this earth to the faithful. And yes, the premise is that the Pope is just God's messenger. But then, there are lots of people these days claiming to be messengers for lots of Gods, each of whom is supposedly the only "true" God. Whip out the yellow crayon and color my eye jaundiced.

So the Pope is threatening members of his flock with a fate worse than death if they don't do as he says. Leaving aside the emptiness of this threat and the complicity of anyone who takes it seriously, is there anything substantively different from terrorism about it?

Yes and no. Due to the emptiness of this threat and the fact that this threat involves the sanction of its victims, what the Pope did is not legally terrorism, but an exercise of his freedom of speech. But on a moral level, it looks about the same to me. Except that anyone who caves is also to blame. Most importantly, these threats will force other people, many not even Catholic, to live to some extent according to Catholic doctrine. This last is due to the fact that the government is entrusted with the right to use force in defense of the rights of its citizens, and the Pope is demanding that his followers betray that trust, and to use that force to make them do his bidding instead.

And if you think I am being heavy-handed in my moral criticism of the Pope, consider the fact that he has already implicitly branded me -- and any other intellectual critic -- as a terrorist. Here's what got someone in Italy denounced by the Vatican for "terrorism":

At the concert, held every year in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica -- Rome's cathedral where Pope Benedict sits as bishop -- one of the presenters, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pontiff's stand on a number of issues.

"The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved," he said.

He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. [bold added]

Please tell me how this exercise of freedom of speech has threatened anyone -- bodily or "spiritually". It has not, although I am sure some theologian somewhere has concocted an argument that it has. I don't care.

Men making threats on behalf of imaginary beings in order to elicit obedience from other men: That's the essence of religious "authority". The world will either perish in an orgy of this soon, or mankind will finally reject religion once and for all.

We may one day thank Pope Benedict for making this crystal clear by emulating the Moslems with his inane threats of hellfire and wild accusations of terrorism.

-- CAV

208 Commission

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Lin Zinser just posted this entry about Colorado's 208 Commission on healthcare reform to the FIRM blog. I think it's important enough to repeat here on NoodleFood.

Between now and Saturday, May 12, 2007, is the only real opportunity to voice your concerns to the 208 Commission through the public comment. After May 12, there is no opportunity for public comment before they select the 3 to 5 proposals, which they will do at public hearings on May 17 and May 18. These 3 to 5 proposals will be the ones submitted to the state legislature next January for its consideration. This means that you and your voice could be heard by the legislature through the commission.

There are currently 11 proposals being considered. I have summarized the 11 proposals briefly below -- at the end of this post.

Only one of the proposals recommends deregulation of the insurance market and of Medicaid. That proposal was submitted by Brian Schwartz, PhD, and his full proposal (worth reading) is called FAIR (Free Markets, Affordability and Individual Rights). (You must download it - it's toward the bottom of the page).

The Commission numbered each tendered proposal -- and the FAIR plan is number 21. The other plans include individual mandates, insurance company benefit mandates, insurance company guaranteed issue and community rating mandates, employer mandates, provider mandates, or some combination of the above. My summary of all eleven is provided at the end of this post.

The Commission is requesting comment on 2 issues related to these proposals:

1) What are the one or two most important features that you feel must be included in any Colorado health care reform?
2) What is the most important principle that should be considered in any reform effort?

There are two ways to provide comment to the 208 Commission. 1) You may submit a comment in writing by e-mail to 208Commission@coloradofoundation.org It is crucial to send your comments this way. Any comment sent to this address will be posted on the Commission website and distributed to all Commissioners for review in advance of the May 17-18 meeting. But the e-mail must be received by May 12. Comments sent to individual commissioners, or received after the deadline will be ignored.

Alternatively, there are five meetings planned across the state this week -- May 10 and May 12 -- for public comment and where you have the opportunity to speak before one or more commissioners. They still want you to submit written testimony at the time of your oral presentation.

This is the last opportunity to express your opinion about the most important principle (and features) to be used to select any proposal. This is the time to speak about capitalism v. government control, the individual rights of doctors and other providers v. the needs of some patients, and freedom in medicine and health insurance v. insurance mandates and other instances of government force.

To be effective to the Commission, any written (or oral) comments must state specifically ONLY the principle and or features that are most important to health care reform, and to give specific reasons for that choice. They are not interested in your advocacy or rejection of any particular proposal.

Some examples of written comments to the 208 Commission might be

• The most important feature to include in any health care reform would be to eliminate all mandates -- whether they require individuals or employers to purchase health insurance, or whether they impose benefit packages on insurance companies, or impose mandatory guaranteed issue and/or community ratings of insurance companies; or any mandate on the care or treatment (including the cost for that care) provided by any health care provider. Mandates violate the freedom of contract between individuals, doctors and insurers. They also increase the cost of health insurance policies for the healthier citizens by subsidizing the cost of those who are not as healthy. OR,
• The most important principle to consider in any health care reform would be that only capitalism can provide the best quality of medicine and health insurance at the lowest possible price. For example, the United States leads the world in innovative, new science and technology in medicine because of its tendency towards market based solutions, not in spite of them. Government controlled medicine and insurance advocate the status quo, and are resistant to change. To continue to have better and better technology to save more premature births, to enhance the quality of the lives of diabetics, heart patients, cancer victims old age survivors, as well as countless other conditions, we must turn to capitalism and capitalism alone, for its infinite choices and solutions, made by individuals in a free market. OR,
• The most important principle to consider is that government involvement in medicine has caused the problems we face in health care today and we need to get government out of medicine. For example, the 1942 IRS ruling distorted the market to favor employer-purchased health insurance policies over individual purchased ones, thus taking the responsibility for the purchase of health insurance from the individual, eliminating portability, transparency of the costs of medical services and health insurance, and encouraging too much coverage for routine care, while discouraging catastrophic care coverage. Another example is EMT ALA, which required all hospitals with emergency rooms (and their doctors) to treat any person, regardless of ability to pay, who believed they had an emergent health issue. This caused doctors and hospitals to treat some people, while getting paid nothing. This in turn caused hospitals and doctors to charge others who could pay more, and caused some hospitals and doctors to stop providing care -- to close emergency rooms and to stop practicing at hospitals with emergency rooms. We need to eliminate provider mandates. OR,
• The most important principle of any health care reform would be respecting individual rights of doctors, insurers, employers and individuals. Doctors and hospitals must be free of mandates that require them to participate in any program (e.g., EMT ALA). Insurers must be free to contract and provide whatever benefits they deem profitable or appropriate (eliminate all mandates including mandatory guaranteed issue and community rating). Employers and individuals must be free to purchase health insurance at whatever level they deem appropriate (e.g., high deductible - HSA, basic minimum, catastrophic only, etc.). No one has a right to force others to provide him or her health care or health insurance -- even though many governments have treated both as temporary privileges -- granting benefits which it can then take away depending on cost, majority vote, or other illusory standard
  

Again, these are examples. The crucial thing is to pick the most important principle for health care reform, or one or two features that are important to consider in health care reform, and make them your own. Feel free to use any of these, expanding or narrowing them to suit your situation. There are many more specific examples for any principle or feature that could be used.

NOW IS THE TIME to send your comments to the 208 Commission. The Commissioners need to understand what is important to you, what principles are crucial to you and how those principles are manifested in features of the various proposals.

To assist you in understanding the essential features of all eleven plans being considered for submission to the legislature, I have summarized them below. You may read the full proposals at the 208 Commmission website by downloading any or all from this page. I used the commission number for each plan. These 11 proposals are as follows:

#21 – FAIR (Free Markets, Affordability and Individual Rights) proposed by Brian Schwartz, PHD. Plan proposes to lower cost of health insurance by eliminating all insurance benefit mandates, thus allowing people to obtain less coverage for fewer dollars. Eliminates single-group of one which eliminate guaranteed issue and community rating for that market.
Seeks to encourage high deductible HSA health insurance plans.

Medicaid Reform seeks to transfer more enrollees into private insurance market. It also uses cost-sharing to eliminate over-consumption of some Medicaid services. He also advocates reduction of asset sheltering for long term care in Medicaid. He also advocates increasing access to home care and, most provocatively, to allow Medicaid to compete for funding with voluntary charities in the private market.

#16 -- The Colorado Health Services Program, proposed by Health Care for All Colorado Coalition – is a single payer, publicly financed program. It covers all primary, preventive, specialty, surgical care, automobile and work-related injuries, prescription drugs, mental health services, chiropractic, dental, basic vision, audiology, home health and hospice services, among others. It states that all providers and hospitals will be paid the same for the same level of service, thus eliminating the drive for profit in determining the quality of care. It is explicitly egalitarian and states that every resident has equal access to program benefits. There is no opt-out provision.

It calls for a statewide, fully integrated information technology network to track outcomes, utilization and expenditures. Removes profit motive from financing resulting in a truly egalitarian health care system. Would create the Colorado Health Services: a non-profit government "insurance company," administered and governed as a public utility with five districts and it would be strictly regulatory - no outside supervision or control. All of its decisions final. It would also determine malpractice, but allow its findings to be public in malpractice litigation in a court of law.

#12 – A Plan for Covering Colorado, proposed by the Committee for Colorado Health Care Solutions – requires a single insurance pool – in which all insurers would be required to participate and would be mandatory guaranteed issue and community rated. All individuals, including all state employees, and employers will be mandated to purchase insurance through the single pool. Employers would be mandated to pay a portion of the employees' health insurance or pay an assessment to the state per employee. Individuals (and employers) would be limited to opt for one of 6 to 10 standardized benefit plans. Policy mandates would include a list of essential services, but could include options of type (PPO or HMO), choice of provider panels, and amounts of co-pays or deductibles allowed. Employers required to allow workers to pay their share of premium through payroll deduction. So employers become the enforcement mechanism -- they collect the premium and forward to the state.

This single insurance pool wold be administered by new public authority – Colorado Health Insurance Purchasing Authority. It will define benefit packages, define and periodically update a standard set of benefits based on effectiveness and cost, define and certify “high-value" providers, define subsidy and premium assistance requirements to be provided to low to middle income individuals. Consumers with premium assistance can opt for only 2 plans, with one an HMO. Authority will also decide guidelines for performance of providers, and of course, determine the amounts paid to the providers.

#11 – Community of Caring proposed by a coalition of CCHN, CCC, CA and CBHC. Individuals have mandate to purchase adequate health insurance; there is also an employer mandate to contribute to employee coverage; Insurers must guarantee insurance regardless of health according to community rating. The plan will provide subsidies to low-income and small businesses and expand Medicaid to more people. Benefits will include preventive care, routine medical services, maternity, diagnostic testing, hospitalization, emergency care, outpatient surgery, mental health and substance abuse treatment, physical, occupational and speech therapies; in-home, hospice, and nursing facility care; durable medical equipment and pharmacy, plus oral health benefits.

Creates a quasi-governmental entity that is exempt from TABOR called Health Insurance Partnership. Also creates and funds the Community of Caring Collaborative Board and the Safety Net Stabilization Program. It will establish comprehensive benefits package, competitively negotiate contracts with private health plans; implement quality standards for insurers and providers; and collect taxes from individuals and employers for the program, and collect monies from state agencies and premiums from health insurers for more funding. It says it will provide a variety of products that modify cost sharing or offer enhanced benefits.

#10 – Healthy Colorado Now – proposed by the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved. Employer Mandated on pay or play basis, which means that employers must pay for insurance or pay an assessment per employee to the state. Policies are guaranteed issue, community rated, standard benefits. There will be a default enrollment system with individual mandates, but the employer is ultimately responsible if the individual doesn't purchase insurance. Benefits will exclude services without proven benefits or with poor cost benefit ratios, so no experimentation or new technologies can be tested or tried. There will be spending caps per individual beneficiary. There will also be a limitation of expensive and heroic services.

Creates the Personal Responsibility Option in Colorado (PRO-CO). Governed by non-profit, non-governmental authority called the Colorado Health Authority. Adopt "medical home" standards, which mandates that every individual must choose a primary care physican who then becomes a gate keeper for specialty services. The plan supposedly creates incentives for standardized care. It will implement new information technology, define standard policy benefits, and provide quality and performance standards. Every non-ERISA insurer must offer at least the PRO-CO benefit package. Individuals do have the option to buy higher levels of coverage. Evidence based medicine.

#9 – An Individual Based Insurance System proposed by the South Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce. Individual and Insurance Company mandates. Mandatory maintenance routine care policies (up to $100,000) and mandatory preventive care (required to get annual exam). Guaranteed issue, community rating. Catastrophic care funded by 5 to 20% of maintenance policy premiums – with financial backing of the pool from a state governmental safety net similar to the role of the FDIC. Mandated benefits on maintenance policies – may limit benefits on cosmetic, self-inflicted, treatment without a reasonable scientific basis, highly experimental, infertility and repetitive injuries caused by extreme choices.

Creates Colorado Health Commission to investigate quality and cost factors that "drive" cost and quality. Discounts for health lifestyle choices. Massachusetts style connector to link insurers and consumers. Vouchers for poor. State clinics for poor and uninsured – one per county.

#7 – Connecting Care and Health for Colorado proposed by CCHI. Universal coverage. Individual and employer mandates. Guaranteed Issue and Community rating. Expansion of public programs. Standardized benefits, including minimum benefit requirement. Diagnosis and treatment, preventive dental care, vision and hearing services, mental health, substance abuse, cancer screenings and other chronic disease screenings, rehab services, non-emergent medical transportation and other appropriate services.

Creates the Stakeholder Oversight Commission to supervise 3 advisory committees – health care quality, rural health and health disparities. Private insurance includes all state mandated benefits and two or three enhanced plans that include vision and dental benefits. Tax assessment on employers with tax credit for those who provide health insurance. Mandate all residents to purchase insurance.

#6 – A Phased Approach to Achieving Universal Health Coverage in Colorado proposed by Kaiser Permanente.
Expand Medicaid programs to children with premium assistance. Individual mandates such that an individual must have coverage through their employer, individually private coverage or through a public program. There will be a tax and surcharge on those who remain uninsured. Guaranteed issue, community rating. Would increase and encourage the use of HMOs. A medical home or primary physician essential. Evidence based guidelines. Statewide medical records database.

Uses voluntary HMOs and providers; but also a statewide managed indemnity plan mandated for those not in HMO. Individuals in indemnity plan must choose primary care physician – a medical home. Reimbursement rate is 100% of medicare for non-HMO providers, HMO rates are reimbursed on a capitated basis and determined at the state level. Individuals eligible for group plan must use that plan. Basic or comprehensive plan with a deductible (0, $2000 or $10,000).

#4 – Comprehensive Health Care Plan for Colorado proposed by CLUB 20. Individual mandates for tier 1 coverage – basic benefits using appropriate associated reimbursement rates using Oregon as model. Providers mandated to participate in quality improvement efforts and meet quality standards.

It would create Colorado Health Commission to coordinate and direct new overarching elements of health care reform. Also would create the Colorado Care Connector to assume role of current medical and efficiently provide Tier 1 coverage to those who can’t afford it. Promote concept of medical home with primary care provider. Can purchase Tier 2 coverage – which allows for unlimited health care options.

#2 – Better Health Care for Colorado proposed by Service Employees International Union. This plan is a bit vague but seeks to create a path for universal health coverage. It doesn't appear to have mandates, but I'm not sure how universal coverage is to be enforced without mandates.

It would create a new quasi-public entity to provide access to private insurance specifically tailored for "target" populations. The exchange would coordinate health care financing from multiple sources, and offer products to subsidized uninsured and non-subsidized small businesses. Would offer limited health plan of $25,000 to $35,000 annual benefit; pre-paid plan; more comprehensive coverage such as in the State Employee Health Insurance Plan, and other plans for indigent or high risks. Managed care approach. Would have employer-sponsored insurance with an opt-out provision.

More from the Archimedes Palimpsest

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

WOW: Yet another ancient text has been found buried in the Archimedes Palimpsest. This time, it appears to be a commentary on Aristotle's Categories by Alexander of Aphrodisias!

Text reveals more ancient secrets
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Experts are "lost for words" to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment. Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest. But now advanced imaging technology has revealed a third text - a commentary on the philosopher Aristotle. Project director William Noel called it a "sensational find".

The prayer book was written in the 13th Century by a scribe called John Myronas. But instead of using fresh parchment for his work, he employed pages from five existing books. Dr Noel, curator of manuscripts at the US-based Walters Art Museum and a co-author of a forthcoming book on the Archimedes Palimpsest, said: "It's a rather brutal process, but it means you can reuse parchment if you are short of it. You take books off shelves, you scrub off the text, you cut them up and you make a new book."

In 1906 it came to light that one of the books recycled to form the medieval manuscript contained a unique work by Archimedes. And in 2002, modern imaging technology not only provided a clearer view of this famous mathematician's words, but it also revealed another text - the only known manuscript of Hyperides, an Athenian politician from the 4th Century BC.

"At this point you start thinking striking one palimpsest is gold, and striking two is utterly astonishing. But then something even more extraordinary happened," Dr Noel told the BBC News website. One of the recycled books was proving extremely difficult to read, explained Roger Easton, a professor of imaging science at Rochester Institute of Technology, US. "We were using a technique called multispectral imaging," he said. This digital imaging technique uses photographs taken at different wavelengths to enhance particular characteristics of the imaged area.

Subtle adjustments of this method, explained Professor Easton, suddenly enabled these hidden words to be revealed. "Even though I couldn't read Ancient Greek, just the fact that I could see the words gave me shivers," he said.

Foundations of logic

An international team of experts began to scrutinize the ancient words, explained Reviel Netz, professor of ancient science at Stanford University, US, and another co-author of the palimpsest book. A series of clues, such as spotting a key name in the margin, led the team to its conclusion. "The philosophical passage in the Archimedes Palimpsest is now definitely identified as a relatively early commentary to Aristotle's Categories," said Professor Netz. He said that Aristotle's Categories had served as the foundation for the study of logic throughout western history.

Further study has revealed the most likely author of this unique commentary is Alexander of Aphrodisias, Professor Robert Sharples from University College London, UK, told BBC News. If this is the case, he said, "it gives us part of a commentary previously supposed lost by the most important of those ancient commentators on Aristotle".

A provisional translation of the commentary is currently being undertaken. It reveals a debate on some aspects of Aristotle's theory of classification, such as: if the term "footed" is used for animals, can it be used to classify anything else, such as a bed?

The passage reads:

For as "foot" is ambiguous when applied to an animal and to a bed, so are "with feet" and "without feet". So by "in species" here [Aristotle] is saying "in formula". For if it ever happens that the same name indicates the differentiae of genera that are different and not subordinate one to the other, they are at any rate not the same in formula.

Dr Noel said: "There is no more important philosopher in the world than Aristotle. To have early views in the 2nd and 3rd Century AD of Aristotle's Categories is just fantastic. We have one book that contains three texts from the ancient world that are absolutely central to our understanding of mathematics, politics and now philosophy," he said. He added: "I am at a loss for words at what this book has turned out to be. To make these discoveries in the 21st Century is frankly nutty - it is just so exciting."

WOWEEEEE! This discovery is really exciting!

Review of Peikoff's "History of Philosophy" Series

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

I am proud to announce that I have just completed the last lecture of Dr. Peikoff's, behemoth, 2-part, 24 lecture, 72 hour course on the History of Philosophy. The first set of lectures is Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume, and the second set is Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present. These are by far the best courses on Philosophy that I've ever taken (as a college graduate with a BA in Philosophy, that's saying a lot).

Peikoff traces the roots of philosophy from Thales and the ancient Greeks all the way to the present. His primary focus is metaphysics and epistemology, and it's easy to see why he chose this method of exposition: a philosopher's stance on metaphysics and epistemology set the ground rules for the rest of his philosophy. Over the course of 24 lectures, Peikoff ties ancient philosophers to their modern-day intellectual heirs with seeming ease. Though he only had time to present each philosopher (or school of thought) in a very essentialized form, I found that I learned a lot about thinkers who I had studied in-depth in college. Can you tell I'm impressed?

I would recommend this set of lectures to anyone, and I would regard it as a "must-listen" for any serious student of philosophy. The Objectivist Academic Center agrees with this evaluation; the courses are required for graduation.

One thing became very evident to me as I listened to these lectures:

The charge that Objectivists in general, and Ayn Rand in particular, are uneducated about the history of philosophy is completely bogus. Peikoff's exposition of each thinker was 100% on the mark (based on my readings of the same thinkers). He displays a high degree of technical understanding about even the most difficult philosophers, like Heidegger and Kant. During the question and answer periods, I was amazed at the detailed minutia he had memorized about each philosopher. He has done his homework, and it shows. One could not honestly charge that Peikoff is ignorant of history's most important thinkers.

Also, after listening to these lectures it became more evident to me how intimately Ayn Rand must have understood these same thinkers. Her seeming snap-judgment evaluations of complex ideologies (like Kant's categories) are highly accurate and insightful, given a fuller understanding of the subject matter. Objectivism was not formed in the absence of knowledge about the history of philosophy; quite the contrary. Rand systematically roots out and obliterates all of the classical philosophical "problems."

You can now get the complete set of these lecture courses at a reduced price from the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

--Dan Edge

Al Gore, Creationist

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

Friday, commenter Jim May pointed me to this interesting post by a disciple of Al Gore over at Neurotransmission, who expressed amazement and disappointment with Gore after seeing his traveling medicine show -- I mean "global warming slide show".

Why? Because Gore not only confessed to holding Creationist beliefs during his allegedly scientific presentation, he also nonchalantly claimed that there was "no conflict" between science and religion.

Even more interesting is the form his reaction took:

[Gore] tarnishes his beautifully crafted presentation by not only stating his belief in creationism - but by placing the words "Adam and Eve" right on the slide (which is actually a scientific graph) as a caption explaining the beginnings of mankind.

Something doesn't add up here. On one hand, he is using science to predict the disastrous outcome of our current actions and rally support for taking proactive measures to make sure bad things don't happen, but on the other hand, he is clinging to stone-age beliefs that another very important area of science has proven wrong (that we humans evolved from other forms of life, and that every organism on Earth has a common ancestor).

...

Whaaaaa???? You tell me that anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact (to the degree that science can use that word), mankind came from God's creation of Adam and Eve 200,000 years ago, there is no conflict between science and religion, refer to the Scopes trial, and then shrug it off and move on with the show?

[This juxtaposition] pretty much ruined the rest of the show for me. His message about climate change and our need to take action was great, inspiring even. However, I am now somewhat confused about the sort of man that is Al Gore. If you're going to be intellectually honest about issues like climate change, than why not carry through to the next logical step and apply this kind of honest thinking to everything?

I dunno. Maybe he's just saying these things because he's a politician, or because his family would freak out if he didn't claim belief in theistic creationism. Maybe one day in this part of the world it will be ok for our elected representatives to not believe. ... [last bold added]

Pardon the expression, but Amen to that question in the bold there, "br0k3nglass". You should look into the mirror when asking it, though.

Even aside from the fact that many scientists on the global warming side of the scientific debate vehemently disagree with Gore's B-movie disaster scenarios (and see them discrediting their scientific views), on what basis do you hold that the government has any right to deprive the citizenry of its economic freedom in order to implement the political programs demanded by Gore and his ilk?

There really should be two global warming debates going on right now: the scientific debate, and a political debate. The former debate centers around the question of, "Is it happening, and why?" The latter, wholly independent question which is, sadly, not being asked at all, let alone debated, is "By what right does the government dictate how I obtain the energy I need to live?"

The answer to that question is "None," as I recently outlined, and yet the vast majority of mankind accept on faith that it is the government's job to force people to act in certain ways -- whether or not they rationally judge such actions to be appropriate and regardless of the fact that what they wish to do does not violate the rights of any other individual.

The day when it will be acceptable for politicians "to not believe" will arrive when ignorance and superstition become the exception rather than the rule within the body politic.

-- CAV

Jamestown: Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal

By Eric Daniels

On May 14, America will commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The occasion provides us with an opportunity to understand and celebrate the distinctive, secular ideal underlying America's freedom and prosperity.

Although many Americans recognize that Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in North America (predating the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts by over a decade), too many mistakenly view the religious ethos of the New England colonies as the impetus for America's flourishing. But the religious colonists, whose moral outlook stands opposed to our ideals of intellectual and political liberty, merely transplanted Old World ideas to new soil. The New World that promised opportunity and progress had begun in Jamestown, where the defining spirit of American individualism was born.

The Jamestown settlement project began, not as a Puritan escape to pursue and enforce a dogmatic faith, but with a group of profit-seeking investors in London pooling capital in a joint-stock company, a forerunner of our modern corporations. Members of the Virginia Company had organized with the goal of uncovering economic opportunity in North America by finding precious metals and possibly a water route to the Pacific.

The intrepid band of 104 adventurers who survived the Atlantic journey, braved a forbidding wilderness, established Jamestown, and faced extreme peril. In its first fragile decade, Jamestown lost hundreds of settlers to disease, starvation, and war, with casualty rates in one harsh winter reaching 80 percent of the colony. Eventually, under the deft leadership of Captain John Smith, the colony weathered these trials to emerge with renewed resolve. Smith himself had risen from modest circumstances in England to lead these adventurers, and he saw America as a land where his kind of self-reliance could flourish.

Though the Virginia Company found little gold and no sea route to Asia, they soon discovered something vastly more important--that economic opportunity lay wherever men were left free to work and create new wealth. In contrast to the rigid class structure and static economy of Jacobean England, America promised rewards based on individual merit. It was this spirit, and not the Puritan belief in cosmic predestination and unthinking duty to God, that attracted men to pursue their own earthly success in the New World.

"Here every man may be master and owner of his own labor and land," Smith noted in one of his many promotional books intended to attract new settlers to America. "If he have nothing but his hands," he boasted, "he may set up his trade, and by industry quickly grow rich." For Smith and the other early settlers of Jamestown, the profound significance of America lay in the possibility that a man could choose, pursue, and realize his own destiny--it lay in a new ideal of individual liberty.

By the late eighteenth century, under the growing influence of that ideal, the colonists began to resist and protest against British imperial controls on their economic and political freedom, which led to the American Revolution. In framing our constitutional government, the Founders put individualism into political practice by protecting individual rights against the claims of any cleric, monarch, or legislative majority. The new nation's founding ideals had emerged in opposition to the religious morality that entailed obedience to Biblical teachings and authority, conformity to the group, and condemnation of worldliness and material success.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the individualist spirit born in Jamestown brought countless millions to America, each looking to create a better life for himself. Through the years, that spirit has fostered untold prosperity by encouraging self-reliant innovators like Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, or James J. Hill. Its legacy lives on in America today, in anyone who believes that each individual owns his own life and has an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness.

In the centuries since Jamestown, America has thrived because of this distinctive ideal--an ideal in marked contrast not only to America's religious colonies but also to the rest of the world today, where duty to the group or to divine command still subjugates millions.

Americans should pause to celebrate the full significance of the Jamestown anniversary as an opportunity to appreciate and rededicate themselves to America's noble spirit of individualism. Doing so will help remind us of the need to defend this value from those who would compromise or attack it. Doing any less would be an act of injustice to those brave men who helped to shape our most important institutions.

Eric Daniels, PhD, is a Visiting Scholar at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University, and a guest writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Obama Supporter Gets Cheap Lesson

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

Via Matt Drudge, I noted with some amusement that a supporter of Barack Obama, who had created a web site in support of his run for president, has had his site taken over without even nominal compensation by the Obama campaign!

... Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign has taken over control of the MySpace page listed under his name on the popular social networking site.

For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

But as the site exploded in popularity in recent months, the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content and responses going out under Obama's name and told Anthony they wanted him to turn it over.

In this new frontier of online campaigning, it's hard to determine the value of 160,000 MySpace friends -- about four times what any other official campaign MySpace page has amassed. But the Obama campaign decided they wouldn't pay $39,000, which is what Anthony said he proposed for his extensive work on the site, plus some additional fees up to $10,000.

MySpace reluctantly stepped in to settle the dispute and decided that Obama should have the rights to control http://www.myspace.com/barackobama as of Monday night, while Anthony had the right to take the contact information for all the friends who signed up while he was in control. That includes the right to tell them exactly how he feels about the Obama campaign. [links dropped]

Anthony, doing just that, recounts the long run-around the Obama campaign gave him, expresses indignation, and states that Obama has lost his vote as a result of this:

Since January, as you may know, and as many in the Myspace community know, I've been working on the page around the clock. I started this profile in November of 2004 and it grew steadily since then. In January and February the media started to notice, and I began to work even harder because I reallized what an impact the Myspace could really have.

People were actually registering to vote, making contributions, asking questions, putting banners on their pages, etc. I know this because I constantly received emails about this, and I replied to every single one to thank them or point them in the right direction if they needed more information.

The campaign got involved in February and although at first it was very exciting, it quickly became clear that they just had no interest in me or my involvement. They only wanted to take control of the profile and get on with it. I bit the bullet for a while and kept working for the good of the campaign, but they quickly went from passive aggressive, to aggressive, and then eventually just rotten and dishonest.

For the past few weeks, the campaign decided it would be better if they just took control of the profile and we decided to try to come to some agreement. By this time, I didn't have quite as much respect for the campaign guys, and frankly felt like I was just being used. They knew about this profile the entire time, and really just waited until it got enough media coverage and friends request so they could step in and bully me out of it.

The last few weeks were just insane. They kept scheduling phone conferences with me, I would wake up early that day after barely sleeping the night before, I'd take time off work, etc. and each after another would be postponed at the last minute. This went on for weeks.

It got to the point where I didn't feel comfortable turning the profile over to the campaign unless they paid for it. This was largely symbolic. The same campaign that inspired me to work so hard to build this community, the same campaign whose underlying message stresses "the power of the individual to have an impact on politics", was constantly downplaying my role in this, bullying me, and a couple of other things that were just rotten and dishonest (specifically in connection with Myspace, and the campaign quashing a recent NPR interview about the profile).

...


Apparently the message here is, as an individual, if you have too big of an impact, you're just a liability.

This is how Obama lost my vote, and one of his strongest supporters. [bold added]

Before I go on, I will note that the actual "takeover" was a decision on the part on the part of Myspace. But also recall that Barack Obama is in favor of socialized medicine -- the government takeover and monopolization of an entire industry! As unhappy as Anthony ought to be with Myspace, at least he can take his business to another social networking site, and make it known that he was cheated out of his hard work, possibly causing Myspace to lose lots of business. The campaign site, as far as I can tell, is the property of Myspace to do with as it sees fit. Stupid business decision or not, this is Myspace's right.

But the government is different from Myspace. The government is the only social institution that can legally wield force (i.e., threaten people with imprisonment or jail for not doing as it says). As such, if the government were to do to Anthony what Myspace helped Obama do, Anthony would have no recourse at all. Like the physicians whose work Obama hopes to expropriate, Anthony would face fines or imprisonment if he didn't simply go along with Obama's dictates; he could not simply set up shop under a different government; and he could potentially be muzzled from expressing his opinion about what was done to him -- as happens in Cuba all the time.

Presumably, one of the reasons Anthony supported Obama was because the Democrat promised to deliver "free" medical care to all by government decree. Well, Anthony just learned the easy way what this actually means: the expropriation of the hard work of countless individuals. Furthermore, the shoddy treatment he got at the hands of the Obama campaign even after helping them should show him that despite his lip-service to "the individual", Obama is all about only one thing when it comes to the individual: having power over him. Is it really a big surprise that someone who sees physicians as a means to an end -- rather than a group of hard-working individuals -- would see other human beings in the same way, and so be capable of treating even a supporter so shoddily?

It is not hard work that made you a liability, Mr. Anthony. It was your refusal to meekly take orders. Notice that they took the fruits of your labors and disposed of you as expeditiously as possible. At least with Obama not having the power of the government at his disposal, he needs accomplices. We might be better off keeping it this way.

Joe Anthony now knows what helping someone who promises to pass out stolen loot -- and anything stolen has to be stolen from someone -- will do for you. The question is, will anyone else figure this out before electing Obama and giving him the ability to do this to the rest of us at the point of a gun?

-- CAV

OBloggers Mailing List

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Just last night, I set up a mailing list for Objectivist bloggers on my otherwise unused OList.com domain. The list has no grand purpose: its only goal is to facilitate communication between Objectivist bloggers on issues like upcoming events, posts of interests, best blogging practices, and the like.

To join the list, you must be a semi-active blogger -- or intend to become one shortly. You must also be an Objectivist, meaning that you agree with and live by the principles of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't require that you endorse or support the Ayn Rand Institute, nor that you agree with any particular Objectivist intellectual in ongoing debates. However, it does require that you refrain from supporting, endorsing, or associating with those who actively distort Ayn Rand's life and ideas, most notably David Kelley, Chris Sciabarra, and Barbara and Nathaniel Branden. Also, if you've treated Leonard Peikoff or other worthy Objectivist intellectuals with contempt in the recent debates about the election, please don't subscribe.

(Those criteria will exclude some people I regard as reasonable, intelligent, and decent folk from the list. So unless you already know that I hate your guts, please don't take your exclusion personally. If you're wondering, you're welcome to inquire!)

To subscribe to the list, visit the main page for OBloggers@OList.com. If I'm not already familiar with you and your blog, please drop me a note with the URL.

Update: I should mention that you don't have to blog about Objectivism to join the list. You just have to be an Objectivist who blogs.

On Competition

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

It would seem that competition is a fundamental aspect of capitalism. Anti-trusters, in their zeal to regulate business, would have us believe that a market without competition is coercive, and requires legislation in order to restore competition to it. Right-wingers have a zeal for competitive mechanisms, as they try to inject it into such government run programs as education (school vouchers) or health care (re: private insurance options). It is “competitive” mechanisms that will cure inefficient government programs.

But looking through the Objectivist literature, one is hard pressed to find much mention of competition as a fundamental of capitalism. It has a brief mention in the Lexicon, mostly related to government enforcement of such, and it has no mention in the entire OPAR section on capitalism. Competition isn’t an Objectivist virtue, like independence or productiveness so it doesn’t even seem to have an ethical basis. I know that independence and productivity are virtues, and that being “second-handed”, i.e. placing self-worth using others as a standard is wrong. I know that capitalism is the proper political system, and I sure see a lot of preoccupation with competition in capitalism. This leads me to wonder just what the proper attitude toward competition should be. Is it fundamental not? Is it good or not?

My family used to run a Labor Day race every year, A 5K run through the woods of northern Michigan. Our last running of this race found my step-son and I alone on the trail at the half-way point with about 15 minutes to go.

“Kendall, I don’t think I can keep running. My legs hurt,” my son said through labored breaths.

“hmm. Ok, well maybe we can stop to walk a bit. Tell you what though. See that runner up there,” I said motioning to a woman about 100 yards ahead who had been steadily falling back.

“yeah.”

“Is she closer to us now than she was five minutes ago?” I asked.

“I think so,” he responded.

“OK, well that means she started out too fast and we’re going to catch up to her. Do you think you can keep going until we do?”

“Yeah, I think I could do that,” he replied, gauging the distance and the time required. And we stepped up the pace just a little and began closing the gap. He focused on the gap between us and the runner, and he increased his stride, ever so slightly.

After passing her, my son spoke up. “Hey, you know that guy up there looks like he’s falling back too. Maybe we can catch him. Do you think we can in time?”

“It looks like it,” I said. “We’ve got another mile or so to go.”

When I look at top tier businessmen that I know, I see similar responses to competitors. They take a keen interest in what the competition is doing, but never to the extent of allowing the competition to define their actions. Nor do they react emotionally to frustrating moves that the competition makes. Any emotions that are expressed are usually based in a sense of friendly rivalry or respect, especially for able competitors. Mostly, they learn from their competition and focus on their own goals.

Second and third-tier businessmen, however, show the signs of second-handedness. They are preoccupied with the competition. They may respond emotionally and with frustration at competitive moves and make strategy decisions out of a desire for retribution rather than true self-interest.

And so from these few examples I start to get a sense of the proper characterization of competition. It is a side-effect of capitalism. Competition is the natural result of men who practice the virtues of independence and productivity, within a society based upon rational self-interest, and man’s right to pursue it. It is an effect, not a cause.

“Competition is a by-product of productive work, not it’s goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” - Ayn Rand ["The Moratorium on Brains", The Ayn Rand Letter 1,2,4]

And the proper psychological attitude toward competition? Well, implicitly I understood this from the race with my son. It came to me explicitly as a result of thinking about a discussion on ObjectivismOnline.com on personal motivation. Competition is a positive tool that we can use. It helps us to learn about the nature of the game we’re playing and to set intermediate goals. It gives us concrete gauges by which we can measure our own progress and performance. It is one of the ways that we turn productiveness into excellence. The same is true in business. The proper attitude is one of benevolence (and maybe a little rivalry) toward honest competition, and of respect and admiration for ability in our competitors.

And the implication for our would-be policy makers who fancy competition, as such? Simple. Focus on creating the causes of capitalism, namely namely individual liberties, and markets free from coercion. Only then will the effects be properly seen. However, if one tries to legislate the effects by short-circuiting the causes, failure is the only outcome.

The only actual factor required for the existence of free competition is: the unhampered, unobstructed operation of the mechanism of a free market. The only action which a government can take to protect free competition is: Laissez-faire! - Ayn Rand

My son passed three more runners that day, two (including yours truly) at the final sprint to the finish, which he initiated 200 yards before I would have. I never heard about the pain in his legs again. We have no idea how the runners we passed ended up, and it really doesn't matter, but I know that he ran longer and harder than he would have otherwise - because of the competition.

Chavez Steals American Property, Bush Does Nothing

Irvine, CA--On Tuesday president Hugo Chavez forced ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil to cede operational control over their multi-billion dollar projects to the Venezuelan government. With their backs to the wall, these oil companies are "negotiating" the terms of their surrender, and trying to get some "compensation" for the property being stolen from them.

"President Bush should do something to protect the assets of American companies in Venezuela," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is disgraceful that while Chavez steals American property Bush says nothing and does nothing."

"At a minimum," Dr. Brook said, "Bush should denounce Chavez's nationalization of private businesses as a form of robbery and cut U.S. diplomatic relationships with Venezuela."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute.

Minds of Wax

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

"Neither individuals nor nations become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment."

So observed William Wordsworth in 1815. He was commenting on the resistance to the revolution in poetry and in literature that was beginning to sweep through Europe as an overture to the Romantic movement.

It would not be taxing credulity to observe, 192 years later, that neither the West nor the United States was corrupted all at once, or to wonder if the advocates of reason are fighting a rearguard action against the assaults on a retreating Western civilization, or are in the vanguard of reason, knowing too well in either instance that neither men nor nations can be enlightened in a moment. Chief elements of the corruption encouraging the assault are Kant's philosophy and the altruist/collectivist axis. When men abandon reason, whether gradually or immediately, a vacuum is created, and barbarism and irrationality rush in. This is what we are witnessing today, in virtually every realm of human life and action.

Reason seems to be impotent in the face of this multi-front onslaught. It certainly is not in the ascendant in current trends.

Dr. John Lewis of Ashland University, Ohio, was invited to George Mason University in Virginia, to give a talk, "No Substitute for Victory: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism," and faced a form of this onslaught of anti-reason on the evening of April 24th. Although campus and local police were present, the barbarians established the anarchical tone of the event, continually interrupting Dr. Lewis with heckling and disruptive behavior.

At one point, the article reported, he replied to an uninvited comment, "The enemy is not Muslims. If you people [the "protestors"] refuse to hear this sentence, I can't help what's in your ears." ("No Substitute for Conflict," George Mason University Broadside, April 30)

Presumably, he meant wax, or rather the wax clogging their minds. Earwax, of course, can block hearing partially or completely, if not removed. And, it collects dirt, and can cause infection that can lead to a loss of hearing. "Wax" in the mind is immeasurably more harmful, and too many people today resist giving their minds a thorough scouring of the many forms of irrationality that comprise that wax.

Like people who hundreds of years ago believed that blood-letting was a cure-all for many kinds of illness, and resisted advances in medicine because they were "unnatural" or unsanctioned by God, many people today believe that closing one's mind to reason is a cure-all for most moral and philosophical conflicts. That is caused by the wax that accumulates in their minds by either faith or nihilism or Kantian "idealism" or emotion-driven subjectivism. Just as earwax mutes or blocks sound, these patently irrational methods of dealing with reality and other men mute the role of reason or block it entirely.

And what did Dr. Lewis say? Simply that totalitarian Iran is the U.S.'s biggest threat, that it seeks to impose its religious tyranny on as much of the world as it can, and that, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it must be defeated, militarily if necessary, if the West is to have any chance of survival.

This, the "protestors" did not wish to hear, nor wish anyone else to hear. Their minds were infected, of their own choice, at the behest of their religion or their professors. (Ayn Rand might have referred to it as "venomous muck.")

(I disagree with Dr. Lewis on only two points: Muslims are as much an "enemy" as devout Christians, environmentalists, left-wing student protestors, and power-seeking politicians; their minds are also closed to reason by choice or by mental lethargy. More on these phenomena below.

Elsewhere in the Broadside article, he is cited as believing that Islam is a "religion of peace," and that the problem with it is its application as a political ideology that denies a separation of church and state. But Islam is not a pacific creed; it is a supremacist creed whose fundamental tenets mandate its hegemony by force, guile or dissimulation in its means and ends.

I see no difference between Islam, Nazism, Shintoism and any other vile ideology that requires uncritical, unquestioning faith and the ready submission of its followers. It requires of men an internal comfort level with totalitarian ambience, and the granting by them to authoritarians or totalitarians an omniscience that relieves the believers of the task or responsibility of questioning party lines, dogmas and consensus-founded "truisms.")

Why is it so difficult to enlighten men? Reason is not so radical a means of resolving conflicts or answering questions. It has been an operative in Western culture since the Renaissance; if it had not been, no "West" would have come into existence. However, it has not been consistently applied to all human affairs; in some instances, not at all.

But, when reason is applied to a specific critical issue, what can account for the resistance to what it prescribes as proper actions to take? Why is reason rejected so hastily, or so volubly, so finally? In the GMU protestors' case, it is a matter of active resistance to it, prompted by malice or hostility to it as a resolution to problems or to the values reason seeks to advance or preserve; in many others, it is a matter of lethargic, passive resistance, or a disinclination to think, or a preference to rely on undisputed, supposedly infallible authority, augmented by whatever irrational, fallacious ideas an individual has absorbed in the culture and never bothered to scrutinize.

At the risk of carrying the wax metaphor beyond bounds, a few instances might help to illustrate the malady.

At a recent booksigning for my Sparrowhawk novels outside the bookstore at Colonial Williamsburg where I appear every weekend, a prospective buyer asked me if I had written a book about the founding of Jamestown. Since I was having an informal conversation with the man and his party, I turned and pointed inside the store to a display of books on Jamestown by over a dozen authors, and exclaimed in a friendly manner, "Jesus Christ! I don't think they need another book about Jamestown! Everyone and his mother is writing about Jamestown!" Then the man's wife gave me an odd look and said to me, "You swore."

I learned later that the woman made a point of informing a store clerk that she had persuaded her husband not to buy a whole set of the series, as he had wanted to, because I "swore." There was a mind of wax in action. (Which is just as well, since they would have discovered that religious clerics do not fare well in the series; it was secular ideas of liberty that moved the American patriots, not religious ones.)

Moving to a broader issue, the Daily Telegraph (London) reported on April 30, under the headline, "Britain damaged by dropping arms deal inquiry," that Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was dropping an investigation of corruption connected with a multi-billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

"The decision followed a Saudi threat to cancel a £10 billion order for new Typhoon fighters, a move which threatened thousands of jobs in the defence industry.

"Despite widespread criticism, Tony Blair defended the decision by arguing earlier this year that the SFO inquiry would have a 'devastating' impact on Britain's relations with Saudi Arabia if it was carried on."

Here is evidence of a great mound of wax. What possible benefit could Britain reap by maintaining "relations" with Saudi Arabia, except an arms deal that would prop up its subsidized arms industry? Why would it want to sell advanced fighter jets to a feudal monarchy that is using much of its oil revenues to stir up British Muslims and advance the Muslimization of Britain? If kickbacks, briberies, and other forms of corruption indeed characterize the arms deal, shouldn't the Saudi threat to cancel the deal imply their reality and indicate the Saudis' fear that corruption would be exposed?

Why are "good relations" with one's de facto enemies regarded as indispensable, but not the truth? But, these questions will not occur to Tony Blair or anyone else in his government, because the imperatives of unreason trump reason. The wax of pragmatic diplomacy is proof against reason. It will not penetrate.

Meanwhile, speaking of pragmatic diplomacy, on May 3rd, at a Middle East conference in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice exhibited her own mind wax by stooping to meet with Walid Moallem, foreign minister of Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism and training ground for foreign "insurgents" it sends into neighboring Iraq to kill Americans and continue the unacknowledged civil war there. So much for President Bush sticking to his principle of never dealing even indirectly with Syria or Iran. The mind waxes of faith in God and faith in his goal of "democratizing" Iraq at the cost of American blood and treasure have for the last five years plugged up his receptivity to reason.

Does it matter to the Bush administration, or even to its Democratic opponents in Congress, that the U.S. military has evidence that Iran declared war on the U.S. by supplying Iraqi "insurgents" with ordnance with which to kill American soldiers? According to the World Tribune of May 1, this ordnance is not only of Iranian manufacture, but much of it is of Chinese origin, as well. Also, agents of Iran's Revolutionary Guard have been directing the "insurgency." No, none of this matters. Evidence is a product of reason, which is barred from playing a role in the formulation of foreign policy.

The "Goebbels" of global warming, Al Gore, has apparently instituted a "climate change" project which has trained over a thousand climate "messengers" to indoctrinate Americans in schools and businesses with the propaganda that man is responsible for melting icebergs, rising sea levels, and foul weather. Arguably the most culpable in helping Gore spread this propaganda is the news media, whose "reporters" and alleged journalists treat the fallacy as rock solid truth and who evince not the least inclination to question Gore's assertions.

Arguments offered by scientists who question Gore's assertions are either sidelined or not reported at all. The truth about global warming apparently is "inconvenient" enough to discourage the news media and most politicans to dislodge the wax of "consensus" from their minds. It is safer to repeat banalities.

What this culture needs is a firestorm of reason that will melt the wax that has been incrementally smothering this nation and the West for the last century.

Got a light?

Update on "Infuriated Socialists"

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Denver Post did publish my response to the Jim Spencer column in today's edition:

Jim Spencer called my April 25 letter "crazy" and accused me of violating my oath as a physician because I argued that health care is not a right.

The exact opposite is true. My moral responsibility to my patients requires that I oppose socialized medicine. When countries like Canada attempt to guarantee a "right" to health care, it inevitably leads to rationing of vital medical services. Under their "single payer" system, Canadian patients routinely wait for months before government bureaucrats allow them to get MRI scans or surgeries that are immediately available in the U.S. Doctors cannot practice good medicine when handcuffed by such a system - and many will quit medicine rather than work under those conditions. (For more information, see www.WeStandFIRM.org.)

Trying to create a universal "right" to health care turns patients into pieces of meat and turns doctors into slaves. Neither is right for Colorado.

Paul Hsieh, M.D., Sedalia

The other letter they published at the same time was also good:

Jim Spencer refers to a letter from a physician regarding the "right" to health care as the craziest he has read in some time. Plainly, Mr. Spencer has no idea what a "right" is.

A "right" refers to a freedom of action that an individual possesses. For example, "the pursuit of happiness." It does not refer to a sanctioned or legalized gain of unearned goods or services, nor does it involve the violation of others' rights. These are more properly termed "theft" or "slavery," and are obviously immoral.

A "right" to health care necessarily involves enslavement of health care workers (Canadian physicians have no right to private contracts) and confiscation and redistribution of tax monies.

If it were so easy to provide health care as a "right" by simple legislative fiat, as Mr. Spencer implies, then I cannot understand why we do not end hunger by passing a similar law forcing restaurants to provide food.

The health care problems we have now would best be addressed by reintroduction of the concept of personal responsibility, re-establishment of a free market and the rewarding of charity care. Only then will "rights" truly be respected.

(They left his name off the online version, but the print version lists him as "Michael K. Stahl, M.D., Carbondale".)

After reading the Spencer column and my reply, one of my partners also e-mailed me:

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. While reading Spencer's article, the "looters" from Atlas Shrugged kept coming to mind. Keep fighting the good fight.

I had no idea that he had any familiarity with either Atlas Shrugged or Ayn Rand, so that was a pleasant surprise!

Doublethink Redux

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

Raymund reminded me of a review of the second volume of the collected works of Friedrich A. Hayek that I saw recently at Arts and Letters Daily. The review starts out badly, but makes some decent points at the end.

What I want to discuss here is the following major philosophical error, from Hayek's The Fatal Conceit (or at least reviewer Roger Kimball's interpretation of the work), which I have seen crop up in other, non-economic contexts recently. Kimball first quotes Hayek:

The intellectuals' vain search for a truly socialist community, which results in the idealisation of, and then disillusionment with, a seemingly endless string of "utopias" -- the Soviet Union, then Cuba, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Tanzania, Nicaragua -- should suggest that there might be something about socialism that does not conform to certain facts.

To which Kimball adds:

It should, but it hasn't. And the reason, Hayek suggests, lies in the peculiar rationalism to which a certain species of intellectual is addicted. The "fatal conceit" lay in believing that, by exercising his reason, mankind could recast society in a way that was at once equitable and prosperous, orderly and conducive to political liberty.

So far, this might want clarification, but it could be either a very good point or a very grave mistake.

By Kimball's account, it is, sadly, the latter. To make sure we know that reason is no path to freedom, he then follows up with this:

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that the test of "a first-rate intelligence" was "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time" and still be able to function. In fact, that ability is as common as dirt. Look around.

I am not familiar enough with Hayek to know whether Kimball's interpretation of this aspect of his thought is correct, but the notion that reason has failed because socialism has failed is exactly the opposite of the lesson that the failure of socialism should have taught us!

Socialism did not fail because its proponents were "too rational". It was because they misapplied reason to the question "What constitutes a proper politics?" Although many socialist thinkers deserve some credit for the realization that how one answers this question depends on how one answers the antecedent question of what constitutes a proper ethics, none of them went far enough, because answering that question correctly necessitates dealing with many other more fundamental issues, as we shall see.

By contrast, another champion of capitalism, novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, epitomizes the correct approach to ethics, as I have noted before.

Very briefly, let us consider the essence of the conventional approach to the field of ethics. Most will claim that ethics is a set of arbitrary commands (e.g. meaningless social conventions or divine edicts) which may or may not happen to provide any practical guidance to an individual for furthering his own life. This is reflected in the fact that so many people face ethical dilemmas when what they regard as the moral conflicts with what they regard as the practical.

The reason for this common problem is that most ethical systems are formulated without regard to what man actually is or why he might need an ethical system to survive. Quite frequently, when man's nature is considered at all, it is man who is found wanting when his nature conflicts with the ethical system, rather than the validity of the ethical system coming into question. But then, when one accepts the arbitrary, one has placed it outside of rational consideration.

By contrast, 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.

How this pertains to politics is best understood, furthermore, by considering this additional observation by Rand: Contrary to popular belief, a man on a desert island would not be "exempt" from morality. Rather, he would need it more urgently than ever. Why? Because morality does not apply only to how we treat others (the main focus of altruism), but because it provide guidelines for how we are to live, period.

Bearing that in mind, we see that how we function as part of a society is really a special category of morality. Specifically, the question that arises is: How can I benefit from the goods these other men have produced in an effort to further their own lives? Clearly, the answer lies in acquiring some of these goods for oneself. The means of doing so will boil down to two essential choices: (1) trade for them on mutually beneficial terms, or (2) simply take the goods from them.

The first option will promote the lives of each trading partner. The second will clearly harm that of the person who produced the goods (and ultimately that of both parties). Because the second option threatens the life of the other person, he must act to defend himself in order to live and prosper. Clearly, then, to "simply" take goods will require the use of force (or threat thereof) against the producer, as will any efforts by the producer to prevent this from happening.

A few things about simply taking goods are worth noting. The person who takes from the producer has (1) effectively negated whatever effort the producer spent producing the stolen items, (2) made certain future efforts on his part more difficult than they should have been, (3) ignored the wishes of the producer, and (4) added a great deal of uncertainty to any long-range plans he would have had.

The only way for the producer to be able to prosper will be to cause the person who would take the fruits of his labors to be unable to or to stop. Only the would-be expropriator has a choice in this matter, hence he can be said to initiate force against the producer, whose life requires that he retaliate, by doing whatever he must to remove the expropriator from the equation. In other words, he must use force in self-defense. This is, incidentally, the only moral use of force against another human being.

Clearly, then, those who wish to trade must protect themselves from those who wish to plunder. Furthermore, since plunderers can organize themselves (and men can be dishonest or mistaken about their own use of retaliatory force anyway), it is advantageous for the traders to organize themselves for mutual protection of their lives and their ability to live in accordance to their own best judgement.

Such an organization is known as a "government". Men who wish to live peacefully delegate their power to defend themselves to this organization, whose sole purpose is to protect their individual rights (i.e., their lives and all manifestations of the use of their minds to further their lives, such as speech and property). The only proper purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

Note that once one studies the question of why one must have a government at all in this way, it becomes impossible to entertain seriously the whole notion of socialism, which is based on the government taking over (and perfecting) the role of predator to deny the rights of all its citizens to dispose of their property as they see best fit to further their own lives! Furthermore, one sees that it is not only immoral, but impossible for a small handful of people to "plan" the lives of everyone else anyway.

On this last point, Andrew Bernstein, in The Capitalist Manifesto quotes economist George Reisman:

The overwhelming majority of people have not realized that all the thinking and planning about their economic activities that they perform in their capacity as individuals actually is economic planning. By the same token, the term "planning" has been reserved for the feeble efforts of a comparative handful of government officials, who, having prohibited the planning of everyone else, presume to substitute their knowledge and intelligence for the knowledge and intelligence of tens of millions, and to call that planning. (345) [bold added]

I suspect that Hayek would agree with this statement. His observation that economic activity organizes itself is simply a result of the fact that the self-interests of individuals do not conflict.

It is indeed a "fatal conceit" to imagine that one can guide the lives of millions, but it is not an example of the proper application of reason. It furthermore does not mean that reason is impotent as a guide to discovering the proper political organization of human society or that we must engage in "doublethink" in order to be true advocates of capitalism.

Hayek's or not, this last notion, by encouraging people to shade all or part of the sphere of politics from the light of reason, threatens to limit our ability to understand the true nature of capitalism, to appreciate its life-and-death significance, and most of all, to defend it as what it is: the only rational, moral, or practical system with which to organize human society optimally for our own sakes as individuals.

-- CAV

Reprints of Ayn Rand Writings

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As the spring term draws to a close and the time for fall course preparations will soon be at hand, this announcement seems timely...

Professors, teachers, instructors and the like seeking to use Ayn Rand's writings in their classes can find instructions on how to do so easily on the Ayn Rand Institute's web site. For a small fee, you can use copyright.com. Or you can request permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand; if permission is granted, then it's free.

White Guilt, Meet Religious Left

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

Over the past few days, I have encountered two very interesting articles about Barack Obama, who John McWhorter thinks will be our next President. After ticking off the trinity atop the Republican field as losers against him in a head-to-head -- save Giuliani, who he thinks will have trouble getting past the primaries -- McWhorter says the following in a guest blog for The Economist:

Mr Obama has a once-in-a-lifetime charisma that Hillary Clinton could never approximate, and she also suffers from the handicap of not being black. For all of his other plusses, part of Mr Obama's appeal lies in the fact that many whites feel that voting for a black presidential candidate would be Doing the Right Thing. Leon Wieseltier has been explicit about this; he is not unique.

Some object that white voters have often claimed to support black candidates only to refrain from actually pulling the lever for them. But does this unquestionably apply to the Obama case? Are all those swooning whites fighting their way into his appearances racists deep-down, chasing Mr Obama as a rock star but loth to vote for "one of those people" as a President? There are blacks, after all, who have designated Obama "the kind of black they're comfortable with". [bold added]

On the flip side of some whites feeling like they are "Doing the Right Thing", by supporting Obama, others may find themselves painted as racists for opposing him -- or afraid enough of having this happen to shut up. This would have the effect of stifling lots of legitimate criticism of Obama in a dynamic reminiscent of one that has happened over and over:

Ward Connerly has repeatedly witnessed [the] dynamic [described above by Shelby Steele] at work firsthand. "I've often had the experience of speaking in a room of 100 people, and knowing that 99 of them agree with me," he says. "But if there's one angry black person in the audience who disagrees, that person controls the room. He'll go on about the last 400 years, and institutional racism, and 'driving while black,' and the other 99 will just sit there and fold like a cheap accordion." [bold added]

Needless to say, Obama won't do the confrontational dirty work himself, nor would he have to. The leftist media and the corrupt civil rights establishment will take care of that.

In Obama, therefore, we will have a charismatic candidate whose agenda will often go unexamined or unchallenged for either of the above reasons. The only people left standing will be the other candidate (who, even if he does not fold, will be reduced to sound bites in response), a few principled opponents, and actual racists. Our leftist media will happily do what it can to paint the former two groups with the same brush it uses for the last. In today's fashion of political "debate", this could well be decisive.

And what will we get if Obama wins? A man famous for being a leftist, and who, in his own words, "submitted myself to [God's] will" -- a member of the emerging religious left, who is big pals with Jim Wallis no less:

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama is reaching out to both liberal skeptics and committed Christians. In many speeches or discussions, he never mentions religion. When Mr. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, does speak of faith, he tends to add a footnote about keeping church and state separate.

But he also talks of building a consensus among secular liberal and conservative Christian voters. Mr. Wallis, the antipoverty advocate who calls himself a "progressive evangelical," first met Mr. Obama 10 years ago when both participated in traveling seminars on American civic life. On bus rides, Mr. Wallis and Mr. Obama would huddle, away from company like George Stephanopoulos and Ralph Reed, to plot building a coalition of progressive and religious voters.

"The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect 10 point plan," Mr. Obama says in one of his standard campaign lines. "They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness -- in the imperfections of man."

He often makes reference to the civil rights movement, when liberals used Christian rhetoric to win change. [bold added]

Obama's spiritual mentor -- with whom he has already agreed to "publicly distance" himself (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) should he emerge from the primaries -- has a great many views that ought to be challenged. Among them:

On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. [Jeremiah A.] Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later he wrote that the attacks had proved that "people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."

Obama is only too happy to make excuses for such inexcusable utterances.

"Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr. Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality."

Does he really mean this, and does he really mean it when he says, "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification"? Or is he just "publicly distancing" himself from the Rev. Wright?

It will be very interesting, and probably in the most morbid sense, to observe the Presidential race should Obama be the Democratic nominee. I think McWhorter has a very good point about the possible role of what I think of as White Guilt in his potential to be elected. But might his far-left politics obviate his personal and social advantages?

Possibly, although this would be predicated on him being too far "ahead of his time" in presenting religious conservatives with the full political expression of their moral philosophy as well as being otherwise unable to sway them that his "heart is in the right place".

On balance, I see Obama as having a high chance of being elected. This will sound like an unmitigated disaster to many of my readers (and it could well be), and I do not relish the prospect in the short term. But is there a silver lining?

We need look no farther than the pretend "war" our current President is busy turning into a negotiated surrender to our real enemy, Iran -- and to the current leaders of the Republican field. Pat Toomey talks about what he thinks each of these men should do to win fiscal conservative voters (Disclaimer: I am not a fiscal conservative, but a radical capitalist.):

• The boisterous maverick who opposed the Bush tax cuts with the same vociferousness as Ted Kennedy and Tom Daschle will have to prove to conservatives that a President McCain won't stab them in the back again. [Aside from the fact that support for McCain-Feingold automatically makes a candidate unworthy of support, has Mr. Toomey ever read the parable of the Scorpion and the Frog? Too late. --ed]
• [Rudy Giuliani's positions include] opposition to NAFTA and support for McCain-Feingold. ... Rudy will have to reassure economic conservatives that underneath that Yankees baseball cap, there is a firm commitment to free-market, limited-government values that will benefit the country as a whole. [See my above remark on McCain-Feingold. Also, I have already addressed Giuliani's standing as a "fiscal conservative" at some length. --ed]
• Romney will also need ... to convince voters that he truly is an economic conservative by distancing himself from his recent labeling of the flat tax as "unfair" and assuring Republicans that his universal health care plan won't be revived under a Romney administration. [This man signed socialized medicine into law. 'Nuff said. --ed]

It is quite likely that our next presidential election will be a race between two candidates who each wish to impose socialized medicine, neither of whom will fight the current war the way it ought to be fought (if at all), and neither of whom is exactly a huge defender of freedom of speech. At least Obama would not surrender while claiming to wage war or pretend that elements of socialized medicine (or carbon taxes for that matter) are compatible with capitalism. And at least his conservative opposition will be more likely to oppose restrictions on freedom of speech with a Democrat in the White House. Best yet, Obama would openly tie his uniformly horrendous policy positions to his Christian faith, reminding many Americans, through his results, of the danger posed by injecting religion into politics.

[Obama] has said he shares core Christian beliefs in God and in Jesus as his resurrected son, he sometimes mentions doubts. In his second book, he admitted uncertainty about the afterlife, and "what existed before the Big Bang." Generally, Mr. Obama emphasizes the communal aspects of religion over the supernatural ones.

Obama will do what he can to make our lives a "communal" Hell on Earth if he is elected, and the blame will (perhaps) finally rest where it belongs: religion. Assuming we survive this Jimmy Carter on Steroids, we may profit greatly as a nation from the experience.

Having said this, I shudder to imagine what an Obama Presidency would look like. Would Obama, with opponents afraid to stretch their necks out too far, end up with a cowering, rubber-stamp Congress? Would he succeed in building a socialist-theocrat coalition, thereby morally reinvigorating the former and delivering political power to the latter?

I started this blog with John McWhorter's essay as my point of departure and I end with it as well. McWhorter goes on to speculate how an Obama Presidency will affect conversations about what it means to be black in America. Equally interesting will be whether whites in America learn (or we find that they have learned) that it really is okay to treat a black man as an equal, including expressing honest disagreement with him and stopping him if one honestly thinks he is wrong.

-- CAV

Infuriated Socialists

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A few days ago, Paul published this letter to the editor in the Denver Post:

Health care is not a right, and it is not the proper role of government to provide health care for all citizens. Instead, this should be left to the free market. It is precisely the attempts of the governments of countries like Canada (or states like Tennessee) to attempt to mandate universal coverage which have led to the rationing and waiting lists for vital medical services. Similar problems are already starting to develop in the Massachusetts plan as well. Any plan of government-mandated "universal coverage" is nothing more than socialized medicine, and would be a disaster for Colorado.

Paul S. Hsieh, M.D., Sedalia

In response, Denver Post staff columnist Jim Spencer attacked Paul (without identifying him by name) in his column "Reforming the health of our care":

The craziest letter to the editor that I've read in some time came from a physician who claimed that Coloradans have no right to health care.

Seems the guy not only forgot his Hippocratic oath but also the law.

If you're sick enough or badly injured, they have to treat you at the emergency room regardless of your ability to pay.

The doctor aimed his editorial rant against socialized medicine. But he wrote it because a state blue-ribbon commission is now cobbling together a plan for medical treatment and prescription drugs for Coloradans.

The column then discusses the supposedly noble work of the 208 Commission in determining the proper "private/public mix in the provision of health care."

I'm tickled pink to see Paul causing such a stir. It shows the power that physicians have when they speak out against socialized medicine.

For more information about the fight against socialized medicine in Colorado, visit FIRM: Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine. For Paul's more detailed case against socialized medicine in Colorado, read Socialized Medicine in Colorado - An Open Letter to Colorado Physicians.

The Ten-Cent Solution

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

In our mixed economy, where many industries are partially or sometimes wholly socialized, I find a curious phenomena. Such industries are rife with myths designed to perpetuate the socialized status quo. And because there are few examples of free-market solutions, the debate about the problems and issues with these institutions includes only weak or outright straw men arguments for the free market.

Take education, an industry which is roughly 90% public (i.e. socialized), according to the Council for American Private Education. Myths of the need for public education abound here. Some include:

• All children, regardless of means, need a "full service" K-12 education, one that includes many teachers, a full range of possible course choices, extra-curricular activities, and capable facilities. (The implication is that not everyone can afford such a necessary education and so it must be a socialized institution)
• Teachers are never paid enough for the "value" they bring to society by educating our youth, and this observation is true of all teachers regardless of performance.
• Private schools are an "upgrade" from public schools and as such are typically only relevant to the rich. Indeed, there is no way private schooling could educate the poor since it must rely on such a weak source of income to fuel its curricula (which of course can only suceed if it is "full service")
  
• Education is a societal need, and as such it is a "loftier" responsibility than mere commerce is capable of handling.

I've heard all of these arguments for public schooling, and it is sheer bunk. Were it not for the fact that the public school system has a near monopoly on the industry, it would take only a few hard examples to show the flaws in these arguments and to show the capable, education industry that the free market could build in place of socialized education.

Enter a clear example of the success of the free market, not in educating the rich, but in educating the poorest of the poor in the poorest countries in the world. In a March 2007 Atlantic article, The Ten-Cent Solution, one researcher has found a hidden grey market for education among the poor of Hyderabad, India, and other third world cities.

In Hyderabad, a city of more than 6 million people, Tooley and his team--confining their search to poor areas lacking amenities such as running water, electricity, and paved roads--counted 918 schools. Only about 40 percent were run or financed by the government; 60 percent were private. Of those, some were "recognized" by the government, but most were officially unknown to the authorities. These black-market private schools were smaller on average than the other kinds--but they still accounted for about a quarter of all the children in any sort of school. Remarkably, some of the slots in these private slum schools were offered free or at reduced rates: The parents of full-fee students, desperately poor themselves, willingly subsidized those in direst need.

This flourishing educational enterprise is all the more surprising once you understand that India has deliberately discriminated against private education--forbidding for-profit schools, for instance, and requiring schools to be run as trusts rather than proprietorships, and limiting their ability to borrow. Despite these handicaps, private education for the very poor has evidently thrived...

As Tooley relates it, the response of the international development community to his research has been less than enthusiastic. Even if private schools are much more prevalent than we had previously thought, he's been told, they are obviously no good. Standards in such schools are bound to be low.

But the development community seems to be wrong about that, too. On the whole, dime-a-day for-profit schools are doing a better job of teaching the poorest children than the far more expensive state schools. In many localities, private schools operate alongside a free, government-run alternative. Many parents, poor as they may be, have chosen to reject it and to pay perhaps a tenth of their meager incomes to educate their children privately. They would hardly do that unless they expected better results.

Better results are what they get. After comparing test scores for literacy and basic math, Tooley has shown that pupils in private schools do better than their state-school equivalents--at between a half and a quarter of the per-pupil teacher cost. In some places, such as Gansu, China, the researchers found that private schools serving the poor had worse facilities than comparable state schools; in Hyderabad, they were better equipped (with blackboards, desks, toilets, drinking water, and so on). Regardless, the tests so far show that private-school students do better across the board.

I love examples like these. Here in one example you have clear refutation of most of the myths above, and additionally a clear demonstration of the bias of advocates of socialized medicine against private education, even in the face of hard data. Here is the reality:

• What particular education is of value is contextual. That is, it depends on the needs of the child being educated and the particular means of his parents. And so the market will respond by offering all sorts of options for education, allowing the individual to choose which options best fit his means, and capabilities. Just as I can select from a myriad of cars each fitting a particular utility and means, so parents would be able to select a product that fits their needs and means. The idea that a Ford Focus is inferior to a BMW 7 series is laughable. To a man of modest means the Ford Focus may be exactly what he needs, and correspondingly exactly what he can afford. And so the Ford Focus of education, one that includes "literacy and basic math" (The Three R's) may be just the thing that the poor need given their particular context.
  
• The value of the service provided by a teacher is also contextual, and the best way to reflect this value is by a direct fee for service model, with parents paying a teacher.
• All teachers are not created equal, and the best way to get excellence in teaching is to reward it. The best way to do that is through the profit motive. Teachers who can demonstrate their value will then command a great proportion of share and a great price for their services. This works at all levels.
• And finally, the free-market does a better job with education at any level. Period.

The myth that education is too lofty and important to be left to commerce belies the evidence as scarce as it sometimes is. Education is important. And it is for that reason that it is exactly something which should be left to commerce.

PBS airs "Islam for Dhimmis"

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

A spell of insomnia saw me up early Wednesday morning (April 25). I poured a glass of milk and tried to read Taine's "Introduction to the History of English Literature." But my mind was too restless to concentrate, so I switched on the television to see what anyone else up at so ungodly an hour would be watching, aside from Jay Leno, "infomercials," or national news. I would settle for anything that would induce drowsiness.

Lo and behold, what did I encounter at 3:05 a.m. on Channel 15, the local Public Broadcasting System station out of Norfolk, but propaganda for Islam. I have not been able to learn the actual name of the program. Several calls to the station's program director asking for its name have not been returned. In the newspaper TV listings, a block of hours from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. was marked simply "Varied Programs." Not "various"? But, never mind.

However, if it is to have a name, it should be dubbed either "Islam for Real Dummies" or "Islam for Dhimmis." Billed certainly as a "documentary," it left out a great mass of very crucial documents, leaving one with the question in one's mind: If Islam is such a mellow, benign creed, how could anyone hold a brief on it? It was such a solemn yet saccharine encomium it could just as well have been a promotion for the Rotary Club or the Knights of Columbus.

But, my tax dollars were at work, shilling for Mohammad.

This is the kind of "educational" film doubtless shown to gullible, impressionable, ignorant teenagers in high schools, in the same rank as films shown them about environmentalism, recycling, tolerance, sex, global warming, and "democracy." Perhaps it is even shown in middle or grade schools, our Comprachico-trained public school authorities having a policy of brainwashing children as early as possible.

Now, I had not seen such a "puff piece" (thanks to Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Critic for that term) since Michael Moore's last effort at disinformation and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," so "Islam for Dhimmis" was a special experience. I will not recount everything that was in the film, but focus on some highlights.

One image sticks in my mind, that of a comely young Muslim woman, appropriately attired in an immaculately white hair-and-neck-hiding scarf, being interviewed about the Islamic notion of charity. "If you can't give someone money, then Mohammad says you should reward him with a smile. Mohammad is such a wonderful role model!" She said it with her best Moonie smile, as well. That whole segment of the half-hour program was devoted to the Fourth Pillar of Islam, of giving alms to the poor as a matter of duty and as "purification" of one's wealth. (I immediately thought of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and the penance they haven chosen to perform with their wealth.)

Smile? No mention was made anywhere in the program of all the smiles hidden by the ski masks worn by the troops of Hezbollah or Hamas or by the murderers of Nick Berg, Daniel Pearl, or of any other "infidel" Westerner similarly subjected to such compassion.

Another image that sticks in my mind is the footage of Hajj pilgrims thronging by the tens of thousands around the Kaaba in Mecca, a veritable sea of wild-eyed manqués who hope to hike around the place seven times and press their lips to the Black Stone, and by kissing it, add their own sins to its likely unsanitary surface. No footage, however, was shown of the usual stampedes of the faithful that result in hundreds of them being crushed to death as surely as if the Black Stone fell on them from the sky, leaving behind mountains of empty sandals. So much for the Fifth Pillar of Islam.

The program's take on the early history of Islam was interesting in that it was a model of how to gloss over historical facts. After Mohammad captured Mecca and died shortly thereafter, his followers spread the faith throughout the Middle East, Africa, and into parts of southern Europe - by the sword. In the program, however, this was not called "conquest" by force of arms and threat of annihilation. Islam's history was presented in so slick a manner that an uncritical mind would have gone away thinking that it was a peaceful spread of the creed, involving no slaughters, mayhem, destruction, or the enslavement of whole populations.

It was left to the dhimmi mind to infer that the success of Allah's gospel was the work of just hard-working imams and mullahs and Sufis preaching the Word in pagan lands, just like St. Patrick in Ireland. It implied that the conquerors respected the religions of the populations they subdued, and all was well. There was no mention of the fact that those populations the Islamists permitted to keep their religions, were obliged to pay jizya, protection money that was a sign of submission and dhimmitude, a condition of "coexistence" which meant little more than dhimmis getting the hell out of the way of any Muslim.

The narrator did not broach the subject that Islam could spread only because the final collapse of Greco-Roman civilization created a political/military vacuum that allowed Islam to sweep through the known world in the south and the Huns and Visigoths to sweep down from the north, probably because it was history that did not fit the thesis.

Another segment on "colonialism" was equally interesting. For some strange, unexplained reason, Islam declined in the 19th century, allowing Western powers to colonize great portions of the expiring semi-caliphate of Islam, overrunning North Africa, the Middle East, and as far away as Indonesia. There was a peculiar focus on British, French, and Dutch colonialism, complete with old footage of soldiers dispersing mobs of presumably Muslims with guns, bayonets and swords. In the late 19th century, according to the program, "resentment" over Islam's decline and the power of the West grew. I am supposing that was the program producer's way of cocking a snook at Britain, France and the Netherlands, which now have the most contentious, unassimilated Muslim populations.

That "resentment" covers a lot of territory not even hinted at in the program, including fatwahs, jihads, and anti-Semitism. "Resentment" was probably the softest term the program's scriptwriter could come up with and have approved by his Islamic script consultants to stand in for "hatred," that is, for hatred of the West for being the West and for being superior, as well.

Interestingly, not once was the role of oil brought up during the program. The footage of the 1930's and 1940's suddenly depicted Arab emirs and princes debouching from airplanes and taking part in international conferences, with no explanation of how or why tribal chieftains could suddenly do these things. No mention was made of all the expropriated, Western developed oil fields in the Mideast that Western governments neglected to defend for their owners (and whose owners capitulated and "cooperated" with the expropriations to form such bastard entities as ARAMCO). All those skinny Bedouin emirs and princes grew very fat; look at the members of the House of Saud today.

In explaining the character and content of Islam, the narrator said that Islam recognizes only one God (Allah), and that Mohammad is his prophet. He did not go on to point out one major implication of that belief, to wit, that if Mohammad is not any other creed's prophet, then it is a false creed and consequently a legitimate target for repression and ultimate elimination by Islam. This theological Catch-22 is blatantly obvious, yet it is astounding that it is not grasped by most who comment on Islam (including Pope Benedict). It is a central tenet of Islam; remove it, or demote Mohammad to just one of a gaggle of Muslim prophets, and Islam would implode as a religious/political ideology.

(Similarly, Jesus Christ was not the only religious "savior" of his time to be crucified by the Romans; imagine the consequences throughout Christianity if that icon were shattered, as well. How many candidates for the role of "son of God" were there originally? Did the authors of the Bible draw up a short list, or hold an "American Idol" style talent contest to judge who was the most pacific?)

This, neither the Islamic "extremists" nor the "moderates" will or can allow to happen. No one but an unbeliever or an apostate would propose the idea, because doing so would immediately earn him a fatwah or death sentence. (Call it the Muslim "Wanted: Dead or Alive" bulletin board.). Re Salman Rushdie, Wafa Sultan, Oriana Fallaci, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Steve Emerson, and others. The roll call of those with the intellectual honesty and courage to excoriate Islam grows daily, but it is not given much press.

Also mentioned by the narrator with great deference in this segment was the fact that neither humans nor animals are permitted representation in Islamic art. This, he and some imam explained, is to discourage icons and to encourage the perception of Allah and Mohammad as "abstractions." The narrator spoke dozens of words about the beauty of Islamic architecture and the grace of Islamic calligraphy, but did not once allude to the Danish cartoons and the uproar by thousands of "tolerant" and "compassionate" Muslims calling for the cartoonists' deaths.

In all the program, no breath of suggestion was made about: the bestial strictures of Sharia law, honor killings, fatwahs on apostates and defamers of Islam, beheadings, the regular slaughter of infidels, the jihad against the West, 9/11, the London, Madrid and Bali bombings - all that and more credited to Islam, about Islam, in Islam's name.

The end credits were not surprising. The half-hour program was made possible by "The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia," "The Government of Kuwait," and "The Islamic Center," and was produced by Delphi Productions. The credits rolled down so quickly I may have missed a few other sponsor names.

I do not know if "Islam for Dhimmis" was ever aired during prime time and if this was just a rerun to fill a dead time slot in the wee hours. If my queries to WHRO Channel 15 are ever answered, I will report what is told me. It would be interesting, however, to learn who funded the production of this instance of catholic cosmetology and vetted the final cut. Probably the usual suspects, here and abroad.

It would be pointless to protest the use of my tax dollars to advance a religious doctrine by a government-funded entity such as PBS, especially a doctrine so antithetical to the principles of freedom on which this country was founded. The high Pooh-Bahs of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, like their counterparts in the BBC, would dismiss such a protest with scorn. PBS broadcasts so many programs that are antithetical that it would be churlish to upbraid it over this program alone. As have the private broadcasters - ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc. - it has bought into the collectivist/altruist ideological axis without the least sign of discrimination or fastidiousness, without the least regard for its totalitarian potential. All that is protected by the sacred cow of "public service."

Given the ongoing Islamist jihad against the West, the airing of "Islam for Dhimmis" is an unforgivable public "disservice," and for that offense alone, PBS should be defunded and abolished.

Leiter on Churchill

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yesterday, a professor in Boulder's philosophy department forwarded this post by Brain Leiter minimizing and excusing Ward Churchill's dishonesty to the department's "disscuss" list. I was floored by Leiter's remarks. Here's what I wrote in reply:

Brian Leiter approvingly quoted someone who wrote: "Churchill is guilty of occasionally shoddy scholarship and the dubious practice of ghostwriting, and perhaps even more."

The "dubious practice of ghostwriting"?!? That has got to be joke. (Yeah, I know it's not.)

By his own admission, Churchill published his papers under the names of others. As if that's not bad enough, he then cited those papers as independent sources to corroborate false legal and historical claims. That's not some kind of mistake or oversight. It's not merely dubious: it's twice-baked academic fraud. Contra Leiter, it's very serious.

A graduate student would surely be kicked out of the program for ghostwriting papers for other students. Fabricating sources would be a serious offense. So why is that behavior excusable in a professor?

If academic freedom is understood as granting professors freedom to engage in the same kinds of dishonesty for which students are flunked and/or expelled, then academic freedom won't be around much longer.

As for the rest of the blog post, it's not consistent with what I've read in the various CU reports on Churchill. See:

http://www.colorado.edu/.../report.html

http://www.colorado.edu/.../WardChurchillReport.pdf

http://www.colorado.edu/.../ChurchillStandingCmteReport.pdf

Augh. I don't understand how academics can punish plagiarism and cheating in their students while excusing Ward Churchill. Yet they do.

Then and Now

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

In 1900, the city of Galveston, Texas was nearly obliterated by a severe hurricane. Its citizens immediately started rebuilding the city and making it more hurricane-resistant.

The latter involved building a seawall and raising the land behind it. Although there was some government aid, the home owners themselves had to bear the cost of raising their houses.

Ignoring advice from its sister paper, The Dallas Morning News, that it move temporarily to Houston, The Galveston Daily News continued publishing from the island and never missed an issue. Sept. 9 and 10, 1900, were published together on a single sheet of paper. One side listed the dead. The other reported the devastation of the storm.

In the first week after the storm, according to [David G.] McComb's book, telegraph and water service were restored. Lines for a new telephone system were being laid by the second.

"In the third week, Houston relief groups went home, the saloons reopened, the electric trolleys began operating and freight began moving through the harbor," McComb wrote.

Residents of Galveston quickly decided that they would rebuild, that the city would survive, and almost as soon, leaders began deciding how it would do so.

...

The oldest part of the seawall still visible runs from Sixth street to 39th street and was built between 1902 and 1904, he said. [bold added]

500 city blocks had been raised by as much as 11 feet within a decade.

By contrast, residents of New Orleans who fled Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have just learned that they will be receiving government assistance at least through 2009 to continue living in Houston while assorted leftists complain (See PS.) about Latin American immigrants taking "their" jobs during the agonizingly slow rebuilding of New Orleans.

Housing assistance for more than 120,000 displaced families, which was scheduled to end Aug. 31, will continue through March 1, 2009. Starting March 1, 2008, recipients will be required to make monthly payments starting at $50 and increasing to $600 by the time the assistance ends.

On Sept. 1, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will take over the program from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has helped families with rent, utility payments, mobile homes and travel trailers since the two hurricanes struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.

A century later, despite the fact that our vastly higher general level of prosperity and numerous technological advances could make the rebuilding and fortification of New Orleans against future storms easier in some respects than that of Galveston, the recovery of the Crescent City moves at a snail's pace while nearly three times the entire pre-hurricane population of 1900 Galveston will remain on the dole at the time by which a more enterprising citizenry had managed to build a seawall a century earlier.

Once again, we have a glaring example of the fact that the welfare state does not bring about what most Americans know as prosperity. And yet, the man-made welfare state is accepted as an unquestionable, unalterable, metaphysical fact. Why? Because no one will ask why it is that they are asked to help their fellow man above and beyond imminent peril, and into perpetuity. Because of the widespread ethics of altruism, which provides the welfare state with its moral justification.

Such is the power of the philosophical ideas that motivate the members of a society: In one century, Americans on a sandbar raised their own homes and built a seawall to fend off a major hurricane; by the next, the citizens of a once-great city fled it, never to return or help in its reconstruction, to live in perpetual lassitude as parasites on a nation of suckers who could not raise more than a feeble objection to the fact that it was being taken advantage of.

-- CAV

PS: From the leftist site linked above, I reproduce this amazing piece of evasion, in part because it is not on its own web page and I want to make sure it exists somewhere for future reference:

By some estimates, close to 100,000 new migrant workers -- Latino, African-American, Asian, Native-American, and Anglo workers either recruited to the reconstruction zones or searching on their own for better economic opportunities -- have arrived in the Gulf Coast region after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Tens of thousands have come to rebuild New Orleans. Instead of being validated and rewarded [Money, you see, is an "entitlement" to some people, and doesn't count. --ed] for their role in this city's renewal, they find themselves locked into states of marginalization and transience. Across the city, workers are living in abandoned cars, working in toxic conditions, chasing after a web of subcontractors for their wages, and running from police and immigration authorities who have intensified their enforcement efforts while labor law enforcement is lax.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of former New Orleans residents -- many of whom lived paycheck to paycheck on hospitality industry poverty wages before Katrina -- face tremendous barriers to finding meaningful employment. [Like what? Greyhound? Amtrak? The Interstate Highway system? Southwest Airlines? --ed] Survivors of the hurricane attempting to return home find they have no housing, no schools for their children, no public infrastructure to support them. They are, consequently, locked out of the burgeoning labor market in their own hometown.

And those poor, brave souls in Galveston at the turn of the last century had it any better?

Such cluelessness of the left, while sometimes only apparent, and as a result of deliberate context-dropping, is also sometimes a symptom of the prevalence of the lack of the normal connection between work and reward made possible by the welfare state.