Ayn Rand Institute editorial/press release RSS feed

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

Since the Objectivist Metablog republishes most of ARI’s press releases, I created an RSS feed which allows you to feed those press releases to your newsreader/website:

http://www.objectivismonline.net/Feeds/ARI.php

Please note that the feed contains a copyright notice reproduced verbatim from ARI’s press releases.  You will have to follow the rules in their copyright notice if you want to publish it on your site.

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MIT’s learning Leonardo Robot

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

How cool is this:

(More cool robots.)

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Make October 20 “Light’s On” day in Los Angeles

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

The city and county of Los Angeles is organizing a voluntary “lights out” event on October 20 to “fight climate change.” 

If you agree with me that this event is a moral atrocity and a stepping stone to coercive restrictions on human industry, then I urge you to use as much energy as possible from 8-9pm October 20^th, 2007.  Shine your lights bright, and run your dishwasher, laundry, vacuum, and any other electronic device you have.  If we don’t take a stand against environmentalism now, we might not have a choice when the next blackout hits because yet another power plant was banned.

(The site is lightsoutla.org, but please don’t link to it.)

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ARI featured on Forbes.com

From the Ayn Rand Institute:

We are pleased to report that the Ayn Rand Institute is featured in a prominent article on Forbes.com today, September 28, 2007. The article discusses the progress Objectivism is making in the culture, with the surge of interest in Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged and the Ayn Rand Institute.

» read the article …

Progressively Wrong

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

Via Matt Drudge comes a "news" story whose ostensible subject matter isn't really news -- or shouldn't be, anyway -- and whose purpose is not to inform, but to push an insidious point.

The story rambles on for a whole page with inconsequential details and wastes time describing the feelings of entitlement of two of its actors, but this short paragraph pretty much sums up the "story" as well as the insidious point:

Some San Antonio apartment complexes are refusing to rent to people with tattoos and body piercings. News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooter Jaie Avila investigates the case of one couple who says that policy is unfair.

Translation: (1) A landlord exercised his property rights, but (2) a couple claims that it is unfair that he be free to do so.

What is interesting here is that the basis for the claim that it is "unfair" for a landlord not to rent to someone who changes his own appearance lies in the various laws against housing discrimination that are on the books, as evidenced by an interview with a government housing official conducted by Channel 4:

"Refusing to rent to somebody because they have tattoos may be unfair, but it's not discrimination under the fair housing act, unless the tattoos are specific to the person's religion or national origin," says Sandy Tamez of the San Antonio Fair Housing Council. [bold added]

Notice the error from the civil rights era being carried forward to the present. While it was proper to repeal Jim Crow laws (i.e., government-enforced segregation), it was dead wrong to prohibit private individuals from engaging in discriminatory practices because the precedent is set for the government to intervene in all other spheres of private behavior, thereby violating individual rights.

While the sentiment behind such laws -- fighting racial prejudice -- was certainly noble, enacting these laws was a mistake, for it is the purpose of government to protect individual rights, not to enforce morality. Instead, the government remained in a business it should have never been in in the first place: Dictating the actions of private individuals in matters of race.

Certainly, it is inconsistent that private individuals are being made to rent to members of certain minority groups who do not look European or conform to Western standards of grooming -- but not to all individuals who fail to do so. It is inconsistent, but it is not unfair. What is unfair is not that we don't violate the rights of landlords across the board, but that we violate the property rights of anyone at all.

If the News 4 Trouble Shooters should have covered this story at all, they should have grilled self-disfiguring exhibitionist Gilbert Carrillo about whether he has looked elsewhere for housing. Has San Antonio no one who do not have a problem with his particular aesthetic standards or who caters to those who do not? And why is the government apparently all but in league with him to persecute the small landholding, tatoo-disliking minority of San Antonio? After all, a government official stated publicly that she agreed with Carrillo that the landlord was being uppity.

Instead, they joined in and even extracted a small bribe (in the form of a returned, non-refundable deposit) from the landlord Carrillo probably lied to on the matter of his tattoos.

It's funny how a group of people helping to perpetuate government-enforced discrimination against property owners is calling itself "Trouble Shooters" when so many who fought to end government-enforced discrimination of another kind were labeled "trouble makers" nearly fifty years ago.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 249

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

Yesterday was Petrov Day. How did you celebrate?

Noumenal Self links to a blog posting about a narrowly-avoided catastrophe from the Cold War Era and the man who averted it.

On September 26th, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the officer on duty when the warning system reported a US missile launch. Petrov kept calm, suspecting a computer error.

...

Petrov was first congratulated, then extensively interrogated, then reprimanded for failing to follow procedure. He resigned in poor health from the military several months later. According to Wikipedia, he is spending his retirement in relative poverty in the town of Fryazino, on a pension of $200/month. In 2004, the Association of World Citizens gave Petrov a trophy and $1000. There is also a movie scheduled for release in 2008, entitled The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World.

Given that the Soviet system punished independent judgement, Petrov's calm independence was all the more remarkable for the strength it took for him to preserve that crucial aspect of his character into adulthood.

Pssst! It's called "individual rights"!

I haven't had the time to consider the full context of the Jena Six story, but found the end of this Clarence Page column about it interesting:

The best legacy for the Jena 6 march would be a new movement, dedicated this time to the reduction and elimination of unequal justice wherever it appears. I don't care who leads it, but it shouldn't be for blacks only.

In other words, the best legacy would be the one that should have been left by the civil rights movement of the 1960's, but wasn't: a respect for the individual rights of all Americans.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are involved in this pale imitation of the days when the movement was fighting for what is right, are too busy keeping the government involved in racial discrimination to be the leaders Page is hoping for. (And their involvement smacks of opportunism at best.)

We will not have equal justice for all until everyone becomes willing to put aside the illusory benefits of government favoritism. This will not happen until more people understand the evil unleashed by the premise that it is okay for the government to violate the rights of "others".

And this won't happen until more people understand the vital, personal importance of the government's consistently protecting everyone's freedom to act in accordance to his own best judgement. Government favors and equal justice are mutually-exclusive goals, of which the second is the only legitimate mission for government.

Not only are Jackson and Sharpton too busy making the government everyone's enemy, they do not hold the requisite ideas in political philosophy to effect this cultural revolution. True political revolutions are started by intellectuals, not pull-peddling politicians.

Getting Things Done in Academia

Given that Diana Hsieh already knows about David Allen's productivity techniques and is ABD (all but dissertation) anyway, telling her about this blog now doesn't quite fit the bill of returning the favor of introducing me to Getting Things Done.

But if you are in academia and particularly if you are considering or starting grad school, take a look at Getting Things Done in Academia. It is loaded with excellent advice, including how to adapt Allen's techniques to academic work.

For example, had I grad school to do over again, I wish I could have run across something like this post: "5 Essentials for Your Grad School Survival Kit". Item 4 is particularly relevant, although it was written way back in the '70s.

-- CAV

Iran on Campus

By Dr Yaron Brook:

Irvine, CA--On Monday Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave a speech at Columbia University. Columbia, defending the controversial decision to have Ahmadinejad speak, said the event gave students an opportunity to question and learn from opposing views.

"But we have nothing to learn from tyrants who seek to murder and enslave us," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"Iran is the leading state sponsor of Islamic totalitarianism, which for three decades has waged a proxy terror-war on the United States. Indeed, Iran is already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. It is outrageous to give the leader of Iran a platform. To do so is to participate in his pretense that he is the leader of a civilized nation with legitimate grievances against the United States. Stripped of that pretense, Ahmadinejad would be exposed as the thug who heads a militant theocracy seeking, not peace and prosperity, but 'death to America.'

"Far from having its president invited to speak at a prestigious American university, Iran and its leaders should suffer the only fate appropriate for a country that threatens American lives: a crushing defeat at the hands of the United States."

Thank You, Mr. Stossel!

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

In a series of recent columns, John Stossel has been ably and valiantly tackling the numerous fallacies and misconceptions behind the current drive for socialized medicine. In his latest installment, he looks at the notion that we all "need" medical insurance (of the kind many of us have today) with a jaundiced eye:

America's health-care problem is not that some people lack insurance -- it's that 250 million Americans do have it.

You have to understand something right from the start. We Americans got hooked on health insurance because the government did the insurance companies a favor during World War II. Wartime wage controls prohibited cash raises, so employers started giving noncash benefits, like health insurance, to attract workers. The tax code helped this along by treating employer-based health insurance more favorably than coverage you buy yourself.

Now this is nothing new to me or to many fellow advocates of fewer government controls for the medical sector, but remember that it is necessary (and often missing) historical context for most people.

This background also sets up Stossel's very good explanation of what is wrong with so many Americans having medical insurance. Here is just part of a superb explanation of the overhead insurance companies face, as well as how low deductibles encourage over-use of the medical care that is available by those who don't really need it.

[I]nsurance is a lousy way to pay for things. Your premiums go not just to pay for medical care but also for fraud, paperwork and insurance-company employee salaries. This is bad for you and bad for doctors.

The average American doctor now spends 14 percent of his income on insurance paperwork. A North Carolina doctor we interviewed had to hire four people just to fill out forms. He wishes he could spend that money on caring for patients.

...

Imagine if your car insurance covered oil changes and gasoline. You wouldn't care how much gas you used, and you wouldn't care what it cost. Mechanics would sell you $100 oil changes. Prices would skyrocket.

Read the whole thing -- and remember these excellent examples the next time you find yourself talking to someone who is a little confused about the "need" for universal rationing -- I mean "coverage".

-- CAV

Learning how to teach history . . .

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

Recently I've been training to be a docent at George Mason's Gunston Hall Plantation. Our mission is to present Mason's life and achievements to 4th and 6th graders, who are required to know Virginia and US history as part of the commonwealth's curriculum standards. While I have lectured before high school students before, this will be the first time that I will have an opportunity to work with grade-schoolers and I am looking forward to the challenge that a younger and less-knowledgeable audience entails.

One of the tools that I plan to use in my tours is something I picked up from listening to Scott Powell's course on European history. In his course, Powell presents the idea of "periodization" as a tool to identify and present the essential elements of a historical epoch in a few sentences. The benefit of this process is that it forces one to think though all that they know about a historical epoch and pick out the most crucial factors. For me, it's a effective way to identify men with their ideas and corresponding actions and present my knowledge in a concise statement.

For example, George Mason lived from 1725 to 1792 and was a key player in the American quest for political independence from Great Britain and the establishment of constitutional rights-protecting republic to replace the British king. As part of the colonial trend toward self-governance, Mason wrote the Virginia constitution and its groundbreaking Declaration of Rights; this was the first time the Lockean idea of natural rights was codified in a political charter in the Americas. After the revolution, Mason refused to sign the Federal Constitution on the grounds that it did not originally include its own charter of fundamental political rights. Being a southern planter, Mason owned slaves, yet he referred to slavery as a "slow poison" and slave-owners as "petty tyrants" and he all but predicted the American Civil War.

The problem with these and the myriad of other facts I have learned about Mason as part of my docent training is that they can quickly overwhelm anyone, let alone a young (and typically under-educated) mind. Furthermore, I think one of the problems faced by historical institutions such as Gunston Hall is while it is relatively easy for interpreters to focus on the available concretes (such as Mason's house, the available artifacts, ect.), it is much harder to concretize an abstract principle such as natural law and the principle of individual rights. Nevertheless, a proper periodization reminds one that at least in Mason's case, the abstract is the most essential element.

Thus I think Powell's periodization tool serves as a great method for me to introduce Mason's world. To follow Powell's method, I'd say "The American revolution was a period when English colonists, animated by the philosophic ideas of John Locke, forcibly removed themselves from the arbitrary power of the English king and pioneered the world's first individual rights-protecting government. The planter George Mason was a pivotal player in this revolution, and today we will learn about his ideas and his life . . ." And while I certainly would have approached the topic philosophically and hierarchically, I think Powell's program gave me a clear and useful tool with which to do it.

Welfare [Flickr]

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

HeroicLife posted a photo:

When you love strangers so much that you're willing to have the government steal money from another stranger to help them out.

Casual Sex

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I thank all the people who took time to comment about my question regarding casual sex. I think most of the contention and confusion in the comments arose from interpreting the hypothetical situation, which I an now sorry I brought up. One has to assume an average context to a hypothetical. If one starts dreaming up wild scenarios like, "Okay, say it's the last day of this guy's life..." then one defeats the purpose of the hypothetical. But still, there are too many variables to make that hypothetical question useful.

I have some uncertainty about casual sex, which is why I asked the question. My tentative answer is most like the fourth commenter, Anonymous, who brought up the virtue of pride. Promiscuity shows a lack of pride. Before the rise of the egalitarian New Left, discriminating was understood as a virtue. A discriminating man does not sleep with any slut who will say yes after 10 seconds of conversation.

To understand a lack of pride as immorality, one must get rid of every vestige of Christian or traditional morality, for they hold humility as a virtue. I think even some Objectivists struggle with the idea that lacking pride is immoral. Remember, morality is not primarily about what you do to other people, but about how you should deal with reality. Pride is a virtue because it means you strive to live as well as you can.

Sex between a man and a woman involves the woman submitting to the man. The man pursues the woman, wins the woman, conquers the woman, takes the woman and other verbs that make romantic love sound like a battlefield. The man penetrates and the woman is penetrated. If a woman submits too easily, then the victory is not as satisfying.

But I also sympathize with Tom Rowland's position. Casual sex might be inferior and not as satisfying as romantic love sex, and certainly a habit of casual sex -- promiscuity -- is wrong, but is occasional casual sex always wrong? I can't say that it is.

Don't tell me my position is like "If I only rob banks on Tuesday, then I'm still moral." Casual sex is not a crime. A better analogy would be, "I know that great art offers the more enriching, soul-satisfying experience, but sometimes I like to watch detective shows on TV." Or "I enjoy fine dining, but sometimes I only have time and money for McDonald's."

I think those of us who are not religious still have to watch for remnants of puritan hatred of sex in our thinking. Sex is a good thing. With a serious, committed romantic partner it is great; with anyone less serious it can still be pretty good.

Those are my thoughts. I am open to persuasion if I am wrong.

Reject the "Values Voters'" Culture of Living Death

Irvine, CA--On Monday, the Republican Values Voters Presidential Debate was held, billed as representing "America's Largest Voting Block." Most of the candidates involved, including straw poll winner Mike Huckabee, pledged their support for building a "culture of life"--a rallying cry for America's "values voters" in their opposition to all abortion and embryonic stem cell research, and in their opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide. By doing everything possible to preserve embryos, fetuses, and the incurably ill or vegetative, they say, we will bring about a "culture of life."

Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, denounced this idea. "Think about the reality of such a culture. Pregnant women who rationally desired to abort--whether because of accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, or danger to their lives--would be forced to attempt dangerous, 'back-alley' abortions, the kind that crippled or killed untold numbers of women before Roe v. Wade. Individuals with incurable and unbearable diseases would not be able to die with dignity at a time of their own choosing, but would be subjected to a protracted existence of often unspeakable agony. The potential millions who could be cured by treatments derived from the promising field of embryonic stem-cell research would instead suffer and die.

"To call this a 'culture of life' is a colossal fraud. In reality, it is a culture of suffering--of living death--in which actual human lives are sacrificed because 'God's will' commands it. It is a culture that consistently accepts the Christian ideal that human life is properly lived in sacrifice to God, and that suffering is proof of virtue.

"A true 'culture of life' would leave individuals free to pursue their own happiness--free from coercive injunctions to sacrifice themselves to religious dogma. Such a culture is what we must seek to create, as we do everything possible to fight religious conservatives' 'culture of living death.'"

Reject the Latest Push for Net Neutrality

Irvine, CA--U.S. senator Byron Dorgan, a leading advocate of "Net Neutrality" legislation--which is supported by Microsoft, Google, and many other software companies--promised last week at the Future of Music Policy Summit that the push for this legislation would continue. Americans, he said, to a standing ovation, must "fight back and say this is something that's important for our country's interests." But, said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, "Any law enforcing 'Net Neutrality' would be a terrible blow to Internet freedom."

"'Net neutrality' is the idea that ISPs should not be able to favor some types of data over others; they must be 'neutral' toward all the data they carry. But just as cable companies have a right to apportion their bandwidth between Internet and television data, so Internet providers have a right to apportion their bandwidth between standard and premium Internet data."

"'Net Neutrality' laws would forcibly prevent network owners from selling innovative services to their customers," said Epstein. "Shame on Microsoft and Google for trying to deny their competitors the freedom that has made the Internet great--and shame on the politicians and activists who support this corrupt idea."

Message to Presidential Candidates: Income Inequality Is Good

Irvine, CA--Presidential candidate Barack Obama is receiving lavish praise for giving a speech on Wall Street that included “tough talk” about the issue of “income inequality”--an issue that he and nearly every other presidential candidate regard as a crisis.

But, said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, "there is no such crisis. Income inequality is a natural and desirable part of a free, prosperous society.

"Critics of income inequality act as if American wealth is a communal pie that belongs equally to all of us. But the vast wealth that exists in America has been created--through the productive activities and voluntary arrangements of individuals. And individuals do not necessarily create the same amount of wealth. Because all wealth is created, it rightly belongs to those who earn it (or their chosen beneficiaries)--and no one can rightly claim to deserve wealth earned by others.

"Critics of income inequality point to some legitimate problems, such as poor educational opportunities, growing healthcare costs, and stagnating wages--but these are the result, not of too much capitalism, but of government policies based on the same egalitarian mentality that denounces 'income inequality.' If business and wages were deregulated, we would see a dramatic rise in economic opportunity. If education and medicine were left free, with America's businessmen, doctors, and educators liberated to offer education and medicine at all different price points, we would see quality and price improvements like those for computers or flat-panel television sets. But these benefits of freedom require that we recognize the moral right of each individual to enjoy whatever he produces--and recognize that none of us has a right to something for nothing."

Western Reason vs. Islamic Mysticism

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

A "moderate" Muslim organization called "Muslims Against Sharia" posted a comment on my "Islamophobia is Justified" commentary (in English and in Swedish, no less). Here is my reply to it. I do not often respond to criticisms by Muslims, but the reader will see why I do in this instance in the first and last paragraphs.

Sirs/Mesdames:

Thank you for replying to my “'Islamophobia' is Justified” commentary on Rule of Reason. It quite startled me that you not only praised the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks and his colleagues, but also countered with your own bounty on the head of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi (obviously an alias of the contrivance of the coward who hides behind it).

I printed out your Muslims against Sharia Manifesto to read more closely and to compose some commentary on it. You are to be commended for taking the position on Sharia law that you have – that it must be completely abolished – and I agree with many of the points in the Manifesto, if not entirely with their style of expression, then in spirit, especially in regard to religious privacy, outdated practices, words and phrases, and especially with your endorsement of free expression in terms of depicting Mohammad. I particularly liked your characterization of terrorists as “homicidal zombies’; a more accurate description of them I have not encountered elsewhere.

All that, together with your condemnation of Muslims who murder Muslims and non-Muslims in the name of Islam, certainly deserves recognition of your courage and honesty, and you have mine.

You posed a very interesting question in the Manifesto. After citing the possible (and likely) corruption of the Bible over the centuries (if not expedient inventions of great parts of it by the Church), you ask: “Could it be possible that the Koran itself was corrupted by Muslims over the last thirteen centuries?”

I’m sure you are aware of the abrogation issue concerning the Koran, and if you or Muslim scholars attempt to reform Islam, this will be a major and I think insurmountable hurdle. It is my understanding that the earlier sections of the Koran and Hadith reveal a sort of “kinder, gentler” Mohammad who did not call for war against all unbelievers. I would probably agree with some historians who aver that these sections were calculated merely to win him allies among non-Muslims during his campaign to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. There is no other accounting for their content other than that they are a form of taqiya. Later sections of the Koran abrogate or supplant the earlier ones, however, and these contain the homicidal and belligerent injunctions that fundamentalists cite to sanction jihad.

Another issue I think you or your scholars would face would be retaining Islam’s purported “peaceful” identity, so reforming it would prove to be a daunting but nevertheless insoluble and impossible task.

If you performed a theological and textual vivisection on the written corpus of the religion – that is, managed to “reform” it by excising all its objectionable injunctions, leaving only its more “benign” aspects – could you could still call it “Islam”? What would be left would be a collection of unconnected, disparate rules and sentiments with no system at all. It might be a more pacific creed, akin to the Amish or Quaker, but would it still retain the identity you wanted to preserve? I don’t think it would. You would need to call it by another name.

My final remarks concern faith. Muslims, like Christians, Jews and other religionists, have “faith” in the existence of a supreme being, and that what such a being commands or prescribes as moral is true and right. Of this, all religionists are “certain.”

Now, there is a crucial difference between faith and certainty. You exhibit certainty about the existence, for example, of your car keys, that the laws of cause and effect will enable you to unlock the car door with them, and that the laws of physics will cause them to start the engine. Your certainty is grounded in reality. You don’t even think about it, or need to think about it. Reality and your certainty about it are the given.

You exhibit faith when you believe, without so much as an iota of proof, in the existence of a supernatural being who has never appeared to anyone in history, but whose existence is merely asserted by priests, mullahs or other professional mystics. Apocryphal anecdotes about this being comprise all the sacred texts of all the religions, all of them claiming at some point that this being spoke to or appeared before or somehow manifested his existence to a variety of prophets, seers, saints and so on.

But all of these assertions are merely legends that offer no supporting evidence to substantiate them other than what long-dead, shadowy monks and the like recorded. A pile of unsubstantiated written assertions does not make a truth, no matter how many millions of words or thousands of pages are devoted to “proving” it. Nor do millions of people believing in a thing make it a fact or a truth.

But, you are asked (or told) to accept this “truth” on faith. In short, you are expected to treat the unreal as real. Further, you are not permitted to think about or doubt or question what you are expected to believe. You are not to apply reason to the subject. Even further, you are expected, under pain of sin or punishment, to conduct your life according to a chaos of arbitrary rules and injunctions – pacific or not – purportedly authored by a being – call him Allah, God, Siva, Brahma, Vishnu, or Wontonka – evidence of whose existence you have not a shred, except for the assertions or say-so of a hierarchy of witch doctors.

As you have probably concluded, I am an atheist. I was raised in the Catholic faith, but I could never take it seriously, because every one of its tenets contradicted the evidence of my senses and my nature as a thinking, volitional being, and my senses and my mind and my nature are engineered to deal with reality, not with some fictive other-worldly realm. Every human being is so engineered, without exception, and nature did the engineering or “designing,” not a ghost. If reason cannot be applied to an issue, in this instance, the existence of a supreme being, call him what you will, if it is excluded from any discussion of the subject, then I see no reason to concern myself with the question.

But, you might ask, as so many Christians and Jews do, what about the “first cause”? What about the “beginning”? The cosmologies of the various religions, including Islam’s, are ludicrous, fantastic and metaphysically impossible. I think that most men suffer from a kind of mental block, or absorb it from our semi-rational culture, that stops them from accepting the axiom that existence exists. Period. So they become nominally “faithful” or agnostic.

The concept of a “first cause” or “beginning” is a logical fallacy that beggars metaphysical validation, and is subject to an endless reductio ad absurdum argument. Did existence come into existence when Allah or God or Vishnu snapped his fingers or just “wished” it, and if existence didn’t exist before that, where did this being reside if matter and nothingness did not exist before he did, and where did he come from, and why is his supernatural realm always beyond human perception and comprehension? And so on. It is a matter deserving an essay far longer than my remarks here. Aristotle and Ayn Rand have done a better job of exploding that concept than I could ever attempt.

As a primitive form of philosophy, I do not think any religion is “great.” It has caused so much misery, suffering, horror and destruction in man’s history. And because it has attracted so much attention lately, I find Islam especially repellent for its degrading rituals, prohibitions and virulent anti-mindedness. I don’t like seeing men bowing to a ghost or throwing pebbles at a rock in defiance of another ghost.

Faith and reason are incompatible and antithetical means of living, but most men commit the error of compartmentalizing them to avoid facing the issue. They know that doing the hokey-pokey while reciting a doggerel won’t cause their car keys to work, but they’ll do much the same thing believing it will make a morality work.

Because your Manifesto exhibited a quantum of reason, as did your response to my Islamophobia commentary, I thought it earned a reciprocal reply, which is the best kind of respect I can offer. However, I do not wish to debate this subject at any length, but hope you accept my observations in the spirit in which they are offered.

Bollinger Completely Backwards

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

At National Review Online is an article by a pair of Columbia University students who argue against Columbia President Lee Bollinger's invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at his university.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger[ described] the invitation as an affirmation of academic freedom. Granting that "many, most, or even all of us" find Ahmadinejad "offensive and even odious," Bollinger wrote this week that to "examine critically all ideas" is "our nation's most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world." In Bollinger's view, "this is America at its best."

But Bollinger is begging the question. Certainly the ideas of a powerful world leader should be studied on American campuses. The true question is whether the university should dignify the Iranian leader by making him an officially invited guest. [bold added]

This hits the nail on the head and the article gets even better from there.

Not to criticize their article for this, but amazingly, David Feith and Jordan Hirsch never get around to mentioning one fact that makes Bollinger's praise of academic freedom sound like so much lip service: Columbia's sorry track record of failing to respect the academic freedom of its own students!

While Columbia honors a foreign war criminal with an open forum, it imposes enough restrictions on the freedom of speech of its own students to have earned a "red light" speech code rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is stepping up its public awareness efforts this year on matters of free speech at America's universities.

Rather than mouthing platitudes about academic freedom and grandstanding by asking "tough" questions of Ahmadinejad, Bollinger should instead do something substantive about fostering free intellectual inquiry (which requires freedom of speech). Two good places to start would be to work for the repeal of official school policies that trample freedom of speech and to attempt to change the repressive, multiculturalist atmosphere at Coulmbia, which such policies help bring about and reinforce.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Craig Biddle of Principles in Practice discusses the moral relativism behind Ahmadinejad's speaking invitation here and here.
9-25-07: Corrected a typo.

Democracy vs. Freedom

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

Thomas Sowell, arguing against "nation-building and Wilsonian grandiosity," has written one of the better conservative critiques of the war in Iraq that I have seen in awhile. Its main strength is that it emphasizes the difference between freedom and democracy, a distinction that seems lost on our President.

Natan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy" argues persuasively for the international, as well as internal, benefits of democracy, seeing it as the kind of government that reduces the dangers of war.

President Bush became an enthusiast for the idea and spent hours talking with Sharansky in the White House.

Perhaps he should have spent a little time talking with Amy Chua, whose book "World on Fire" points out that democracy -- in certain kinds of societies -- is a recipe for disaster, despite how valuable it has been in Western nations.

Democracy means voting. It does not mean freedom. When we lump the two ideas together, we confuse ourselves and others.

Britain was a free country long before it became democratic. In Germany, Hitler was elected democratically. In much of Africa, democracy in practice has meant, "One man, one vote -- one time," as elected leaders put an end to both elections and freedom.

It would be wonderful to have free and democratic nations throughout the world, and that would very likely reduce military conflicts, as Sharansky and others say. But we do not ensure freedom by holding elections. [bold added]

As desperately as that point needs to be hammered home, Sowell's lack of appreciation for deeper philosophic ideas limits his effectiveness.

For example, Sowell can only imply that something about Britain predisposed it to freedom and something about Germany predisposed it to tyranny. But what? And yes, arbitrarily tossing disparate peoples together into one country can lead to conflict, as in the examples he cites, but what of America, populated as it is by peoples from around the world who have been killing each other for centuries?

That "what" is at least an implicit respect for individual rights among the citizens of free nations. Sowell grasps at this when he says that, "Real nations evolve over time out of the mutual accommodations of peoples, not by imposing the bright ideas of theorists from the top down."

Indeed Sowell even sounds a little like an Objectivist in that quote, given how we are constantly hammering home the need for cultural change (i.e., the intelligent grasp and adoption of better philosophical ideas by the people themselves) before its politics will move towards freedom. But if he saw this, his article would have been more explicit about this point, and I have noted in some detail before his failure to appreciate the importance of abstract ideas and of intellectuals.

His disdain for ideas comes to full flower as the weed that chokes off his column -- causing it to end weakly. He argues admirably against nation-building, but not at all for what we ought to be doing in this war. " It is the terrorists' war, regardless of where it is fought." Yes. And ... ? Setting aside for the moment whether we should be in Iraq, this piece may not be a call for withdrawal, but it ain't exactly gonna rally the troops, either. Or sustain home front morale.

This war transcends international borders and national interests among our enemies precisely because it is an ideologically-motivated war. And one must appreciate the role of ideas in motivating our enemies if one is to know how to fight the war, including such tactical details as which country we ought to be in. Had Sowell appreciated this, he would have argued for a devastating attack on Iran regardless of where he stands on whether to stay in Iraq.

But instead, his column ends short of ideas and sounding rather pessimistic. Those who think Objectivists, for all our dismay at the improper prosecution of this war, sound like pessimists should think about this.

We sounded the alarm sooner because we saw that the war was being fought the wrong way sooner. And we sound angrier because we know what should be done instead. Most importantly, though, we are speaking up because we know that ideas (and a war based on an understanding of how they affect history) are not futile.

Sowell sounds like he is giving up the ghost here, which is a shame, because there is no substitute for victory, no reason to think it is impossible, and no reason to quit fighting for it.

-- CAV

Inflation

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Chip Joyce posted the following at HBL. I thought it was so interesting that I asked his permission to repost it here.

The US government is committing theft on an historic level and all of us who get paid in dollars are the victims.

* The Canadian Dollar is .9999:1, highest relative value in 31 yrs

* The Euro is 1.4:1, the highest relative value in history

* The British Pound is 2.014:1, right around the highest relative value in history

At this point HB noted that the Pound is at a high in recent history; long ago it was much higher.

* Gold is $730/oz, the highest price since 1980

* Crude oil is $82.51, the highest on record

If you have dollars, you are getting ripped off on a level you probably haven't yet realized. Inflation--and this is serious inflation--does not at first uniformly affect the economy. Much of it depends on where the government creates credit and pumps counterfeit money ( i.e. paper money) into the economy. In my judgment things are much worse than they appear to most people right now.

Roughly 30% of your income and wealth has been stolen from you since 2001, and the trend continues. While Bush advertises his tax cuts, his inflationist policy is taxing us to death, in a sneaky way.

Remember, inflation is a hidden tax. What's worse, politicians blame the price rise of such products as gasoline on greedy corporations. Statists dishonestly use the rising prices that the state causes to argue for more state intervention in the economy!

So now, on top of all the other damage Bush's "compassionate conservatism" has done to the economy, we can add rising inflation.

You can read more about inflation in this post, The Worst American President in History.

12 Steps to the Next Dark Age

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I heard a liberal DJ -- a serious man, not a shock jock -- announce that America was healed from September 11, 2001 because no one cared about the anniversary in 2007. In fact, both Kanye West and 50 Cent released albums on September 11, 2007, and judging who was the King of Hip-Hop was more important to many people than remembering the terrorist attacks. The nation has healed so now it can move on. (And anyone who does not move on, one can infer, is psychologically unhealthy as he holds onto his grief.)

It must be nice to reduce complicated issues of foreign policy, war and the fate of our civilization to psychobabble. The wounds are healed! Move on! Don't think about it!

That's right, we can all stick our head back in the sand. Go back to sleep, the crisis is over.

It reminds me of the first scene in Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen is spending his leave in a hotel room getting drunk. Growing soft. While Charlie is still out there in the jungle staying hard. Charlie doesn't take leave.

We don't have names like Charlie, Gook or Kraut for our current enemy -- that would be racist. We can kill the enemy, but we can't call him names. In fact, we can't name him at all. We refer to him by his tactic: terrorist.

Whatever his name is, the enemy is still out there. Like Charlie, he doesn't take leave. He doesn't grow soft. He doesn't lie to himself or forget his purpose. He knows he is at war.

Because we have not killed him, he will attack again. Those who want us to move on evade the fact that the enemy refuses to move on. As Trotsky said, you might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

But I don't want to disturb the left from its daydreams. Let them live on in their fuzzy cocoon. It has become obvious that Western Civilization has deteriorated in the last 60 years and we will have to win the current war without the help of the left. If the West continues to decline, perhaps the next war will see leftists picking up weapons with the enemy and shooting at us. I'm not too worried about this prospect; people who are so out of touch with reality can't be very good shots.

Protecting Beast from Man

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

The humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe has reached a new low. Officials from the same government that has caused that nation's economy to collapse are now preventing human beings from availing themselves of one of the few sources of food there are left: wild game.

Hungry Zimbabweans threatened to kill and eat a giraffe after it wandered towards the outskirts of the capital Harare, it has emerged.

Scores of people rushed to the scene after the adult giraffe entered Seke district from surrounding farmland. Police said several wanted to butcher the animal "for the pot", according to the state-owned Herald newspaper.

"We have to guard the animal," said one officer. "We have to remain here until it is taken to a safe place."

The incident comes as wild game increasingly falls victim to President Robert Mugabe's policies, with impoverished Zimbabweans turning to any possible source of meat. Poaching is reportedly rising rapidly, with two elephants recently killed in Hurungwe. [bold added]

If I were to propose such a scenario as the logical outcome of the notion that governments do not exist to protect individual rights, but to regulate the use of natural resources by man, most people would regard me as a crackpot. And yet, here it is: Starving human beings are being forbidden at gunpoint to eat animals.

More telling was the headline under which a summary of this story was reported in the print edition of today's Houston Chronicle: "Hungry crowd lets giraffe live". The headline was obviously wrong since the story accurately reported that police prevented the starving crowd from eating. This is immediately obvious from the first line, part of which appears below:

HARARE -- Police stopped villagers from slaughtering and eating a giraffe that strayed into the outskirts .... [bold added]

One wonders how this mistake came about in the first place for such a clear-cut case of government-enforced famine. Did whoever selected this from the wire attribute "noble" motives to the villagers? Did he think the police "talked sense" into the crowd. And did he stop to think about what differentiated the use of force against rational human beings from the use of force against unintelligent animals? Regardless, he seems to have no problems with what the Zimbabwean police did, and major problems with what the villagers wanted to do, even despite their dire situation, as evidenced by the words in bold above.

Look long upon Robert Mugabe. This brute is not content with already having shown (yet again) how disastrous collectivism and government planning are when put into practice -- he is now demonstrating how dangerous the government can be when it decides to protect nature from exploitation by men, rather than its citizens from the threat of force initiated by other men.

The only thing more amazing to me than any of this is the deafening silence from around the world that has greeted this outrage.

-- CAV

Suicide Hotlines

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In retrospect, it's not surprising that volunteer-manned suicide hotlines are plagued by scary levels of incompetence:

The person manning the suicide hot line should have asked a follow-up question about the gun. Yes, the caller had said, he was despondent, and, yes, he mentioned he had considered using a gun to end his life. But that's where that line of conversation ended - until the phone receiver exploded with the sound of a gunshot.

The caller had a rifle with a string tied to the trigger, rigged to point at his head. The bullet went wide, sparing the man, but a question or two more from the crisis-center representative - such as, do you have a gun with you now? - might have changed the course of events.

The journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior has published a remarkable series of articles on the effectiveness of suicide hot lines, opening a window into the world of desperate people and the volunteers who try to help them get through the night. Two of the unprecedented studies involved eavesdropping on suicide hot-line calls - in which the researchers heard things like that terrifying rifle shot - and two main conclusions came out of the work: One, many crisis-line callers are indeed in suicidal distress (and not just lonely or sad) and they are helped by talking to an empathetic fellow human being. And two, the call centers fail, with alarming regularity, to ask some very basic questions: Are you suicidal? Do you have a plan? Do you have the tools at hand to carry it off? Are you alone and drinking? ...

In 723 of 1,431 calls, for example, the helper never got around to asking whether the caller was feeling suicidal.

And when suicidal thoughts were identified, the helpers asked about available means less than half the time. There were more egregious lapses, too: in 72 cases a caller was actually put on hold until he or she hung up. Seventy-six times the helper screamed at, or was rude to, the caller. Four were told they might as well kill themselves. (In one such case, the caller had admitted to compulsively molesting a child.)

There were 33 evident on-line suicide attempts, yet only six rescue efforts, sometimes because the caller ended the communication. In one case, a caller who'd overdosed passed out, yet the helper hung up.

I guess the suicidally depressed could try calling again, in the hopes of hitting on one of the better volunteers. (Apparently, they do exist.) That's probably not going to happen though, horribly enough.

Adventure Capitalist

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

That's my first stab, although it isn't a single word, at Scott Powell's neologism contest, which he blogged some time ago, but I had managed to overlook until tonight.

Starting off by discussing the fact that he was considered for a faculty position at Founders College -- despite the fact that he has just a B.A. -- Scott Powell is searching for a better way to describe his work as a history teacher that somehow also captures his entrepreneurial approach to education.

Sure there are CEOs that accept Objectivism. But they're not selling an intellectual product. They're selling banking services or computer chips, with the help of philosophy. What I'm talking about is philosophy, or, more broadly "intellectual values" as a product–not an "ivory tower" pursuit.

I think this is new enough (correct me, if I'm wrong!) and significant enough (correct me here too, again, if I'm wrong!) to warrant a new term. The hyphenated alternatives (philosopher-businessman, businessman-philosopher, philosopher-entrepreneur, intellectual-businessman, etc.) just don't cut it for me, especially since I want to start using the term to denote myself and my own work! It just has to be catchier!

The best I've come up with so far is "philopreneur," but I'm not too keen on it. So I invite everyone to put their creative side to work on a neologism! Call it the PHR Neologism Contest, if you will. If you're intrigued by the idea, give it a shot, and may the best neologist win!

This is an interesting point that, as an academic scientist, I have not had to think as hard about as Mr. Powell. As an Objectivist, that is, as an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, the question of how certain things currently provided by the government would be provided under capitalism is of interest.

Among those things is scientific research, but even now, at least part of the way it would continue under capitalism is pretty easy to imagine. After all, even now, private industry and charitable foundations fund a fair amount of research, and those sources would have far more money at their disposal without extensive government regulation of the economy and taxation throttling them.

But what of the humanities? Yes. There would still be universities, and academic research would still go on to some extent as long as there were centers of learning, but the practical value of knowing history is not as obvious as it is for science. Since when have you heard of an industry hiring an "applied historian"? (Hmmm. Entry #2, perhaps?)

Throughout history, those interested in intellectual pursuits have had to find ways to support themselves and their studies, often through patronage, support provided by the Church or the wealthy. In modern times, the government has usurped this role, removing money from the pockets of willing patrons and putting the weight of massive subsidies behind intellectual fads of one kind or another and the mediocrity they bring with them

Capitalism, aside from its greater ability to generate wealth (and more patronage), encourages innovation of all kinds. And in the case of Mr. Powell, we see innovation not only in his unique (and very effective) method of presenting history, but in his particular way of financing his interest in being a historian.

It is almost as if Powell asked: "Well. Who was Bill Gates's patron?" and then found a way to gain the favor of that same patron -- by selling history to the public as an adventure and an intellectual pursuit with lessons applicable to our daily lives. (Heck, he has even advised some of us on how we can learn to make more time to enjoy such things!)

I recommend that you explore his web site a bit and consider taking his next history course -- that you consider meeting Scott Powell, adventure capitalist!

And then, of course, if you come up with a better way to describe him, drop him a line in his comments section!

-- CAV

Democracy for Dummies

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

The World Forum on the Future of Democracy at Colonial Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary, the subject of extensive commentary by this site’s host (“Colonial Williamsburg’s Summit of Scrambled Egg-Heads,” September 5), ended on September 18 on a flat note. Only one session of the three-day event was open to the public. The other sessions were “private” events at Colonial Williamsburg’s Williamsburg Lodge, so it cannot be determined if these secret deliberations ended on a high note. Perhaps The New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of the Forum participants, will wax poetic on those private sessions in the near future and let the world know what transpired in them.

The Forum, the signature event of “Jamestown 2007” to mark the founding of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607, was more like a quasi-religious synod of high-minded altruists, globalists, collectivists and pragmatists to discuss in hush-hush huddles how they propose to reform, manage and save the world through “democracy.” As Mr. Provenzo pointed out in his “Scrambled Egg-Heads” commentary, “democracy” had little or nothing to do with the founding of either Jamestown or the United States. All the delegates and participants of the Forum, however, seemed to think it had everything to do with it. This fallacy or untruth neither they, nor the Forum’s publicists, nor the press cared to scrutinize, nor, for that matter, demonstrated any awareness of it. Contradictions cause them no consternation.

It is likely that not one of the 3,000 local residents, students and guests who attended the public session at the College had the presence of mind to challenge any of the panelists with the question: “But, wasn’t this country founded as a republic, and its representative government established to preserve and protect individual rights?” See “Scrambled Egg-Heads” for why individual rights could not be a concern to any of the Forum’s 600 delegates and speakers. Such a question would have left any one of the panelists blinking in momentary speechlessness until he could compose some reassuring but bilious blather.

For example, individual rights were not mentioned by Ali Ansari, panelist and director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, in answer to a question put to him during the public session. According to the September 18 Daily Press (Newport News, VA) article, “Democracy is no cure-all, Iran expert warns,” he said that democracy “is a process that requires a lot of work. It’s a means and not an end.”

The article reports that “One student asked if democracy and theocracy are mutually exclusive.

“’I think they probably are,’ Ansari said. But he added that religion and democracy aren’t incompatible. He also said in response to an earlier question that theocracy is ‘undoubtedly compatible’ with that form of government.”

Which can be taken to mean that, in the evolution of a theocratic state, democracy is compatible if everyone votes the straight Islam-Sharia law ticket. Then democracy, the “means,” can be discarded because a totalitarian theocratic state, the “end,” will be established – permanently. This is probably what Ansari meant when he said the two forms are “probably” and ultimately mutually exclusive.

Dissension from that “consensus” can result in a charge of apostasy or heresy and relegation to a state of dhimmitude of anyone who protests, or worse. The consequences of opposing Islamic theocracy, elected or not, are remarkably similar to those suffered by dissenters under totalitarian communism and Nazism.

The intellectual roots of Ansari’s brand of vacuous doublethink are strictly Western; see Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Comte, Marx and other anti-Western theorists of the 18th and 19th centuries. Islam’s own leading theorists studied them well in Western universities in the early and mid-20th century in search of a credible system which would both sanction Islam’s irrationality and allow it to gather strength with which to first, resist the inroads of the West, and then emasculate and ultimately subdue it. Not for them and their contemporary heirs and practitioners to see Islam suffer the fate of the Catholic Church, when reason in the Renaissance and Enlightenment contributed to that institution’s diminished role as a political force.

If Islam is enjoying a resurgence, it is only because the West has abandoned reason as the primary means of combating and defeating any species of irrationalism. Ansari and his other Muslim Forum participants could have pointed out (but certainly didn’t) that Islam is as much a political system as it is a religious one. Its fundamentalist purists and moderates make no distinction between God and government. They are one and the same, which is what Christian conservatives are asserting more aggressively today in the U.S.

It is doubtful that Ansari offered Iran as an exemplar of “deliberative” democracy. After all, Iranians voted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into power, and now they are stuck with a copycat Hitler who is running the country ragged in his pursuit of Iranian hegemony in the Mideast. Ansari’s glib answer was so vacillating that he might feel it is safe enough to return to Tehran. He must have suspected that his remarks were being closely monitored from far away by Ahmadinejad’s thought police. It is certain they gave his performance high marks.

It is also doubtful that he cited Iraq or Afghanistan as models of democracy in action, countries whose citizens promptly voted in theocratic regimes.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put in a surprise appearance at the Forum – the Bush administration having a special interest in “democracy” – and gave a talk titled “Promoting Democracy Abroad: A Realist’s View.” His presence was written up in a companion Daily Press article of the same date, “Gates: Leaving Iraq a setback for freedom.”

The article reports him as saying that the United States “has made its share of mistakes.”

“From time to time, we have strayed from our ideals and have been arrogant enough in dealing with others. Yet what has brought us together with our democratic allies is a shared belief that the future of democracy and its spread is worth our enduring labors and sacrifices – reflecting both our interests and our ideals.”

Without implying admiration for him, Woodrow Wilson said it better. Gates’s statement is just an echo of Wilson’s imperative in his April 1917 address to Congress that “the world must be made safe for democracy,” and is simply a reiteration of President Bush’s exhortations on the same “duty” to pursue the same selfless goal.

The Daily Press article reported that “Gates emphasized that it takes time to develop democratic governments, referring to efforts within the last 60 years in Germany, Japan, South Korea and other countries, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The article did not mention if Gates dwelt on the nature of those efforts, which in Germany meant a program of ruthless denazification, and in Japan of stripping the Emperor of his deity status and extinguishing every bit of militarism from the culture. It is doubtful that Gates discussed these efforts, or that he even knows much, if anything, about that chapter of successful U.S. foreign policy.

But, can we imagine Gates or Bush Junior or Condoleezza Rice approving a program of “de-Islamizing” Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan? No. Such a program would be “arrogant” and “un-democratic.” To propose and impose a separation of mosque and state and a system of objective law would be “offensive” to a “great religion.”

“Gates said that for the U.S. ‘to leave Iraq and the Middle East in chaos would betray and demoralize our allies there and in the region, while emboldening our most dangerous adversaries.’ He urged staying the course in Afghanistan, which he called ‘a litmus test of whether an alliance of advanced democracies can still make sacrifices and meet commitments to advance democracy.’”

Translation: If the U.S. withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan because of the incalculable expense of blood and treasure, it would mean an admission that the policy of altruistic sacrifice to promote democracy, any time, anywhere, is at least futile and impractical, if not immoral. It would be a concession that a failure to act in the U.S.’s self-defense and security has only emboldened our adversaries, chiefly Iran, all of whom correctly treat the U.S.’s policy of selflessness and willingness to “talk things out” as a weakness to be exploited.

Another surprise participant on the public Forum panel was the doppelganger of former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, a left-over from Bush Senior’s administration.

The has-been Secretary of State, however, the Daily Press reports, “drew one of the night’s biggest bursts of applause by saying the United States no longer can take out leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, though it’s done things like that in the past. He said leaders like Chavez could get themselves into trouble on their own and then get replaced.”

Like Osama bin Laden, whom President Bill Clinton had a chance to “take out” but passed up? Or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe? Or Fidel Castro of Cuba? Or Omar Qadaffi of Libya? Or Vladimir Putin of Russia? Or Ahmadinejad of Iran? Instead of being replaced, these “leaders” have demonstrated remarkable staying power, a power they derive largely from the pragmatic, compromising moral relevance policies of the West and particularly those of the U.S.

Eagleburger expressed an odd opinion, given the venue:

“We should never expect that we can take American democracy into somebody’s country and expect it to work.”

While his statement contradicted the theme and purpose of the Forum, this contrarian assertion apparently passed unnoted and unchallenged. It is as much a reflection on Eagleburger’s chaotic philosophical and moral premises, as on the audience’s.

The Daily Press article also reported that Eagleburger “provided a feisty response to a student’s question on whether increased government surveillance will lead to a Big Brother-style regime.

“’I’m not going to apologize for getting tougher when there are problems within this country that have to be dealt with,’ Eagleburger said. He said the nation must take terrorism seriously and do things it hasn’t done before, within limits.”

“Within limits”? O’Brien, the villain of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, would not agree that there are “limits” to such power, once it is acquired, and he is much more persuasive on that matter than Eagleburger could ever be. As for the “problems within this country,” anyone can go onto Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project site and see how extensive those problems are by studying the map of the U.S. that pinpoints the dozens of Al Qada, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other “Islamic extremist” cells that exist in this country. One can’t gauge how “tough” the authorities are being with them.

And concerning taking “terrorism seriously,” the best “serious” policy would be to deal militarily with states that sponsor terrorism and that fund all those cells. If that happened, all those cells would perish, or they would show their hand only to have it lopped off by the authorities. Then there would be no more need for Big Brother-style surveillance.

But statists need an on-going crisis, real or imaginary (whether it is terrorism, obesity, health care, smoking, global warming, interest rates, etc.), as a rationale for acquiring and retaining extra-legal powers. It usually takes mass civil disobedience, an uprising, or a revolution to force a government to relinquish them.

Also on the public session panel was retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She may have had more to say about democracy, but the Daily Press article chose to merely report her Jay Leno-style “Man in the Street” observation that “a recent poll found that more young people are able to name the Three Stooges than the nation’s three branches of government.

“She said, ‘If young people can’t name the three branches, then we might be in a little bit of trouble.’”

She might have added that if older people, such as the Forum’s speakers and participants, can’t or won’t distinguish between the concepts of democratic and republican forms of government, then we are in more than just “a little bit of trouble.” After all, it is her own and her successor generations of teachers and thinkers who are largely responsible for the general ignorance of young people today.

And that was the congress of knaves, cads, and illusionists, who assembled from around the world to test (liberally paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson in his last letter) the new chains of “monkish ignorance and superstition” about democracy. They came, “booted and spurred,” to persuade men that they were indeed born with “saddles on their backs” to be ridden legitimately by the select few of the Forum, by the tripartite graces of collectivism, unreason, and power.

It was democracy for dummies. Will the dummies ever open their eyes and acquire some smarts before it is too late?

As You Like It

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As You Like It (1936), a British film starring Laurence Olivier and Elizabeth Bergner, is, I believe, the most successful screen version of a Shakespeare play ever. Shakespeare generally does not film well, as cinema is a visual art and Shakespeare is an art of spoken poetry. This movie cut the hell out of the play to achieve its success, which will not make purists happy, but judging the movie qua movie, I think it was the right choice.

The script is based on a treatment by J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. The editing is done by a young David Lean who would go onto greater glory as the director of such masterpieces as Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge Over River Kwai. Some of the older actors in the film would have started their careers in the 19th century and acted with the likes of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

This movie is a most romantic production of Shakespeare's most romantic comedy. The sets and costumes are stylized and unrealistic, as in a fairy tale, but not grotesque or fantastic. Every detail of the production is chosen to create this romantic world; as a result the viewer is transported to a happy universe that has never existed but ought to exist.

Young Laurence Olivier is relaxed, handsome and heroic as Orlando. His sleepy eyes are suggestive and mesmerizing on film, and he manages to give a slightly written character more depth than he really has. This clip of the wrestling scene gives some idea of his acting and the production values. (Doubtless, if this scene were filmed today by say, Steven Spielberg, it would be more realistic and exciting, with thunderous rock music, laser lights, swooping cameras and sweat, blood and grunts -- but would it be better than this naive production?)

The revelation in this movie is Elizabeth Bergner, which is as it should be, for Rosalind dominates the play and all the other characters are two-dimensional compared to her. In all of Shakespeare's female roles she is second only to Cleopatra in depth and breadth. Bergner plays Rosalind as a young girl whose eyes shine with the innocence of youth. As a young girl, Rosalind's relationship with her best friend and confidante Celia is almost as important as her love relationship. (Women talk to each other about love way more than men do.) The two are giddy, giggling young things and their friendship is one of the most endearing aspects of the film -- a touch other productions might forget as they focus on the Rosalind-Orlando relationship. (Perhaps the Rosalind-Celia emphasis is a J.M. Barrie touch?)

Bergner plays a Rosalind who is madly in love and who has fun being in love. She is light-hearted and gay throughout and the viewer can't help having as much fun as she has. This is not an obvious choice for Rosalind. Many actresses are led astray by Rosalind's bountiful wisdom and good sense to play her as a Goddess of Reason who calmly trains Orlando in the art of love. How much more interesting it is to watch a Rosalind who is a bubbly, vivacious, feminine creature.

I work with a director who constantly urges actors to have more fun in Shakespeare's comedies. As he puts it, these characters lived before TV's and DVD's. Their entertainment was each other. In Twelfth Night Sir Toby and his friends gull Malvolio because they want to have fun; they want to be entertained. Or take the scene in Comedy of Errors in which Antipholus of Ephesus is locked out of his own house. If Angelo and Balthazar, who are onstage during this scene, just stand there watching Antipholus fight to get into his own house, that is a poor choice. Angelo and Balthazar should be laughing their ass off because their buddy is locked out of his own house. The right choice in a comedy is usually for characters to have fun (unless, like Malvolio or Antipholus, they are the object of fun). Bergner never forgets that she is in a comedy and her character immensely enjoys having some innocent fun with the man she loves.

The most astonishing thing about the play is how little actually happens -- and yet Shakespeare's theatrical sense and his poetry make it work. The plot is as thin and light as a fairy tale, hardly worth recounting. Many of the key actions that move the plot take place off stage and are told to us briefly by messengers because they're not important. What is important is the romantic, sunny world of Arden Forest, where Rosalind's father has been banished and lives like a Robin Hood without the mission to steal from the rich and redistribute wealth. Arden Forest integrates everything else in the story; the place is almost a character of its own.

Into this pastoral world Rosalind goes dressed as a boy named Ganymede. She meets her lover Orlando and slyly suggests that he practice wooing Rosalind with Ganymede. Orlando, apparently confident that none of the other men are watching, agrees to playact wooing with this boy. As Shakespeare knew from the Falstaff-Prince Hal scene in which they playact Hal talking to his father (Henry IV), there is something fascinating about watching characters pretend to be someone else onstage; or to put it another way, watching actors play characters who are actors. The scenes between Orlando and Ganymede, in which Orlando acts out his love with a boy who is actually his love are the heart of the play.

The movie is not for everyone. It's in black and white, which many young people refuse to watch these days. Any movie made in England in 1936 is bound to be crude by today's technical standards. When you watch a 70-year old movie, it helps if you have some practice watching old movies. The sound quality is typically poor -- this is especially bad since the script is full of archaic language that is hard to understand under the best of conditions. They cut almost all of Act V, including one of the best parts of the play, when Jaques leaves the Duke. If you can get past all this, you might like it -- especially if you are tired of naturalism and long for a romantic view of life that is forgotten today.

UPDATE: Revision.

End, Don't Extend, the Persecution of Microsoft

By Alex Epstein:

The government has been investigating and prosecuting Microsoft under antitrust law since 1990--including a 2001 judgment that forced the company to be subject to government dictates of its business practices that apply to no other software company. This regime was scheduled to end in November, but a group of states, led by California, are saying that it must be extended. According to the Wall Street Journal, their reason was that “Microsoft has faced little new competition” in “operating-systems and Internet-browser technologies.”

“This justification for further government control of Microsoft is a microcosm of the fundamental injustice of the government’s entire prosecution of the company,” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. The criticism against Microsoft amounts to: Microsoft has been too successful in comparison to its competitors for their liking. By this perverse logic, only if the company had been a miserable failure in producing desirable operating systems and Web browsers would it deserve to be free.

“Of course, Microsoft’s tremendous success is the whole reason it ever fell under antitrust prosecution in the first place. Antitrust law regards any company that has earned substantial market share as a dangerous ‘monopolist.’ Microsoft has suffered almost two decades of government threats and punishment on the grounds that its 90 percent plus market share in operating systems was a ‘threat’ to the consumers who eagerly chose Microsoft Windows over the competition. Microsoft used no force or fraud against anyone; its ‘crime’ was to choose to add a valuable feature, a Web browser, to its popular operating system.

“If the government extends its coercive ‘oversight’ of Microsoft, it will further compound this injustice. Instead, the government owes Microsoft an apology--and it owes other successful companies the justice of abolishing the success-punishing antitrust laws.”

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute.

“Islamophobia” is Justified

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

Islam gets such good Western press that one can’t imagine why Muslims protest so much. For every “offensive” cartoon of Mohammad that bubbles up into public view from the fetid swamp of a decaying and suicidal European culture, there are miles of newsprint that implicitly or overtly take the side of Islam. Of course, the “public” is fortunate if it ever sees these cartoons, because most Western newspapers and news services are too tremulously funked to reprint them for their readers’ edification. The cowardice is artfully disguised by most publications under the cloak of multicultural “tolerance” and “respect” for a great religion.

The exceptions are perhaps such bastions of freedom of the press as The New York Times, which, so much the worse, seems to be sincere in its esteem for a creed whose chaotic and often homicidal tenets were established by a murderous barbarian who heard a voice in the night. The angel Gabriel’s, the legend goes. One imagines Allah was too much of elitist snot to speak directly to a mere mortal.

The Islamists’, or Islamofascists’ protests against such alleged “offenses” seem all out of proportion to their infrequent occurrences. This is because the Islamists demand complete, across-the-board “respect” – or submission. Islam forbids Muslims to criticize the creed; its fundamentalists also expect infidels to abide by the same prohibition.

An instance of Islam-friendly journalism is an Associated Press item of September 16, under the headline “U.N. expert: Religious bias a threat to peace.” No, the “religious bias” is not Islam’s persecution and murder of Christians, Jews, and other religious faithful around the world, but a phenomenon called “Islamophobia.”

“A U.N. expert on racism on Friday branded the defamation of religions – in particular critical portrayals of Islam in the West – a threat to world peace.

“’Islamophobia today is the most serious form of religious defamation,’ Doudou Diene told the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session in Geneva.

“Diene cited a caricature of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in a Swedish newspaper, a protest by far-right groups in Belgium Tuesday against the ‘Islamization of Europe,’ and campaigns against the construction of mosques in Germany and of an ‘ever increasing trend’ toward anti-Islamic actions in Europe.”

One’s first thought after reading this pap is: “He must be kidding.” But, then, Mr. Diene is a U.N. “expert,” and such “experts” not only get things backwards, but get them perversely backwards, as well. No one notices it, perhaps least of all Western journalists.

“Diene, a Senegalese lawyer and U.N. expert on racism, was presenting a report on defamation of religions to the 47-member council. The report also includes sections on anti-Semitism and other forms of persecution around the world.”

If Mr. Diene asserted in his report that “Islamophobia” is the “most serious form of religious defamation,” then one can bet that the sections on anti-Semitism and “other forms of persecution” will not be very lengthy or sententious. If they exist, these sections will not dwell on:

• The regular defamation in cartoons, editorials and in television programming of Jews, Christians and other religionists in the Muslim media.
• The Islamic Sudanese government’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
• The fatwahs against the Danish and Swedish cartoonists (not to mention the still outstanding fatwah against Salman Rushdie, and the achieved fatwahs against Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh).
• The destruction or vandalizing of churches and attacks on non-Muslims during Muslim riots in Europe, especially against non-hijabed, non-Muslim women.
• The synagogues in many European cities now protected by the police or private armed guards against Muslim jihadists.

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Associated Press item concludes:

“African and Islamic countries welcomed the assessment and called for moves
to draft an international treaty that would compel states to act against any form of defamation of religion. European Union members of the council and other countries cautioned against equating criticism of religion with racism.”

The only religionists now claiming that any criticism of Islam by Westerners constitutes “racism” are Muslims. And the “caution” by Europeans and presumably other Western nations on the council is the usual meekly vacuous squeak of protest.

None of this was noted by Frank Jordans, who filed the AP report. Now, before he filed his article, he might have taken time to consult a dictionary on the term “phobia.” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a “morbid fear or aversion.” Webster’s New Collegiate defines it as “an irrational, persistent fear of a particular object or class of objects.” The American Heritage defines it as “a persistent, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specific thing or situation.”

He might have then asked himself: If Islamists or jihadists in the name of Allah were not so regularly persistent in their suicide bombings, detected and foiled conspiracies to perpetrate mass casualties in the West, kidnappings and murders of non-Muslim humanitarian workers, and other episodes of Islamic religious violence, would anyone be justified in developing a “phobia” for Islam? No.

However, since all these outrages are committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, could “Islamophobia” be considered at all morbid, irrational, illogical or even abnormal? Is such a phobia any less justified or understandable than harboring a phobia for rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, or poisonous centipedes?

Perhaps, he might have further thought, such a phobia is more justified or understandable because, while one might have a chance but fatal encounter with a snake, spider or centipede, Islamists or Islamofascists deliberately target their victims. The difference, he might have realized, is one of volition.

Then the journalist might have scoffed: Who or what is the real “threat to world peace”? How can this U.N. “expert” take so much exception to the defiant but pathetic gestures of a dying culture – the cartoons, the protest against the Islamization of Europe and so on – and characterize them as “destabilizing”?

And, if he had any self-respect as a journalist, and respect for his profession, he might have taken principled exception to the idea of an “international treaty” that would prohibit or punish the defamation of any religion. He might have thought: I’ll say what I damned well please about any religion. As far as I’m concerned, and based on all the evidence of the last thirty years of Islamic violence, Islam has earned that phobia.

Jordans could have enlightened his readers about the Swedish cartoon mentioned by Doudou Diene – of Mohammad's head on the body of a dog, a mullah holding the dog leash – drawn by Lars Vilks and published in Nerikes Allehanda on August 18. He could have mentioned the $100,000 reward for the murder of Vilks and a $50,000 reward for murdering the newspaper’s editor, both offered by the purported head of Al Qada in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Whose “peace” was threatened? Islam’s, or the Swedes’? These questions did not occur to Jordans, and so he did not bother to enlighten his readers.

Jordans could have enlightened his readers about the “far-right protests in Belgium against the ‘Islamization of Europe.’” These protests occurred in Brussels on September 11, when a peaceful protest by members of Belgium’s opposition parties was broken up by Belgian police, who beat and arrested two prominent demonstrators. The police undoubtedly wanted to prove to Islamists that they are on their side and can be just as brutal when it comes to punishing anyone who publicly speaks on the danger of recognizing Sharia law in an expiring Western culture.

Jordans could have questioned the use of the term “far-right” when it is used to smear anyone who protests Islamization anywhere, and emphasized that while it has traditionally been the “far right” that is accused of using “police state” tactics to squelch opposition, any more it is the far left that is employing them, such as in Belgium.

Jordans’ investigative skills must have been in a sleep mode on this subject, too.

Finally, Jordans could have mentioned another instance of anti-Islamic action in Europe cited by Diene, the “campaigns against the construction of mosques in Germany and Switzerland.” He might have merely noted these campaigns, and posed the question of whether they alone can stem the tide of Islamization, then proposed that it is the totalitarian ideas that are the foundation of Islam which must be combated, not their manifestation in the form of mosques. (He might have even pointed out that no synagogues, churches or even chapels may be built in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic fiefdoms, and delved into the Islamists’ double standard on the matter of places of worship.)

Jordans could have written something like this:

“In the West, churches and synagogues are just that – places for people to go and worship and socialize. But in the West, as well as in the Middle East, and in Indonesia and other Muslim-dominated countries, most mosques are venues of rabble-rousing and jihadist recruiting, where imams and mullahs regularly declaim against the West for its sins against Allah and call for holy war. This has been so thoroughly documented by intelligence services that it is a wonder most mosques in Europe and the U.S. have not been raided and closed down by counter-terrorism authorities.”

But, he didn’t write that. And if he had the knowledge to write it, he would not have dared to write it and file it. And if he had the integrity to write and file it, would the AP have accepted it? Is its motto “All the facts all the time”? Not likely.

That is giving Islam a good Western press. It is dishonest enough to cause one to develop a severe case of “media-phobia.”

HillaryCare 2.0: More of the Poison that Is Killing Our Healthcare System

By Alex Epstein:

Like all other “universal healthcare” schemes, Mrs. Clinton’s is guaranteed to lead to disaster if implemented, because it ignores the basic requirement of medical progress and falling prices: freedom for doctors, patients, and insurance companies.

The problem with our current system is that government coercion has infected every facet of medicine, dictating everything from how many doctors are allowed to be licensed to which medical professionals may perform what procedures, to what procedures insurance companies must provide on their plans. And yet Mrs. Clinton seeks to solve our problems with more coercion. For example, her new “guarantee” that “your insurance company will be required to renew at a price you can afford” is a veiled call for price-controls--and a prescription for insurance companies to be exposed to a bankrupting combination of huge liabilities with comparatively low premiums.

If anyone is interested in fixing American healthcare, there is only one solution: get the government out of it.

EU to Microsoft: "You're too good"

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

That was the main message to Microsoft today as a European Union court ruled against the US software company in an appeal of its previous anti-trust ruling. Fines and penalties against the company could reach over $2 billion.

Microsoft's crime? Bundling it's music software, Media Player, with its Windows operating systems, and failing to instruct competitors on how to make their systems communicate effectively with Windows. So says the ruling, but the real crime is Microsoft's dominance of the operating system software. From today's Wall Street Journal:

European regulators hailed the court decision as a victory for consumers, who, in the words of Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, are "suffering at the hands of Microsoft." Ms. Kroes said she would like to see a "significant drop" in Microsoft's nearly 95% market share in operating-system software.

These consumers who are being hurt, when offered a choice by Microsoft between Windows with Media Player and without, voluntarily chose the version with Media Player. The claims are laughable. Microsoft may have Windows on 95% of people's Intel machines, but this in an era when the operating system is becoming less important and web based application hosting such as Google's fantastic suite are sucking the value (i.e. price) out of bundled operating system packages. Microsoft may bundle it's Media Player with Windows, but that doesn't prevent the iPod and its necessary music player software, iTunes, from dominating the segment. Yes, everyone has Media Player on their Intel machines, but those people who are actually listening to music to any degree are listening to it on iTunes, and their iPods. Microsoft is squelching its competition, at least, the competition that tries to be just like it. But that doesn't mean it can stop any competition whatsoever, as Google and iTunes prove.

And how do our politicians respond to the EU's move? With seeming concern,

The U.S. Justice Department's chief, Thomas Barnett, contrasted Europe's approach with America's. He said that in the U.S., even dominant firms "are encouraged to compete vigorously," while Europe's stance may end up "harming consumers by chilling innovation."

This seeming contrast is nothing but a separate forms of the same principle, that the best corporations are a danger to the marketplace and must be stopped, either by being hamstrung by regulations or stripped of their competitive advantage and forced to compete on "level playing fields". Will the real defenders of capitalism please stand up? They are not in this bunch.

Even Microsoft can't properly defend itself, arguing that "traditional anti-trust tools aren't appropriate for fast-moving technology industries." Implying of course that they are appropriate for slow-moving traditional industries, when in fact, slow moving industries became that way due to over-regulation and anti-trust limitations.

There is only one proper answer here: laissez faire. Monopolies which hurt the consumer, cannot exist for long in a free economy where proper rights are enforced. Microsoft has continued to innovate with new generations of its operating system and yet has still seen its revenues stall, and it's share of components (email, music, etc) of its operating system decrease. And this has not been through the use of regulation, but rather through good old-fashioned competition.

I use a Vista machine and I use Media Player with 3rd party music player. However, my email, photos, blogs, maps, and soon calendar and even documents are hosted by Google. My browser is Firefox, my finance software is Intuit's Quicken, and my picture and video editing are all Adobe Elements. All have Microsoft alternatives, and many are already bundled with Windows. No matter. This component erosion means that Microsoft cannot get the same revenue per copy of Windows, and this shows in its stalling top line growth.

Markets don't fail, and it's time our politicians learned that.

"Single-Payer" Health Care Is Anything but Free

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

My very own Paul Hsieh just published an op-ed on health care through the Ayn Rand Institute: "Single-Payer" Health Care Is Anything but Free. Here it is, in full.

"Single-Payer" Health Care Is Anything but Free
By Paul Hsieh

Michael Moore's latest movie "SiCKO" sings the praises of the Canadian "single-payer" socialized medical system. Some Americans want a similar system implemented in the United States. Defenders of the Canadian system frequently claim that patients don't have to worry about money when they're sick--the health care is free. But is this really true?

No.

First, it is ludicrous to think the system is free. Each citizen is forced to pay for his neighbors' medical care in the form of high taxes. (As a percentage of GDP, total taxation is 28 percent higher in Canada than in the United States.) The government, rather than individuals, then decides how that money is spent.

Even worse, in the name of "equal access" the government generally forbids patients from purchasing medical services outside of its system. Canadian law makes it difficult or impossible for citizens to spend their own honestly earned money on medically necessary care for themselves or their loved ones, even when both the doctor and the patient are willing.

To control costs, the government restricts access to crucial medical services via infamous waiting lists. This imposes a second, hidden, cost on patients: their time.

According to the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, "Canadian doctors say patients wait almost twice as long for treatment than is clinically reasonable, . . . almost 18 weeks between the time they see their family physician and the time they receive treatment from a specialist."

Because of the waiting lists, mortality rates for treatable conditions such as breast cancer and prostate cancer are significantly higher in Canada than in the U.S. A Canadian woman who discovers a lump in her breast might wait for months before she receives the surgery and chemotherapy she needs, with the cancer cells multiplying rapidly as each week goes by. If she lived in the United States, she could receive treatment within days.

This tax on time is especially cruel because the burden falls hardest on the sickest patients, i.e., those with the least time to spare.

Consequently, Canadian patients routinely suffer and die while waiting for their "free" health care. The National Center for Policy Analysis notes, "During one 12-month period in Ontario, ... 71 patients died waiting for coronary bypass surgery while 121 patients were removed from the list because they had become too sick to undergo surgery."

To guarantee "free" health care, a government must force the individual to pay for everyone else's medical care and limit his freedom to pay voluntarily for his own. With bureaucrats deciding who receives what, the individual is therefore forbidden from spending his money according to his own rational judgment (and the advice of his doctors) as to what's best for his health. When a government forces people to act against their own interests, it's no surprise that the results are misery and death.

Fortunately, Canadians are starting to recognize the problems inherent in "single-payer" health care and are taking very small steps towards limited private medicine. America must not repeat Canada's mistakes. As P. J. O'Rourke said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

Paul Hsieh, MD, guest writer, is a practicing physician in the south Denver metro area. He is a founding member of the Colorado group Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (www.WeStandFIRM.org). His e-mail address is: paulhsiehmd@gmail.com.

The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright (c) 2007 Ayn Rand(R) Institute. All rights reserved.

"Single-Payer" Health Care Is Anything but Free

By Paul Hsieh

Michael Moore's latest movie "SiCKO" sings the praises of the Canadian "single-payer" socialized medical system. Some Americans want a similar system implemented in the United States. Defenders of the Canadian system frequently claim that patients don't have to worry about money when they're sick--the health care is free. But is this really true?

No.

First, it is ludicrous to think the system is free. Each citizen is forced to pay for his neighbors' medical care in the form of high taxes. (As a percentage of GDP, total taxation is 28 percent higher in Canada than in the United States.) The government, rather than individuals, then decides how that money is spent.

Even worse, in the name of "equal access" the government generally forbids patients from purchasing medical services outside of its system. Canadian law makes it difficult or impossible for citizens to spend their own honestly earned money on medically necessary care for themselves or their loved ones, even when both the doctor and the patient are willing.

To control costs, the government restricts access to crucial medical services via infamous waiting lists. This imposes a second, hidden, cost on patients: their time.

According to the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, "Canadian doctors say patients wait almost twice as long for treatment than is clinically reasonable, . . . almost 18 weeks between the time they see their family physician and the time they receive treatment from a specialist."

Because of the waiting lists, mortality rates for treatable conditions such as breast cancer and prostate cancer are significantly higher in Canada than in the U.S. A Canadian woman who discovers a lump in her breast might wait for months before she receives the surgery and chemotherapy she needs, with the cancer cells multiplying rapidly as each week goes by. If she lived in the United States, she could receive treatment within days.

This tax on time is especially cruel because the burden falls hardest on the sickest patients, i.e., those with the least time to spare.

Consequently, Canadian patients routinely suffer and die while waiting for their "free" health care. The National Center for Policy Analysis notes, "During one 12-month period in Ontario, . . . 71 patients died waiting for coronary bypass surgery while 121 patients were removed from the list because they had become too sick to undergo surgery."

To guarantee "free" health care, a government must force the individual to pay for everyone else's medical care and limit his freedom to pay voluntarily for his own. With bureaucrats deciding who receives what, the individual is therefore forbidden from spending his money according to his own rational judgment (and the advice of his doctors) as to what's best for his health. When a government forces people to act against their own interests, it's no surprise that the results are misery and death.

Fortunately, Canadians are starting to recognize the problems inherent in "single-payer" health care and are taking very small steps towards limited private medicine. America must not repeat Canada's mistakes. As P. J. O'Rourke said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

Paul Hsieh, MD, guest writer, is a practicing physician in the south Denver metro area. He is a founding member of the Colorado group Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (www.WeStandFIRM.org). His e-mail address is: paulhsiehmd@gmail.com. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

End Government Licensing

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release:

According to a recent “Wall Street Journal” story, the range of professions now requiring a government license in certain states includes taxidermy, massage therapy, interior decorating, selling mobile homes--even fortune-telling! While many would laugh about these particular fields having government licensing requirements, nearly everyone concedes that government licensing is, in general, a necessary and beneficial practice--especially for complex fields like medicine.

“In fact,” said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, ”if we want a market with ample information, high-quality products, and freedom of competition, government licensing is an impediment that must be abolished across the board.

“Contrary to advocates of government licensing, it is not true that without it, we would be taken in by unqualified charlatans in every endeavor, whether getting a haircut, a taxicab ride, or a triple bypass. Since there is great value for consumers and producers to have independent, expert verification of quality products and services, they would gladly pay for it. This is especially true for businesses whose most valuable asset is their reputation. The only difference between free-market licensing and government licensing is that private licensing organizations cannot force people to follow their advice, but must instead persuade them to follow their counsel. This is a life-and-death difference because it leaves experts, producers, and consumers free to acquire and act on the best possible information. Under government licensing, by contrast, individual judgment is rendered irrelevant, what the government says, goes.

“The more complex the field, the more destructive coercive licensing is, because the more urgent it is that there be freedom of thought and action. In a vast, continually evolving field like medicine, in which a huge and growing range of medical procedures exists, each requiring different skill sets, it is absurd and incredibly costly to have the government reserving jobs for full-fledged MDs that could be done by other medical professionals, while giving an official stamp of approval to MDs who do jobs that they lack necessary specialized knowledge to do (such as general practitioners who prescribe complex psychiatric medications).

“It may be funny when governments takes charge of licensing fortune tellers, but it is deadly when it is in charge of licensing doctors. We should abolish the government’s coercive licensing power and unleash a free market of objective-standards bodies who function by persuasion, not compulsion.”

Colin McGinn on Egoism

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Well-respected philosopher Colin McGinn claims to have "dispatched" egoism with the following argument:

The topic this week was ethical egoism. What a terrible theory it is! An action is right if and only if it's in your own self interest. That means that helping others, with no benefit to self, is immoral. Rubbish. Particularly pathetic is the argument that apparently atruistic actions are really egoistic, since you get pleasure from doing good. This just conflates the object of a want with its consequences. You might as well argue that economic actions, like buying a television, are really altruistic, because someone else benefits, namely the people you buy it from. Motives are of several kinds: egoistic, altruistic, malicious, and self-destructive.

Note that the bulk of the paragraph is concerned with psychological egoism. That's not surprising: I've noticed that philosophers often conflate ethical with psychological egoism. They persuasively argue that altruistic action is possible, then take that as an adequate refutation of egoism generally. Well, it's not. That only refutes psychological egoism, not ethical egoism. Refuting ethical egoism would require showing that altruistic action is morally obligatory, not merely possible.

However, McGinn does offer an argument against egoism. He claims:

P1. Ethical egoism implies that helping others, with no benefit to self, is immoral.
P2. That's rubbish.
C. Ethical egoism is false.

Is that seriously supposed to be any kind of refutation of egoism? P2 is nothing but a colorful assertion of the truth of altruism. Obviously, you don't refute theory X simply by asserting that contrary theory Y is true. That's blatant question-begging. What's needed is a proof of the morality of altruism. Why is it morally right -- or rather, morally obligatory -- to sacrifice oneself to others? No, I won't accept the standard claim that altruism just seems obviously true. That's not an argument: it's a confession of faith.

Alternatively, McGinn might attempt to refute the best available argument for egoism, namely that found in Ayn Rand's essay "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness. That's a dense essay, so for the academic philosopher, I'd also recommend Tara Smith's development of the same argument in Viable Values.

I'd like to see the academic critics of egoism engage those arguments. Right now, the standard arguments against egoism found in introductory ethical texts are egregious strawmen. Those texts claim that the egoist would be obliged to cheat, steal, and murder for personal gain, that the egoist couldn't have friends or care about others, that the egoist cannot coherently advocate his ethics since he should want others to be altruists, and so on. Such criticisms radically misunderstand the nature and demands of egoism. Most commonly, they confuse egoism with hedonism, even though the pursuit the objective requirements of a lifetime of robust flourishing would be quite different in character from the pursuit of maximal pleasure or the attempt to satisfy as many random desires as possible.

Philosophers should be able to do better in their criticisms -- if egoism is as absurd as often claimed.

Update: I posted the above remarks in the comments of Colin McGinn's post. So you can find some responses to it, plus further comments by me, on his web site.

Ironic Provincialism

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The doughty Gus Van Horn has linked to recent pieces discussing Ayn Rand. Some of the commenters at Volokh offer an opinion that has astonished me for 30 years -- that Ayn Rand's novels are not well written. There are those who say the novels are not great literature, or sometimes they call them "subliterature." Some go so far as to say they are not novels at all. They rarely give examples, but assert the inferiority of Ayn Rand's writing as if it were self-evident and any sophisticated, impartial reader would see it.

Since I am an Objectivist, my opinion is meaningless to them -- I am biased/blinded/cultish/a true believer/one who doesn't like real literature -- but I'll give it anyway. Ayn Rand is a brilliant novelist. Her style is a remarkable integration of clarity and passion, or fact and value; she gives concrete percepts that add up to thematic and emotional meaning. She avoids vague emotional writing unconnected to specific percepts as well as dry concretes that add up to no evaluation. (This is just an observation on her style. One could write a book about the excellence of her plotting, characterization and themes.)

The blithe certainty of these critics is made possible by our current culture, in which modern literature (especially naturalism) is assumed to be the way literature should be and pre-modern literature (especially romanticism) is assumed to be inferior, merely a step in our cultural evolution that culminates in modernism. Pre-modern literature is just the sapling, its potential still unfulfilled, whereas modern literature is the tree: mature, actualized literature. The assumptions of naturalism are unquestioned, like the air we breathe.

The literary critic Northrop Frye called our time the age of irony: instead of looking up at a protagonist who is larger than life, we look down at one who is smaller. Kafka's heroes, trapped in a nightmare existence in which they are helpless, are archetypal figures in ironic literature. Frye called the idea that irony is sophisticated or better than the literature that came before it "ironic provincialism."

(As an aside, the premises of naturalism/modernism/irony have played hell with the art of acting. Many of today's actors are terrified to do anything "unnatural" -- that is, anything larger than life or romanticized. Marlon Brando's mumbles are the unquestioned "way it should be," but John Gielgud's glorious music is considered inferior. An acting teacher once told me he tried to get an actress to do something big and presentational, one of those moments when the actor looks right at the audience and speaks. The actress shrank in horror and replied, "But that's... theatrical!" Imagine that, actors afraid to be theatrical. This is where a century of naturalism has brought us.)

Ayn Rand's novels are unnaturalistic in every aspect, from plot to style, but I think two aspects bother the modernists more than the rest. First, she has something to say. Her novels have her ideas in them, and some characters speak the author's ideas. This drives the modernists crazy. Open any book on fiction writing/screenwriting/playwriting and you will find warnings against using characters as a "soapbox." Naturalists consider it bad if a character speaks the author's "message."

The soapbox can be bad if it is handled ineptly. The thematic material must be integrated with the plot and characters for it to work. John Galt's speech -- the most audacious speech in the history of literature, in which Ayn Rand not only makes the point of Atlas Shrugged, but also introduces a revolutionary new philosophy -- is integrated, because it give the explicit thematic meaning of what has been dramatized in the previous 900-plus pages.

You'll notice that those who are against soapboxes are rather selective in their indignation. If a character is a cynic who denounces man as inherently depraved, somehow that is not criticized as being a soapbox, even though the character is expressing the author's belief. Instead, this is praised as "challenging," "disturbing our bourgeois complacency," and so on. Any play that attacks George Bush, conservatism, capitalism or America is praised as a courageous act of justice.

The more consistent naturalists will attack soapboxes on both the left and the right. In their radical empiricism, they see any thematic summation as unnatural. If characters are shown stumbling around in an idiotic, concrete-bound daze, never using reason to understand or add it all up, then the empiricists are comfortable that the writer has dramatized human nature realistically.

The other aspect of Ayn Rand's writing that convinces modernists she is inferior is her clarity. She writes clearly and with power. In our modern age novels that make you scratch your head and mumble "What the f**k was THAT all about?" are considered sophisticated literature. Ambiguity is praised as a literary virtue. As Nietzsche put it, they muddy their waters to make them look deep. By this standard Rand can't be a good writer because she can be understood.

But there will always be young people coming along who have not yet been corrupted by the modernists into believing obfuscation, plotlessness, nihilism and despair are sophistication. Those young people will respond positively to Ayn Rand's novels. Some will continue on to study Rand's nonfiction books and explore the philosophy seriously. The fate of the West, I suspect, is in their hands.

The Ashes of Universal National Service

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

An interesting movie came and went in 1993 without much critical or even public notice, Thomas Carter’s Swing Kids, set in Frankfurt, Germany in the 1930’s. It is interesting because it presaged an issue that has been trial-ballooned by politicians and collectivists in the U.S. for decades – and is now rearing its ugly head again – ever since President John F. Kennedy proclaimed, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”: Mandatory national service.

The movie focuses on the conflicts of a group of rebellious teenagers devoted to “swing,” the popular dance music of the period. That style of music and dance, however, was not only frowned upon by the Nazi government as an instance of Western decadence, but was outlawed, as well. The teenagers are under constant pressure from their parents and teachers to conform to Nazi norms of good citizenship, which meant, among other things, serving their country by joining the Hitler Youth.

All but one in the group cave in to the pressure (that one character commits suicide after being hazed by members of the Hitler Youth). The most moral one, wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth, is tasked to deliver little wooden boxes to several women in the city. He is not told of their contents. When he learns the boxes hold the ashes of husbands who were executed in concentration camps, of men who had opposed the Nazi regime, he breaks down, suddenly realizing the true horror of the monster he had formerly rebelled against but was now serving.

In a final, desperate, blind protest against the evil he cannot understand, he attends a dance at the Hotel Bismarck he knows is to be raided by the SS and the Hitler Youth. He is ultimately arrested and put on a truck with other dancers, presumably destined for a concentration camp.

(In one of his most effective roles, British actor Kenneth Branagh [Hamlet, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing] plays an SS officer who persuades the principal teenager to join the Hitler Youth by promising better food and luxuries for his family and immunity from Nazi purges. A friend called him the “great seducer.”)

This raises the question of how many American youths today would be able to rebel against the American version of the Hitler Youth as proposed by Time Magazine in its August 30th issue, “The Case for National Service: A Time to Serve.” Would they have the character to spurn the inducements, rewards and emoluments described in that propaganda? Would they have the repressed moral premises with which to gauge the evil of mandatory or pseudo-voluntary national service?

The questions are not difficult to answer. Are today’s youth being taught to regard themselves as individuals not answerable to the state, the collective or the nation for their existence? No.

Are they taught that they own their own lives? No.

Are they taught that they are not obligated to “give back” to society what it never gave them, and never could? No.

Are they taught that their education today is more a gauntlet of indoctrination than an acquisition of knowledge and skills? No.

Are they taught that reason is their sole guide to survival and living? No.

Are they taught that independence of mind is a virtue never to be compromised or adulterated? No.

Are they taught that whether it is national or “community” service, it is a policy of extortion? No.

Are they being taught that one’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are one’s inalienable rights? No.

They are being taught that those inalienable rights are imaginary, or perhaps that they were valid in the past but not in the present, or that they are obstructive to the public good and so alienable, or are conditional privileges granted by the state or the collective to be abridged, abrogated or nullified at whim or by expediency.

Today’s youth – and past generations of youth, to judge by the flaccid complaisance of today’s adults and “senior citizens” – are taught to believe that consensus and group-think are valid policies with which to judge right and wrong, that these are the only feasible means of dealing with others, that whatever independence or sense of self they may feel must be subordinated to the state or collective.

Two obscenities in the Time article must be dealt with before examining the piece in depth. The first is its twice quoting Benjamin Franklin out of context in a puerile resort to the argument from authority to make it seem that he endorsed the idea of national service. The second obscenity is its concluding flourish of quoting from the Declaration of Independence. “The courageous souls who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged ‘our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.’ The least we can do to keep the Republic is to pledge a little time.”

This last is either an instance of a profound ignorance of what moved the Founders to action, or an unmitigated, thoroughly dishonest subrogation of their words. Did it occur to the article’s author that the Founders pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor in a commitment to freedom, not to slavery? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the tactic indicates that the author of the article is a college graduate who was taught that a study of history and ideas is merely a study of historical graffiti that can be indiscriminately linked to any proposition, any time, anywhere.

The flourish then manipulates that quotation to hang an onus of responsibility over the reader, implying that his own life, fortune and honor require him to pledge himself to voluntary or involuntary servitude in order to “keep the Republic.”

On to the critique of Time’s master plan to “save” the Republic.

In prefatory remarks to the article’s assertion that more and more Americans are volunteering in public service – “Polls show that while confidence in our democracy and our government is near an all-time low, volunteerism and civic participation since the 1970’s are near all-time highs” – the authors cite what they claim are some reasons for the purported rise in “volunteerism.”

• “…[T]hey see public-school system with 38% of fourth graders unable to read at a basic level.” The percentage is probably higher. But regardless of the percentage, isn’t that figure a reflection of the non-efficacy of government-run, compulsory public education? Shouldn’t the disgracefully low test scores in math, science and literacy of American students suggest a termination of public education?
• …[T]hey see the cost of health insurance escalating as 47 million people go uninsured.” Why is the cost escalating? It is the government’s interference in the medical business and its incremental socialization of the medical profession. What about those alleged 47 million uninsured people? Perhaps they don’t want the insurance, or can’t afford it, because they are already paying for their neighbors’ medical coverage and bills through their taxes.
• …[T]hey see a government that responded ineptly to a hurricane in New Orleans.” Should the federal government go to the rescue of state and local governments to reward them for their corruption and negligence? According to ABC, the federal government has to date already spent $114 billion on rebuilding New Orleans, and will spend billions more. Yet, the Time article recommends creating a “Rapid-Response Reserve Corps” of volunteers to work under the “guidance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),” the very mismanaged bureaucracy that responded so ineptly!
• …[T]hey see a war whose ends they do not completely value or understand.” Neither do our politicians, including the President. Has any one of them heard of the Islamic jihad, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or the fifth column of cultural jihadists in the U.S., or placed any importance on them vis-à-vis the war against the West? No. There are apparently more important matters to see to than wondering how and why Islamists want to turn the U.S. into a caliphate.

For an intellectual sanction of Time’s plan for universal national servitude, the article relies on the assertions of an obscure Harvard (where else?) political scientist, Robert Putnam, who predicts that, despite the growing “diversity” of the American population, America will develop a “more capacious sense of ‘we.’” “We” meaning neither the thematic sense of Ayn Rand’s We the Living, nor the individualistic sense of “We” as the term is employed in the Declaration of Independence, but rather a boundless number of indistinguishable ciphers.

Twice in the course of the article the author insists that the proposed plan would be voluntary, not mandatory. Apparently he is anxious not to be accused of advocating involuntary servitude. What he fails to mention is that every one of the plan’s ten points requires another form of universal involuntary servitude: taxation. Individuals who resist the social pressure to sacrifice their time in “voluntary” service or refuse to be corralled in that “capacious ‘we’” not only can be shunned as “anti-social,” but can be dunned for the plan’s cost, as well.

Point One of the Time plan is to create a “National-Service Baby Bond.” Upon the birth of each American child, “the Federal Government would invest $5,000 in that child’s name in a 529-type fund – the kind many Americans are already using for college savings.” Where would that $5,000 come from but taxpayers? “At a rate of return of 7% [who or what will guarantee that rate?]…that money would total roughly $19,000 by the time that baby reaches age 20.”

Since it costs about $100,000 today to send a student through four years of an relatively inexpensive and mediocre liberal arts college, by the time “that baby” reaches college age, the cost could well be half a million dollars or more. And since such a “bond” would be similar to a Treasury bond, imagine the deleterious effects it would have in the marketplace for government securities; imagine all the rackets that would spring up in the trade of “baby bonds.”

The catch to this generous offer of other people’s money is “that baby” wouldn’t be allowed to touch it unless he spent at least one year in military or civilian “service.” This is a curious notion of “volunteerism.” Another catch is that the money “must be used to fund education, start a business or make a down payment on a home.” If, by that time, he can still afford such things.

Point Two of the Time plan proposes the creation of a White House cabinet-level department of universal mandatory service, which (under a “catchier” name, such as the Department of National Service, headed by someone whose surname shouldn’t rhyme with “Goebbels”) would amalgamate existing federal “volunteer” programs, such as National Senior Volunteer Corps and Americorps. That is, elevate the Corporation for National and Community Service to the executive level. This new department’s goal would be to “enlist at least 1 million Americans annually in national service by the year 2016.”

The author recommends appointing a department head “who would capture the imagination of the public,” such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the petit fascist governor of California, or Michael Bloomberg, the petit fascist mayor of New York. If the author of the Time plan knows nothing else, he knows his statists and which ones would assume his departmental duties with power-hungry gusto. Yes, such a person would certainly capture the imagination of Americans who haven’t been beaten or who haven’t surrendered their independence to that “capacious ‘we’”: they would gird themselves for more proscriptions on their lives.

Points Four through Seven describe programs that would come under the aegis of this Department of National Service. The first is an “Education Corps” that would send selfless do-gooders into selected urban swamps of public education to tutor and teach children who can’t read and who are not “supervised” during after-school hours. This would presumably attempt to compensate for the failure of compulsory public school attendance. The “education corpspersons” (one supposes that would be the politically correct term) of course would not need to bother with children who can read and think because they are being home-schooled or sent to private schools (by parents who are also paying via property tax assessments for the dumbing down of public school students), those children far outperforming any prisoner or graduate of the public education system.

The second proposed DNS program would send children to what can only be called a “let’s pay the pubescent not to make trouble” program. “For many teenagers, the summer between middle school and high school is an awkward time. They’re too young to get a real job [thanks to child labor laws and the federal minimum wage] and too old to be babysat.” But apparently they are young enough for further indoctrination and old enough to be babysat by the federal government.

As a “rite of passage” program, the “summer of service” would organize “after-school activities for middle schoolers and run summer programs for younger students in exchange for a $500 college scholarship.” Presumably those activities and programs would focus on “doing good.” After all, our new Nazi youth must be energized. As for the pittance in scholarships, in the old days it was called embracery. Today it is called bribery.

Point Six of the DNS idea is to create a “Health Corps.” This program would oversee the education and make-work of volunteers who would direct low-income people to government insurance programs and work as nonmedical support staff. “The one-year experience in the Health Corps could lead these volunteers toward careers in nursing or medicine, helping to redress gaps that have left the U.S. with a dearth of qualified nurses and medical professionals.”

The simplest solution to filling that gap would be to abolish all immigration restrictions on competent medical professionals. The government’s problem with this solution is that most of those qualified immigrants would come from Europe, and that would be “discriminatory.” It should surprise no one that the federal government is the biggest practitioner of racism. Also, the government would need to abolish the INS, and all its personnel would need to find gainful, productive employment elsewhere – which wouldn’t be fair, either.

The last DNS program Time proposes is to “Launch a Green Corps.” “This would be a combination of F.D.R.’s Civilian Conservation Corps…and a group that would improve national infrastructure and combat climate change….Today there are 1.5 million Americans between 18 and 24 who are neither employed nor in school.”

One needn’t wonder why, since the un-schooled are either are not allowed (or don’t wish) to work or are not worth an employer’s federally mandated minimum wage. Picture semi-literate unemployables working on a New Orleans levee, or combating climate change by using giant fans to waft hot air back across the oceans. “The Green Corps could reclaim polluted streams [and seed it with more snail darters?] and blighted urban lots; repair and rehabilitate railroad lines, ports, schools and hospitals [all government owned or managed entities already!]; and build energy-efficient green housing for elderly and low-income people.” Which would be another invitation to more government-contractor racketeering, also paid for by the shunned and dunned.

Point Nine of the Time plan is to start a “National Service Academy.” Another and more accurate name for this idea would be an extended Nazi Youth Camp. In it, “students would be studying the Federalist Papers [provided they can read them] and learning how to transform a failing public school.” This four-year stint of indoctrination would entail a “five-year commitment to public service after graduation” in order to “create a new generation of civic leaders” – or bureaucrats and gauleiters.

“The idea has been endorsed by Hillary Clinton and Pennsylvanian Republican Arlen Specter who are co-sponsors of legislation that would allocate $164 million per year for the envisioned 5,000-student academy.” It is bipartisan, so there can’t be anything wrong with the idea, right? Who said the Democrats and Republicans are worlds apart in social policy?

Point Ten of the Time plan is to create a “Baby-Boomer Education Bond.” “Over the next 20 years, 78 million baby boomers will be eligible to retire. That is, if they can afford to – and if they want to.” If they can’t afford to, it is because government tax policies penalize their savings and retirement funds, so they continue working part- or full-time to make ends meet.

For doing time teaching children to read or performing “community service,” “baby-boomer volunteers would be able to designate a scholarship of $1,000 for every 500 hours” of volunteer work; this amount would be "deposited in an education savings account or a 529 fund to be used by the volunteer’s children or grandchildren or a student they designate.” That works out to $2 an hour, way below the minimum wage, and it represents money that was already taken away in taxes over the years, but “given back” by the government, with the proviso that the sucker cannot use it himself but must hand it over to someone else. Leave it to a collectivist to dream up another scam.

The author of the Time plan for universal national service calculates that it would cost only more billions of dollars to implement. “At the same time, corporate America would need to play a critical role….The private sector has contributed more than $1 billion to Americorps. The private sector must step up to the plate in funding national service – after all, it benefits, too.” How? By being nationalized by the federal government for not doing enough for the “public good,” just as corporate Germany was nationalized by the Nazi government?

The Time article ends its advocacy of universal national service by remarking that people “are often skeptical of calls for national service, especially from politicians, as they see them as crowd-pleasing rhetoric or a way of avoiding asking people to make a true sacrifice.” Frankly, any American with a shred of self-respect should be frightened of politicians arrogant enough to ask for a “true sacrifice.” To quote Ellsworth Toohey in Rand’s The Fountainhead:

“…Just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice – run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”*

The Time article is not so much another trial balloon as an emphatic signal to the presidential candidates of both parties that universal mandatory service is an imperative they should all endorse and include in their party platforms. “’People understand the idea that this is a great country,’ says Zach Maurin, the co-founder of ServeNext.org, which has launched a campaign to get the presidential candidates to endorse national service.” And there isn’t a single candidate who would not hesitate to advocate some form of it. Every one of them is statist to the core.

In my role as a writer, my concept of “good citizenship” has always been and will ever be to oppose every form of tyranny over the mind of man – and over his life, as well. I know what ashes are in the boxes of universal national service – the ashes of a great, free country.

I refuse to carry them.

*The Fountainhead, Centennial Edition, p. 666

The Latest Rand Bashing

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

What happens when a writer obviously ignorant about, but hostile to Ayn Rand is handed a convenient set of stereotypes by a group of people who claim to be on her side, but repeatedly demonstrate that they don't know anything about her, either?

Thanks to an email from reader Bill Spears yesterday, I learned that you get articles like this.

Like Ayn Rand, whom I admire and who repeatedly denounced libertarianism, I am not a libertarian and I will not defend libertarianism, which is an anti-intellectual movement that pretends that one can advocate liberty without even bothering to be clear about what one is talking about. Libertarianism deserves no defense from anyone who actually values freedom and capitalism.

When a political movement seeks, as libertarianism does, to expand its membership at the expense of that membership actually knowing what it is talking about or agreeing about anything important, what you get is a such a motley collection of fools -- who claim to be fans of so many random intellectuals -- that even a five-year-old could figure out how to drag intellectual X through the mud with their unwitting help.

All such a brilliant polemicist would have to do is find someone who obviously hasn't a clue about anything -- and pretend that this person somehow does have a clue about the intellectual she wishes to smear. Here is author Kay Hymowitz channeling her inner five-year-old with a libertarian stereotype:

More than perhaps any other American political group, libertarians have suffered the blows of caricature. For many people, the term evokes an image of a scraggly misfit living in the woods with his gun collection, a few marijuana plants, some dogeared Ayn Rand titles, and a battered pickup truck plastered with bumper stickers reading "Taxes = Theft" and "FDR Was A Pinko."

After saying that this stereotype is "not entirely unfair", Hymowitz then goes medieval on capitalism and Ayn Rand through the convenient surrogates of libertarianism and such luminaries as Brian Doherty and Murray Rothbard.

And her attack is a moral attack against the "cultural contradictions of libertarianism". As just one example, she cites Brian Doherty, editor of Reason Magazine and author of a recent history of the libertarian movement (which also wrongly includes Rand as a libertarian):

Despite Mr. Lindsey's protestations to the contrary, libertarianism has supported, always implicitly and often with an enthusiastic hurrah, the "Aquarian" excesses that he now decries. Many of the movement's devotees were deeply involved in the radicalism of the 1960s.

Nor should this come as a surprise. After all, the libertarian vision of personal morality--described by Mr. Doherty as "People ought to be free to do whatever the hell they want, mostly, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else"--is not far removed from "if it feels good, do it," the cri de coeur of the Aquarians. To be sure, part of the libertarian entanglement with the radicalism of the 1960s stemmed from the movement's opposition to both the Vietnam War and the draft, which Milton Friedman likened to slavery. But libertarians were also drawn to the left's revolutionary social posture. [bold added]

Had Hymowitz a deeper familiarity with Ayn Rand, she would have demonstrated some inkling that Rand made a major distinction between morality and politics, which plenty of libertarians are happy to paper over just like Doherty does above. It is one thing to uphold the political right of someone to do what he wants as long as he does not violate the rights of someone else, but it is quite another to say that it is moral to do whatever one wants to do.

Ayn Rand, well-known (and condemned among libertarians) as a moralist, wrote an entire book about morality called The Virtue of Selfishness. Her philosophy is unique, as Tara Smith recently demonstrated in her academic (but still quite accessible) Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, in making a strong case for the necessity of the morality of egoism for human life and well-being.

Why does one get the impression that Hymowitz either does not know or does not care that Rand holds a radically different view of morality than the collection of hippies she tosses out in the same essay? At the very least, if one is going to call Rand a libertarian, one ought to show some modicum of surprise that this is one "libertarian" whose view of morality is uncharacteristically fastidious. Rand understood that one must grasp morality before formulating a theory of politics. This goes unmentioned, along with the fact that her ethics is just as far from the Christian morality espoused by conservatives as it is from the hedonism of hippies.

One would think that Hymowitz is afraid for her readers to learn that Rand offered a serious, rational, and revolutionary alternative to the old "choice" between mindlessly obeying allegedly divine commands -- or mindlessly doing "your own thing"!

And if Hymowitz had bothered to look more closely into Rand's moral thinking, she would have seen how it ties in with her political thinking, and furthermore how, as a result, while libertarians parrot many of the words of Rand's capitalist political theory, they clearly do not understand its actual meaning.

For example, she cites the apparent disconnect between the recent return of momentum towards the expansion of big government and the optimism of many libertarians:

[D]espite Bill Clinton's declaration that "the era of big government is over," antistatist ideas like school vouchers and privatized Social Security accounts continue to be greeted with widespread skepticism, while massive new programs like the Medicare prescription-drug benefit continue to win the support of re-election-minded incumbents. A recent New York Times survey found increasing support for government-run health care, and both parties are showing signs of a populist resurgence, with demands for new economic and trade regulation.

And yet, judging by their output in recent years, libertarians are in a fine mood--and not because they are in denial. However distant the country may be from their laissez-faire ideal, free-market principles now drive the American economy to a degree unimaginable a generation ago. [bold added]

But school vouchers are not fundamentally "anti-statist". Privatizing the educational system is anti-statist, while the government taking control of part of your (and others') income and dictating how it is spent is just another form of statism. Ditto for the government having anything whatsoever to do with the business of retirement planning. If people look askance at capitalism because of such measures, it is plainly because the word about what capitalism really is hasn't been put out quite accurately.

In other words, not only is there a recent buildup of new momentum for big government, the efforts of libertarians which Hymowitz agrees are attempts to make America more capitalistic were not in fact anything of the sort!

Hymowitz is technically (and accidentally) right about libertarians not being "in denial" about any of this: How can one be "in denial" about one's asessment of the facts on the ground if one is dead wrong about how he assesses them? Libertarians advocate measures as "capitalism" all the time on the basis of nonessential details that look on the surface like capitalism. For example vouchers look good to many libertarians because they fixate on greater school "choice" -- while dropping the context of the unchallenged state near-monopoly on education and the fact that vouchers also increase state involvment in religion by sending tax money to religious schools.

Objectivists and others who actually understand Ayn Rand's ideas understand that the "anti-statist" measures Hymowitz mentions are actually quite statist, but revealingly, neither do Hymowitz nor too many libertarians. Indeed, City Journal, to which Hymowitz is a contributing editor, recently lauded a massive wave of "privatization" of infrastructure which, as I pointed out, is not really privatization at all!

To the degree Hymowitz's mischaracterization of that revolutionary champion of capitalism, Ayn Rand, carries any water, it does so because Hymowitz has a reputation as an intellectual ally of capitalism. It would seem that both her moral criticism of this intellectual giant and Hymowitz's reputation as an advocate of the free market are wide open to question.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected some typos.

Blame the Government, Not the Market, for Exorbitant Health-Care Costs

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release:

Irvine, CA--The New York Times reports that employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased by 6.1 percent this year--not as high as last year's 7.7 percent increase, but still far ahead of wages or inflation--and that since 2001 they have increased by 78 percent.

"These statistics will be used by the advocates of collectivized medicine to say, once again, that the 'free market' has failed, and that we need some form of government-controlled 'universal health care' scheme," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But the truth is the opposite. These skyrocketing premiums are testament to the huge destruction that the government's massive control of healthcare to date has already wrought.

"Health-care is one of America's most controlled and socialized industries--beginning with the fact that we are all forced to pay for one another's health-care through Medicare and the government-induced third-party-payer system. In the name of the individual's 'right' to health-care and the government's 'responsibility' to provide it, the government has reached its tentacles into every facet of medicine, from how many doctors are allowed to be licensed to which medical professionals may perform what procedures, to what procedures insurance companies must provide on their plans. Is it any wonder that health-care is a mess?

"Observe that in the fields that are left free, like the computer and electronics industries, over time the cost of any given product generally goes down, not up. If medicine were left free, with individuals responsible for paying for their own care and insurance, and America's businessmen, doctors, and educators liberated to offer it at all different price points, we would see quality and price improvements like those for flat-panel television sets. Indeed, we already see this with the few realms of medicine that are left free; laser eye surgery, for example, has improved dramatically over the years while prices have fallen. We could see such developments with medical care as a whole--as soon as we agree to take responsibility for our own health, and get the government out of it."

The Ideas of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"

The Ideas of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"
A Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibit

IRVINE, Calif.--Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" is the subject of a new exhibit to open on October 8, 2007, at the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library. Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the novel's publication, the exhibit is jointly sponsored by the Los Angeles Public Library and the Ayn Rand Institute, and is curated by Jeff Britting, archivist of the Ayn Rand Archives, a special collection of the Ayn Rand Institute. The exhibit will include a reception open to the public on the date of the novel's fiftieth anniversary, October 10, 7 pm, as well as four public talks devoted to the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged" and their contemporary importance.

The exhibit--a sequel to the library's 2006-07 exhibit on Ayn Rand's time in Hollywood--titled "The Ideas of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged,'" once again displays items from the Ayn Rand Archives, including rare and never-before-displayed reproductions of manuscript pages and notes from early drafts of the novel. Also on display will be original promotional materials produced by Random House, including a dollar-sign cigarette; an excerpt from Rand's manuscript for a television miniseries written shortly before her death; and the cover artwork of historic and foreign editions.

Portions of the exhibit text have been extracted from Mr. Britting's illustrated biography, "Ayn Rand" (The Overlook Press, 2005).

In addition to the exhibit, the library will present, free of charge, four Saturday afternoon discussion sessions about the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged" and their relevance to today's world. Hosted by Mr. Britting, this series will feature presentations by speakers from the Ayn Rand Institute:

* Oct. 20, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Mr. Alex Epstein on Capitalism
* Nov. 3, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Dr. Onkar Ghate on Morality
* Nov. 17, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Mr. Elan Journo on Foreign Policy
* Dec. 8, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Dr. Keith Lockitch on Environmentalism

In "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand wrote a philosophic mystery story that she said integrated metaphysics, politics, economics and sex. It also presented for the first time her original philosophic system, later called "Objectivism," a philosophy advocating reason, rational selfishness and laissez-faire capitalism. The theme of "Atlas Shrugged" is "the role of the mind in man's existence," and the novel dramatizes what would happen to the world if the creators withdrew their works. "Atlas Shrugged" became an immediate best-seller, but was so vilified by critics and academics at the time that Ayn Rand realized she would have to become a full-time philosopher in order to defend and spread the philosophy that made her fictional heroes possible.

"Atlas Shrugged" ranks as one of the most influential books of all time, ranking second only to the Bible in a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress. Selling more copies than ever before, it is studied every year by thousands of students and is regularly cited by businessmen, athletes, scholars and politicians as a book that changed their lives. Even though it was written a half-century ago, the ideas in "Atlas Shrugged" are still profoundly relevant to the moral, cultural and political issues we face today. As Ayn Rand herself explained: "My attitude toward my writing is best expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: 'If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.'"

The exhibit at the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library runs through December 11.

### ### ###

Jeff Britting, manager of the Ayn Rand Archives at the Ayn Rand Institute and associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated feature documentary "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life," is available for interviews.

How to Truly Defeat OPEC

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release:

Irvine, CA--After some verbal wrangling between OPEC and Western countries over oil production, in which OPEC officials argued that "there is enough crude in the market," and in which the West claimed that oil production should increase to lower prices, OPEC has decided to allow a 2 percent increase in oil production.

"While some in the West might consider this a victory," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "every day that OPEC continues to wield such power over us is a loss. It is taken for granted that this despicable cartel of looter regimes who allow no truly private enterprise in oil, can manipulate our energy future on a whim. But such a state of affairs is completely unnecessary; it is a product of U.S. environmental regulations that strangle domestic energy production.

"In a free energy market, the response of competing producers to OPEC-influenced high prices would be to eagerly cultivate new oil sources in America--such as the many untapped sources of oil in Alaska and on America's coastlines--and to vigorously seek to produce truly practical alternative sources of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Such actions would drive oil and energy prices down, and with them OPEC's ability to manipulate prices.

"However, thanks to environmentalist policies, America's energy market is anything but free. In the name of preserving pristine nature at human expense, our government has rendered huge oil and natural gas deposits off-limits, has strangled coal production for decades, and has demonized and practically prohibited the pursuit of nuclear power.

"It is only because America has for decades throttled domestic energy producers that the looting dictators of OPEC continue to wield major influence over our energy supplies. It is time for America to liberate itself from the shackles of OPEC by liberating energy production from the shackles of environmentalist policies."

Finessing the "Race Card"?

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

Walter Williams writes a column that starts off with a familiar theme: politicians who pander to black cultural stereotypes. Knowing that most of these politicians are leftists and that Williams is black and conservative, you might expect this to be an attack on such politicians.

You would be right, but Williams isn't done. As his column progresses, the examples of pandering becomes more and more outlandish. Williams moves from Hillary Clinton's embarrassing imitation of black dialect, through John Kerry's condescending blanket moral amnesty for black criminals, and the loony insinuations by Jesse Jackson in 2000 that a Bush Presidency would lead to the return of Jim Crow, all the way ... to the black voters themselves.

What does it say about blacks who can be taken in by pandering, alarmist nonsense from both whites and blacks as a means to get their votes? As a black man, I don't find the most obvious answer very flattering.

He could have simply said, "You can't cheat an honest man," but that would have let the biggest villains off too easily.

The key to understanding why Williams ends his column as he does is to consider why Williams mentioned his race at all in closing. He obviously does not subscribe to the collectivist (and racist) nonsense he condemns, so in that sense, his race is irrelevant. He is an individual observing disgraceful behavior, and as such, he would be the last man on earth to claim moral authority simply on the basis of his race.

So why is he, at first glance, apparently playing the race card? Williams has carefully built the reader up to the inescapable conclusion that black voters must be either really stupid or complicit with the race panderers, hoping to gain by "falling" for politicians who play up to racial stereotypes.

Any self-respecting black man will bristle at the notion that his fellow blacks are generally stupid -- a notion blacks have had to work against for the better part of their history as Americans. But if blacks aren't stupid, then the inescapable conclusion is that too many of them are cynically looking for government favors.

This is what makes Williams's race relevant. He is pointing out that after fighting long and hard to be respected as men, many blacks are betraying that struggle and the opportunity -- to live as men -- that struggle won for them. In the process, they are perpetuating the notion that men can and should be judged by race. Williams, as a black man, now finds himself in the sadly familiar position of having to fight this unjust idea, but with the twist that he must now find a way to get his fellow blacks to stop promoting racial stereotypes!

Williams, as an economist, has made numerous arguments against leftist political policies. He nailed the coffin of the welfare state shut on practical grounds long ago. This is an attempt to reach his black readership on moral grounds, by appealing to their sense of honor.

-- CAV

September 11th: Six Years and Counting

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

Today is the sixth anniversary of 9/11, a day that has become less a day of infamy in men’s minds and more of a fading memory, not only among politicians – most of whom, Republican and Democrat, are too concerned with how to best straddle themselves on the fence yet still look appealing to voters – but among most Americans. Most Americans are living now in the enfeebling purgatory of disillusion, mistrust, and moral exhaustion.

The U.S. won a war against two established war machines in World War Two. Six years after being attacked by our enemies, have we won the war against states that sponsor terrorism?

What war? No declaration of war was ever made against them. As a result, the West-hating regimes of those states still remain intact and in power. In fact, President Bush’s vacillation on whether to serve mankind by being a “democracy builder” or to honor his oath of office to protect this country and never mind what the rest of mankind thinks about it, has added two more states to the Islamic club of evil: Iraq and Afghanistan. (Pakistan has from the beginning been only a pseudo-ally, dominated by a military that is either on the Taliban take or sympathetic with the Taliban.)

Iraq’s government is determined to milk the U.S. for all the billions its bureaucrats can siphon into their pockets before the country succumbs completely to Iranian hegemony. Afghanistan has signaled its true allegiance by hosting a visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and by looking the other way while the Taliban raises cash from sales of poppy crops grown within the country’s borders.

Add a new, non-Islamic enemy: Vladimir Putin’s fascist Russia, which is flexing its muscles by claiming sovereignty over the North Pole and sending squadrons of Soviet era bombers close to British air space in exercises of “chicken.” Putin is emboldened by what he correctly sees as American (and European) uncertainty and weakness.

The U.S. has merely protested in its best diplomatic whine Iranian military responsibility for killing American troops in Iraq (technically, another reason to declare war on Iran). Congenitally unable to recognize and deal with the real world and so unable to take the proper actions in self-defense, our policymakers can only stare like frozen deer into the headlights of the oncoming juggernaut of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Their solution is to “end the war,” to “draw down” our presence in Iraq by stealthy degrees, but somehow leave Iraq and Afghanistan “stabilized.” This will somehow un-provoke Ahmadinejad from using his bomb and discourage further terrorist attacks.

Ever since 9/11, President Bush has adhered to a policy that is scarily reminiscent of the premise of the 1989 baseball fantasy, Field of Dreams. Presumably the voice of God has told him that if he builds fields of democracy, all those putative freedom-yearning Muslims will come, that they will stop hating the U.S. and emerge like magic from the cornfield to express their gratitude and “play ball.” God, true to form, has apparently insisted that this fantasy be accomplished only by well-meaning altruism and self-sacrifice.

What else could we expect from a man whose favorite “philosopher” is Jesus?

This observation is more than an analogy. It identifies the root premise that results can be wished into existence without any reference to the nature of existence or of things in existence. As famous but long dead baseball giants somehow inhabiting a Kantian noumenal realm can be called back to the phenomenal world if one “believes” and builds a baseball field, so an “ideal” state of non-judgmental amity with Islam and our other dedicated enemies can be called into the real world by wishing very hard – religionists call it praying – and it will become true.

There is no fundamental difference between the premise behind Field of Dreams and the premise that has governed Bush’s war and diplomatic policies since 9/11.

One real-world problem with his fantasy is that it costs him and his fellow wishers nothing to pursue it. However, it is costing American lives and American wealth, which the wishers believe are inexhaustible, but which are being sacrificed on the altar of altruism and pragmatism. Because individual rights and productivity are not quite “real” to them, the wishers consequently are ready and willing to expend countless lives and incalculable billions to attain their own “field of dreams.”

How great, perilous, and shameful is the gap between the fantasy world of the altruists in office and in power and the real world of the likes of Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers, who struggled to overcome their captor/killers on the flight that ultimately crashed in a Pennsylvania field near Shanksville on 9/11. They gave the last full measure of their devotion to actual values, to living in the real world, to taking the proper actions.

Women in Art

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Klaus Nordby pointed me to this video. As he says, "This short movie, a 'morphing' of female faces throughout the history of painting, is utterly fascinating!"

Thug Schooled by Blind Man

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

I love it when some punk gets his -- especially when it happens like this!

A street robber in Germany didn't know what had hit him when he tried to mug a blind man. He had made the mistake of choosing a world judo champion as his victim.

A brutal mugger who punched a blind man in the face to steal his carton of cigarettes got a nasty shock when he found he was dealing with a former world champion in judo for the visually impaired.

"The blind Judoka used some expert moves to wrestle the robber to the ground and pinned him down while he shouted for help," police in the city of Marburg said in a statement. A passerby called the police, who then arrested the 17-year-old mugger.

The teenager had threatened the 33-year-old blind man near the train station in Marburg. The champion had to be treated for a bloody nose following the incident. [bold added]

Hah! Action, humor, and justice! The only thing missing was the blind man making a crack like, "I'm too old for this *^%#" as he dusted off his hands.

On a serious note, though, consider for a moment the bravery and presence of mind shown by that blind man.

And for that matter, let's hope that the stupid kid takes a lesson from him on the value of discipline and hard work.

-- CAV

I will not submit.

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

Six years ago, nineteen savages executed thousands of decent, civilized human beings in the name of a superstition known as Islam, and were celebrated the world over then and to this very day by many of their fellow Moslems all over the world.

We have obviously been in a state of war since that day, although this state has in fact existed for decades longer. This state of war continues to exist today, not because of any merit possessed by our foes, but through a lack of political, tactical, and military efficiency ultimately caused by our own cultural rot, which has been manifest ever since the attacks.

A people predominantly confident in their cultural superiority to primitive, malodorous, unkempt filth would not have a second thought about promising their extermination if its just demand for unconditional surrender were not met; would have ended all foreign aid to their state sponsors rather than airlift even more rations; and would have stated in no uncertain terms that totalitarian Islam is evil, and -- as motivator of our enemies -- must be eradicated from the face of the earth.

Last year, I described what that day was like for myself, and this year, Dan Edge and others have done the same. This year, after hearing about the petulant rantings of Osama bin Laden -- who resembles a brat muttering just loudly enough under his breath to almost provoke his parents more than anything else -- part of me almost doesn't wish to speak at all, lest I be misconstrued as engaging in some sort of undeserved dialog with that person.

Osama bin Laden and everyone who supports him are beyond the pale, and should never be addressed in words. They should be hunted down like the animals they are and the "prophet" they so admire was.

The only words that need be spoken of this are among ourselves, and these are the words of renewed commitment to the sacred cause of our own lives and happiness, of mutual encouragement, and of the profitable enterprise of exchanging and debating our ideas on how best to achieve our goals.

All of these things can be summed up in the words that appear, in the pig-tail like letters of Arabic, on a tee shirt pictured here (and for sale at this site): "I will not submit." In other words, "I will reject Islam."

I hear that Osama bin Laden has once again "invited" us to adopt his religion, which is to say, to celebrate with him the murders he committed. Which is also to say, to despise the one life and chance for happiness we have -- this one on earth. Which is to say, to betray our loved ones. Which is to say, to reject reason, the fundamental virtue of our great nation. Even he understands on some level how miserable Islam is. Why else would he feel the need to threaten people who do not accept his bill of goods?

Yes, thanks to Osama bin Laden, when I see pictures of large numbers of Moslems, the question often crosses my mind of where a "daisy cutter" is when you need one. And while I also certainly regard no fate as bad enough for him, I feel no need to heed him in any way save to render his efforts moot.

I say "I will not submit" out of no defiance of him. What is there to "defy" in a coward in a cave who owes his life to generations of corrupt intellectuals and politicians? Nor am I defying his imaginary friend, Allah. How can one "defy" something that is not real?

No. I say "I will not submit" for that holiest of reasons: Because I love my life on this earth, and the many wonderful people and things in it. And I recognize that to "live" my life in accordance with the arbitrary dictates of a religious authority would be worse than merely being dead.

-- CAV

Where Were You? -- Reflections on 9/11

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

For me, September 11, 2001 began as a normal Tuesday morning in Greenville, SC. I got up, had breakfast, got dressed, and drove to StereoVideo, where I worked as a retail salesman. I arrived at work at about 8:30am. As usual, most of the staff met in the back of the store for a bull-and-smoking session before opening up. At about 8:50am, the owner (who was always late getting in) called to tell us that a plane had crashed into a building in New York City. We wanted to see what was going on, so we turned on the store.

StereoVideo is a high-end electronics store specializing in large, high-definition televisions and powerful audio systems. When we turned on the store, hundreds of thousands of dollars in audio-visual equipment brought the height of consumer technology to bear – to show us a scene of terror. The World Trade Center was on fire. The Sony high-def rear-projector shot rays of light on the wall, displaying a plume of smoke 10 feet tall. The $10k Infinity floor standing speakers boomed its built-in subwoofers as the second plane exploded on impact. It was a terrible spectacle of light and sound.

All day we watched – surrounded by 100 televisions, all showing the same nightmare. As the events of September 11 unfolded, StereoVideo continued to operate. I fought back tears as the wave of attacks continued. People kept coming into the store and would stay for hours, transfixed by images of destruction. To my utter shock, a few customers still wanted to chat about setting up their new home theatre system. So we loaded Shrek into a few of the DVD Players, and Princess Fiona pouted – next to images of tragic murder victims hurling themselves from the top of the World Trade Center. It was surreal.

After we closed the store, I went to a sports bar near the Blood Bank in downtown Greenville. All of the televisions were tuned to news channels, and the bar was alive with sad, angry, and patriotic discussion. I spoke with three or four strangers who shared my grief and rage. We all agreed that whoever was responsible for these attacks deserved prompt and utter destruction. We were at war.

As I approached the Blood Bank, I saw that I had to park half a mile away in order to get close to it. Many others had the same idea as me, and the place was mobbed with patriots offering their blood. A police officer that had just given blood advised me to come back the following day. The staff at the Blood Bank was overwhelmed. When I went the next day, they said to come back in a month, as they were already filled to capacity with blood donations.

In the days and weeks following the September 11 attacks, the country seemed to come together in a way I’d never seen before in my adult life. I finally understood why the adults around me were rejoicing so much when the Berlin Wall fell. Americans demanded justice, and a significant portion of the public had the moral courage to support an all-out war against Islamic Totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, that window of opportunity has passed. Most Americans seem to have forgotten what happened that Tuesday in 2001. It has become just one attack of many – perpetrated by some terrorist group or other – all tied-in to some nebulous “War on Terror” that is going nowhere fast. That is why, every year on the anniversary of September 11, I take the time to remember where I was that day. I remember where I was, how I felt, what I thought, and most importantly, what we need to do to make sure it never happens again.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> Where were you?

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

Reject the Un-American Call for "National Service"

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release:

Irvine, CA--The lead article in a recent issue of Time magazine makes the case for "universal national service"--which the article describes as "the simple but compelling idea that devoting a year or more to national service, whether military or civilian, should become a countrywide rite of passage, the common expectation and widespread experience of virtually every young American." Many commentators and politicians have called in recent years for Americans to engage in more national service, which they claim is necessary to preserve and sustain America's greatness. The Time article calls it "a recipe for keeping a republic."

"In fact," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "the idea of 'national service' is profoundly un-American. America was founded on the idea that each individual is a sovereign being with the moral right to his own life and to the achievement of his own goals. This is the basis of the political idea that the individual possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the notion that people are servants who owe their lives--or any portion of them--to their neighbors or to the state.

"The collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state.

"To call service to a collectivist state pro-American is false and perverse. To preserve our great nation, we must embrace not the subjugation of the individual to 'national service,' but his sovereign right to the pursuit of his own happiness."

Ju-eez-uss-uh Camp

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

See. "Jesus" does have four syllables!

Recalling a recommendation by a fellow Objectivist blogger some time ago, I watched the documentary Jesus Camp today. Mike's capsule was accurate, but still did not prepare me for the depths of depravity some people can reach on the matter of rearing children.

I think this is an excellent case study of the fundamentalist movement. See how two very young children admire Christian martyrs, and how their pastor admires Muslim suicide bombers for their faith.

This pastor (Becky Fischer), fully aware of the controversy this movie has generated among the non-religious, points to a chapter from a book she wrote at the end of each question of a lengthy FAQ on the movie at her ministry's web site, in the way of offering further explanation for her actions.

Since she is so proud of it -- and it reiterates the most monstrous aspect of the brain-crippling practices that come across in the movie -- I shall quote from it below:

[I]f we are to win the battle of transforming our children into spiritual champions, we must link arms and voices to get our message out because we can work our whole lives in our individual fields and not see much more accomplished than what we have right now. But if we work together, we have a better chance of making our voices heard and making a permanent, lasting impact. You need only to do a quick search on the Internet under "Palestinian children" to see how serious our enemy is about training their kids to walk in their vision. At all costs, we must redefine children's ministry in the 21st century if we are to save this next generation. [bold added]

At all costs, indeed. The steepest one will be the minds of the children themselves.

Although she was not telling children to blow themselves up, these children were being systematically programmed -- like young Moslems in Palestine -- to think about religion at every waking moment and in every aspect of their lives. One of the children the filmmakers focused on, who several times went up to complete strangers apropos of nothing to attempt to convert them, was at one point encouraged by her father, who said, "Way to be obedient!"

Indeed, the film caused enough people concern that one of the questions she fields (by quoting the makers of the film) is whether the children are "capable of violence". The "reply" -- which takes advantage of the wishy-washy moral relativism of the filmmakers themselves, dodges this issue by noting the demeanor and articulateness of the children and raising the red herring of "brain-washing" being a "loaded term":

Asked whether Fischer, the leading voice at the camp, was a "brainwasher" or an "educator," [Rachel] Grady says, "Let's put it this way: 'Brainwashing,' obviously, is a very loaded word. It made me look at that word differently... all parents are indoctrinating their children in their beliefs. It made me question--do you start calling it 'brainwashing' or 'indoctrinating' if the beliefs are different from your own?" She feels the film "made my worldview open up a bit. Would I raise my kids like this? No. But I don't that's really relevant." [bold added]

I beg to differ. There is more to the (proper) instruction of children than mere indoctrination. Education is not simply a matter of content, but of the epistemological method being taught to children. Ideally, a proper education, whose nature can be determined only after a rigorous inquiry into what, exactly a child is and what adulthood requires him to learn, will permit a child to develop an independent, rational mind. (Note that such an inquiry would depend on a prior rejection, root and branch, of the entire mystical metaphysics, epistemology of blind faith, and ethics of total obedience to which Fischer subscribes.) Such a mind will then be able to determine for itself whether its beliefs have a firm basis in the facts of reality and the requirements for human life and correct such beliefs, if need be.

In other words, the short, honest answer to the question of whether these children are capable of violence is: Not yet -- as far as anyone can tell. So what if it isn't apparent from the documentary alone that anyone has told these children (or that they may, as fundamentalists, determine later for themselves from the Bible) that God "wants" them to force others to obey his alleged will or to injure or kill those who do not? The idea of obedience is firmly entrenched, the possibility of the Bible being wrong rejected out of hand, and the violence within the Bible very well known. Indeed, Fischer herself says at one point that someone would have been "put to death" in Biblical times for an attitude she did not like.

This is a disturbing film. Despite Fischer's numerous protestations against the notion that she has a political agenda, it is plain from her focus -- at a children's summer camp of all places -- on abortion and the overturning of the Roe vs. Wade decision, that she is being dishonest about that matter. Furthermore, if her lot are in fact churning out large numbers of charismatic (i.e., explicitly mystical) fundamentalists, we are in store for a major push for an end to the separation of church and state in America, the introduction or reimposition of religion-based laws wherever possible, and, quite possibly, religious terrorism beyond the occasional abortion clinic bombing.

This will make you sick, but watch it anyway.

-- CAV

PS: Regarding the second to last sentence, the first two are already underway, and none of them require the spread of charismatic Christianity (or any particular sect) to occur. My point here is simply that Becky Fischer's particular brand of indoctrination will make the possibility of such things greater sooner than otherwise.

Updates

9-10-07: Added PS.

Book Recommendation

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Lin Zinser recently posted this book recommendation on the FRODO e-mailing list. I thought it worthy of reposting on NoodleFood, and Lin was kind enough to give me permission to do so. She wrote:

I am currently reading one of the most significant books about political activism that I have ever read. Many of you may have picked up copies at OCON this summer. For those of you who have not, I urge you to buy this book and read it.

The book contains a series of essays, written by various authors about the proper methods, strategies and tactics of political action on a specific topic. It is a book with the most consistently good moral arguments that I remember reading outside of Ayn Rand. (Although some use religious arguments, they are perfunctory, almost add-ons, rather than central theses.)

These authors understand moral arguments and their importance. They are deeply ideological. They are passionate. They are rational. They debate the important political topics relevant to achieving a political purpose, such as, what are the proper considerations in voting for a party or a political candidate; should one form a separate political party or infiltrate existing parties; is it ever proper to use force to achieve political ends, particularly when force is being used against you; is it more profitable to advocate gradual change or to hold out for absolute and complete perfection; what is the moral and the practical, and do they ever conflict; and other interesting crucial matters pertaining to political action used to achieve a particular goal.

These essays were written by 19th century abolitionists. The book is Anti-Slavery Political Writings, 1833-1860, and is edited by C. Bradley Thompson (executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism).

All of these authors condemn slavery, are on the "same side" in the war against slavery, and yet their arguments with each other are sharp, clear, compelling and harsh. Passion and reason radiate throughout these essays. Brad Thompson's introductory essay and his comments on each selection are illuminating and distill the essence and fundamental nature of the issues involved. His choice of these selections is truly inspired because these particular essays focus one one the essence of the debate. This book emphasizes the practical nature of philosophy.

If you want to understand how abolitionists brought slavery to the forefront of American thought in less than 10 years; if you want to study how a good, moral political movement changed the world in 30 years; if you want to get involved in political action today, but you want to do it in a principled, moral way -- this is the book to read, understand and study. Whether your concern is foreign policy, health care, immigration, or education, this book is an excellent resource and tool.

I should add: Brad Thompson's course at OCON in June, American Slavery, American Freedom was not only stellar but also very relevant to politics today. I highly recommend buying it when it becomes available. The book and the course would make a great pair, I imagine.

Be Healthy or Else!

Irvine, CA--Under Democratic presidential contender John Edwards's "universal" health-care proposal, every American would be required to go to the doctor for preventive care in order to keep health-care costs down. In a similar proposal, a Tory panel in Britain suggested that, in order to control the spiraling costs of its socialized health-care system, Britons should be forced to adopt a government-prescribed "healthy lifestyle" or else be denied certain medical treatments. Britons who improve their health by, for example, quitting smoking or losing weight would receive "Health Miles" that could be used to purchase vegetables or pay for gym memberships.

"These proposals are the reductio ad absurdum of nanny-state paternalism," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "According to these politicians, instead of having a government that protects our right to live our own lives, we are to be treated like incompetent children who need someone to force us to visit the doctor and eat our veggies.

"Such proposals are the inevitable consequence of socialized medicine, where the only ways to control spiraling health-care costs are to cut benefits or attempt to reduce demand for medical services by forcing preventive care on individuals. Indeed, the fundamental justification for socialized medicine rests on the view that individuals are helpless to manage their own lives and so need beneficent bureaucrats to take care of them. Under socialized medicine, the government gives us 'free' health care--and in exchange, it gets to dictate how we live our lives. It's like a parent who tells his child, 'So long as I pay the bills, I make the rules!'

"But coercing people into 'healthy' behavior is not only destructive to individual liberty--it's destructive to health. If an individual is to maintain his health and well-being, he must (in consultation with his doctor) make myriad judgments about what is good for his life and what is harmful, given the context of his knowledge, goals, and interests. When the government takes away the individual's freedom to pursue his well-being as he sees fit in favor of coercively enforced collective judgments about what is healthy or unhealthy, it prevents him from making such judgments and the life-promoting decisions they entail. It also leaves him at the mercy of any errors the government makes in its declarations about what is 'healthy.' Imagine the destructive consequences had people been forced to abide by the USDA's now widely discredited 'food pyramid.'

"To protect our health and our freedom, we must reject socialized medicine in any form."

Off to the Founders College kickoff

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

I'm off to Founders College for the weekend, which officially kicks off its first year of classes with an opening celebration tomorrow. Earlier this week Scott Powell posted his interview with Founders College CEO Tamara Fuller at his blog History at Our House. The interview brought to light several of Founders' key points of differentiation. Unlike most other colleges, Founders is expressly dedicated to teaching an integrated body of knowledge. According to Fuller:

[I]integration permeates every level of [Founders'] construction from the connections between the classes to the training for professors. At Founders, liberal arts and business are connected. Students don’t just study major periods in history, such as the Renaissance, or just the literature of the Renaissance, they are taught to see connections between the arts, literature, philosophy, and the progress of events in society at large.

In most college settings the opposite is true. From the outset, when students arrive they can choose from a wide spectrum of course; they are not taught in any particular order; they are not taught by people who are aware of the other curriculum areas of the system. In most cases, there is no expert guidance provided to enable students to develop a mastery of the subject they are studying.

Powell also asks Fuller about Founders' perspective on home schooling. Unlike many colleges, Founders outright embraces home-schooled students for matriculation. In the interview, Fuller made clear her admiration for home school teaching methods:

Homeschoolers necessarily teach in more integrated fashion, because the entire curriculum is developed under the oversight of a single individual or couple. When I interview homeschoolers, I see accelerated learning, because students have an added measure of integration in their education.

Again, it all comes back to integration: take the chaos of the world and organize it, first in one's mind, and second in one's actions. And on these grounds, I am excited about the Founders opening: let the revolution begin.

Interview with Tamara Fuller of Founders College

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Whiners of the World Unite?

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

Mentioned in passing at the start of an otherwise very amusing article (via the Houston Chronicle) about socially inept and abusive bosses is the following bombshell:

A bill in New Jersey would give an individual the right to seek as much as $25,000 in damages if an employer created "an abusive work environment." Similar measures are pending in New York state, Vermont and Washington state. In California, a Sacramento-based group called California Healthy Workplace Advocates is working to revive a sue-the-boss bill that died in committee in 2003.

The bills are short on specifics, such as what exactly would constitute an abusive work environment, and their prospects are far from certain. The wisdom of giving employees new grounds to sue is debatable, considering the threat of frivolous court-clogging suits and laws at the federal level and in many states that already protect people against, among other things, sexual harassment and discrimination based on gender, race, pregnancy, physical disability and religion. [bold added]

And you can add, "Nobody in his right mind will want to work in management," to the laundry list of unintended, but obvious consequences of passage.

Since when has "being surrounded by pleasant coworkers" (or "having a cool boss") been a right? There is so much wrong with this proposal I don't even know where to begin. Just like anyone else, I've had my share of lousy bosses, but think about this for a moment.

First of all, management isn't easy to begin with. Second, you have a near-infinite variety of potential personality conflicts just waiting to happen even if the boss (or the subordinate) isn't afflicted with difficulty in interpersonal relationships. Third, there would be a huge potential for abuse by the subordinate even if you could somehow define objective criteria for determining what constitutes an "abusive work environment".

This is plainly just another way to redistribute income through the legal system, as implied by the fact that there is no similar legislation in the works to allow bosses to sue particularly troublesome subordinates they can't fire easily. Indeed, the double standard becomes even more obvious when you think of quitting your job as firing your boss (or at least, "letting him go"), which is exactly what it is.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected some typos.

Far Worse Than Pound Foolish

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

A horrible example of minor government functionaries I blogged about awhile back -- British doctors refusing treatment to patients whose lifestyles they disapprove of -- has now been proposed by a member of the British Conservative Party as national policy:

Failing to follow a healthy lifestyle could lead to free NHS treatment being denied under the Tory plans.

Patients would be handed "NHS Health Miles Cards" allowing them to earn reward points for losing weight, giving up smoking, receiving immunisations or attending regular health screenings.

Like a supermarket loyalty card [only enforced at the point of a gun --ed], the points could be redeemed as discounts on gym membership and fresh fruit and vegetables, or even give priority for other public services - such as jumping the queue for council housing.

But heavy smokers, the obese and binge drinkers who were a drain on the NHS could be denied some routine treatments such as hip replacements until they cleaned up their act.

Those who abused the system - by calling an ambulance when a trip to the GP would be sufficient, or telephoning out of hours with needless queries - could also be penalised.

Can we say, "libertarian paternalism"?

So much for such past conservative ideas (if they ever had them) as reducing government expenditure, respecting the property rights of physicians and the personal sovereignty of everyone, and allowing non-coercive market forces to encourage people to take responsibility for their own lives -- all of which could be put into practice by privatizing the medical sector....

Even in America, which is in the midst of considering whether to hurl itself into the abyss of socialized medicine, many would look favorably upon this terrible development, seeing it as both a clever way to "cut costs" and "encourage" personal responsibility. Indeed, some, rather than taking this as the object lesson that it is, will regard it as something for America to emulate.

This incredible state of affairs is caused immediately by the fact that our long history of government interference in the economy generally and medicine particularly has resulted in individuals taking less responsibility for their own lives, thereby draining the pockets of the rest of us through taxation. Clearly, something must be done about this financial crisis.

Unfortunately, since repealing the welfare state does not exist as an option in the public debate -- because nobody is challenging the idea that one man should be enslaved to meet the needs of another -- the debate will move inexorably to a greater and greater role for the state. We are already seeing this here in America with smoking bans and trans-fat bans. What is going on in Britain is just more of the same, but further along the primrose path to hell. (And see my recent remarks on John Edwards' latest stab at "medical" policy.)

This ratcheting in the direction of statism is not unique to the debate over medicine. We see it, too, in the immigration debate with people trying to stop immigration on the grounds that immigrants use social services -- rather than looking at ending those social services.

The worst thing about this is that people, used to having their money taken from them by the government, no longer expect the government to protect their right to property. And yet, they grasp that the government can make others take less from them (or give them more) by dictating to others behaviors that will require lower expenditures by the government.

In other words, the people forget that the government has stolen from them, personally, by taxing them, and look at the public budget as a sort of communal "property". In that delimited sense, justice is on their side in demanding that some not use too much of it. It is in this way that people, having now forgotten about property rights begin demanding that the government redress crimes against "common property" by eroding what little protection it still affords of other rights.

This, I think, partly explains the prevalence of what I privately call the "dictator fantasy" in the West today, the idea that increased government controls are okay because they won't stop the fantasizer from doing anything he wants to do. (Most people who want to ban smoking don't themselves smoke, for example.) The general social consensus is (so far) reasonable enough for most people, and the behaviors the government wants to ban are (so far) harmful if done to excess or at least risky. This last point makes opposing these incremental steps towards tyranny easy to smear as "anti-health" or "anti-safety".

Unfortunately, just as people have gotten used to basically not having property rights, so will they, by acquiescing in all these "sensible" restrictions on personal freedom, slowly become used to the government telling them what to do. And eventually, they will find that something they wish to do runs afoul of the law, but by then, it will be too late.

A very wise man once said the following:

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.

Perhaps we need to update that. I propose the following:

First they banned smoking, but I didn't smoke, so I didn't speak up. Then they banned trans-fats, but I didn't eat them, so I didn't speak up. Then they banned eating what you wanted, but I wasn't fat, so I didn't speak up. Then they banned casting doubt on the consensus and I couldn't speak up at all.

It is worse than "penny wise and pound foolish" for the Tories to attempt to solve a fiscal crisis by means of libertarian paternalism: It is a sacrilege against freedom and thus a crime against the lives of the British people.

The Tories would do well to propose, instead, a return to the private practice of medicine, and the Americans should move in that direction as well.

-- CAV

Colonial Williamsburg's Summit of Scrambled Egg-Heads

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

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is ostensibly dedicated to promoting an understanding of how and why the United States was founded in the 18th century, to communicate a sense of why the Revolution happened. Among its programs was the replication of colonial Williamsburg, once the capital of colonial Virginia, restoring original buildings dating from the period and reconstructing others from extant records. For decades costumed "interpreters" or actors have roamed the streets of Colonial Williamsburg, regaling visitors with tales and stories from the period, while inside many of the restored or rebuilt structures they introduced visitors to life in the 18th century, from peruke making to 18th century cooking to gardening to the contradance. Over its seventy-plus years of existence, Colonial Williamsburg has been explored, toured and experienced by millions of tourists from the United States and from around the world.

All of this was made possible by money from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who in the 1930's and 1940's invested millions in the resuscitation of what was once a sleepy, down on its luck college town. Less emphasis was put on the explication of the political principles that animated many of the town's more famous residents and visiting burgesses, and more on "life as it was." Which is not to say that visitors did not go away without a better knowledge of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and the rival Randolph and Lee families, to mention a few of the men who once were familiar with Duke of Gloucester Street, the mile-long thoroughfare between the College of William and Mary and the colonial Capitol.

Today, however, in 2007, visitors go away with less of a knowledge of those men, their causes, and their time, and a skewed one, as well - a politically correct one. The rot began to set in and spread late in the last century. What has helped to accelerate the decomposition, among other cultural and political influences, is that Colonial Williamsburg now receives federal money.

When it was a purely private, "not for profit" foundation, depending on donations, endowments, bequests and tourist revenue, it did not need to abide by the Civil Rights Act, or the Equal Opportunity Act, or any other egalitarian legislation intended to usurp and regulate private dealings between individuals and organizations, between employers and employees.

For example, now visitors leave with the impression that there were indeed female footmen and coach drivers, women coopers and carpenters, women fifers and drummers, female "militia persons," and so on, without any attempt by the Foundation or its employees to correct that impression or to even hint at the true, male-defined character of the period.

This is one consequence of taking federal bread - and having to sing the federal song. And it illustrates just one way in which the policymakers of Colonial Williamsburg contradict and ultimately betray the Foundation's decades-old mission and watchword: "That the future may learn from the past." To be willing to falsify the past is to be willing to falsify the present. George Orwell dramatized the motive behind and the consequences of that policy in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Perhaps worse than falsifying the character of the period, Colonial Williamsburg has hosted several international conferences. Presidents, queens, princes, sheiks, and demagogues have all visited the place in one capacity or another. The latest event was the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in 1607. President and Laura Bush, Queen Elizabeth of England, and other dignitaries all descended on Williamsburg and Jamestown to participate in an orgy of multicultural "diversity" - designed by its organizers to underplay (and in many instances, to diminish or denigrate) the European settlement and overplay or inflate alleged Indian and African cultural contributions.

The climax of the celebration of the beginning of what the Founders more than 150 years later would deem a republic, however, will not be a recognition of that unprecedented political feat, but the "World Forum on the Future of Democracy," to take place between September 16 and 18.

According to the August 14th Colonial Williamsburg Newsletter, an employee in-house publication, "The World Forum will bring together noted international and national scholars on democracy, as well as leading government officials, political practitioners, advocates and commentators who have played a role in democracy's advance.

"The signature event of America's 400th anniversary is sponsored jointly by the Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission, the College of William and Mary, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and the Commonwealth of Virginia's 'Jamestown 2007' organization.

"The Williamsburg Lodge and the College of William and Mary...will both host World Forum events. Invited guests to the World Forum Conference will be given the rare opportunity to hear a distinguished group of international speakers...

"The first full conference day will focus on [the] 'Architecture of Liberty' and will address the American framers' development of a structure for deliberative democracy, the evolution of the American system over the ensuing centuries, and the contemporary relevance of democracy in a global age." (Italics mine.)

I have news for the invited guests, the participants, the chairs, and the panelists of the Forum: the framers did no such thing. What they "structured" was a political system intended to preserve a republic, that is, a nation whose government was charged with defending and preserving individual rights against foes foreign and domestic - especially against democratically-inclined domestic ones. The Founders abhorred the idea of a democracy, which in history meant mob rule. They knew that democracy, "deliberative" or not, in most cases was an overture to tyranny by mobs or tyranny by dictators. Their papers, correspondence, and speeches bear out that abhorrence. When the Constitution was drawn up for ratification, someone asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government he and his fellow delegates had created. He answered: "A republic, if you can keep it."

But Americans haven't been able to keep it. They have lost sight of it, or surrendered it in exchange for the messy and expensive pottage of the welfare state. Most do not know the vitally defining differences between a democracy and a republic; to most of them, the terms are synonymous. We have to thank for that appalling and debilitating ignorance a federally dominated public education system dominated by bureaucrats and "educators" one of whose pernicious goals is to convert the study of ideas and the history of ideas into mere "social studies."

Lexicographers have had trouble defining the term republic. The common definition of this form of representative government (compiled here from the Oxford, Webster's, and American Heritage dictionaries) usually includes the absence of a monarch as head of state, substituting an elected president or executive, and the right of citizens to elect representatives who are responsible and answerable to the citizens.

However, the political system in the U.S. today meets only half that definition. What elected official is truly held responsible for his actions? Even if he is voted out of office or forced to resign, he can still collect a taxpayer-paid pension and avail himself of taxpayer-paid fringe benefits. He is not answerable for endorsing policies that result in the destruction of individual rights or the seizure of private property or the mortgaging of the lives of the living and the not-yet-born by voting for programs that depend on theft and deficit spending.

The typical politician is privileged to legislate, and indemnified from any ruinous consequences of his actions and policies.

Also, the meaning of the term republic has not so much been lost, as ignored. Dictatorships and theocracies have incorporated the term in the names of their slave states, e.g., the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the German Democratic Republic, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

So, in modern practice, the term republic has become meaningless. Democracy, on the other hand, is what most collectivists and statists prefer to impose in theory and in practice. It means majority rule, or mob rule, even though in many instances the majority may be a fantasy or an illusion of its advocates or of those who believe they are in the majority.

Some notorious instances of democracy in action are: the death of Socrates, the French Revolution, and the election of the Nazi Party to power in Germany. Or, more recently, the democratically elected government of Iraq, which adopted a theocratic constitution, a democracy bought with the lives of thousands of American soldiers. (President Bush's attitude? "So be it, if that's what they want, it was democratically done.") All of these instances of democracy were "deliberated," as well.

Like the defenders of Communism in the past, advocates of democracy contend that the system has been given a bad reputation by artless practitioners or just plain bad luck, that it would be an ideal form of government if only the "right" individuals oversaw its implementation. Its poor and often criminal record is blamed on inconducive circumstances, corruption, and other incidental or irrelevant factors - never on its fundamental nature.

Majority rule, moreover, recognizes no absolute principles necessary to ensure the freedom and legitimate rights of individuals. This was a major concern of the Founders, who, within the limit of their knowledge (which was demonstrably wider and deeper than that of modern politicians), labored to ban democracy from the Constitution. Under democracy, absolute principles, founded on the nature of man, are the enemy of the advocates of "social progress" and "political evolution." The rights of minorities, or even the minorities themselves, can be sacrificed for the good of the whole. Or, a minority with political pull can subjugate a majority through the influence of a bloc of ambitious, venal legislators (e.g., the 18th Amendment, or the Volstead Act).

What is deliberative democracy, that is, what the Founders did not "structure"? One can only guess that it means that instead of instant mob rule, the mob and its leaders stop to talk about it first, to devise the best means of imposing their wishes with the least amount of debate or conflict, before putting individual rights on the tumbrel of legislation for a trip to the guillotine.

The roll call of organizations and individuals participating in the World Forum on the Future of Democracy is largely answered by doe-eyed altruists and professional and career do-gooders. It is complemented by a cohort of political has-beens (such as Charles Robb, former U.S senator from Virginia and its former governor, William P. Barr, 77th Attorney General and now executive vice president and general counsel of Verizon, and retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor), scholars of the people management and one-worlder globalization stripes, and a few odd couples. Leftist news editor and anchor James C. Lehrer of PBS will moderate some of the panels and two historians, Gordon Wood of Brown University and Joseph Ellis of Mount Holyoke College, both Pulitzer Prize authors, are also scheduled to appear as speakers and panelists.

The World Forum's list of panel topics is a litany of collectivist causes and statist concerns: "Developing a Structure for Deliberative Democracy - The Framers' Debate" - "Has America Kept the Faith? Is it Working?" - "Are America's Founding Principles Relevant in a Global Age?" - "Terrorism and Security" - "Protecting Religious Freedom and Minority Rights" - "World Markets" - "Sustainable Development."

Among the organizations represented at the Forum are:

• The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. government entity established in 2004, charged with reducing global poverty through the promotion of sustainable growth. It receives an annual Congressional appropriation. "Reducing global poverty" was not what the Founders had in mind when they were "structuring" our alleged democracy. "Sustainable" growth or development, moreover, means the transfer of wealth, private or taxpayer extorted, from a free, prosperous country to an unfree, poor one, as long as the free, prosperous one can sustain its productivity under the twin burdens of regulation and taxation.

• The Aspen Institute, which, according to its website, "is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering enlightened leadership and open-minded dialogue...The Institute and its international partners seek to promote nonpartisan inquiry and an appreciation of timeless values." The rest of its mission statement is just as woozily worded and is a pæan to cultural relativism and sensitivity training. One may suppose that political freedom is a "timeless value" appreciated by the principals of the Institute, but is not much defended by them. To defend it as a non-negotiable value would be "close-minded."

• CIVICUS, or the "World Alliance for Citizen Participation," dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society throughout the world. Its "vision" is "a worldwide community of informed, inspired, committed citizens engaged in confronting the challenges facing humanity." This is also woozy. Perhaps the U.S.-Iranian talks are an example of "civil engagement."

• First Peoples Worldwide, "a project of the Tides Center...the only international organization led by Indigenous Peoples and dedicated to the mission of promoting Indigenous economic determination and strengthening Indigenous communities through asset control and the dissemination of knowledge." Which means: keeping the "indigenous" down on the farm and dependent on aid. If these people weren't kept poor, would the do-gooders have anything else to do?

• Winrock International, "a nonprofit organization that works with people in the United States and around the world to increase economic opportunity, sustain natural resources, and protect the environment...By linking local individuals and communities with new ideas and technology, Winrock is increasing long-term productivity, equity, and responsible resource management to benefit the poor and disadvantaged of the world." And all those new ideas and the technology come from individuals who fortunately didn't merit Winrock's compassionate attention.

• Mortara Center for International Studies (Georgetown University), which apparently specializes in "conflict management" and resolving disputes without passing moral judgment on the conflicting parties. Its mission is "to advance scholarship and inform policy by combining the expertise of scholars and the experiences of international affairs practitioners." The Mortara Center is a creature of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. Well, look at the sorry record of U.S. diplomacy over the last half-century.

• The Cohen Group, a Washington "business" lobby headed by former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, and staffed chiefly by high-ranking retired military men. "Our Principals," says its website, "bring centuries of experience [that expression, "centuries of experience," is absolutely meaningless] at the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and Congress....The Cohen Group's reach extends internationally where our Principals have developed great expertise and relationships with key political, economic and business leaders and acquired valuable experience with the individuals and institutions that affect our clients' success abroad." One couldn't understate it better. The shorthand and more honest term for all that expertise and experience is "political pull." On TCG's website also are several "success stories," which are nonpareil examples of résumé padding, puffery, and circumlocution.

Several of the individuals who will appear as speakers or panelists deserve particular attention.

Carol J. Lancaster, director of the Mortara Center, and currently teaching courses on political leadership, the politics and economics of development and ethics, and global development at Georgetown, has made a career of rationalizing in a scholarly manner the disastrous policy of U.S. foreign aid.

Jessica P. Einhorn, dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, took that position after retiring from public careers with the World Bank, the U.S. State and Treasury Departments, and the U.S. International Development Corporation Agency. Nominally an "economist," she had stints with the International Monetary Fund and the Brookings Institute. She is a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a director of the Institute for International Economics, the Center for Global Development, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. This is a "brainy" Hillary Clinton.

Martha Crenshaw is the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought, and also Professor of Government at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. (Colin Campbell is president of Colonial Williamsburg.) She is a kind of scholarly "peacenik." She has made a career of analyzing and writing about terrorism, but in terms that treat the subject as a kind of jigsaw puzzle or computer program, sans any moral judgment of terrorists or of states that sponsor terrorism.

She contributed a chapter, "Coercive Diplomacy and the Response to Terrorism" to a book published by the U.S. Institute of Peace Press, The United States and Coercive Diplomacy and several other papers to similarly titled works and the quarterly Foreign Affairs. Among her many, many liberal credits are her memberships on the Committee on Law and Justice and the Committee on (wait for it!) Determining Basic Research Needs to Interrupt the Improvised Explosive Device Delivery Chain of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science.

Here is a sample of her writing from her article, "Thoughts on Relating Terrorism to Historical Contexts," in a book she edited, Terrorism in Context:

In answer to the question of the consequences of terrorism, she wrote:

"The impact of terrorism is often lost in a tide of sensational exaggerations. Furthermore, terrorism shapes interactions among political actors over long periods of time through a dynamic process in which violence alters the conditions under which it initially occurs. Many consequences are unintended, but it is rare that terrorism (or, more frequently, the government's reaction to terrorism) does not alter political institutions, values, and behavior as well as the functioning of society."

That is her "disinterested" style and perspective, to view terrorism and reactions to it as no better than competing nests of ants that raid each other. One supposes that she regards the reporting of the murder of 3,000 people, mostly Americans, on 9/11, as an instance of sensational exaggeration. Among other things, according to the Wesleyan website, Crenshaw is a former President and Councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology. "Political psychology"? Not political principles, or political ideas?

Which brings me to what initially startled me when I read the list of World Forum participants. Two of the panel topics, mentioned above, are "Terrorism and Security" and "Protecting Religious Freedom and Minority Rights."

Not coincidentally, two individuals who won't be at odds either are retired Coast Guard Admiral James M. Loy, former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005 (and now senior counselor for The Cohen Group), and Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, and formerly a director of the Islamic Circle of North America.

Loy, who also served as chief operating officer for the Transportation Security Administration, will probably chair or moderate the panel on terrorism and security. He got masters degrees in history/government and public administration from Wesleyan in Connecticut and the University of Rhode Island, and was an intern at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. So one can be certain that he will not be saying that President Bush has made a mess of things, that we are losing the so-called "war on terror," and that the solution is to eradicate states that sponsor terrorism - Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria.

No, he will probably advocate that to frustrate "radical militants" bent on launching another attack on U.S. soil, the U.S. be turned into a more thorough police state than the DHS and TSA already has, and that we extend a hand of friendship to Islam. Islam, after all, is a "peaceful" religion. Loy would not be a part of the World Forum if he were not soft (or soft-headed) on Islamism, Islamofascism, or whatever other name Islamic jihad goes by.

The Islamic Society of North America claims over two million members. Its affiliated organization, the Islamic Circle of North America, claims near two million members, and Dr. Mattson was also a director of it, as well. These organizations, like CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations), MPAC (the Muslim Public Affairs Council), and others that pass as "moderate" or "mainstream" Muslim organizations, practice what can be called "stealth" jihad. (Steve Emerson, an authority on Islamism and jihad, calls this policy "cultural jihad.")

Instead of resorting to violence to punish infidels or send them running into a state of siege (as President Bush has done), American Islamists apply "reverse" assimilation, that is, coaxing or beguiling a host country into accepting Islam on its own terms, terms that are defined by the Koran and Sharia law. To question those terms - indeed, to criticize any facet of Islam - is to risk accusations of "hate speech," racism, bigotry, or religious discrimination or intolerance.

The ISNA, however, is a Saudi-funded Islamic group and preaches the Wahhabist version of Islam. That makes it as bad and as dangerous as CAIR, which in 1993 began as and remains the American branch of Hamas. Neither the Circle nor the Society has hidden its agenda, which is to turn the U.S. into an Islamic nation. For example, the goal of the Circle, stated on its website, is:

"...the establishment of Islam in all spheres of life. ICNA has many projects, programs, and activities which are designed to help in the process of molding the individual and reforming society at large."

The Society's vision, stated on its website, is:

"To be an exemplary and unifying Islamic organization in North America that contributes to the betterment of the Muslim community and society at large."

"Society at large" means all non-Muslims. "All spheres of life" means their conversion to Islam, or their acceptance of the status of dhimmi-hood in a Muslim society.

Mattson, like her colleagues at CAIR and MPAC, presents the "soft face" of militant Islam. Last year she objected to President Bush's use of the term "Islamic fascism." In an Associated Press report of September 1, 2006, she "acknowledged that terrorist groups 'do misuse and use Islamic concepts and terms to justify their violence. But I think that when we then bestow that term upon them we only make the situation worse and somehow give validity to their claims which we need to deny and reject.'"

She probably added, sotto voce, "But only for the time being, while we talk these fools into giving us the rope with which we will subjugate or hang them." Mattson got her Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Chicago, which meant, among other things, mastering the art of verisimilitude. The Islamic term for it is taqiya, sanctioned by Mohammed as a means of conquest.

Last year her ICNA also declared itself as being against suicide bombings, except if they are directed against Jews. Mattson doubtless will participate on the "Religious Freedom and Minority Rights" panel.

For an eye-opening panel discussion on the duplicitous means and ends of American Islamic organizations, including those mentioned above, and of the culpability of many of its officials - not to mention the delusions of most of our elected officials and the news media - the reader is directed to a FrontPageMagazine article of February 24, 2006, "Victory over Terror?" The chief panelists are Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Steve Emerson, and Phyllis Chesler, all authorities on Islamism and its jihadists, foreign and domestic.

I have not dwelt here on the role of the College of William and Mary as a host for the Forum here, for it is a state university and as guilty as virtually any other school of indoctrinating its students with an anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-reason ideas. Its faculty is largely staffed with teachers of the same philosophical and political ilk of the Forum's participants.

As a measure of how ubiquitous and uncontroversial is the notion in the news media that the U.S. was founded as and intended to be a "democracy," the Newport News Daily Press, on September 1, under the headline "The 400th's Last Hurrah," simply wondered if former presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and former British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, all designated honorary co-chairs of the Forum, will actually attend.

That is the composition and character of the upcoming World Forum on the Future of Democracy. Given that composition and character, one might have expected the principals of Colonial Williamsburg to view the theme of "democracy" of such a "summit" with opprobrium, and resolve to vigorously discredit its thematic link to Jamestown.

In conclusion, if Colonial Williamsburg is willing to falsify the past, and water down its presentation of the political ideas of the Founders, or filter them through the strainer of political correctness, and see nothing wrong in it - it's just a matter of subjective interpretation, don't you know - it should not be surprising that it would lend its venue to a forum that will promulgate a false state of the world, together with false solutions to perceived or imaginary crises and issues - and see nothing wrong in that, either.

The powers of Colonial Williamsburg do not know the difference between democracy and republicanism - between mob rule and individual rights-based liberty, between a leviathan state and limited government - or do not care to know the difference, as long as Colonial Williamsburg is in the public relations limelight.

Concierge Medicine

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

Note: The Houston Chronicle tends to pull stories off the web quickly. Read this one sooner rather than later if it sounds interesting to you.

Thanks to the small sliver of the free market still left in medicine, we in Texas are finally seeing the return of something that sounds more like the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting than a viable business practice: the physician house call.

At the Sugar Land practice of Frank Mazza and Kirk Lee, the doctor is always in.

Patients enjoy same-day scheduling, routinely empty waiting rooms, appointments that linger as long as it takes to unhurriedly answer questions and access to doctors via phone and e-mail during non-office hours.

If the patient is unable to come in, Dr. Mazza or Dr. Lee even make house calls.

"It's wonderful," said Laura Konrad, a 73-year-old patient in last week to have some moles checked out. "It gives you such a sense of security, a feeling that you can always get to your doctor and talk to him. I can't say enough about it."

There is a catch: It costs $1,800 a year out of the patient's own pocket.

It is known as concierge medicine, a revolt against what many doctors consider the McDonaldsization of contemporary health care. The premise is simple: Fees collected from patients allow the doctors to slash their caseloads and spend more time on those who remain. It also allows them to increase their income.

So it's a "catch" to pay someone for services rendered? And we're blaming the declining amount of time physicians spend with patients on capitalism? On those counts, this article is both immoral and incorrect.

Our medical sector is anything but "McDonaldized". Rather, we can thank our federal government's hiding medical insurance costs through the tax code and outright subsidies for the fact that most people see paying for medical care as a "drawback" -- while cheerfully paying for other life necessities and even luxuries. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most people spend far more than $1800 per annum on vacations and other forms of recreation each year.

Even the charge that physicians who opt for small practices like the ones described are de facto unavailable is seen to be bunk late in the article when it is mentioned that some physicians would rather abandon primary care altogether than practice in the mill-like environments that the prevalence of managed care -- for which we can also thank government meddling -- has helped to make so common.

Would I necessarily opt for concierge medicine? Probably not, but its existence both indicts our current government-micromanaged health care system and points the way towards a solution. The government helped create the need for such practices in the first place -- and doctors are free (so far) to fill that need. Unfortunately, with so many journalists and intellectuals damning the notion of payment for services as "elitism" (as we see in this article), Americans sound ready to stampede in the wrong direction, trampling the rights of physicians and patients alike in a new quest to extirpate what little capitalism is left in a vital industry.

If we want to continue to have access to the best medicine in the world, we should embrace what makes it possible: Capitalism.

-- CAV

Updates

9-3-07: Corrected a typo.

Future Home As Envisioned in 1979

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This conception of the "home of the future" from 1979 is both surprisingly accurate and humorously inaccurate in retrospect.



Click on the image to read the text.

(Via Cynical-C.)

Newsflash: US Not a Christian Nation

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Article 11 of the US's Treaty with Tripoli reads:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

The treaty was "authored by American diplomat Joel Barlow in 1796, [then] sent to the floor of the Senate, June 7, 1797, where it was read aloud in its entirety and unanimously approved. John Adams, having seen the treaty, signed it and proudly proclaimed it to the Nation." Today, claims that the US is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles are common. In contrast, that statement was accepted without protest in 1797 according to this article. Since the US was actually not founded on any Christian principles whatsoever, that's just what I'd expect. Still, it's lovely to see it said explicitly by the Founders themselves.

"Muslim Opinion" Be Damned: Hatred of America is Irrational and Undeserved

By Alex Epstein

To listen to most of our foreign-policy commentators, the biggest problem facing America today, six years after 9/11, is the fact that many Muslims are mad at us.

"Whatever one's views on the [Iraq] war," writes a New York Times columnist, "thoughtful Americans need to consider . . . the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world." In response to the Abu Ghraib scandal several years ago, Ted Kennedy lamented, "We have become the most hated nation in the world, as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons." Muslim anger over America's support of Israel, we are told, is a major cause of anti-American terrorism.

We face, these commentators say, a crisis of "Muslim opinion." We must, they say, win the "hearts and minds" of angry Muslims by heaping public affection on Islam, by shutting down Guantanamo, by being more "evenhanded" between free Israel and the terrorist Palestinian Authority--and certainly by avoiding any new military action in the Muslim world. If we fail to win over "Muslim opinion," we are told, we will drive even more to become terrorists.

All of this evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on America is irrational and undeserved. Consider the issue of treatment of POWs. Many Muslims are up in arms about the treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and at Guantanamo--many of whom were captured on battlefields trying to kill Americans. Yet these same Muslims are silent about the summary convictions and torture--real torture, with electric drills and vats of acid--that are official policy and daily practice throughout the Middle East.

Or consider "Muslim opinion" over the U.S. handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the United States is accused of not being "hard enough" on Israel--a free nation with laws that protect all citizens, Jew and Arab alike--for Israel's supposed mistreatment of Palestinians. Yet "Muslim opinion" reveres the Palestinian Authority, a brutal dictatorship that deprives Palestinians of every basic freedom, keeps them in unspeakable poverty, and routinely tortures and executes peaceful dissenters.

So-called Muslim opinion is not the unanimous and just consensus that its seekers pretend. It is the irrational and unjust opinion of the world's worst Muslims: Islamists and their legions of "moderate" supporters and sympathizers. These people oppose us not because of any legitimate grievances against America, but because they are steeped in a fundamentalist interpretation of their religion--one that views America's freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly pleasures as the height of depravity. They do not seek respect for the rights of the individual (Muslim or non-Muslim), they seek a world in which the rights of all are sacrificed to the dictates of Islam.

The proper response to Islamists and their supporters is to identify them as our ideological and political enemies--and dispense justice accordingly. In the case of our militant enemies, we must kill or demoralize them--especially those regimes that support terrorism and fuel the Islamist movement; as for the rest, we must politically ignore them and intellectually discredit them, while proudly arguing for the superiority of Americanism. Such a policy would make us safe, expose Islamic anti-Americanism as irrational and immoral, and embolden the better Muslims to support our ideals and emulate our ways.

President Bush, like most politicians and intellectuals, has taken the opposite approach to "Muslim opinion": appeasement. Instead of identifying anti-American Muslims as ideological enemies to be discredited, he has appealed to their sensibilities and met their demands--e.g., sacrificing American soldiers to save Iraqi civilians and mosques. Instead of seeking to crush the Islamists by defeating the causes they fight for--such as Islamic world domination and the destruction of Israel--he has appeased those causes, declaring Islam a "great religion" and rewarding the Palestinian terrorist Jihad with a promised Palestinian state. Instead of destroying terrorist regimes that wage war against the West--including, most notably, Iran--he has sought their "cooperation" and even cast some as coalition partners.

Such measures have rewarded our enemy for waging physical and spiritual war against us. Condemn America, they have learned, and American leaders will praise your ideals and meet your demands. Attack America via terrorist proxy, terrorist states and movements have been taught, and America will neither blame you nor destroy you, but redouble its efforts to buy your love.

Every attempt to appease "Muslim opinion" preserves, promotes, and emboldens our enemies. Every concession to angry Muslim mobs gives hope to the Islamist cause. Every day we allow terrorist regimes to exist gives their minions time to execute the next Sept. 11. America needs honest leadership with the courage to identify and defeat our enemies--"Muslim opinion" be damned.

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