Affirmative Action Debate

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

On the evening of November 5th, the L.O.G.I.C. (the UCLA Objectivist Club) will be hosting a debate on affirmative action featuring Ward Connerly, Richard Sander, and Peter Schwartz. More details can be found on the club's web site

Taxpayer-financed sports riots?

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

The case for taxpayer-financed support for the construction of professional sports stadiums is made along the lines that the presence of these stadiums creates economic benefits for the community at large. Never mind that such "economic benefits" comes at the price of denying wealth's producers with the benefits of their hard work—that kind of thinking is typically just so much noise when it comes to government-subsidized stadiums.

Yet there's another aspect to this debacle that is worth noting. When the teams that play in these stadiums actually win their big games, their fans rain outright destruction upon the population. Take for example the all too typical reports on Major League Baseball's World Series "celebrations" in Boston.

Police in riot gear cleared several large crowds gathered around Fenway Park early Monday after the Red Sox won their second World Series title in four years.

Police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said 37 arrests were made in the city, mostly for disorderly conduct. No serious injuries were reported.

An unruly crowd flipped a pickup truck to its side near Fenway Park and at least one car fire was reported. Young people sprayed each other with beer and some climbed street signs or utility poles. [Source: AP]

Let's get this right: the home teams win, so let's set a car on fire and mill about like a deranged alcohol-soaked mob. I'm sorry, but this creates about as much economic benefit as smashing a window. And worse, this is a broken window that is shattered because government theft makes it possible to do so. Rome had its bread and circuses to keep its citizens' minds off their troubles, and it seems so do we.

Book Recommendation Wanted

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I recently received this e-mail from Jason Head:

I am a daily reader of your blog and have been for several years. My question is not philosophical, but I believe that you or your readers may be able to lead me in the right direction. I am looking for an economics and/or investing book which explains in laymen terms what the Federal Reserve does, what it purports to do, and the actual consequences of its actions from a free market perspective. Do you or your loyal readers have any suggestions for reading on this topic?

I know almost nothing about the Fed. Does anyone have any suggestions? (Disloyal readers are welcome to chime in too.)

After Ten Years, States Still Resist Assisted Suicide

By Thomas Bowden

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Oregon’s pathbreaking assisted suicide law. But despite legislative proposals in California and elsewhere, Oregon remains the only state to have provided clear procedures by which doctors can help end their dying patients' pain and suffering while protecting themselves from criminal prosecution.

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

Elsewhere in America, however, the political influence of religious conservatism has thwarted passage of similar legislation, leaving terminal patients with nothing but a macabre menu of frightening, painful, and often violent end-of-life techniques universally regarded as too inhumane for use on sick dogs or mass murderers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rational state legislators should regard the Oregon law’s anniversary as a stinging reminder that 49 of the 50 states have failed to take meaningful steps toward recognizing and protecting an individual's unconditional right to commit suicide.

Mr. Bowden is an analyst focusing on legal issues at the Ayn Rand Institute and is the author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus. A former attorney and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Hate crime legislation as punishing speech.

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

Wendy Kaminer had a great piece in the October 26th Wall Street Journal. In "The Return of the Though Police" she characterizes hate crimes as punishment of the thought or ideas that accompany a criminals commission of an act. That is, a "hate crime" is nothing more than a package of a crime and the thought that goes along with it. As such, it is a false concept, and leads to the politicization of crime.

Still, distinguishing hateful bias crimes from other hateful acts of violence punishes ideas and expression, no matter how scrupulously the legislation is crafted. When someone convicted of assaulting one woman is subject to an enhanced prison sentence or a more vigorous prosecution because his assault was motivated by a hateful belief in the inherent inferiority of all women, then he is being punished for his thoughts as well as his conduct.

I went searching for other expressions of this opinion and found two great op-eds at ARI. One by Robert Tracisnki and the other by ARI Director Yaron Brook.

How to Help Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

Via HBL comes the following clarification for those inclined to help Ayaan Hirsi Ali protect herself from the death threats of Islamic totalitarians. Note that it supersedes all previous advice that appeared here:

Dear Supporter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

Last week, we sent out preliminary information about a fund that has been set up to privately finance Ayaan Hirsi Ali's security, now that it is no longer being provided by the Dutch government. Below and attached, please find more detailed information about how you can contribute to this fund. This is the most accurate and up-to-date information; please disregard the previous email you were sent.

This new information is ready to be widely disseminated and replaces any previous communications you may have received. Please feel free to share the details with anyone interested in helping Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely, Yael Levin Office of Ayaan Hirsi Ali American Enterprise Institute

Providing Financial Assistance for Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Security Detail

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Dutch parliamentarian and an outspoken defender of women's rights in Islamic societies, is at risk from a variety of extremist threats in both Europe and the United States. She has needed constant security protection since her life was originally threatened in 2002. Up until October 1, 2007, this protection was provided by the Dutch government.

Now a permanent resident of the United States and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Ms. Hirsi Ali must raise her own funds to finance her costly-but necessary-protection. In response to the numerous private citizens who have expressed interest in helping Ms. Hirsi Ali fund her security detail, the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust has been established.

The preferred and most immediate way to assist Ms. Hirsi Ali in the financing of her private security protection is through the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust. This private trust fund can accept non-tax deductible donations from within the United States and internationally, and is entirely dedicated to financing Ms. Hirsi Ali's security.

Checks should be made payable to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust and sent to:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust
Bank of Georgetown
1054 31st Street, N.W.
Suite 18
Washington, DC 20007

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Trust Tax Identification Number: 75-6826872

Thank you for your interest in assisting Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

For more information please contact: John Matteo
(jmatteo@jackscamp.com) or Mackenzie McNaughton
(mmcnaughton@jackscamp.com), representatives for Ms. Hirsi Ali.

Telephone: 202.457.1600 [minor edits]

If you can't donate, spread the word!

-- CAV

Letter to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

The following letter of mine is in response to a broadcast appeal from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington asking for donations to help pay for Ayaan Hirsi Ali's security protection in Holland, to which this Jihad-targeted woman was forced to return by the Dutch government. Neither President Bush nor the State Department would do anything to help this brave, outspoken, and articulate fighter for freedom. Should any reader wish to contribute to her trust fund, there is enough information in the letter to facilitate a donation. Go to the AEI website for more information about the trust fund and about Hirsi Ali herself.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Dear Hirsi Ali:

Enclosed please find a check made out to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust. An appeal was broadcast via the Harry Binswanger List (remotely and unofficially affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute) with permission to forward it to interested individuals and organizations, which I certainly will do.

I have always been cheered by reading your comments on Islam, and also by your courage and strength when facing hypocrisy, cowardice and betrayal. At the same time, I was angered beyond description when our government refused to make an exception in your case and provide you with security when the Dutch government reneged on its responsibility. I was especially angered when President Bush received the Dalai Lama of Tibet but apparently refused to even acknowledge your existence, never mind offer to intercede on your behalf (even though your life is in danger). I suppose that was because you are an outspoken atheist. It was one mystic of the spirit honoring another mystic of the spirit – a mystic who is in thrall to another species of mystics of muscle (the Chinese government).

I liken your situation to that of Thomas Paine, who came to the American colonies in 1775 and wrote a pamphlet that helped to convince Americans that reconciliation with tyranny was a sure means of political suicide, of seeing their liberties first adulterated, then finally extinguished, that there was no common ground between freedom and force, and that the only practical action the colonists could take was to declare their severance from the Crown.

I could also liken your situation to that of Russian-born immigrant Ayn Rand, the novelist-philosopher, who came to America in the 1920’s to escape the “religion” of Soviet Communism. As Paine argued that there was no reconciliation possible between liberty and tyranny, Rand argued there is no reconciliation possible between reason and faith (and force).

You argued in the Reason interview that for Islam to be defeated, it must be defeated in toto. Muslims who want to live on earth for its own sake, and not just as a transit point to some (unprovable) “paradise,” must repudiate Islam and stop being Muslims. I couldn’t agree more. I have argued for years that Islam cannot be “tamed” or “modified” and still remain Islam. To defeat it, the air must be let out of all its tires, and then the vehicle towed to the junkyard of history.

There the similarities to Rand and Paine end. You came to America to write about the insidious designs of Islamism (or Islamofascism) and what was required to defeat them, but in the end were rebuffed and compelled to return home to a perilous existence. I did not learn of your return in the newspapers here; I had to learn it on the Internet. Well, most American newspapers showed their true colors during the Danish cartoon imbroglio. I cannot recall a single newspaper or TV news item that reported your “deportation,” either.

You are right that America is “in denial” of the threat of Islamism. It is difficult to decide if that denial is a consequence of thoughtless American benevolence or the destructive influence of political correctness and multiculturalism. Since I take ideas seriously, I come down on the side of the latter influence.

I hope AEI has some means of communicating this letter to you. And I hope you will take the time to read my commentaries on Islam and the jihadists on the Rule of Reason sub-site of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

My very best regards to you,

Edward Cline

Sea Treaty Drowns Property Rights

By Thomas Bowden:

The Senate will soon decide whether to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, which deems most of the earth's vast ocean floor "the common heritage of mankind" and places it under United Nations ownership "for the benefit of mankind as a whole.”

"This treaty vests monopoly authority over most of the world’s seabeds in a U.N. agency that issues licenses burdened by complex regulations, fees, royalties, and mandatory land transfers," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Licensees are required to give back half or more of the submerged land they explore, to be mined by the International Seabed Authority using the licensees' technology and know-how, with proceeds going to U.N. members such as Cuba, Uganda, and Venezuela, who contribute nothing to the productive process.

"The proposed treaty ignores the fundamental principle that unowned natural resources should become the private property of the people whose efforts make them valuable," Bowden said. "Although the ocean floor is full of potentially valuable minerals, they remain useless until some pioneer discovers how to retrieve them. Under this treaty, however, the deep-sea mining companies whose science, exploration, technology, and entrepreneurship are being counted on to gather otherwise inaccessible riches are treated as mere servants of a world collective.

"This treaty is an injustice that will hamper, if not halt, the exploitation of undersea wealth," Bowden said. "Because no self-respecting entrepreneur will work under such conditions, the U.N. regime will attract only the kind of lumbering state-owned enterprises that have historically failed to match the performance of private, profit-seeking companies."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently held hearings on the treaty, which has the support of the Bush administration. The treaty, which President Reagan refused to sign in 1982, was submitted to the Senate by President Clinton in 1994 but never ratified. The treaty requires a two-thirds Senate majority for ratification.

"Governments have legitimate options regarding how to deal with undersea explorers' need to establish property rights in the deep ocean," Bowden said. "But it would be totally improper for America to declare eternal hostility to private property in the ocean floor by ratifying a treaty dedicated on principle to denying such rights."

Mr. Bowden is an analyst focusing on legal issues at the Ayn Rand Institute. A former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Celebrate "Atlas" in the South

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

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with a free public lecture by Andrew Bernstein Saturday, Nov. 10 in Greenville, S.C. hosted by the New South Objectivists. Dr. Bernstein...

Kant vs. Columbus (Part 3)

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

Kant, Savior of Religion

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

ICK:

Religion has faced formidable foes in its history. But atheism hasn't generally been one of them -- until today. A recent string of bestselling books has put believers of all stripes on the defensive. Religion, say authors such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, is an unreasonable form of blind faith, often leading to fanaticism and violence. Reason and science, they contend, are the only proper foundations for forming opinions and understanding the universe. Those who believe in God, they insist, are falling for silly superstitions.

This atheist attack is based on a fallacy -- the Fallacy of the Enlightenment. It was pointed out by the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant erected a sturdy intellectual bulwark against atheism that hasn't been breached since. His defense doesn't draw on sacred texts or any other sources of authority to which people of faith might naturally and rightfully turn when confronted with atheist arguments. Instead, it relies on the only framework that today's atheist proselytizers say is valid: reason. The Fallacy of the Enlightenment is the glib assumption that there is only one limit to what human beings can know -- reality itself. This view says we can find out more and more until eventually there is nothing more to discover. It holds that human reason and science can, in principle, unmask the whole of reality.

That's from Dinesh D'Souza, unsurprisingly. He's the author of the just-published book, What's So Great About Christianity. (Yes, I do plan to read it.)

American Belief in the Supernatural

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog


According to this recent survey, nearly 1/3rd of Americans believe in ghosts and 23% believe they've personally seen or felt the presence of one. Also, "About one out of five people, 19 percent, say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. Nearly half, 48 percent, believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP."

For those who wish to promote a culture of rationality, this means there's a significant "market opportunity"!

The Ayn Rand Lexicon: now available free on the Web!

Through a special arrangement with the publisher, the editor and the Estate of Ayn Rand, ARI has received exclusive permission to present The Ayn Rand Lexicon--now available in its entirety, free of charge, to Web visitors. Edited by Harry Binswanger, and with an introduction by Leonard Peikoff, this important book presents all of the key ideas of Ayn Rand's philosophy, in an encyclopedic reference of stunning breadth and depth.

From the back cover:

A prolific writer, best-selling novelist, and world-renowned philosopher, Ayn Rand defined a full system of thought--from epistemology to aesthetics. Her writing is so extensive and the range of issues she covers so enormous that those interested in finding her discussions of a given topic may have to search through many sources to locate the relevant passage.

THE AYN RAND LEXICON brings together for the first time all the key ideas of her philosophy of Objectivism, organized alphabetically by topic.

Through excerpts culled from Ayn Rand's many articles, lectures, and books, this work presents the Objectivist view on some 400 topics in philosophy, politics, art, economics, and psychology. The Lexicon thus serves as a mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism, complete with a conceptual index and extensive cross-references.

The Lexicon is both an intriguing introduction for the newcomer and a comprehensive sourcebook for readers already familiar with Objectivist ideas. Begun under Ayn Rand's personal supervision, this unique volume is an invaluable guide to her philosophy of reason, self-interest, and laissez-faire capitalism--the philosophy so brilliantly dramatized in her novels The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Atlas Shrugged.

Browse The Ayn Rand Lexicon »

Gus Van Horn Turns Three!

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

Well. Now it's three years in a row that I arrive at the celebration of my blog's birthday tired and not quite in a writing mood. Fortunately for me this time around, I wasn't up until 3:00 in the morning the night before, although I do find myself putting off some blog maintenance I had in mind, sort of like on my first blogging anniversary. (I will be updating the list of favorite posts and sidebar links some time soon -- just not today as I'd hoped.)

Unlike on those previous two blogiversaries, though, I have been thinking more about blogging, my writing career, and life in general this time around. Indeed, as I glance back at those other two blogiversary posts and the post that started it all, I am struck by how much I have changed as a writer, as a thinker, and as a person over that time.

I began blogging for several reasons, the central ones being that I want to pursue a career of some kind in opinion writing (be that on the side or full-time), but that I was unclear how best to proceed. The friend who, over a sociable pint, first got me to consider blogging, provided an important part of the answer. People have been discovered and managed to achieve national prominence through blogging since the rise of the medium.

Experience and the gradual accumulation of knowledge that comes with it are providing the rest of the answer. I argue from a perspective that is just now gaining greater prominence culturally and in the public debate. The upside is that I'm getting in on the ground floor. The downside is that there will likely not be, even in the best of circumstances, a rapid rise to fame: Most people do not necessarily want to hear what I have to say. In addition, I have learned, I think from Scott Adams, that success even for someone more mainstream does not come overnight. If I recall correctly, he labored for about a decade before Dilbert became a household name.

It is with that as a backdrop that I have been thinking lately about how blogging will fit into the picture of my pursuit of a writing career, including the question of whether to continue at all. (Coincidentally, I was thinking hardest about that very question the morning that news of John Cox and Allen Forkum's decision to stop cartooning struck me like a lightning bolt from my feed reader.) Writing daily takes time and energy, even when it comes easily to me, which, fortunately, it normally does.

The question is: Am I gaining enough value from my blogging to justify the expense? Monetarily, no. Or at least not yet. But as I have watched my audience slowly grow in numbers while continuing to be of high quality, I have received encouragement as a writer. In fact, some people I hold in very high regard either follow this blog or have told me personally -- without my asking -- that they like my writing. Furthermore, one doesn't occasionally get links out of the blue from the likes of City Journal if one isn't doing something right.

Indeed, over the past year, although my output of formal writing has been low (and very frustrating for me), I am undertaking two projects (and may participate in a third) that stand to further my writing career in one way or another, be that improving my approach to writing to the point that I will more consistently produce publishable work, making myself known to a broader audience, or even perhaps getting paid to write something for the first time. All this has been during a year that has been exceedingly busy with no signs of slowing down, but during which I still managed a fairly regular posting schedule.

I would have to say that this year has been difficult on a daily level, but exciting in the long view. Both have been due to my blogging, as has my discovery of a possible answer to my dilemma about whether and how to continue. As I have mentioned quite frequently lately, another blogger, historian Scott Powell, introduced me to the work of productivity guru David Allen, whose methods I have adopted and which have begun bearing fruit for me in the form of a mother lode of time recovered from each day -- and a lower stress level. I have realized both simply by changing some of my work habits according to his suggestions. I now spend less time blogging, but have managed to continue what I regard as an output level sufficient to maintain the value of this blog for myself and my regular readers.

Whether I will be able to continue blogging at my normal pace and pursue these other writing-related projects remains to be seen. David Allen's methods are slowly revolutionizing the way I do almost everything. Thus it is possible that as I continue making my approach to project management more efficient and continue to internalize this new way of working, that I will be able to maintain the amount and quality of output here to make this blog continue to be worth my time and effort.

In summary, this blog gives me, as a writer, value in terms of practice at research and writing, feedback, and networking. I must continue blogging to continue seeing these benefits, as well as a few others I have just thought of, but don't have time to elaborate on. It is not producing income for me or getting me published, although it could do these things eventually. It does cost me time and energy, but I may find that I have more of both than I think (and can use each more efficiently) as I integrate David Allen's techniques into my work habits. In the short term, I am going to continue blogging in order to continue to reap its benefits and in part just to see whether I can. This blog started as an adventure and continues to be one!

Last but not least, blogging has introduced me to an ever-widening circle of really good people, several of whom I have had the honor to meet personally, and it has led to my renewing several old acquaintances, including that of an old friend I had a falling-out with some years ago. This has been the greatest boon of all, and I would like to thank all of you, as well as the rest of my readers.

As an activity, writing is a strange mixture of the solitary and the social. You have all made that second aspect of it very worthwhile to me. Because of that, I will never regret blogging as a person, regardless of where I eventually take it as a writer. Thank you very much for stopping by.

-- CAV

PS: Very last and way far from least, the blogger (pictured at right) thanks his wife for her tolerance (and indeed, support) of his constant blogging, and especially for her (cough) feedback whenever he asks her to listen to him read a post he is especially proud of!

I am the luckiest man in the world and love her very much.

Updates

Today: (1) Minor edits. (2) Made feeble attempt to claw my way out of doghouse by adding a postscript after reading this to my dear, beloved, and very tolerant wife!

The Jihadist in Your Portfolio

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

Caroline Glick has penned a must-read about "Shari'a-Friendly Investments" over at Jewish World Review.

A combination of hypocrisy, the life-blood of religions the world over, ...

Given the religious rather than financial aim of Shari'a-compliant investing, it isn't surprising that Shari'a-compliant investments are little more than a word game. Paying lip service to the Koranic prohibition on interest-based transactions and risky investments, Mawdudi and Qutb invented various means to cover the fact that Shari'a-compliant investments involve both interest payments and risk. [bold added]

... widespread Pragmatism (i.e., in the form of the rejection of broad abstractions and philosophic principles as irrelevant) in the West, ...

[T]he new trend in the West is for Western financial institutions to offer Shari'a-compliant investment opportunities. So excited is Britain, for instance about the financial benefit to be gained by attracting oil-rich Islamic investors that in January Britain's Treasury Minister Ed Balls announced his government's intention to turn London into the center of global Islamic finance.

...

Many New York investment houses, banks and hedge funds have indicated their interest in expanding their services to include Shari'a-compliant investments. These organizations should carefully consider the likely moral and criminal implications of enabling Shari'a advisors associated with radical Islamic theologians and a foreign body on record for supporting terror, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism to determine both the composition of their investments and the utilization of 2.5 percent of the revenues stemming from those investments. [bold added; Glick notes earlier that, "[R]adicals, supported by jihad-supporting Islamic institutions constitute an effective cartel in Shari'a-finance.]

... and the general confusion our Commander-in-Chief has sown in a time of war ...

Perhaps the greatest problem with the term "war on terror" is that it confuses both the public and those charged with prosecuting the war on all levels about the nature of the enemy we face. The jihadists who seek to dominate the world in the name of Islam are not merely involved in violent activities. Organizations like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida devote the majority of their efforts to spreading the message of jihad by proselytizing fellow Muslims through propaganda, educational and welfare activities. These actions are vital for building popular support both for their terror activities and for their larger political goals.

Essential to the aims of the jihadists is the Muslim sacrament of zakat. Zakat, one of the pillars of Islam, requires Muslims to donate 2.5 percent of their incomes to charity. As the indictment in the Holyland Foundation case showed, most of the money that the five defendants transferred to Hamas was transferred through zakat committees in Palestinian cities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. These committees then transferred the monies to Hamas terrorists, their family members, political leaders and terror cells. [bold added]

... have just come together to enable Islamic totalitarians to finance terrorism with our help.

Read it all.

-- CAV

Updates

10-24-07: Corrected a typo, HT Adrian Hester.

Economic Intelligence

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dr. James Watson made a strange statement.

In an interview published in the October 14, 2007 edition of the Sunday Times, Watson was quoted as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa". "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."

This is the kind of stupid statement scientists make sometimes when they talk about politics and economics. It reminds me of the liberal Isaac Asimov, who never made racist statements, but used to lose 100 points of IQ when he wrote about politics.

Dr. Watson further confused the issue by backtracking as if he didn't say what he said:

"I am mortified about what has happened," he told a group of scientists and journalists. "I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have.

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly.

"That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

There is no explanation of what Dr. Watson's original statement was supposed to mean. What IS the meaning of this statement?

All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.

Our "social policies" consist of giving Africa handouts. These handouts don't seem to do any good, so Dr. Watson concludes from his testing that it is because the negro race lacks intelligence. I see no other way to read this statement. Dr. Watson gives no evidence to support his outrageous statement about "their intelligence" -- however, his statement gives plenty of evidence that he lacks intelligence in economics.

If he had thought his proposition through, he might have considered the Palestinians. We have given them billions of dollars over the years, none of which did a damn bit of good. Much of the money ended up in Arafat's Swiss bank account. The Palestinians are caucasian.

Or he might have considered the Soviet Union. In that communist country, run by white people in their brilliance, there were always shortages in the stores and the masses had a low standard of living, despite the fact that Russia has vast natural resources.

I bring up the Soviet Union because their problems were caused by the same thing causing Africa's woes: they lacked freedom. As Ludwig von Mises explained, it doesn't matter what race a people is, if their economy is planned, they will lack intelligence. Economic intelligence comes when free individuals in a free market use the pricing system to make rational calculations.

Our "social policies" lack intelligence. Following the morality of altruism, we throw money at Africa. The money does nothing but make altruists feel they have done their moral duty. To do the truly intelligent thing (and the truly moral thing), we need to shut off all foreign aid to Africa and demand that the socialist hellholes and thugocracies free their people and respect property rights. Any poor country that tries this soon looks like a country filled with brilliant people -- when they are only people using prices to pursue their self-interest.

Dr. Watson needs to read Ludwig von Mises. Perhaps then he would stop embarrassing himself with his economic ignorance.

Invitation to The Objectivism Seminar

By Greg from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Truly living well calls for engaging fundamental philosophical ideas and integrating their use into our everyday lives, our everyday actions, our way of being—into our souls. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to get busy with all the urgent things around us, and we can drift, distracted and disintegrated. For those of us who want an ongoing practice in such engagement (and those who want to explore the need for that in the first place), I have created The Objectivism Seminar.

The Objectivism Seminar is a weekly online conference call to systematically work through the philosophy of Ayn Rand via the books of prominent Rand scholars. These moderated, one-hour sessions will be recorded and podcast to allow review, catch-up, and even disconnected participation. The idea is to give people—new and experienced alike—a forum to chew through key Objectivist works and tour the complete system, further clarifying, integrating, and grounding their grasp of the ideas.

Because it is an ongoing seminar, we will have incentive to keep up with the steady schedule of study and stay equipped to consider fresh angles, concretizations, challenges, and applications from other participants. And because life is so full for many of us, I am purposefully keeping the reading load light and the method of participation unobtrusive. The plan is that we will spend almost as much time discussing the ideas as reading about them. Study like this is productive for both experienced students of Objectivism and those new to Rand's ideas: I've read all of these books, some several times, and I would expect to get at least as much out of this as someone going through them for the first time.

If you are interested, please look over the FAQ below and head over to www.ObjectivismSeminar.com to sign up!

Pass the word,
Greg

The Objectivism Seminar FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Q: What is The Objectivism Seminar?
A: The Objectivism Seminar is a weekly online conference call to systematically work through the philosophy of Ayn Rand via the books of prominent Rand scholars. These moderated one-hour sessions will be recorded and podcast to allow review, catch-up, and even disconnected participation.

Q: How much does it cost?
A: The cost is $15 per person per book to participate in or access the recordings of the sessions (and it is refundable in full for any reason whatsoever in your first five sessions). But Objectivist luminaries who have or might produce the sorts of substantive books, articles, and lectures we are studying are only allowed to participate for free. ;^)

Q: Do I have to be an Objectivist to participate?
A: No. The purpose of the seminar is to give people a means to critically engage Objectivism and improve their understanding of the philosophy. Anybody who is polite and honest in this effort is welcome; anybody who disrupts others in that endeavor is not. (The process of examining ideas can be challenging enough that we certainly don't need to have someone being rude or beating us up psychologically while we do it!)

Q: What are the books we'll be working through?
A: Here are the books and the order in which we'll study them:

1. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Dr. Tara Smith
2. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
3. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand
4. (to be determined)

Q: How much material will we cover per week? (How heavy is the work load?)
A: We all have busy lives, so this is designed to be a slow-and-steady project. I hope we can work through a chapter every two weeks, but depending on the material and peoples' needs and interests, that will vary. In raw numbers, the expected load will be an average of 15 pages of reading and one hour of discussion per week.

Q: When, where, and how do we meet?
A: Sunday evenings 8:00-9:00 Mountain, we'll meet in an online conference call so people from anywhere can join in. For those who miss a meeting (and those who want to join in halfway through a book), we'll have recordings of the sessions archived on the www.ObjectivismSeminar.com website. The website will also host links to any diagrams drawn in the sessions, and there will be a discussion forum where people can work out issues during the week to bring to the sessions.

Q: What tools will I need?
A: You will need to download and install Skype (and hopefully get a headset for your PC). The sessions will actually be Skypecasts (free Skype conference calls that can include up to 100 people), and we'll use Skype Public Chats to type written asides to each other, to get the moderator's attention, and to share URLs or whatever. Any "whiteboard" drawings can be sketched with the Gliffy web-based drawing tool, and the resulting images can be shared easily during the meeting. (Gliffy also allows for collaborative drawing, if we need it.)

Q: Conference calls can be pretty chaotic and noisy, especially if you have a lot of people on the line...
A: These will not be anything-goes bull sessions—I will moderate the sessions to keep us on track with the agenda and in alignment with the purpose of the seminar. And we'll try to hold the Skypecast noise and conversational chaos to a minimum by keeping everybody muted except for those actively talking. Our Skype Public Chat will allow anyone to signal that they would like to speak (and by giving a hint of what they want to talk about, they'll also help make the session more focused and productive).

Q: What will the structure of the sessions be like?
A: We'll always be trying to improve how we run things, but let's begin with this basic plan:

• Up to 5 or 10 minutes of follow-up discussion around any past material (good for raising that issue that hit you in the shower after the previous week's discussion, as well as a chance for those who participate by only listening to the podcasts to raise their issues for comment via email to the moderator).
• Introduction of the current material with the leader's quick sketch of the highlights (good for reminding people of the scope of the discussion and prompting their observations, questions, etc.).
• Extended discussion of the current material, with people 'raising hands' in the Skype Public Chat to be unmuted (the Chat lets participants give a hint of what they want to raise or follow up on, as well as to second what someone else wants to raise, both of which will let the leader better organize the session). The leader will usually address what is raised, but may also defer to others who can better address it, further clarify what has already been said, or (best of all) correct a confused response.

Q: How did you select the books and their order?
A: The goal is to work through the entire system, and Peikoff's book is the definitive single-volume systematic presentation of Rand's philosophy. Ethics is where the philosophical rubber meets the road in our lives, and Smith's book is the most thorough and enlightening presentation of the substance of Rand's ethics that exists. And Rand's monograph on concept formation is important because understanding the core of her epistemology will strengthen our understanding of her distinctive methodology and the character of her entire system. As for the order, there's a great reason for that, and I'm glad you'll ask about it in the first session! :^)

Q: What's the fine print?
A: Here are the details I could think of to keep The Objectivism Seminar sailing as smoothly as possible; other wrinkles will be addressed as they arise.

• GOVERNANCE: To put it simply, this is not a democracy. The Objectivism Seminar is a benevolent dictatorship, and I am The Man. :^) I will work for openness and consensus, and entertain suggestions about how to make this a fun and productive adventure for all—and when there are difficulties I will do my best to be patient and fair (I'm not without experience in this, and also not without room to grow). Ultimately, though, my call will constitute the final word on the forum.
• REFUNDS: The fee is fully refundable for any reason whatsoever in your first five sessions; after that, refunds will only happen for my failure to similarly conduct the ongoing sessions, and they will be pro-rated by the percentage of the book not yet discussed. (In all cases, Seminar refunds will exclude the cut PayPal took when you made payment.) Potential causes of pro-rated refunds would include: infrastructure difficulties making production of the Seminar too painful to continue, changes in my life that make conducting future sessions infeasible, my changing these terms in a way you don't like, my choosing to exclude you from the Seminar, etc.
• MEETING TIMES: The regular meeting time may shift to another day or time as life requires, and there will need to be occasional weeks off for holidays, vacation, hospitalization, etc. (Because I don't have the luxury of listening to the podcast and following up at the next session or via written questions. :^)
• RECORDINGS: Please keep in mind that the session recordings will belong to me and may not be shared, transferred, or distributed in any way without my explicit permission. Also, the recordings may be edited at my discretion to remove segments with, say, disturbing or distracting misbehavior. (Or, if you bribe me well enough, to remove that comment you made and can't bear to have people hearing in ten years.)
  

The "Rights" of Property

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

The Houston Chronicle recently reported that more and more law schools across the country are offering courses specifically devoted to animal law. Unfortunately, this does not reflect a growing respect for the property rights of animal owners, nor is it merely a symptom of governmental intrusion into yet another area of our lives.

Today, she said, more large firms want to take on animal cases pro bono and that an animal law conference held this spring at Harvard was sold out.

"This decade, an attorney can go into court and not be laughed at for being an animal lawyer, when 10 years ago they would have been laughed at," said Alexander, who helps develop programs for law education and legal practices. "It's gone from the fringe to mainstream."

The recent headlines reflect the shift in society's views about animals and how to protect them, officials said.

"We're at the beginning of the coming of age in animal law," said Amy Bures Danna, an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center and an attorney who takes some animal cases.

"People are becoming more aware of animals and animal protection. Our social values are broadening and are becoming deeper and are accompanying animals in different ways." [bold added]

Instead, this trend represents a disturbing manifestation of a fundamental failure to grasp the concept of rights by those whose duty it is to protect them on a day-to-day basis -- the legal profession.

As the article's lead-in from the Michael Vick story portends -- this "awareness" and these "broadening" "values", reflected in the "coming of age in animal law" reflect a reciprocal societal forgetfulness about the rights of human beings.

The notion that a being has political rights is based on the premise that said being is possessed of the faculty of reason, and can be prevented from exercising this faculty only by the initiation of force by others. Integral to a society-wide respect for individual rights is reciprocity, whereby a rational being understands that to be able to expect the freedom to profit from his own thinking (and that of others via trade), he must respect the rights of others.

Animals possess neither reason nor the ability to understand or respect the rights of others. Therefore, the concept of political rights does not apply to them at all. The only legal protection properly afforded to an animal extends from the property rights of any owner it may have.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a specialization in the practice of law pertaining to animals -- provided it is premised on the protection of the individual rights of rational animals. Too bad that the law schools described in this article are starting to churn out attorneys interested in precisely the opposite goal: the erosion of the rights of the only animals -- humans -- who have them, and the unleashing of irrational animals upon us to boot.

-- CAV

Updates

10-23-07: Minor edit.

Legalize Drugs Now!

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

Got your attention? Think I'm going to talk about marijuana? Not on your life. I want to talk about real drugs; experimental cancer drugs to be exact. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled that cancer patients cannot have access to experimental cancer drug therapies that have not been approved by the FDA.

For an agency supposedly chartered to protect the health and safety of the public, I can think of nothing more reprehensible than forbidding access to any medication to patients who may likely be dead before the medication is approved. Who's life is it, anyway? The state's? But then it's because the FDA ought not to exist as an agency, that the government has no business regulating healthcare or any other industry. Seeking justice after crimes are committed? Sure. Clogging up the system with bureaucratic red tape in the name of preventing as-yet-uncommitted crimes? That does one thing. It kills people. Literally.

Pharma companies are rued for making too much money on drugs, and cancer drugs are among the most expensive. As Stella Daily explains to us on ReasonPharm, that is due to very explainable reasons. Cancer is fragmented; it's not a single disease, but rather 300 separate individual, somewhat-related diseases. Compared to the market for cholesterol lowering drugs like statins, cancer is microscopic. But it still costs a fortune to develop any drug, and cancer is one of the tougher disease areas for which to develop. Most cancer drugs today are successful if they can extend a patient's life for a year or two, and most are targeted at late stage cancers. A cure is viewed as an almost unattainable holy grail. Compared to other diseases, cancer drug therapy is in the dark ages.

Pharmaceutical companies need one thing desperately to find new cancer cures: profits. Given small markets, large up front investment costs, and stunningly long approval times, rational companies seek greener pastures than oncology. That's not what I want. I want cancer to be profitable, because profits draws profit-seekers. And it is profit-seekers, the Atlases of the world, not bureaucrats, that discover life-saving medications. If people value their lives, they'll want the same thing.

This one is a matter of life and death, and also, it's personal. You see, I'm a cancer survivor. I'm a number in a box. 2001; Hit "Go"; Select "Incidence Counts"; white male; cancer type: testis. It was summer, so I'm guessing I'm around number 3,000 out of 6,596 diagnoses that year. 6,000 - 7,000 patients per year. That is hardly a market that will justify drug research. Luckily, early diagnosis, surgery, radiation therapy, and five years of monitoring have left me "cured". My chance of recurrence in my lifetime is probably less than 1%. But if it should happen, then between now and then I want drug companies working round the clock seeking huge profits on new cancer drugs. I titled this post "Legalize Drugs..." What I really meant was "Abolish the FDA"; it's the same thing really. I want the FDA gone, out of the way, so that these companies can work as quickly as possible and make as vast sums of money such that the best and brightest are drawn into the area of research. Any thing else is less than "life-saving".

Conceptual Art on Global Warming

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

TO: All CU-Boulder Students

FROM: Center for Energy & Environmental Security, University of Colorado Law School

SENDER: dorank@colorado.edu

DATE: 10/22/07

SUBJECT: Famous Artist Lectures on Climate Change

What: The Art of Climate Change
Where: Wittemyer Courtroom, Wolf Law
When: Oct. 25, 7:00 - 8:15 p.m., Free Event

Dear CU-Boulder Students:

Climate change is arguably the defining environmental and social issue of the 21st century. You are invited to attend a special lecture by Ms. Lucy Lippard on the use of art to impact climate change. Ms. Lippard is an internationally renowned writer, activist, curator, and acclaimed art critic.

This is not a lecture about the science of climate change; nor is it a lecture about laws and policies dealing with climate change.

Rather, this distinguished lecture is about the use of conceptual art to illuminate our understanding of the environmental, social and political dimensions of climate change; and perhaps more importantly, the ability of art to substantially influence our response to the challenges posed by climate change.

Ms. Lippard's lecture, entitled "Weather Report: Art and Climate Change," will present imaginative and inspiring collaborations between acclaimed artists and world-class scientists designed to address, in a variety of ways, the issue of climate change. In a New York Times article published on Sept. 23, 2007, Ms. Lippard commented on these collaborations: "The critics used to say that conceptual art brings in too much other stuff, too many ideas. I love the idea that art can become something that acts in the world."

Please join us in welcoming and learning from our distinguished guest, Ms. Lucy Lippard.

For more information on this event, please visit: http://www.colorado.edu/law/eesi/Weather_Report.htm.

Oh, how I do love the auto-parody!

Operation Iraqi Freedom: An Altruistic War

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

This is my first published article which appears in the fall issue of the student periodical The Undercurrent:

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM: AN ALTRUISTIC WAR

At the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention on August 22, President Bush spoke about the lessons of World War II, arguing that the U.S. occupation of Japan serves as a model for the current conflict in the Middle East. But the terrible state of the Iraq War makes it clear that he has not learned those lessons himself.

Here's what happened in WW II: On December 7, 1941, the United States was attacked by Japan, a nation of suicidal and religiously motivated warriors. Less than four years later, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito--his country in ruins and his people utterly demoralized--surrendered unconditionally. The subsequent U.S. occupation of Japan met little resistance, and state-sponsorship of the national Shinto religion was suppressed, allowing a smooth transition into a new government. The two countries have since become allies.

By contrast, it's now been over four years since the Iraq War began, and the death toll continues to mount. Judged by the standard of World War II, Operation Iraqi Freedom has been an abysmal failure. Our lack of success is underscored by the fact that our military is vastly superior to the Iraqi opposition. The Japanese were a much more formidable foe, and yet the U.S. was able to achieve complete victory against them in less than four years. What is the difference?

The difference lies in the moral philosophy guiding our nation's leaders. WWII was a war of self-preservation, waged to protect the lives and interests of U.S. citizens. It would have been considered treasonous to call the U.S. operations in Japan, 'Operation Japanese Freedom'. Securing freedom for Americans, not the Japanese or German people, was the purpose of the war. That purpose guided every American decision, from which weapons to use to which constitution to impose on the defeated enemies. Even the U.S. reconstruction efforts in Japan after the war were aimed at keeping the Japanese permanently non-threatening.

What is the goal of the Iraq war? Is it to secure American freedom and relentlessly punish those who threaten it? No: "Our men and woman are fighting to secure the freedom of [Iraqis]," Bush has declared. Bush's aim is not to secure American freedom, but to engage in a worldwide crusade for democracy.

The moral foundation of this goal is the ideal of altruism. Altruism is a moral code which judges an individual, or a nation, by the standard of how much one sacrifices to others. As an altruist, Bush believes that morality requires America to sacrifice for other nations. It requires that American soldiers be slaughtered in order reign gifts on the Iraqis.

One can see the stamp of altruism all over Operation Iraqi Freedom, from the publicly touted goals of the war, to the methods used to wage it. From the very beginning, U.S. forces have taken great care to minimize damage to Iraqi civilians, infrastructure, and even feelings. The rules of engagement forbid U.S. soldiers from attacking mosques--which our enemies often use as bases of operations--in order to avoid offending Iraqi religious sensibilities. New recruits must endure Islamic sensitivity training before they are deployed. All the while, American soldiers keep paying the price for these policies with their lives.

The U.S. military is functioning more like the Peace Corps than an occupation force. Allied soldiers build bridges, dig toilets, and secure public markets for Iraqi use. Many U.S. forces are engaged in protecting and supporting the impotent Iraqi government. As allied soldiers face daily attacks from insurgents, Iraqi politicians--some of which explicitly support the insurgents--bicker over which faction should benefit most from state-owned oil production.

These altruist goals and methods necessarily conflict with the goal of national self-preservation. Iraqi insurgents--and terrorists around the world--are emboldened by every sacrifice offered to the Iraqi people. They hide in mosques and disappear into the civilian population, knowing they will not be pursued.

The true lesson of WWII is this: in order to defeat a powerfully motivated enemy, a nation must fight proudly and openly for its own self-defense, doing whatever is necessary to secure victory. And we must understand what victory truly means: the unconditional surrender of the enemy and the destruction of his ability to wage war.

A nation can either fight to defend its own citizens (as we did in WWII), or sacrifice for the benefit of enemy civilians (as we are doing in the Iraq War), but not both. If America is to enter a war, it should be for one reason only: to eliminate foreign dangers to American freedom. We should identify any threat to our national security, annihilate it as quickly as possible, and then bring our soldiers home.

--Dan Edge

Quick Roundup 262

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

Help Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Via HBL, I learned this morning that, as Sam Harris reports in The Los Angeles Times, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is being thrown to the dogs of Mohammed by the Dutch Government.

As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world.

...

[After being persuaded to return to the Netherlands and winning public office there,] Hirsi Ali was immediately forced into hiding and moved from safe house to safe house, sometimes more than once a day, for months. Eventually, her security concerns drove her from the Netherlands altogether. She returned to the U.S., and the Dutch government has been paying for her protection here -- that is, until it suddenly announced last week that it would no longer protect her outside the Netherlands, thereby advertising her vulnerability to the world. [bold added]

This puts it mildly. The Dutch have effectively issued a fatwa for the death of one of their own countrymen.

As published on HBL by someone who recently corresponded with her office (and as seen here), an email from Hirsi Ali's office explains how you can help.

Hello,

You are receiving this email because you have written our office before expressing admiration for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her work. Thank you again for your support -- receiving such expressions from friends and strangers alike provides Ayaan with much strength and encouragement.

As most of you have probably heard, the Dutch government decided last week to stop funding her security. Effective immediately, she must now raise her own funds to finance her very expensive private security.

We are in the process of setting up different vehicles through which those of you interested in supporting Ayaan and her work may contribute to her security funding:

(1) The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust -- a private trust fund that will be entirely dedicated to financing Ayaan's security. This fund is able to begin accepting donations immediately. Check donations can be made out to the name of the trust, and sent to my attention at the American Enterprise Institute, 1150 Seventeenth St., N.W., Washington, DC. (Please note that this fund can only accept money from within the United States, and that donations to this fund will not be tax deductible.)

(2) A public U.S. charity (501(c)(3)) that will support Muslim dissidents around the world and, among other things, provide financial support for their security -- including Ayaan's. As we are still in the process of establishing this charity, tax deductible donations to it can, for the time being, be made out to American Enterprise Institute and mailed to the attention of Christopher DeMuth, president of AEI, with a cover letter stating the purpose of the donation. (Please note that this fund can also only accept money from within the United States.)

(3) Donations to Ayaan's security from outside the United States can be wired to Haweya, B.V., a special purpose vehicle managed by Ayaan's lawyers in Amsterdam. All funds received will be spent on Ayaan's security and to support her projects with Muslim dissidents. All receipts and expenditures by the company are being checked by public chartered accountants.

The banking details you will need to transfer money to this account are as follows:

Haweya B.V.
P.O. Box 94 510
1090 GM Amsterdam
Netherlands
Account number: 4732822 with Postbank NV, Amsterdam
IBAN number: NL61PSTB0004732822
BIC code bank: PSTBNL21 Postbank NV, Amsterdam

With most sincere gratitude,

Office of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
American Enterprise Institute [minor edits, link added]

As of this morning, I am unable to find a web site specifically pertaining to this new charity, nor does Hirsi Ali's blog make note of it. If anyone happens by who learns of any new developments on this before I do, please drop me a line so I can provide an update.

A Bit of Opera


Adrian Hester, making a couple of opera recommendations in an email, pointed me to the above YouTube video of Renee Fleming singing "Ain't it a pretty night" from Susannah.

"They will know we are Christians by our love." (Part II)

Awhile back, I fell for a very good hoax, in which a letter to the editor of a newspaper, supposedly by a fundamentalist Christian, blamed atheists for all of America's problems and ranted that America should "stomp out" atheists. Commenting on this purported display of Christian "love", I said the following:

When I consider the role that ideas have in shaping human action, and consider the belief systems of others, I am basically indifferent to the choices others make as to what they believe. As I see it, it's their life, and if they want to screw it up, it's their business. I become concerned only when it becomes evident that such people, applying their beliefs to politics, act on their wish to end my political freedom (i.e., to endanger my ability to live by my own lights).

Thus, in exact opposite fashion to the the Christian epistle linked above, I never call for the political persecution of those whose beliefs differ from my own; when I criticize the beliefs of others such criticism is based on facts and logic; and I am comfortable in the knowledge that my ideas will win out in a free marketplace of ideas. This letter-writer obviously feels threatened by the fact that some people think for themselves and her expressed response is to act against them with force.

Upon learning that the letter was a hoax, I added in an update that, "Based on personal experience, I can easily imagine some people being jealous that they hadn't thought of this missive on their own."

Now, thanks to Joe (and Ari Armstrong), "some people" need no longer remain jealous. Nor must I rely any longer on vague memories of the palpable hostility some Christians have exhibited when confronted with the psychological trauma of a person who refuses to take orders from their imaginary friend.

Christian exemplar Doug Giles, in a column titled "How to Shut up an Atheist if You Must", makes the hoax letter to the editor sound like the voice of sweet reason. I'll crib Amstrong's excerpts, although they hardly begin to do this rant, Doug Giles, or his faith justice:

... Suck, for you thick atheists, is a slang word which means to make or to be really, really crappy (kind of like how our culture becomes anytime you guys mess with it). ...

...prissy anti-Christs... pissy God haters... no-God numb nuts... comfortable and cocky atheist...

[E]verywhere I go and speak -- be it in conferences, on the radio, on television or in print -- I'm going to encourage the tens of thousands of Christians I address that every time and everywhere they get crapped on by an atheist with unfounded arguments to open their mouths and slam dance them with facts found in these two new brilliant books from Regnery [by Dinesh D'Souza and Robert Hutchinson]. [my bold]

Not that I especially prize such vulgar terms as the ones in bold from the above passage, but unlike Christians, I do not regard their use as especially immoral. And yet here is a man who does, and who damns atheists for being immoral on the grounds that one must have religion to have morality -- using these very words! So much for religion as bringing about morality. I guess Giles "crapped on" himself there.

Some people never get past diapers in terms of their intellectual development....

Armstrong adds: "For Giles ... arguments become weapons of propaganda, intended not to win an honest and spirited debate, but to 'shut up' the other side." Indeed. And this is because Giles is hardly a man confident in the correctness of his views or interested in unearthing the truth.

I said this before and I'll say it again:

[Those who take religion seriously] scare me for the exact opposite reason I scare them. They want to physically "stamp me out"; I simply remind them of all the questioning and thinking that they have shirked for their whole lives.

I thank Doug Giles for expressing his views on reasoned debate and for providing such an excellent example, in the form of his essay, of how ugly the lack of intellectual confidence that comes with the abandonment of reason can be.

-- CAV

Kant vs. Columbus (Part 2)

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

Leonard Peikoff, Podcaster

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dr. Peikoff's first podcast has just been posted to his web site. You can e-mail him questions to answer at leonard@peikoff.com.

Hooray!

Inhaled Insulin a Bust; Drug Development isn't that easy.

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

Free millions of diabetes patients from daily injections. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? If there was a way to do this, then the replacement product would make a mint, right? Not so fast. Drug giant Pfizer announced this week that it was pulling it's groundbreaking version of insulin, Exubera. Launched little over a year ago, Pfizer and it's licensing partner, biotech Nektar therapeutics, had big plans for Exubera, projecting ultimate revenues of $2 billion. Both spent over a decade working on the drug, and pulling it from the market will come with a big write-off, almost $2.8 billion, one of the costliest drug failures ever.

Just another sign that finding blockbusters (the term for drugs that net over $1billion at maturity) is getting harder to do. Many pharmaceutical companies have begun targeting smaller niche indication areas because of reduced cost to develop and market such drugs. Most people look at market successes such as Pfizer aging Lipitor franchise, which earns the company $13 billion in revenue, and flush with envy. But this does not count the cost and risk that companies face in bringing drugs to market. All of those successes must pay for drug development and for the failures, such as Exubera, and still yield the next generation of winners.

The irony is that Exubera is a technical success. It works. But it was also a big risk. Diabetes is a widespread chronic disease, and therefore treatments for it must undergo very large clinical trials to understand their effects on such a broad target market, and over the long periods of time that the drug must be taken. Exubera failed due to a number of factors, all market driven, which illustrates the tricky nature of making decisions to launch new products like these.

First off, it costs too much. Insulin is not a particularly cheap drug to make, and because much of the drug is broken down in the lungs before it reaches, Exubera requires ten times the normal dosage for injected insulin! The normal rule of thumb for daily therapies such as diabetes or cholesterol treatments are that they are affordable at a rate of about $2-3/day. Exubera costs $5/day.

Secondly, it is somewhat complex to administer. One would think that a diabetes patient might to anything to avoid giving himself daily injections, but the reality is that companies have made injected insulin therapy fairly straight forward. Such innovations as pen injectors, and insulin pumps have taken much of the difficulty out of administering an injected therapy. Exubera's inhaler is a wieldy device that takes some time to learn and is used very differently from traditional injected therapy.

Finally, even though Exubera was shown safe to the lungs over long periods during its clinical trials, FDA was fairly tough on Pfizer and required warnings on the drug label. Doctors, continued to have concerns over the long term use of the therapy. This is again, not so much a technical issue as one of market acceptance, and consumer preference.

The outcome at the intersection of all of these factors are difficult to predict, but the investment required to go through clinical trials is not. This means that someone had to make a call on whether to invest the money to prove the drug worked, before they knew if the drug would sell. Sometimes those decisions succeed, and sometimes they fail, and the people who make them, instead of being reviled for making too much profit as the pharmaceutical industry is, should be allowed to make more profit.

The Neurophysiology of Religious Experience

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Scientific American has an interesting article summarizing what is known about the neurophysiology of meditation and religious experiences. The article does a good job describing the science, but in the end takes a deliberately agnostic view about the meaning of the results. Here are some excerpts:

Spiritual neuroscience studies also face the profound challenge of language. No two mystics describe their experiences in the same way, and it is difficult to distinguish among the various types of mystical experiences, be they spiritual or traditionally religious. To add to the ambiguity, such feelings could also encompass awe of the universe or of nature. “If you are an atheist and you live a certain kind of experience, you will relate it to the magnificence of the universe. If you are a Christian, you will associate it with God. Who knows?

...Moreover, no matter what neural correlates scientists may find, the results cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them. After all, finding a cerebral source for spiritual experiences could serve equally well to identify the medium through which God reaches out to humanity. Thus, the nuns’ forays into the tubular brain scanner did not undermine their faith. On the contrary, the science gave them an even greater reason to believe.

"Open Access" and the Tyranny of the FCC

By Alex Epstein

In January the FCC will auction off the prized 700 MHz spectrum of wireless bandwidth. But instead of offering the spectrum to the highest bidder to employ it however he judges best (for example, a mobile video-on-demand service), the FCC will force the winner to employ a specific business model--an "open access" Internet network that forbids the spectrum-holder from controlling which devices and applications use its network, regardless of how much bandwidth they eat up. Why? Because the FCC and sundry lobbyists claim, "open access" is necessary for the "public interest."

Wireless companies have rightly criticized "open access" rules as restrictions on free competition that unfairly favor certain business models--namely that of leading lobbyist Google. But the injustice of "open access" is just a symptom of the deeper injustice used to justify it: FCC's control of the "public airwaves" in the "public interest."

In today's discussions of FCC policy, it is taken for granted that airwaves are "public." But it shouldn't be. As philosopher Ayn Rand argued in a landmark 1964 essay, "The Property Status of Airwaves," airwaves should be private property.

Observe that the broadcast technology that makes the so-called public airwaves a value does not exist in nature. It is the creation of individuals--and, like all human-created values, its creators earn by their effort a right to their creation. When inventors and engineers first unlocked nature's potential to carry radio waves, and entrepreneurs began developing the commercial value of radio, the government had a responsibility to define property rights in this sphere--so that these innovators could own and utilize portions of the spectrum without interference by others.

There is an exact parallel here to property rights over newly available land. When the western frontier was opened in the 19th century, the government did not declare it public property. Rather, it parceled out the unowned land on a first-come, first-served basis, and then recognized a property right for those who made use of the land for five years. The same type of procedure--enabling pioneers to earn a property right to that which they render valuable--applies to any newly usable portion of spectrum. And, like land rights, once a property right to the use of a given frequency band in a given region is earned, it belongs to the owner unconditionally; he may use it to offer whatever content or services he judges best, or sell it to someone else to do the same.

If the government recognized airwaves as private property, the wireless industry and broadcast media would be transformed. Entrepreneurs would compete freely for ownership of spectrum, and over time, those who sold the most valued product would win out. We would see innovations at a pace undreamed of today--the pace of entrepreneurs and inventors, not the pace of central-planning bureaucrats.

Unfortunately, our government does not recognize airwaves as private property, and never has. In the 1920s, its response to the development of radio was not to define and protect property rights for the field's creators, but to nationalize them as "public property." Consider the injustice of this: the pioneers who envisioned the potential of radio technology, and took the risk of bringing it about, had no more right to their creation than we do, who created nothing.

Under the "public" airwaves regime, businesses do not own but merely "license" portions of spectrum--which the government has total authority to control in the "public interest." The use of spectrum is determined, not by the business that has purchased and earned it, but by the FCC--by whatever it feels is in the indefinable "public interest." In the realm of media, FCC bureaucrats can effectively censor viewpoints they dislike by revoking broadcast licenses or imposing huge fines. In the realm of wireless data, FCC bureaucrats and Congress can impose more onerous terms on a paying licensee anytime they wish--such as Google's proposal that licensees be forced to sell large portions of their bandwidth to competitors at FCC-dictated "reasonable" rates, no matter what it does to their business.

In all such cases, the creators with the best ideas and the willingness to prove them in a free market are throttled by lobbyists and government officials who can wheel and deal in Washington--and innovation suffers accordingly.

Americans need to start recognizing airwaves as the private property they really are, and demand the abolition of the FCC. Then the government can hold a fair and just auction for the 700 MHz spectrum, and the others, in which each spectrum is not licensed but sold--no strings attached.

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

Values Voters for Huckabee

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The straw poll at the recent "Values Voters Summit" yielded some noteworthy results:

Romney took 27.6 percent of almost 6,000 votes cast, just ahead of Mike Huckabee, the folksy former governor of Arkansas, who gained 27.1 percent at the conference organized by the Family Research Council.

Maverick Texas Congressman Ron Paul was third with almost 15 percent while former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson got under 10 percent, a major disappointment for his campaign.

Giuliani was eighth with 107 votes -- under 2 percent.

Apparently, Romney's campaign encouraged his supporters to register online with the Family Research Council to vote for him. So Huckabee might well be the man to watch.

Marc Ambindiner of The Atlantic observes:

Huckabee has made a habit of performing well at straw polls like these; there did seem to be a fair number of FairTax supporters, and they may have helped. But Huckabee's victory -- without much organizing -- suggests that his powers of persuasion are mighty and that the social conservative activists have come to know who he is and what he's about.

It's hardly surprising that Huckabee appeals to evangelicals. On his issues page, the first item is "Religion and Politics." The summary says: "My faith is my life -- it defines me. My faith doesn't influence my decisions, it drives them. For example, when it comes to the environment, I believe in being a good steward of the earth. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives." In other words, "I, Mike Huckabee, plan to govern as President of the United States of America based on my delusions about the will of God, as opposed to based on any kind of rational evaluation of the facts."

Consistent with that faith-based approach to politics, Huckabee advocates constitutional amendments to ban abortion and to define marriage as between one man and one woman. He also says that his "personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman, for life." Consistent with Jesus' admonition against divorce except for "unchastity" (Matthew 5:32), he supports -- and helped Ankansas adopt -- covenant marriage.

Obviously, Huckabee doesn't have much national name-recognition yet. However, I worry that he might appeal to fiscal conservatives oblivious or indifferent to the danger of further entanglement of religion and politics. After all, he advocates the replacement of all federal income, payroll, corporate, and capital gains taxes with the "Fair Tax," i.e. a sales tax on all consumption above the poverty level. That might seem very appealing to the fiscal conservatives frustrated by President Bush's wild spending.

Happy Columbus Day Week!

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

(And better late than never!)

My birthday falls close enough to Columbus Day that my Dad would often jokingly wish me a "Happy Columbus Day!" instead as I was growing up. In return, when his birthday rolled around in July, I'd sometimes wish him, "Happy Independence Day!" And so it is that I am usually pretty good about remembering Columbus Day -- although this year, I got busy and had to be reminded on the day by my calendar program.

Do you see what is wrong with this picture? You normally can't go through the run-up to some major holiday or anniversary without being bombarded with reminders from all directions -- sometimes for months in advance. Although I don't recall a huge fuss ever being made over Columbus Day as I was growing up, it has taken a beating from multiculturalists for years and seems to have slowly started sinking out of the public view.

This is a big shame, for Christopher Columbus, with his discovery of the New World, helped get the ball rolling for that greatest expression of the ideas of the Enlightenment, the United States of America.

Fortunately, historian Scott Powell didn't forget about Columbus Day. Indeed, he has made the week around Columbus Day a festival over at his blog:

Unlike modern historians, I am a huge fan of Christopher Columbus. I would rank him as one of the ten most important men in history–and for the good! So Powell History is going to celebrate not just Columbus Day, but as a small measure of justice for a man so wrongly villified in our modern culture, a week of Columbus-related posts highlighting his achievements and his significance in world history. [my bold]

So stop by Powell History Recommends for sculpture, paintings, and poetry commemorating this great man of independent vision, and to learn how to begin mounting an intellectual defense of his place in history.

As I have mentioned several times here previously, it was Scott Powell who initially got me interested in working a lot smarter. Were it not for him, I would not have been so well-organized as to necessarily check a calendar program every day. Conceivably, I could have gotten so wrapped up in my work and personal affairs that the day would have passed completely unnoticed. So this year, it isn't much of a stretch to say that I owe it to him to have remembered Columbus Day on Columbus Day in addition to getting to read his blog posts about it.

And for next year? I've added a calendar reminder for early September to consider taking Columbus Day off. Even if I can't do that, at least, I'll be ready the next time that day arrives! As Thomas Bowden once put it, "On Columbus Day, ... we celebrate Western civilization as history's greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?"

Thanks again, Mr. Powell!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edits.

How Times Have Changed

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

Jeff Jacoby, in an interesting piece against public education, starts off by quoting from the '92 platform of the Democratic Party:

Freedom of education, being an essential of civil and religious liberty ... must not be interfered with under any pretext whatever.... We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental ... doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.

As you've probably guessed by now, that would be the 1892 Democratic platform. Later, Jacoby adds the following:

Wondrous to relate, the platform also warned that "the tendency to centralize all power at the federal capital has become a menace," blasted barriers to free trade as "robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few," and pledged "relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure."

The rest of the Jacoby article is worth reading, too, although it would have been a far better case for the end of public education had it also dealt with the gross violation of property rights used to fund this travesty. But I suspect that this is because Jacoby is more concerned with the fact that non-Christian values are being transmitted through public education than he is with individual rights in general.

But give the man credit. Unlike most religious conservatives, there is no call for the religious right to commandeer this huge state propaganda mill for the purpose of bringing government-enforced prayer back to the public schools.

Heck. It's nice to see a conservative advocating small government for a change!

-- CAV

The Ring of Gyges

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

Flibbert recently got wind of something that might sound strangely familiar to readers of this blog (HT: Qwertz) :

A teen-ager was airlifted to hospital and his father had his nose broken when gatecrashers went on the rampage at a 16th birthday party after details were posted on YouTube, police and media reports said Friday.

More than 100 uninvited teenagers descended on the family house, stole whisky and champagne, smashed windows and started fighting, according to reports.

As with the episode of massive theft and vandalism I blogged back in April (which was conveniently attributed to Craig's List) , there is no rational connection between a simple listing of a home address and an event that is to occur there with what ended up happening.

Here's the essence of each event. Someone's home address was listed on the Internet with an announcement to the effect that he expected a crowd of people to show up there and when. Many youths, being nihilists, are little better than criminals anyway and would, if they thought they could get away with it, behave like barbarians. In each case, these ads offered such a shelter from accountability: a crowd of strangers and a lack of specific orders as to how to behave while in that crowd.

So when things get out of control, the barbarians who made it that way can blame it on the crowd (if it doesn't make it impossible to point fingers anyway) and the circumstance (e.g., a "party" context or the implication that property was free for the taking: "[I]t said come and take what you want.") Add to this the fact that law enforcement everywhere is lax after decades of blaming crime on "society" rather than the individual criminal.

The condition of anonymity ("moral invisibility", if you will) offered in each case reminds me of the legend of the Ring of Gyges, in which a man finds a ring that bestows invisibility and uses it to commit murder. Interestingly, this legend is brought up in a Platonic discussion of justice as an illustrative argument to the effect that morality is a social construct. Plato argues against this position, but given how common it is for people to regard morality as a mere social or religious convention, it would appear that he did not make his case strongly enough.

If any of the savages who participated in either of these events learned anything about morality, I would wager that it was to the effect that morality is arbitrary (i.e., subjective or based on divine whim), enforced by group consensus, and irrelevant to living one's life.

This is in sharp contrast to the view of morality offered by Ayn Rand, who held that objective moral principles could be discovered through the use of reason, that these principles are selfishly important to each individual, and that as such, one risks immorality at his own peril. Or, as I like to think of it, reality enforces morality.

The best one can hope for by behaving short-range, even if he gets away scott-free with some criminal act is continued life with the anxiety associated with perhaps being found out later and with having to figure out how to continue existing. It is a subhuman existence on the spiritual level at the very least. Quite often, criminals, being short-range thinkers, will blow whatever windfall they might have and needlessly face material hardship as well.

Only a rational egoist could be trusted with the Ring of Gyges, because he knows that morality, being of practical relevance to one's life, is not fundamentally about what others think of you (or what you can steal from others), but about how you deal with the problem of your own survival on many levels.

-- CAV

Updates

10-16-07: Added a clarification. At the time of writing, I'd forgotten that the Craig's List looters used a fake announcement to excuse themselves from responsibility for their actions.

Objectivism Versus Christianity

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The already-lengthy comment thread on this article on the rejection of Christian values by Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism might be worth a post or two. The article itself accurately states the principles of the Objectivist ethics, then leaps off the cliff with the following:

Rand's inversion of biblical norms had predictable results: Scott Ryan, who wrote a book on Rand's philosophy, called objectivism a "psychologically totalitarian personality cult that allowed Rand . . . to exercise personal power over [her] unwitting victims." He cites, for example, the way she manipulated "her own unemployed and dependent husband" to get him to agree for her to have "an adulterous sexual affair."

We're not talking here about personal flaws or merely human weaknesses. As Ryan puts it, these abuses are "demonstrably connected to Rand's own 'philosophical' premises"--that is, her worldview.

Rand and her followers, you see, lived in a way consistent with her worldview. But you can hardly regard a philosophy that exalts selfishness and condemns altruism as the basis for a good society.

Obviously, that characterization of Ayn Rand's actions is completely wrong. (Thank you, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, yet again!) Yet the critical point is that the author merely quotes Ryan's assertion of a strong connection between her philosophy and that supposed behavior -- without even hinting at the nature of that actual connection. One can only suppose that the author regards respecting other people as a form of self-sacrifice.

I'm happy to see articles like this one published. It doesn't misrepresent Objectivism, except by implication. It rightly claims that the ideas of Objectivism are wholly opposed to those of Christianity. Those two points might well inspire some curious people to pick up Atlas Shrugged. Heck, it might even lead some ordinary conservatives to question whether they can admire both Jesus and John Galt, as many claim to do.

You can find the comments -- over 210 so far -- here.

A Sign of Our Times

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Completely pathetic:

Religious movie star Mark Wahlberg struggled with the script in director M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening - because his character was required to blaspheme. Wahlberg has no problems swearing in his often gritty movies, but he tried not to use God's name in vain. So, when his latest director asked him to blaspheme, Wahlberg admits he had a real dilemma.

He explains, "I had to say 'G' 'D' in this new movie and that was extremely difficult... He (Shyamalan) asked me if I would say it and I did, and I asked for forgiveness that night when I got home."

Wahlberg was apparently born again while in prison. Blech!

The Global War on Carbon

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

Anyone who still thinks that conservatives know what fighting a war is about, stand for capitalism, or represent a viable alternative to the left should go straight to RealClear Politics right now and read Cal Thomas' column in its entirety. It reads like a fisking of the list in the first sentence of this post.

Since it does, let's allow Mr. Thomas to answer those claims point-by-point.

1. Conservatives know what fighting a war is about.

Cal Thomas replies in the negative:

If we would launch an energy independence program with the intensity of a Marshall Plan for Europe, or a man-on-the-moon project, to liberate ourselves from the petroleum despots by developing synthetic fuels and finding new energy sources closer to home -- especially nuclear power -- we could strike a blow against the Islamofascists more damaging than bombs and bullets. [bold added]

I have written about this before. Much of the oil in Venezuela and the Middle East was stolen from American and British firms when the various kleptocracies there nationalized their property. Even without the numerous other acts of war many of these regimes have perpetrated before or since, we would be fully justified in "waging war for oil". In fact, in not doing so, we lose more than just oil. We lose freedom and prosperity.

To fail to wage such a war war is an abdication of responsibility by our government. (And, no, we are not waging such a war now. Nor are we waging the war that we should against the regimes that support Islamic totalitarianism.) To fail to advocate such a war is an abdication of intellectual responsibility.

As just one example of the depths of irresponsibility to which the likes of Cal Thomas have sunk, consider just this one small problem with Americans not availing themselves of cheap, plentiful oil: China and other less-fastidious regimes will get a lot more of it a lot more cheaply without us to bid up the price.

2. Conservatives stand for capitalism.

Again, Cal Thomas replies in the negative:

If we would launch an energy independence program with the intensity of a Marshall Plan for Europe, or a man-on-the-moon project, to liberate ourselves from the petroleum despots by developing synthetic fuels and finding new energy sources closer to home -- especially nuclear power -- we could strike a blow against the Islamofascists more damaging than bombs and bullets. [bold added]

Oh. My bad. He already answered that charge a moment ago. Thomas is merely following the fashion of his fellow conservatives by adopting big government solutions for everything, as Brad Thompson has already explained far better than I could. If alternative fuels were an economically viable alternative, there would be cutthroat competition to develop the first one. But there isn't, and Cal Thomas knows this. This is why "Father Free Enterprise" is advocating a huge government program to develop an "alternative" to oil that we don't really need.

In fact, we do not simply not need such a program: It will harm our economy, and therefore our military preparedness -- while simultaneously propping up the likes of China and increasingly-hostile Russia.

3. Conservatives represent a viable alternative to the left.

Yet again, Cal Thomas replies in the negative:

Might it be possible for the [Church of Global Warming] crowd and the Church of Free Enterprise (CFE) to come together for the common purpose of reducing our reliance on foreign oil? CGW fundamentalists would get what they want -- a reduced carbon footprint and supposedly lower global temperatures (go ahead and let them believe it) -- while CFE parishioners would rejoice that Saudi Arabia's hold on us (not to mention its use of our money to underwrite terrorism) could be broken.

...

[W]ould Al Gore bring his legions with him to the table? [bold added]

Yes. Cal Thomas wants to join forces with uber-leftist Al Gore to impose massive government regulations on the American economy in order to start a massive federal welfare program!

As a bonus, even Thomas' likening of global warming hysteria to a religion, although provocative, is ultimately not intended as an insult as witness his far less credible claim that advocacy of a free market is like a religion. Instead, he notes his own lack of a rational basis for accepting what he calls "capitalism" and implicitly cites this contempt for reason as common ground with Al Gore and his ilk. Whether or not that sounds familiar, it is an injustice to capitalism and everyone who has argued for it from evidence and logic.

This is a truly sickening column, but I thank Cal Thomas for writing it anyway.

For now we know Cal Thomas' true color, and it is green, which is to say, "red" -- in the old sense or in the new would seem immaterial....

-- CAV

Guilt-free software development

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Be Healthy or Else!

By Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

As part of his universal healthcare proposal, John Edwards would make doctor visits and other forms of preventive care mandatory. In a similar proposal in England, a Tory panel suggested that Britons should be forced to adopt a government-prescribed "healthy lifestyle." Britons who "cooperate" by quitting smoking or losing weight would receive Health Miles that could be used to purchase vegetables or gym memberships; those who don't would be denied certain medical treatments.

These paternalistic proposals are offered as solutions to the spiraling costs that plague our respective healthcare systems. It is unrealistic, states the Tory report, for British citizens "to expect that the state will underwrite the health implications of any lifestyle decision they choose to make."

But any proposal that expands the government's power to control our lives--to dictate to us when to go to the doctor or how many helpings of veggies we must eat--cannot be a solution to anything. Instead of debating what coercive measures we should be taking to lower "social costs," we should be questioning the healthcare systems that make our lifestyles other people's business in the first place.

Both the American and British systems, despite their differences, are fundamentally collectivist: they exist on the premise that the individual's health is not his own responsibility, but "society's." Both Britain's outright socialized medicine and America's semi-socialized blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and government-controlled, employer-sponsored health plans aim to relieve the individual of the burden of paying for his own healthcare by coercively imposing those costs on his neighbors.

When the government introduces force into the healthcare system to relieve the individual of responsibility for his own health, it is inevitably led to progressively expand its control over that system and every citizen's life.

For example, in a system in which medical care is "free" or artificially inexpensive, with someone else paying for one's healthcare, medical costs spiral out of control because individuals are encouraged to demand medical services without having to consider their real costs. When "society" foots the bill for one's health, it also encourages the unhealthy lifestyles of the short-range mentalities who don't care to think beyond the next plate of French fries. The astronomical tab that results from all of this causes collectivist politicians to condemn various easy targets (e.g., doctors, insurance companies, smokers, the obese) for taking too much of the "people's money," and then to enact a host of coercive measures to control expenses: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits--or, as with the current proposals, attempts to reduce demand for medical services by forcing a "healthy lifestyle" on individuals.

Properly, your healthcare decisions and expenditures are not anyone's business but your own--any more than how much you spend on food, cars, or movies is. But under collectivized healthcare, every Twinkie you eat, doctor's visit you cancel, or lab test you wish to have run, becomes other people's right to question, regulate, and prohibit--because they are paying for it. When "society" collectively bears the costs of healthcare, the government will inevitably seek to dictate every detail of medical care and, ultimately, every detail of how you live your life.

To protect our health and our freedom, we must reject collectivized healthcare, and put an end to a system that forces us to pay for other people's medical care. We must remove government from the system and demand a free market in medicine--one in which the government's only role is to protect the individual rights of doctors, patients, hospitals, and insurance companies to deal with one another voluntarily, and where each person is responsible for his own healthcare.

Let's not allow the land of the free and the home of the brave to become a nation of dependents looking to the nanny-state to take care of us and following passively its dictates as to how we should live our lives.

Yaron Brook is the president of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, CA. Don Watkins is a writer and research coordinator at ARI. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

"Me-First" and "Democracy"

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

From time to time, you'll see scientists tackle the question of whether "altruism" might have survival value to an individual organism or to a species as a whole. In these studies, the term "altruism" is a technical term without any application to the field of ethics: "behavior by an animal that may be to its [individual] disadvantage but that benefits others of its kind, as a warning cry that reveals the location of the caller to a predator." (This fact won't stop journalists from happily making the confusion, however.)

I am unfamiliar with the exact origins of this term, but it occurs to me that the term "altruism" as used in the field of animal behavior is subject to many of the same confusions as it is in ethics. Namely: In either sense of the term, "altruism" confounds actions that really don't benefit an individual, but aid others with those that are mutually beneficial to individual and group.

This confusion is doubly unfortunate when some attempt to apply results from animal behavior studies to understand human behavior. Consider the following quote from the end of the study on ant behavior linked above:

One of the greatest acts of human altruism is the near-total devotion of parents to their children, which can be at least partly explained by the kin-selection idea. Most people show the greatest kindness to their own children, followed by the children of their closest relatives.

Since animals, unlike human beings, do not possess rational faculties, and thus lack spiritual values, I submit that the above explanation is completely wrong (no matter which definition of "altruism" one cares to use). Humans do not act on instinct, and can profit on an egoistic, psychological level by raising children. While it can and does make sense to apply findings from biological studies (below the behavioral level) on animals to humans, it would be hard enough to make this leap at the behavioral level even if the term "altruism" weren't so common.

Needless to say, I cringe almost every time I see some scientific study that claims to provide insight about what it calls altruism, trumpeted to boot by some do-gooder journalist who regards the ant hill as the Platonic Ideal to which human society should aspire. It's bad enough that such studies use such a misleading term, but worse to see genuinely good things, like child-rearing, described as "altruistic", and selflessness taken for granted as a moral ideal.

So color me pleasantly surprised when Toiler emailed me about an anthropological study that called into question the idea that altruism is a viable basis for something that is decidedly not altruistic, and that most people recognize on some level as a good thing:

When it comes to establishing democracy, a me-first attitude isn't such a bad thing. In fact, it might be a necessity, according to Northern Illinois University anthropologist Giovanni Bennardo.

Bennardo spent the tail end of the summer in Tonga, the only remaining Polynesian monarchy. Budding democratic movements there have failed to take firm root, and Bennardo says the problem can be traced to a culturally ingrained way of thinking that always puts groups before individuals.

"Democracy puts the rights of the individual first, but Tongans are trained from birth to do the opposite," Bennardo says. "In their society, the extreme importance is attributed to the group over the individual. The ego is highly constrained. That doesn't mean they can't understand freedom and democracy, but putting individuals ahead of the group is a tough task for them." [bold added]

How tough?

For example, a Westerner might describe a building location as "in front of me," whereas a Tongan would describe it as being "toward the church." In experiments, Bennardo asked test subjects to draw pictures of their island. They typically placed the major town in the center of the island, even when in reality it was at or near the coast.

Working with researchers in Germany and at UCLA, Bennardo demonstrated that this way of thinking also applies to concepts of time, kinship and social relationships, the latter of which is closely tied to the political realm.

"One person, one vote is difficult to implement," he says. "Tongans aren't accustomed to viewing themselves in terms of equality of individuals." [bold added]

Granted, the term "democracy" is itself as ambiguous in today's sloppy political discourse as "altruism", but Bennardo is closer to describing a free society through the term than unlimited majority rule. Clearly, his finding shows that certain cultural attitudes are a prerequisite for a political system that protects individual freedom, something he even explicitly states has applications to the current situation in Iraq.

Having expressed my pleasant surprise, I must also offer a caveat: Suppose that Bennardo had used a better term than "democracy" here. Suppose further that he had presented ironclad scientific proof that a given social system or type of cultural milieu is needed for human prosperity.

What difference would this really make to policy-makers who accept altruism as a moral code or collectivism as the political implementation of that "ideal" morality? Not one bit, when people regard ethics as outside the realm of rational inquiry and accept a moral-practical dichotomy as a given.

Bennardo has provided valuable evidence that altruism and political freedom are incompatible, but so have countless economists shown that socialism is incompatible with material prosperity. And yet we still have countless advocates for socialism even today. As Bennardo shows, we must work to introduce better ideas into the culture before it will trend towards supporting an increase in political freedom again.

Until men accept reason as equally valid in the moral realm as in the scientific, all the science in the world will not save freedom from altruism and collectivism.

-- CAV

Politically Correct Racism

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Some writing becomes outdated as fast as a newspaper. There must be millions of books and magazines from the 1970's that are now of interest to no one but scholars and perhaps the mothers of those who wrote them. But Ayn Rand, because she thought in philosophic principles, actually becomes more interesting as time passes.

Take the speech she gave at the Ford Hall Forum in 1977, "Global Balkanization," which can now be found in The Return of the Primitive. When I read it in the '70s, I could see her point, but tribalism in America was still somewhat theoretical to me. I could not imagine that things would get as bad as the Balkans or Belgium or the Basques in Spain and France. 30 years later we have seen the growth of multiculturalism in our culture and Rand's speech seems remarkably prescient. We have seen blacks relabeled "African-Americans" because definition by ethnicity is so important to the New Left. Now we see immigrants from Latin America who spend their lives in the USA without bothering to learn English.

I believe OJ was acquitted in large part because of the influence of multiculturalism on the jury. The jury's stultified minds had been trained to think of everything in tribal terms. OJ was a black man against racist white cops; the facts of the case were not as important to the jury as the fact that OJ was part of their ethnicity, part of their tribe.

Now we see the Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival worried about the ethnic makeup not just of his actors and playwrights but his audience. Now children get pious lectures about different "cultures" -- asians are supposed to have certain traits, African-Americans other traits and Hispanics another set of traits. Now we see politicians elected because they're the first woman/black/hispanic/fill-in-the-blank to run for an office.

I was inspired to reread "Global Balkanization" by the Jena 6 incident. The case is about six black kids who jumped a white kid and beat him unconscious. It's not a civil rights case, and comparisons to Selma, Alabama strike me as laughable. However, to leftists and people such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton the facts are unimportant; it only matters that this is a case of "our tribe vs. their tribe." Black kids are on trial in the South; they must be defended by other blacks, regardless of the facts of the case. Multiculturalism has spread so far through our culture that many can only think of this case through its distorting lens.

There are many quotable passages in "Global Balkanization," not the least Rand's immortal observation of folk dancing, "if you've seen one group of people clapping their hands while jumping up and down, you've seen them all." Here she looks at the nature and causes of modern tribalism:

Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join some group -- any group -- which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group -- they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices -- so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent omniscient power of your body chemistry.

This, of course, is racism. But if your group is small enough, it will not be called "racism": it will be called "ethnicity."

Rand explains the function of the word ethnicity:

Observe that ever since World War II, racism has been regarded as a vicious falsehood and a great evil, which it certainly is. It is not the root of all social evils -- the root is collectivism -- but, as I have written before (in The Virtue of Selfishness), "Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism." One would think that Hitler had given a sufficient demonstration of racism's evil. Yet today's intellectuals, particularly the liberals, are supporting and propagating the most virulent form of racism on earth: tribalism.

The cover-up that makes it possible lies in a single word: ethnicity.

Today multiculturalism is held as an unquestioned ideal. Using such words as culture and ethnicity as a cover, schoolchildren are indoctrinated with racist ideas.

The tragedy of multiculturalism is that instead of helping people be color blind so that they judge others by "the content of their character," it forces people to categorize everyone by race. I get the sense that race consciousness is spreading among whites. Whites are beginning to judge policies and candidates on how they will benefit the caucasian race. If racism spreads among whites as well as among all minorities, the consequences could be disastrous.

Multiculturalism poses as a force for tolerance and brotherly love, when it really leads to the opposite -- to civil strife, hatred and violence. Multiculturalism places everyone into a pressure group by race that looks to the government for preferences at the expense of all the other groups. The now reviled "Melting Pot," in which people were encouraged to forget their ethnicity and be an American like everyone else, did lead to dignity, peace and respect; it was an individualist policy in a country that had a freer market than today. But when the state intervenes in the economy and people divide into pressure groups hoping to get a bigger piece of the handout pie than other groups, the result is group conflict and hatred.

Freedom cannot last when any form of collectivism dominates a culture. For our children and our children's children to grow up in a free country, we need to return to individualism. Instead, our children are being indoctrinated with racism in government schools -- and this might be the greatest scandal nobody cares about.

Al Gore’s "Pulp Fiction"

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

As years go by the idea of Nobel Prizes for peace and literature becomes more and more lunatic. The criteria by which literature is measured and recognized by the Norwegian Nobel Committee remain unfathomable to an outside but critical observer. This year the Prize for literature went to Doris Lessing, a British author who wrote stories with ever-in-vogue feminist themes.

But the individuals who screen nominees and award the Prizes for literature could just as well as sit on award committees for the Guggenheim or MacArthur Foundations, whose criteria for giving away lots of tax-free money are similarly eclectic, eminently subjective, "socially relevant," and focused on the obscure and banal because they are obscure and banal. The standards of what anymore is judged literarily important have been plummeting as fast as a skydiver in a tangled parachute.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, established in 1968 by the Swedish central bank and conferred by it, has invariably gone to economists who disparage or are ignorant of capitalism, or who are not consistent advocates of it, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek.

Only the criteria for the Prizes for medicine, chemistry and physics have retained some semblance of objectivity. But that will change, now that science has become increasingly politicized, that is, now that scientific truths are established, not by empirical evidence, but by consensus. And when politics applies those consensus-based, reality defying "truths" to life, the results have been disastrous.

It was a "scientific cultural consensus" in Germany that Jews were sub-human parasites who were destroying the country. This was an "Aryan truth" responsible for the Holocaust. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist and pseudo-geneticist, claimed that acquired characteristics could be inherited in crops (just as the bourgeois had acquired their own irreversible characteristics, requiring their eradication in Soviet Russia). This was a "Soviet truth" that conformed to Marxist ideology and the Party line. It resulted in drastic crop reductions and chronic famine.

When it comes to rewarding accomplishments in the abstract, normative realm, the successive Committees that vet nominees for the Peace Prize have apparently been spinning their judgmental wheels since 1901. In establishing the conditions for awarding this Prize, Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that it go to the individual who had done "the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace conferences."

The problem is that neither Nobel nor any of his succession of executors of the Peace Prize has ever had any fundamental knowledge of the requirements of "peace." "Fraternity among nations" is possible only if those nations are free nations, nations that feature governments that have at least a nominal respect for individual rights and a judiciary that protects them. Volunteer standing armies may be necessary for those nations as protection from or deterrents against aggressor nations. Peace conferences are not necessary among nations not bent on conquest or territorial expansion, although alliances may be formed between free nations to oppose or fight outlaw, criminal governments that are so inclined.

It is important to note that the Committee that reviews nominees for the Peace Prize is composed of five individuals elected by the Norwegian parliament. Norway is a socialist country, so it is logical that career socialists and collectivists would favor any person or institution that worked for peace for the sake of peace, regardless of kinds of individual accomplishments (as long as they are selfless and altruistic), the nature of a conflict or of the character of the disputing parties. This explains why the Prize has been awarded to an unsavory collection of thugs, criminals, "saints," charlatans, and fools.

In terms of conflict between nations, "peace," to these individuals, as well as to their moral and political ilk ranging from Jimmy Carter to Condoleezza Rice and George Bush, is a Platonic condition to be achieved between antagonistic parties by means of compromise, concession, or even surrender. "Peace" is the "higher" principle to pursue, higher than the principle of a nation's self-preservation in the face of conquest or destruction. Since these individuals regard the desire for self-defense or self-preservation against brute force as a purely "subjective" or selfish motive, the rational and the irrational are placed on the same plane, on which, by their moral criteria, the selfish must always defer to the unselfish.

Thus, for example, to the peaceniks, the desire of Palestinians to swallow chunks of Israel is just as legitimate a cause as Israel wanting to preserve its existence against governments and gangs that wish to dismember it or completely erase it - perhaps even more legitimate, since the Palestinians are stateless, poor and needy, while Israel is a prosperous, relatively free country.

To the peaceniks, the historic circumstances of Israel and the Palestinians are irrelevant. In order to stave off the chimera of violence and war, both parties must be brought to the negotiating table and persuaded to compromise. Bush, Rice and the State Department wish Israel to surrender large sections of its territory to create a Palestinian state, knowing full well, but not conceding it in public, that such a state would merely serve as a launching site for Hamas and Hezbollah to attack and destroy Israel.

But it is Israel that is asked to compromise, while the Palestinians have nothing to compromise but their urge to kill. The peril in which Israel is placed is of no concern to the peaceniks; violence must be avoided at all costs, even at the cost of Israel's existence. The classic instance of pursuing peace for the sake of peace and avoiding violence is Neville Chamberlain's surrender to Hitler in Munich.

All that being said, what has Al Gore's campaign against global warming to do with "peace," vis-à-vis Alfred Nobel's good intentions? In a fairly ludicrous and patently desperate stretch of semantics, Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, offered an explanation. According to an Associated Press release on October 12, the day it was announced that Gore had won the Peace Prize, he said,

"It is a question of war and peace. We're already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa."

"He said that nomads and herders are in conflict with farmers," reported the AP item, "because the changing climate has brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands."

Omitted from his account is the fact that the Sahel Crescent, located between the spreading Sahara desert and the wetter tropical regions to the south, has been in drought conditions since the 1960's, and also the fact that billions of dollars in indiscriminately strewn international aid have not improved conditions there one iota. Perhaps in pre-history it got more rainfall than the contemporary, recorded annual averages of between four and eight inches through summer and fall.

Egeland also neglected to mention the increase in population in the Sahel, a population existing in an altruist purgatory made possible by anti-cause and effect international aid. Much of the African continent is on a Western welfare system, and as a Kenyan economist recently explained, conditions will never improve as long as the West keeps sending it aid. This fellow will never be a serious candidate for the Peace Prize. He spoke a truth and pleaded with the West to stop being so "caring."

By awarding Gore the Peace Prize, which he will share with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Nobel Committee revealed itself as being on the same intellectual level - a very, very low and clueless one - as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which earlier this year awarded an Oscar to Gore's propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth. One can imagine that the Committee members were as impressed by that instance of agitprop as they might have been (and possibly actually were) by Hollywood's past environmental efforts, such as The Day After Tomorrow, Day of the Animals, Frogs, Soylent Green, The Pelican Brief, and Silent Running, to name but a few "let's blame man" eco-disaster films.

Propaganda is not necessarily an evil form of communication. It is an extreme, stylized distillation of concepts to perceptual concretes of a group's position or cause in words, pictures, or both. Its purpose is not to inform men of facts or to educate them, but to alert them to or remind them of an issue. The issue may be genuine or false; that is, it may be governed by facts, falsehoods, or a stew of facts and falsehoods. Political cartoons skirt the definition of propaganda, and an argument could be made that they are a form of propaganda.

Even without a British High Court's ruling this month that An Inconvenient Truth is largely a high-tech tissue of lies and misinformation, and that students shown the film in class must be advised of eleven major "inaccuracies" (a kind term for fabrications) in the film, not only the film but the whole issue of global warming, whether or not it is occurring, and if it is, what is causing it, has been stirring up another kind of "climate war" between believers and skeptics that has gone on for years.

On one side are the believers in anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming, armed with statistics and findings they claim prove man is causing the phenomenon. These have the ear and voice of most of the disaster-and-crisis-obsessed news media. On the other side are climatologists and meteorologists who claim that if global warming is occurring, man has little or nothing to do with it, and they, too, are armed with statistics and findings. They do not have the ear and voice the news media, because they are not posing as oracles of disaster and crises. Some of the latter cannot be justly labeled "skeptics," because they are certain of their findings.

The believers indulge in histrionics and demand that governments impose controls and restrictions on especially industrialized nations to arrest or reverse global warming. The skeptics or "deniers" of anthropogenic global warming, eschewing thespian ambitions, and respecting and relying on human intelligence, simply offer their counter-arguments and positions to anyone who will listen, hoping that reason and truth will win out in the end.

They do not think any action need be taken by either governments or panicked citizens. Indeed, they contend that any drastic, fiat actions taken by governments would result in an infinitesimal reduction in "greenhouse gases," hardly measurable and certainly not worth the likely trillions of dollars such totalitarian measures would cause in lost production and standards of living. (As an illustration of the pathetic, impressionable ignorance rampant in the media, Roger Ebert, the movie critic, when he came home from first seeing An Inconvenient Truth, immediately turned off all his lights. One could say that he remains "in the dark.")

Needless to say, the skeptics and deniers do not get much press, friendly or unfriendly. What they have to say, which is the truth, is not what politicians and the media want to hear. (This is another instance of how "science" can be politicized.) The number of "skeptics" and "deniers" is unknown, chiefly because of the "climate of fear" that exists. Too many climatologists and scientists in related fields are afraid to buck the "truth" and perhaps lose their grants, jobs, or careers.

One meteorologist who is not afraid is Dr. William Gray, retired, famous for his hurricane forecasts, who addressed an audience of 300 at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte recently. The Courier Mail of October 13 ("Gore's climate theory savaged") reported that

"Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicized, said instead that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - is responsible for global warming that he acknowledges has taken place....However, he said, that same cycle means a period of global cooling will begin soon and last for several years."

Countering another of Gore's assertions, that man-caused global warming has caused an increase in hurricanes, the article reported that Gray "cited statistics, showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900-1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957-2006, when the earth warmed."

"'The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures,' Gray said. He said his beliefs have made him an outsider in popular science.

"'It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong,'" said Gray. 'But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants.'"

He cares about the truth, and alluded in his talk to self-censorship by extortion and a fraternity of cowards.

Before Gore's covinous movie won either an Oscar or a Peace Prize, Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow in Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in September 2006 took the film apart nearly frame by frame, assertion by assertion. Among a multitude of things, he points out that Gore:

• "Calls carbon dioxide [CO2] the 'most important greenhouse gas.' Water vapor is the leading contributor to the greenhouse effect."
• "Claims that Venus is too hot and Mars too cold to support life due to differences in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (they are nearly identical), rather than differences in atmospheric densities and distances from the Sun (huge)."
• "Claims that global warming is drying out soils all over the world, whereas pan evaporation studies (which measure the rate of evaporation from open pans of water) indicate that, in general, the Earth's surface is becoming wetter."
• "Blames global warming for pine beetle infestations that likely have more to do with increased forest density [as a consequence of environmentalist policies, "Woodman, spare that tree! It has rights!"] and plain old mismanagement [again, management dominated in the forestry and national park bureaucracies by environmentalist policies]."
• "Blames global warming for a 'mass extinction crisis' that is not, in fact, occurring."
• "Claims that sea level rise could be many times larger and more rapid 'depending on the choices we make or do not make now' concerning global warming. Not so. The most aggressive choice America could make now would be to join Europe in implementing the Kyoto Protocol. Assuming the science underpinning Kyoto is correct [or objectively validated], the treaty would avert only 1 cm of sea level rise by 2050 and 2.5 cm by 2100."
• "Claims that the European Union's emission trading system [linked to Kyoto] is working 'effectively.' In fact, the ETS is not reducing emissions, [it] will transfer an estimated £1.5 billion from British firms to competitors in countries with weaker controls, [it] has enabled oil companies to profit at the expense of hospitals and schools, and [it] has been an administrative nightmare for small firms." [Britain is a "have," and so is guilty and must be punished; competitors and "have not" countries are needy, and must be rewarded with being let off the totalitarian hook. Imagine the consequences in the U.S. if it ever becomes party to the looters' philosophy of the Kyoto Protocol.]

These are seven of the ninety-three points that Lewis raises and discusses in his paper, which is nothing less than a complete shredding of Gore's thesis (square brackets contain my observations). His paper, "A Skeptic's Guide to An Inconvenient Truth," may be read in its entirety at the CEI's site here.

For the report on the British High Court's ruling on Gore's movie, visit here.

For what one CNN weather forecaster has to say about the movie, visit here.

And as a counter Power Point Presentation about the Earth, climate, and the hoax of anthropogenic global warming (Gore's original production was a slide show), visit here. If Marlo Lewis's paper shreds Gore's thesis, this ten-minute presentation further reduces it to atoms.

The Courier Mail article on Dr. William Gray's stand against psuedo-science, which is the least unbiased report I could find, can be read here. It is significant that this report appears in an Australian newspaper, not a cowed American one. But then most American papers were afraid to reprint the Danish Mohammad cartoons, out of "respect" for the religion. Well, a lot of people "respected" Al Capone, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, and it wasn't from love.

It is interesting to note that it was Hollywood that made Gore's movie possible, and not any special marketing savvy of the former vice-president's. (At least he hasn't claimed any.) According to a Los Angeles Times article of October 13, "Even better than an Oscar,"

"Hollywood has been credited for playing a major role in the efforts that led to Gore's [Peace Prize] award Friday." Laurie David, apparently a power behind putting Gore on a studio blue screen, "saw Gore's slide show on global warming at a private Los Angeles presentation in 2004. She immediately asked Pulp Fiction producer Lawrence Bender to get involved. They approached Burns [Scott Burns, a producer of An Inconvenient Truth] and director Davis Guggenheim, then set up a pitch session with Gore at a hotel in San Francisco in spring 2005....Participant Productions - founded by EBay pioneer Jeff Skoll - came onboard with financing, and Guggenheim immediately went to work.....John Lesher, the newly installed head of Paramount Pictures' specialty film division, made the documentary one of his first purchases."

That figures. Leave it to West Coast, anti-American lefties to help a failed politician perpetrate a fraud, a big lie. It is also noteworthy that Laurie David immediately contacted Bender, producer of Quentin Tarantino's 1994 Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction, an episodic collection of stories about Los Angeles low-life criminals. Who better, she must have thought, to help pull off a celluloid non sequitur?

In "The Worm and the Spider," a review I wrote of Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction for the May 1995 Intellectual Activist (and which also appeared in the April 9, 1995 Las Vegas Review-Journal), I noted Bender's (and director Tarantino's) contempt for plot and logic, and his penchant for mindless violence, mayhem, and obscenities. It is a short cinematic journey, in terms of man-hating "art," from depicting the nihilism of brutes to the nihilism of environmentalism.

From one perspective, one cannot help but view Gore's An Inconvenient Truth as his vengeance for having lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Perhaps he wishes to punish America and Americans for having denied him the White House, from which he could have more easily imposed his (not our, what's this "we" business?) environmentalist "choices" without having to resort to a slide show.

From a more fundamental perspective, however, environmentalism, which has become a no-questions-permissible secular religion (and the last graspable straw of the left wing), is Gore's Allah, to which he is urging everyone to bow - or else.

Heinlein Quote of the Day

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein was philosophically mixed, but capable of some great quotes. Here's a classic that was recently cited on Instapundit:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

Immigration Voice

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Some months ago, I blogged about what I consider to be the real U.S. immigration problem: the way the U.S. restricts the immigration of doctors, engineers, and other well-educated professionals from immigrating to the U.S. While, many such people still want to make the U.S. home, I think that will change some decades from now, and today's policies will have contributed to the change.

I recently found a blog called "Immigration Voice", which describes its purpose thus:

Blog for Immigration Voice, striving to a) reform the broken employment-based Immigration System for the United States to maintain a competitive edge b) safeguard the interests of legal, English-speaking, skilled Global professionals waiting for their employment-based Green Cards

When will the Malkins, O'Reilly's and Lou Dobb's of the world speak up for these people, who spend years squeezed into the pipeline called legal immigration? I've lived in that pipe, and it was so unnecessary. How can anyone look at the stuff on this site and think that these people are somehow going to undermine America!

Job insecurity saved my career

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

A chart at the Economist compares the average job tenure of developed countries.  At four years, the United State has the shortest average tenure by far, with the British working more than double that duration, and the Greeks working over 12 years at the same job.  No doubt that many will use these numbers to condemn the U.S. for not protecting “the rights of workers.” In most Western European countries, employers can only fire workers under certain legally-defined conditions, and only after a lengthy disciplinary process subject to independent appeal.  Putting the morality of coercing employers into lifetime contracts aside, do such “protections” really help workers? 

The official French unemployment rate is roughly double America’s, with unemployment among young Frenchmen at about 20%, and lasting much longer on average.   The correlation of high levels and prolonged periods of unemployment with laws meant to protect against unemployment might seem surprising to someone who advocates fixing social problems with legislation.

The glaring problem with the socialistic attitude that society can be improved by replacing voluntary economic activity with a coercive regulatory state is that human beings are not cogs in a machine.  They do not passively follow new regulations, but proactively respond to incentives.  Faced with the practical impossibility of firing unproductive workers, employers would rather not hire them in the first place.   They can hardly be blamed for this, for their alternative is to play a game of Russian roulette and risk being bankrupted with unproductive or even counter-productive employees.  They must try to find people who are passionate about their jobs because once hired, they will earn a salary whether or not they work for it.

I am personally grateful to live in Texas, an “at will employment” state, where either party can terminate employment with no liability.  My career success would not have been possible if I weren’t so easy to fire. 

As I was nearing the end of my master’s degree, I managed to obtain an exclusive internship that promised to jumpstart my career.  Due to a combination of a lack of social skills and planning, I had failed to network with employers, peers, or professors, and managed to swing the internship on the basis of my technical skills and/or academic record.  However less than two weeks before my internship was to start, the company suddenly reneged on the internship offer.  With just a few months until graduation and no personal connections or offers on the table, I started to wonder whether I was any better off than my friends and classmates who went back to their parents with useless liberal arts degrees.   In a similar situation, most young Europeans continue living with their parents for decades and accumulating more useless degrees.

I was not in Europe, and so I was able to do contract work during college, and offered to do a six-week long unpaid “internship” for a think tank I had done some work for.  I’m not familiar with European labor laws, but somehow I doubt that it would be as easy to simply offer one’s services in exchange for room and board with no paperwork or commitment whatsoever.  During that summer, I brushed up on my skills, and was offered a low-paying, but very promising opportunity for a small startup near Austin, Texas.  I had nothing but a degree and a recommendation behind my name, but there was little risk from the perspective of my employer, and so I had my first opportunity to prove my worth.  A year later, I used that experience to get a better position in Dallas.  Exactly a year after that, I changed jobs once more, and then once again seven months after that.  I now work as a month-to-month contractor with no job security whatsoever, but a solid resume and 360% more income than that first job.  Had my employers been bound by French labor laws, I doubt I could have gotten that first chance to prove my worth. 

I am currently employed by a French-owned company, and my coworkers who visit the French headquarters like to joke that their associates there all have good looks but don’t seem to shower or change their clothes.  I don’t know whether it’s true, but it makes sense – without job mobility, superficial characteristics like appearance become much more important when getting that first and only job, and after getting it, there is little incentive to keep up appearances.

 

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Christening the Christener

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

Townhall.com, with its particular mix of Christian conservatives has proved fertile blogging ground time and time again, so when I am in a hurry and in want of blogging material, I will often stop by there for inspiration, so to speak.

Today, brought me big bang for the buck in the form of the following paragraph of this lengthy bit of self-deception by one Gregory Koukl, who claims, but never quite gets around to indicating a proof, that Christianity is "no leap of faith".

There is nothing unreasonable about the idea of a personal God creating the material universe. A Big Bang needs a "big Banger," it seems to me. A complex set of instructions (as in DNA) needs an author. A blueprint requires an engineer. A moral law needs a moral law giver. This is not a leap. This is a step of intelligent reflection. [bold added]

Well, no. Actually it's not just one "step", but the first of an infinite number of steps. Aristotle, whom Koukl cites earlier knew such a series as an "infinite regress". A five year-old could ask in reply, "Well. Who created God?" His age would be no grounds for dismissing such a perceptive question.

And as for Koukl's profound "discovery" that, "Virtually every major thinker in the history of western civilization since Aristotle was a deeply committed Christian theist," all I can do is take note of the chokehold Christianity had over the West for so many centuries after the fall of Rome -- and quote Thomas Sowell, who once remarked upon the complaint that so many Western classics were written by "dead white males": "If we found that the great classics of China were written by Swedes, wouldn't we wonder what the hell was going on?" (Is Reality Optional?, p. 135)

But I digress from the matter at hand. We were contemplating the "Big Banger". For all his willful ignorance, Koukl got on a roll and unwittingly came up with a far more apropos sobriquet for the Almighty than I ever could have, even with my very low opinion of Christianity. After I burst out laughing, I collected myself and, wondering whether it was just me, I polled my wife who was in another room. I asked, "Honey, what does the phrase 'big banger' make you think of?"

Who knew that God's first name was "Richard"?

-- CAV

Ban Belmont's Smoking Ban

From Dr. Yaron Brook:

Belmont, California, recently passed a measure banning smoking in, among other places, multiunit dwellings and outdoor restaurants in order to protect people from secondhand smoke.

"But those who don't wish to be exposed to cigarette smoke do not need a coercive ban to protect them," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "No one is forced to inhale cigarette smoke against his will--if property rights are protected.

Rather than protecting individuals from unwanted smoke, this measure tramples on the rights of property owners.

"Property owners, including restaurant proprietors and apartment landlords, should be free to decide whether or not smoking is allowed on their property and under what conditions. If a potential diner or tenant does not agree to the policy, he is free to take his business elsewhere. But he should not be free to impose his smoking preferences on others, at the expense of their use and enjoyment of their property, or the profitability of their business.

"Clearly, this is not an attempt to protect people from unwillingly inhaling smoke--it is an attempt by the city council to impose its anti-smoking views on Belmont citizens. But no habit could be as destructive as granting the government the power to dictate what we can and can't do on our own property.

"Those who value freedom and property rights should oppose this ban."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute

Will the Big Tent Collapse?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The grumbles from the religious right about leaving the party if the pro-choice Giuliani is the nominee remind us that the Republican Party is a "Big Tent" of various factions -- neoconservatives, social and religious conservatives, free market Republicans -- who are united for little else than that they are not Democrats. To be more accurate, they are united in not being socialists.

The Republican Party is a union riddled with contradictions. Some Republicans want open borders; others want jackbooted police raids of illegal immigrants. Some Republicans think it's fine if gays marry; others quote the Bible and condemn homosexuals as immoral. Some Republicans want to withdraw to Fortress America; others want to pursue neoconservative nation building to spread "democracy" while a few others would like America to assert its national interest and destroy states that sponsor terrorism. A few Republican dinosaurs still long for the Goldwater days when the party seemed to be for laissez-faire capitalism; most are happy with the welfare state, they just want a bit less than the Democrats in order to pretend they're for freedom.

Compared to this the Democrats are united and orderly. All Democrats know what they want: more government. All Democrats adhere to the ideologies of the New Left -- multiculturalism, environmentalism, feminism. When a Dem such as Joseph Lieberman goes off the reservation, he is scorned as a pariah. When a Democrat gently criticizes his own side, he is rebuked for giving the Republicans ammunition.

The conventional wisdom has it that the Republicans are the party with strict discipline, whereas the Democrats are chaotic. The old line goes, "I don't belong to an organized political party -- I'm a Democrat." This might be true in superficial ways, but at root the Republicans are a party full of ideological conflict and the Democrats are a party of ideological conformity. Political correctness comes from the left and is inescapable on the left. A politically incorrect Democrat is not long a Democrat; soon he becomes a neoconservative.

The Republican Big Tent is, I believe, a reaction to Marxism. When the Industrial Revolution was young, the conservatives hated it. They romanticized the middle ages and despised factories, smoke stacks, the division of labor, etc. They longed for the old order, in which everyone knew his place, when God was on his throne in Heaven and all was right in the world. J.R.R. Tolkien was such a conservative; his Shire is a happy, pre-capitalist English town, whereas Mordor is a twisted view of an industrial nation with regimentation and belching smoke stacks. The conservatives were the first enemies of capitalism.

Then came along one Karl Marx, who secularized the conservatives' arguments against capitalism and created dialectical materialism and communism. Marxism was a tremendous success that spread like wildfire through the west. The conservatives had no choice but to band together with their enemy, the pro-capitalist liberals, against their greater enemy the socialists. In America the anti-socialist party accepted the term conservative and gave up liberal, which was immediately claimed by the socialists.

By the mid-20th century it was obvious to all but those blinded by Marxist ideology that capitalism worked and communism did not. The 20th century was a long series of laboratory experiments demonstrating capitalism's productiveness: where people were free, they thrived; where people were not free, they were poor.

Capitalism's productivity presented a problem to the anti-capitalist left. The Old Left's claims of outperforming capitalism because the communists had a planned economy were nothing but a joke by mid-century. They solved the problem by finding an ideology that held productivity itself to be bad. Thus was environmentalism born. Scientific socialism could be thrown overboard -- or at least put on the back burner -- as long as the left could continue pursuing the destruction of capitalism. The left is essentially nihilist: what replaces capitalism is not as important as its destruction.

Capitalism also presents a problem to the religious conservatives -- a problem they are still struggling with and have yet to resolve. Religion upholds the morality of altruism, the idea that the strong must sacrifice for the weak. Capitalism is plainly based on selfishness and greed, what Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness. If one adheres to the morality of altruism consistently, one is led to support the welfare state with the Democrats. This is a contradiction the religious right must resolve.

But the contradictions between capitalism and mysticism go even deeper. If Augustine could be resurrected and set down in midtown Manhattan, his mind would be horrified once he understood what he saw. He would be repulsed by a civilization that is focused on pursuing happiness in this Satanic realm of existence instead of focusing on the Kingdom of God that one enters after death. He would hate a civilization that values science and reason more than blind faith. Modern Christians have been able to evade or plaster over these contradictions so far, but crises have a way of forcing one to act in accordance with what he really believes. Will future crises tear the Republican Big Tent apart?

It might be a testament to the Republicans' vaunted party discipline that the coalition of religionists, individualists, country clubbers and others has held together so well. Or perhaps it is the way a two-party system works: factions are forced by their greater enemy to come together with lesser enemies. Currently, there are calls for James Dobson and the religious conservatives to support Giuliani in order to defeat Hillary Clinton in '08.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to the Republicans' Big Tent will be the spread of Objectivism in American culture. At some point, when a large enough percentage of Americans believes that selfishness is a virtue, the religious right will be galvanized into choosing what they really believe. They will have to decide between religion and capitalism. I believe they will choose religion and forge an alliance with the anti-capitalist left. The mystics will be happier then without having to pretend they value freedom. For the first time in several centuries the conservatives will be home again where they should be -- on the side that opposes capitalism.

Kant vs. Columbus (Part 1)

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

50 Bush Quotes on Religion

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

50 Bush Quotes on Religion:

1. I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. (Sharm el-Sheikh August 2003)

2. I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job. (Statement made during campaign visit to Amish community, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Jul. 9, 2004)

3. I'm also mindful that man should never try to put words in God's mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God. (Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005)

4. God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear. (Los Angeles, California, Mar. 3, 2004)

5. I tell people all the time, you're equally American if you're a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. You're equally American if you believe in an Almighty or don't believe in an Almighty. That's a sacred freedom. (Washington, D.C., Mar. 10, 2006)

6. Well, first of all, you got to understand some of my view on freedom, it's not American's gift to the world. See, freedom is God -- is God given. (Interview with TVR, Romania, Nov. 23, 2002)

7. I'm sure there is some kind of heavy doctrinal difference, which I'm not sophisticated enough to explain to you. (Explaining the issues involved in his switching from attending an Episcopal church to attending a Methodist one, around Jul. 1, 1994)

8. I don't think you order suiciders to kill innocent men, women, and children if you're a religious person. (Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, Jul. 14, 2004)

9. And there's nothing more powerful in helping change the country than the faith -- faith in Dios. (National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., May 16, 2002)

10. We believe in an Almighty, we believe in the freedom for people to worship that Almighty. They don't. (Martinsburg, West Virginia, Jul. 4, 2007)

11. The spirit of our people is the source of America's strength. And we go forward with trust in that spirit, confidence in our purpose, and faith in a loving God who made us to be free. (5th anniversary of the Sep. 11 attacks, White House, Sep. 11, 2006)

12. Churches all across the country are reaching out -- synagogues, people from different faiths understand that it makes sense to help their parishioners realize the benefits of this plan. (Sun City Center, Florida, May 9, 2006)

13.We can never replace lives, and we can't heal hearts, except through prayer. (Enterprise, Alabama, Mar. 3, 2007)

14. God bless the people of this part of the world. (Minneapolis, Minnesota, Aug. 4, 2007)

15. I believe there's an Almighty, and I believe the Almighty's great gift to each man and woman in this world is the desire to be free. This isn't America's gift to the world, it is a universal gift to the world, and people want to be free. (Manhattan, Kansas, Jan. 23, 2006)

16. I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah. (White House, Dec. 10, 200117.)

17. I see an opportunity at home when I hear the stories of Christian and Jewish women alike, helping women of cover, Arab American women go shop because they're afraid to leave their home. (Washington, D.C., Oct. 4, 2001)

18. It's a sign from above. Comment made when television light caught fire above crowd. (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Mar. 9, 2001)

19. I did denounce it. I de- I denounced it. I denounced interracial dating. I denounced anti-Catholic bigacy... bigotry. (Responding to attacks on his visit to ultra-conservative Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, Feb. 25, 2000)

20. We are grateful for the freedoms we enjoy, grateful for the loved ones who give meaning to our lives, and grateful for the many gifts of this prosperous land. On Thanksgiving we acknowledge that all of these things, and life itself, come not from the hand of man, but from Almighty God. (Washington, D.C., Nov. 30, 2002)

21. We say in our country, everybody matters, everybody is precious in the sight of an Almighty. (Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota, Oct. 31, 2002)

22. We love the fact that people can worship an almighty God any way they see fit here in America. (Phoenix, Arizona, Sep. 28, 2002)

23. And I just -- I cannot speak strongly enough about how we must collectively get after those who kill in the name of -- in the name of some kind of false religion. (Press appearance with King Abdullah of Jordan, Aug. 1, 2002)

24. We are commanded by God and called by our conscience to love others as we want to be loved ourselves. (Ohio State University, Jun. 14, 2002)

25. By being active citizens in your church or your synagogue, or for those Muslims, in your mosque, and adhering to the admission to love a neighbor just like you'd like to be loved yourself, that's how we can stand up. (Remarks to the cattle industry annual convention and trade show, Denver, Colorado, Feb. 8, 2002)

26. And we base it, our history, and our decision making, our future, on solid values. The first value is, we're all God's children. (Washington, D.C., Jul. 16, 2003)

27. One of the great things about this country is a lot of people pray. (Washington, D.C., Apr. 13, 2003)

28. And there's no doubt in my mind, when the United States acts abroad and home, we do so based upon values -- particularly the value that we hold dear to our hearts, and that is, everybody ought to be free. I want to repeat what I said during my State of the Union to you. Liberty is not America's gift to the world. What we believe strongly, and what we hold dear, is liberty is God's gift to mankind. And we hold that value precious. And we believe it is true. (White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Feb. 9, 2003)

29. This great, powerful nation is motivated not by power for power's sake, but because of our values. If everybody matters, if every life counts, then we should hope everybody has the great God's gift of freedom. (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jan. 29, 2003)

30. The short-term objective of this country is to find an enemy and bring them to justice before they strike us. The long-term objective is to make this world a more free and hopeful and peaceful place. I believe we'll succeed because freedom is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world. (Portsmouth, Ohio, Sep. 10, 2004)

31. And if you choose to -- if you believe in the Almighty, you can -- you're equally an American. If you're a Jew, Christian or Muslim or Hindi or whatever. It is one of the great traits and traditions of our country, where people can worship the way you see fit. (Interview on Larry King Live, CNN, Aug. 15, 2004)

32. By the way, to whom much has been given, much is owed. Not only are we leading the world in terms of encouraging freedom and peace, we're feeding the hungry. We're taking care of, as best as we possibly can, the victims of HIV/AIDS. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jul. 20, 2004)

33. Faith-based is an important part of my life, individually, but I don't -- I don't ascribe a person's opposing my nominations to an issue of faith. (Prime time press conference, White House, Apr. 28, 2005)

34. I believe liberty is universal. I don't believe it is just for the United States of America alone. I believe there is an Almighty, and I believe the Almighty's gift to people worldwide is the desire to be free. (Fort Irwin, California, Apr. 4, 2007)

35. What a powerful statement to the world about the compassion of the American people that you're free to choose the religion you want in our country. (Washington, D.C., Sep. 29, 2006)

36. The United States of America must understand that freedom is universal, that there is an Almighty, and the great gift of that Almighty to each man and woman in this world is the desire to be free. (Nashville, Tennessee, Aug. 30, 2006)

37. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research. ...Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale. (2006 State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 2006)

38. One of the most -- I think one of the most important and interesting domestic initiatives, which I agree has created an interesting philosophical debate, is to allow faith-based programs and community-based programs to access federal money in order to achieve the results we all want. I mean, for example, if you're trying to encourage people to quit drinking, doesn't it make sense to give people somebody an alternative -- he can maybe go to a government counselor? Or how about somebody who calls upon a higher being to help you quit drinking? All I care about is the results. (Sterling, Virginia, Jan. 19, 2006)

39. Every new citizen of the United States has an obligation to learn our customs and values, including liberty and civic responsibility, equality under God and tolerance for others, and the English language. (Tucson, Arizona, Nov. 28, 2005)

40. We have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom, and America will always be faithful to that cause. (Washington, D.C., Jan. 19, 2005)

41.Secondly, it's really important, Pete, that people not think government is a loving entity. Government is law and justice. Love comes from the hearts of people that are able to impart love. And therefore, what Craig is doing is -- he doesn't realize it -- he's a social entrepreneur. He is inspiring others to continue to reach out to say to somebody who is lonely, I love you. And I'm afraid this requires a higher power than the federal government to cause somebody to love somebody. (Summit on School Violence, Washington DC, October 10, 2006)

42. We don't believe that freedom is America's gift to the world. We believe freedom is the God Almighty's gift to each and every person in the world. (California, Oct. 15, 2003)

43. I believe that, as I told the Crown Prince, the Almighty God has endowed each individual on the face of the earth with -- that expects each person to be treated with dignity. This is a universal call. (Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Jun. 3, 2003)

44. All of you -- all in this generation of our military -- have taken up the highest calling of history. You're defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope -- a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out,' -- and to those in darkness, 'be free.' (Aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, a couple of miles away from San Diego May 1, 2003)

45. It's so inspirational to see your courage, as well as to see the great works of our Lord in your heart. (Nashville, Tennessee, Feb. 10, 2003)

46. As Dick mentioned, we mourn the loss of seven brave souls. We learned a lot about them over the last couple of days, and Laura and I learned a lot about their families in Houston, because we met with them. My impressions of the meeting was that there was -- that Almighty God was present in their hearts. (Washington, D.C., Feb. 6, 2003)

47. It's also important for people to know we never seek to impose our culture or our form of government. We just want to live under those universal values, God-given values. (Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2002)

48. Yet we do know that God has placed us together in this moment, to grieve together, to stand together, to serve each other and our country. (Ellis Island, New York, Sep. 11, 2002)

49. The reason I'm -- asked [these AmeriCorps workers] to join us here is because I want you to know, America can be saved one person at a time. (Green Tree, Pennsylvania, Aug. 5, 2002)

50. Government can hand out money, but it cannot put hope into people's hearts. It cannot put faith into people's lives. (West Ashley High School, Charleston, South Carolina, Jul. 29, 2002)

Some of those quotes are more interesting and relevant than others, of course. Two points:

(1) Bush often acknowledges that people have the right not to believe in or worship any God. That's better than his father, who thought that atheists weren't really citizens. Yet he doesn't believe in the separation of church and state: he gladly uses government to promote religion with faith-based programs and openly governs according to his religious faith.

(2) One particular instance of that governance by religion is Bush's view that God wants freedom for all the people of the world, not just America. That's a basic motivation for his foreign policy, not only his wars of "liberation" in Afghanistan and Iraq but also his push for democratic elections even when that puts Islamic totalitarians in power. Given the religious foundations of those policies, it's no wonder that the resulting disasters didn't dissuade him. (The 2006 election of the Democrats did result in a shift in policy, presumably because that election reflected God's will.

"Captain America" Retires

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

3-Time UFC Heavyweight Champion Randy Couture retired Thursday, officially ending his reign over a sports empire he was instrumental in building. As Mixed Martial Arts becomes more prominent in the news (the UFC was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated earlier this year) and more profitable at the bank (the UFC had the highest pay-per-view ratings in 2006), only one man could accurately be described as "the face of MMA" in America.

Randy Couture will be remembered as MMA’s greatest champion and ambassador. An Olympic athlete, an honorable sportsman, an intelligent spokesman, an unconquerable warrior -- these are the traits used to describe a superhero. The moniker "Captain America" is truly fitting.

As a 3-time Heavyweight Champion of the UFC, Randy Couture is unarguably the Baddest Man on the Planet. A tougher human being literally could not be found. Yet he charmed an entire generation of sports fans with his pride, his professionalism, and his perspicacity. In a country riddled with spoiled, belligerent, and criminal athletes, a true sportsman like Couture is a breath of fresh air.

I have no doubt but that the healthy UFC will continue its meteoric success after Couture's departure. But he will be sorely missed by his fans, his promoters, and especially by those he inspired to compete in an exciting new sport. One can only hope that out of the next generation of fighters, some elite few will approach the sport as Couture did.

Football gave us men like Dan Marino and Brett Favre. Basketball has Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan. Boxing’s greatest include names like Rocky Marciano and Muhammed Ali. Now “The Natural” Randy Couture joins Royce Gracie in the group of Mixed Martial Arts’ founding members and greatest heroes.

Thanks for the ride, Randy, and best wishes in your future endeavors.

--Dan Edge

Spanish-language Activism

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Many U.S. businesses are spending more money on Spanish advertising. That got me wondering if think-tanks (like Heritage and AEI) and have Spanish-speaking spokesmen. It seems that think-tanks with such spokesmen would have a better chance of being booked on Spanish TV networks and radio-stations.

The idea is not to communicate in Spanish in order to appear more empathetic. Rather, those channels might be quicker to book a Spanish-speaker. Spanish language TV networks reach about 15% of U.S. households. Cable-delivered digital channels are available to over 80%. There are also some Spanish radio stations. This is coverage, not the actual number who watch; but, in some states, I assume the numbers could be considerable.

It would be great to see ARI present Objectivism's unique views to this audience, not just on immigration, but on a variety of other topics. I wonder if OAC has any up-and-coming intellectuals who are fluent in Spanish.

The Wallet Test

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This group dropped 100 wallets in a public place (each containing a small amount of cash, a fake $50 gift certificate, and an ID) in front of a hidden camera in order to see who would keep the wallet and who would return it. They then tabulated their results, including a breakdown by age, race, and gender. There's also a FAQ and a short 8-minute video about the project.

They are careful to make the following disclaimer:

Note: It was not the intention of this experiment to make any particular group look bad, reinforce stereotypes nor to further a hidden agenda of any kind. The actions of a few members in a group should not, of course, be used to judge the whole group.

Of course, there's plenty of online discussion, questions, and ranting about the meaning and significance of the results.

For those who care, it is technically a crime to take a lost wallet in Illinois, where the test was performed (720 ILCS 5/16-2 "Theft of Lost or Mislaid Property".) This may or may not be widely known amongst the general population however.

(Via Clicked.)

Student Suspended for Advocating Concealed Carry on Campus

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Hamline University Student Suspended After Advocating Concealed Carry for Students: School Orders Psychological Evaluation:

Hamline University has suspended a student after he sent an e-mail suggesting that the Virginia Tech massacre might have been stopped if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Student Troy Scheffler is now required to undergo a mandatory "mental health evaluation" before being allowed to return to school. Scheffler, who was suspended without due process just two days after sending the e-mail, has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

Un-freaking-believable.

Atlas Shrugged

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand was published on October 10, 1957, 50 years ago today. It is my favorite novel. I believe it is the greatest novel ever written.

The book is a publishing phenomenon. Last year it sold 130,000 copies, more than the year it came out. How many other novels published in the 1950's can boast such sales figures? (And how many of those have yet to be made into a movie?) These sales come despite the contempt the novel has gotten from tastemakers on the left and right since it was first published. Whittaker Chambers in National Review made the novel sound like the second coming of Adolph Hitler, an outrageous smear. (Could there be a worse person to review Atlas Shrugged than a communist who had become a Christian?) The conservative Andrew Ferguson recently dismissed Rand's novels as "preposterous" and the leftist maverick Christopher Hitchens has sneered at them as "transcendently awful."

If you accept the standards of naturalism, to which most serious novels conform, then Tolstoy's War and Peace is the greatest novel and Atlas Shrugged is indeed preposterous and awful. It has an interesting plot with suspense and an exciting climax; characters who are not statistical averages but heroes; a style that is at once clear and poetic, rational and passionate; and worst of all, it has a theme. Moreover, the theme contradicts the morality of both the left and right, undercutting both socialism and religion! Not only does it do all that, but it introduces a radical new philosophy in a 57-page speech. How on earth did such a book ever get published in an age of naturalism, an age in which your typical novel is a dreary, pointless, plotless story about some hapless professor suffering a midlife crisis?

As the venom from conservatives suggests, Atlas Shrugged is in no way conservative. It is radical. It is a revolutionary tract that introduces the philosophy of Objectivism, a philosophy of reality, reason, rational self-interest, capitalism and romanticism. (And it does this while also being a dramatic page-turner, a love story, a mystery and science fiction. To me it's not just the greatest novel, it's the most astonishing and most ambitious. Rand set her purpose high and she fulfilled it.)

Objectivism is now in a race with modern philosophy to determine the fate of Western Civilization. If modern philosophy continues to spread subjectivism, moral relativism, altruism, egalitarianism and collectivism, then statism will continue to grow and America will continue to lose its freedom. The nihilistic black hole of modern philosophy paves the way for religion to fill the value vacuum; as history shows, religion also leads to dictatorship. The enlightenment, of which America is a product, was the historical lowpoint of religion. If Objectivism spreads the morality of rational self-interest and individualism, then the march toward dictatorship will be halted and turned around.

That last paragraph probably baffled all but those who already agree with it. Any discussion of the effects of philosophy on politics and culture is highly abstract and hard to make real. I can't do it in a blog post, but what I can do is point the reader to the book that does make it real, that concretizes the philosophical struggle of Western Civilization. That book is Atlas Shrugged. It shows what altruism-collectivism-mysticism are doing to America -- and it provides the solution.

I can't do the novel justice here. All I can do is suggest you try it, you might like it. Or you might not. I have pushed the book on many family members and friends, none of whom read it. I think people are more likely to read a book they find and buy themselves than one they get as a gift. People seem to think, "You're giving me 1,000 pages to read? As if I didn't have enough work to do!" So I won't give you the book; but if you should see it in a bookstore someday and recall this review... go for it.

The Practicality of Free Medicine

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

It is moral to keep the government out of the medical sector because socialized medicine violates the rights of doctors and patients alike. And since man's rights pertain to his freedom to act within a social context, is practical to reduce government involvement in the medical sector because government force in this case renders moot certain decisions each party would make, such as what to charge and what to pay for a given procedure.

One can understand this in the abstract, and yet still want some concrete examples to back himself up when arguing against the enslavement of physicians that politicians of all stripes are considering these days. For this purpose, John Stossel's latest column comes to the rescue:

A doctor in Tennessee I talked to publishes his low prices, such as $40 for an office visit.

Most doctors would say you can't make money this way. But Dr. Robert Berry told me you can. "Last year, I made about the average of what a primary-care physician makes in this country," he said.

Berry doesn't accept insurance. That saves him money because he doesn't have to hire a staff to process insurance claims, and he never has to fight with companies to get paid.

His mostly uninsured patients save money, too. Unlike doctors trapped in the insurance maze, Berry works with his patients to find ways to save them money.

"It's coming out of their pockets. And they're afraid. They don't know how much it's going to cost. So I can tell them, 'OK, you have heartburn. Let's start out with generic Zantac, which costs around five dollars a month.'" When his patients ask about expensive prescription medicines they see advertised on television, he tells them, "They're great medicines, but why don't you try this one first and see if it works?"

Sometimes the $4 pills from Wal-Mart are just as good as the $100 ones.

Aside from the fact that this column, like the others in this series, focuses exclusively on the economic side of the question of whether we should socialize medicine, one flaw is that Stossel, although he made it clear why health insurance is a mess in an earlier installment, sounds too much like he blames health insurance companies for the current economic mess in the medical sector.

(To reiterate his earlier point: The involvement of insurance companies in ordinary medical expenses are also caused by government interference in the economy. Insurance companies will always be concerned with fraud, but this issue should not come up with practically every single doctor's visit.)

Nevertheless, for those of us who understand the immorality of ordering men around at the point of a gun -- and that freedom unleashes torrents of productivity from the men of the mind -- this column offers some valuable intellectual ammunition.

-- CAV

Columbus, Through the Eyes of an American Patriot

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

Pentagon Infiltrated by the Borg

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

If you want to measure the progressive success of what the Muslim Brotherhood calls in its manifesto “Civilization Jihad” (or what Steven Emerson or Robert Spencer would call “cultural jihad”), one need look no further than the front page of The Washington Times of October 3rd. At the bottom is the headline, “Pentagon observes Muslim holy month,” accompanied by a color photograph of several people, some in uniform, others not, bowing east to Mecca. Up front are all the shoeless men; far in the rear, women in hijibs and caftans.

“Navy imam Chaplain Abuhena M. Saifulisam lifted his voice to God as he called to prayer more than 100 Department of Defense employees Monday at a celebration of Ramadan at the Pentagon.

“’God is most great,’ sang the lieutenant commander and Islamic leader, in Arabic, as iftar – the end of the daily fast – began.”

Isn’t that what Mohammad Atta and his fellow kamikaze “warriors” yelled as they flew their hijacked planes into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and a Pennsylvania field on 9/11? So, the religion that was “hijacked,” according to President Bush, has penetrated the Pentagon again.

“As the Pentagon celebrated Ramadan, the White House is in preparations for an iftar feast tomorrow, said Lt. Commander Saifulislam, who will be participating at the White House events.

“’President and Mrs. Bush host an iftar dinner every year because they want people around the world to know how much they respect Islam and the many Muslims living in the U.S. who are free to worship as they want, and are an integral part of our society,’ said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.”

Consider the “war against terrorism” lost then. After all, President Bush not only “respects” Islam, the born-again Christian also hears God speaking to him.

“’We live in a great nation,’ said master of ceremonies Lt. Col. Timothy Oldenburg, a Muslim. ‘Yes, it is our First Amendment right to do that – to practice our religion the way we feel, to worship God and to come to the Pentagon and celebrate Ramadan.’”

Timothy Oldenburg? He must be a convert who “embraced” the creed. Does he have a secret Arabic-style name? Most Western Islamic converts usually adopt one. A photo of him also accompanies The Washington Times article. It shows a beardless, smiling face, bland except for glassy eyes sparkling with flinty, defensive sanctimony. Why is demonstrating his obeisance to Allah in the Pentagon so important to him? Aren’t taxpayers’ dollars already being wasted in the “war on terror”? Must they also subsidize multi-denominational chapels and a wayside mosque, as well?

If Sharia law gains legal ground as a legitimate moral code and begins to insinuate itself into American civil law – as various American Muslim groups are working to do – of what value will be the First Amendment?

Once upon a time, there was a separation of church and state. Doubtless in less religion-conscious times, Pentagon employees practiced their “faith” elsewhere, that is, outside the Pentagon. I have not been to the Pentagon, but there were and probably still are multi-denominational “chapels” throughout the maze, but before 9/11, not one Muslim prayer room, outfitted with prayer rugs and whatever other paraphernalia Muslims need to do the Holy Hokey-Pokey.

If the establishment of Muslim prayer rooms in the Pentagon post-dates 9/11, it must be a consequence of President Bush’s “outreach” policy to the moderate Borg.

Here is the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people to freely assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

It could be argued that the taxpayer subsidy of the means with which Oldenburg and his fellow Muslims can freely exercise their Islamic Druidism in the Pentagon constitutes a de facto establishment of religion. The same argument can be made against the Christian chapels. If they want to freely assemble to freely exercise their various ghost-worshipping delusions, they can do it elsewhere, not on property taxpayers are maintaining with their confiscated dollars.

(Coincidentally, when I was in the Air Force, I questioned the propriety of churches on military bases.)

“’We do all we can to help meet the religious needs of our soldiers,’ said Deputy Pentagon Chaplain Army Maj. Alan Pomaville, a Christian, who attended the iftar alongside the Muslim chaplains. ‘The leadership in the [Defense Department] wants to care for the body of the whole soldier.’”

But, apparently, not care enough to win a war. Not even the wrong one.

“The Navy’s chief of chaplains, Rear Adm. Robert F. Burt, reminded those attending the ceremony that American men and women, regardless of their religious background, should be honored because all ‘are willing to put their uniform on and lay down their life for this country.’” [Sic]

The egregious grammar aside, what is the rear admiral’s point? Should it make a difference to anyone whether these soldiers are Methodists, Muslims, Catholics, or members of some other sect of ghost-worshipers?

“Lt. Cmdr. Saifulislam said he has presided over funerals of young Muslims service members who have given their lives in the fight against terrorism.” Did he mention they were killed by fellow Muslims? No.

“The first Muslim U.S. congressman – Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat – also attended the iftar, along with Imam Sheik Rashid Lamptey, executive director of the Muslim Association of Virginia….

“As the night’s festivities concluded, Lt. Col. Oldenburg presented Sheik Lamptey with an American flag that flew over the Pentagon on September 7.”

Doubtless the sheik will use it as a prayer rug, first having a humble Muslim seamstress alter it to replace the 50 stars in the blue canton with a big white crescent on a green canton (Saudi colors).

“’It is not a choice for us to know each other,’ said Lt. Cmdr. Saifulislam regarding the diversity in the U.S. and military. ‘It is a necessity for us to know each other.’”

I must agree, but with the proviso that I like to know my enemy. All things are not bright and beautiful, least of all Islam.

Speaking of Virginia, there was a minor flap over Governor Timothy Kaine’s appointment of a Muslim, Dr. Esam Omeish, a northern Virginia surgeon and president of the Muslim American Society, to the Virginia Commission on Immigration. When someone reminded the governor that MAS is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother of all Islamic jihadist organizations, Omeish was asked to resign from the appointment.

Omeish claimed that he was forced out as a result of a “right wing” smear campaign and “Islamophobia.” But, he “smeared” himself when excerpts of his speeches, which called for violent jihad – the “jihad way” – against Israel in support of the Palestinians, appeared on YouTube, and were communicated to Governor Kaine and widely publicized.

In an Associated Press article in the Daily Press (Newport News, Va) of September 29, “Right-wing campaign blamed for ouster,” Omeish is reported to have said at a September 28 press conference that his use of the term “jihad” was misinterpreted. “’It is not a call for violence. We never condone terrorists,’ Omeish said of his speeches on behalf of the Palestinians. ‘We have been very clear from the beginning. It is the same every time we speak. It’s consistent based on our beliefs.’”

This man is blessed with the “gift of tongues.”

“Jihad,” insists Omeish and his brethren, merely means a personal “struggle.” But, a “struggle” against what? Reason? Freedom? Being Westernized? Succumbing to the liberty of smoking, eating, drinking, ogling beautiful girls, and chewing gum during Ramadan? It’s a “spiritual” struggle, they claim. Well, Atta and his fellow zombies won their “spiritual struggle” and attained a complete state of self-annihilation, together with the annihilation of 3,000 people.

That is “the jihad way” in its most personal, essential, and fundamental meaning.

No, activist Muslims never “condone terrorists,” not publicly. That is part and parcel of their Janus-like practice of taqiya, or Mohammad-sanctioned dissimilation for the infidels and the dhimmis, current and future. Among themselves, and in mosques, their rhetoric is fiery and more to the point. He is right that what he said in his speeches is “consistent” with his beliefs. Orwell had a term for that kind of consistency: doublethink.

“Some anti-terror groups [read Steve Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, God forbid they get the free publicity that “moderate” Muslims get],” goes the AP article, “have for years been critical of the Muslim American Society, alleging that it is essentially a front group for Islamic radicals and citing links to the Muslim Brotherhood, a popular movement in the Muslim world that advocates the formation of Islamic governments in the Middle East.”

This piece of news must take the award for disingenuous “reporting.” The “alleged” links have been thoroughly documented by Emerson, Pipes, Spencer, Wafa Sultan, and others. And, the Brotherhood advocates not only forming Islamic governments in the Middle East, but in the West, as well.

Again, from the Muslim Brotherhood’s manifesto:

“The Ikhwan [invaders, the Borg, the Orcs, fifth columnists, what have you] must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all religions.”

Apparently, when discussing the “alleged” links to such a program of conquest, the reporter didn’t want to “go there.” Congress doesn’t need to abridge freedom of speech or the press, not when most of the press abridges its own freedom in the name of political correctness [otherwise called self-censorship] and reports only the news that fits a multicultural mantra. To report the “alleged” facts might upset CAIR, MAS, Oldenburg and Omeish. Not to mention the Saudis, the Taliban, Ahmadinejad, and the Brotherhood itself. The reporting of the facts about the Brotherhood they would all characterize as “Islamophobia.”

The Washington Times of October 3 also carried a long commentary by Cal Thomas on Omeish’s resignation, “The Jihad Way.” While Thomas makes many of the same points that are made here, he errs when he employs the terms “extremist,” “radical” and “moderate” when describing Muslims who are in the public eye (and not the poor saps who run the local 7/11 or Citgo station). Apparently he doesn’t get it either, that Islam is neither “radical” nor “extremist,” that it is what it is, a political-theological ideology of conquest and reverse assimilation which the rank-and-file lack either the brains or spine to repudiate. His “heart” is in the right place – he sees the danger of taking creatures like Omeish for their word – but his mind is elsewhere.

“Former Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, a moderate Muslim, was in Washington last week. I asked her how concerned the United States should be, especially when we see and hear radical talk from people such as Dr. Omeish.

“Speaking of the radicals, she told me ‘They are infiltrating [the United States and England]. What I am hearing is that they are now wanting to buy people off [and] plant people in intelligence and the military….’” After reminiscing about how “moderate” Islam was when she was a girl, she added that the “West is losing the war against radicals.”

Buying people off with Saudi and United Arab Emirates petrodollars, and planting people in the Pentagon? Unthinkable! What a slanderous thought!

I have said it before many times: Excise the fundamentals from the fundamentalist nature of the creed, and there would be no Islam, radical, extremist, moderate, or otherwise.

In the meantime, Hirsi Ali, the Dutch member of parliament who repudiated Islam, fled the Netherlands for the U.S., and was hired by the American Enterprise Institute, has been forced to return to the land of Dutch dhimmis because while the U.S. issued her a green card for permanent residency, it shortly afterwards refused to offer her protection from Islamic assassins for “legal reasons.” Up to now, the Dutch government had paid for that protection, and now is withdrawing it. According to DutchNews.nl of October 3, she will continue her work with the AEI from a secret address. That is, from hiding.

Her implicit expulsion doubtless was a coordinated effort of the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, not a part of Bush’s “outreach” policy. After all, if she were allowed to stay, that might have offended “moderate” Muslims. One supposes that Emma Lazarus’s inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty can’t apply to Hirsi Ali.

Yes, we will allow countless semi-literate, politically clueless, tribalist Mexicans into the country (and not utter a word to them about how and why the country was founded, that would be “racist” or “cultural imperialism”), but not welcome anyone with brains, principles, character and courage.

By the way, October 12 will be a red-letter day for the U.S. It marks two holidays, neither of them American: Eid al Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and Dia de la Raza, or the Mexican “Day of the Race.”

Let the festivities begin.

"Pressuring" Iran While Ahmedinijad Strolls the Red Carpet

By Elan Journo:

Some people fear that Washington is taking overly aggressive steps in an attempt to stop Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. is lobbying the UN to impose yet more, putatively tougher, sanctions on Iran. And the U.S. Senate has urged the White House to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization--a designation that will allegedly enable Washington to deter Teheran's nuclear quest.

But according to Elan Journo, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "in reality these supposedly tough measures are hollow; they cannot deter, let alone intimidate, Iran. That these measures are in fact a pretense at confronting Iran was underscored by Mahmoud Ahmedinijad's visit to New York City this week."

"The U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran several months ago were mere inconveniences that taught Iran that it has nothing to fear from us. More pinprick-sanctions, if they ever materialize, cannot stop Iran from waging its proxy terrorist war against us, nor from killing more U.S. troops in Iraq, nor from developing nuclear weapons. The notion of singling out the Revolutionary Guard Corps--an organ of Teheran's militant regime--as a terrorist organization is as ludicrous as narrowly declaring Hitler's SS as an enemy force. In reality our government has abdicated its responsibility to protect us from the threat of Iran.

"Far from confronting Iran, Washington is utterly meek--a fact highlighted during Ahmedinijad's flamboyant speaking tour in New York. Ahmedinijad is the head of a regime stained with the blood of hundreds upon hundreds of Americans, victims of an Iranian-backed terrorist war that began in 1979. Our leaders busily draft word-splitting sanctions and hollow declarations, but they cannot stir themselves sufficiently to reject the diplomatic protocol allowing world leaders visiting the UN to enter America--and to forbid Ahmedinijad from setting foot on U.S. soil.

"Why do our leaders behave like timorous, submissive lambs? Because they do not believe we have the moral right to stop Iran's nuclear quest. To do that would mean putting America's interests first, which today's prevailing ethical standard condemns as selfish, and immoral. Washington's moral premise rules out as illegitimate U.S. self-assertion; it rules out the dedicated pursuit of American self-defense. This does not mean we should launch another Iraq-like crusade to bring them elections; it means asserting ourselves in self-defense; it means protecting U.S. lives by destroying Iran's militant regime.

"Who could seriously believe that Washington is being 'tough' on Iran, when the Islamist Ahmedinijad is permitted to swagger into New York City?"

A Foreign-Aid Controversy . . . Reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged

By Elan Journo:

What does Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged have to do with a current debate over U.S. foreign aid? More than you might think.

The New York Times reports about the latest dispute over how U.S. foreign aid should be spent. One faction claims that, because the rising cost of food reduces how much can be bought, the government should reserve some money in a "safe box" designated to feed people facing chronic hunger--while others insist that U.S. aid money remain liquid enough to enable us to respond quickly to food emergencies.

But there's one crucial question that no one is asking: While there's much debate over the means of providing aid and while some critics fault our government's aid agency for inefficiencies--no one challenges the basic goal of doling out billions in foreign aid. The notion that Americans have a moral duty to sacrifice their hard-earned wealth to fund such a global welfare schemes is taken as self-evident.

But Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged levels a fundamental challenge to that widely accepted moral premise.

The startling view dramatized in her book is that welfare schemes such as foreign aid are profoundly unjust--and that we have no duty to sacrifice our wealth to feed and clothe the poor, regardless of whether they live across the globe or across the street. On the contrary, on Rand's view as projected in her novel and nonfiction works, those who earn their prosperity by production and trade have an absolute moral right to every penny of their income. Her revolutionary conception of morality holds that self-sacrifice is a vice and that pursuing one's rational self-interest is a virtue.

As for the 'have-nots' in Africa and across the world, their plight is a result of not having freedom and individualism; they are miserably poor because of their bloody tribalism and superstition--ideas that kept the Western world dirt poor for centuries. If Westerners were truly interested in helping them, they would teach them to embrace reason, individualism and capitalism--precisely the values responsible for the West's prosperity, but which are today being eroded through endless altruist policies.

It is high time Americans learned to question not merely the means, but the very goal of foreign aid--and understand the truly destructive nature of the altruist morality that justifies it.

Why Businessmen Love Atlas Shrugged

By Alex Epstein:

If you ask any hundred successful businessmen chosen at random to name the book that has most inspired them, you will undoubtedly hear one title repeated over and over: Atlas Shrugged--Ayn Rand's epic novel, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. Why do businessmen love Atlas Shrugged?

Because, in the form of a thrilling novel with inspiring heroes, it does something no other book has ever done: it presents the pursuit of profit, the essence of business, as a profoundly moral activity.

Observe that while profit-seeking is widely recognized as economically indispensable, it is also widely regarded as morally tainted, if not outright immoral. This applies, not just to attempts to "profit" via theft or fraud, but to the pursuit of profit as such. For example, pharmaceutical companies who successfully develop and sell life-saving drugs, oil companies who explore the ends of the earth to extract a vital resource, and financiers who efficiently invest wealth through our dynamic financial markets are all routinely castigated for their high profits. And those who defend profit-seeking do so, not on moral grounds, but as an amoral means to a noble end: the "public good"--i.e., the good of everyone besides businessmen themselves.

To the extent honest, productive businessmen absorb this view of their profession--and most do, to some extent--they experience unearned guilt over their work, and are unable to morally challenge the ever-increasing taxes and regulations foisted on them for the "public good." Atlas Shrugged rocks their world.

The heroes of Atlas Shrugged are a group of great achievers, mostly businessmen, who, like businessmen today, live in a world that damns, shackles, and drains them. But these achievers refuse to accept this treatment; they fight back. They go on strike, refusing to work in a society that at once depends on their achievements but brands them immoral for seeking to profit from those achievements. They let the world see what happens when their "immorality" is removed. "We are evil, according to your morality," the leader of the strike, John Galt, tells the world in a radio address, "We have chosen not to harm you any longer. . . . We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer."

Without the great, profit-seeking industrialists, what remains is, as Galt puts it, "a world without mind"--a world without the thinker-creators who forge steel by the megaton, direct intricate transcontinental train networks, and bring new inventions to the masses--a world that quickly spirals downward into poverty and destruction.

As readers witness how the world treats the Atlases who carry it on their shoulders, and what happens when Atlas shrugs, they gain a new appreciation for these "dollar chasers," and begin to question the premise that the profit motive is immoral. Readers are joined in this moral-intellectual journey by one of the leading characters in the story, metal magnate Hank Rearden, who is one of the last to learn about the strike.

We meet Rearden at the triumphant culmination of his 10-year-quest to revolutionize the industrial world with Rearden Metal: an alloy far lighter, stronger, and cheaper than steel. When he succeeds, he expects to profit handsomely from sales to grateful customers eager to buy his magnificent new product. Instead, he is punished for his efforts--first by slander and denunciation from a society that damns Rearden Metal as a fraud ("a lethal product of greed")--then by the destruction of his profits by regulations that dictate, in the name of the "public good," how much he can produce and whom he must sell to--and finally by outright nationalization of his product. As his business is destroyed, the world suffers destruction with him--yet his critics still mindlessly damn his pursuit of profit, and demand "wider powers" for the government to curb it.

As Rearden suffers through all this for the sin of trying to make money by creating incredible value, he is led, with the help of the strike's leaders, to a profound moral realization. The selfish pursuit of profit that he so excels at--pursuing his own well-being by his own independent thought, production, and trade--is the essence of what human life requires, and therefore, the highest of moral virtues. "They had known," says Galt of Rearden and the other strikers, "that theirs was the power. I taught them that theirs was the glory."

Armed with, as Galt puts it, "the knowledge of [his] own moral value," Rearden is able to defend himself from government predations like never before. In response to accusations that he "works for nothing but his own profit," Rearden responds defiantly, "I work for nothing but my own profit--which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. . . . I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage--and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. . . . I refuse to apologize for my ability--I refuse to apologize for my success--I refuse to apologize for my money."

Unfortunately, while Rearden experiences a lifelong moral transformation from the story of Atlas, most of the readers of Atlas Shrugged do not. While many businessmen derive lasting inspiration from Atlas, they do not attain or pursue an enduring understanding of the moral virtue of profit--and certainly do not proudly defend their right to practice it freely. Thus, many of Atlas Shrugged's most vocal admirers at once proclaim adoration for the novel, while simultaneously attempting to justify their existence by appealing to some "higher cause" ("the environment," "diversity," "the community")--and certainly do not proudly stand up for their right to pursue profit in a free market. They engage in the same tried-and-failed tactics of behind-the-scenes lobbying and appeals to the "public good" that have led to the shrinking of economic freedom in the last 50 years, just as they did in the 50 years before Atlas Shrugged.

On the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, businessmen should make a point of rereading the novel. But this time, in addition to being inspired to greatness by its heroes, they should pay special attention to the book's radical moral philosophy--a philosophy that has the potential to truly change how they look at their lives and enable them to fight successfully for their freedom.

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

"Non-Interventionism" vs Self-Defense

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

Ron Paul, demonstrating ignorance of American history, indifference about the proper role of government, and utter unfitness for holding the highest office of the land, attempts to defend his "non-interventionist" foreign policy from the charge that it is "isolationist":

A non-interventionist foreign policy is not an isolationist foreign policy. It is quite the opposite. Under a Paul administration, the United States would trade freely with any nation that seeks to engage with us. American citizens would be encouraged to visit other countries and interact with other peoples rather than be told by their own government that certain countries are off limits to them. [bold added]

So if your neighbor's hippie son converts to Islam and becomes interested in waging jihad against America, he would be "encouraged to visit other countries and interact with other peoples ", even if the "other countries" harbor terrorist training camps for useful idiots who would blend in well with American society, and their "other peoples" are in fact waging war against the United States.

Paul would (and in effect does) protest that our military presence in other nations arouses their hostility towards us and that therefore if our military would leave, the realistic scenario I portray above (among others) would not occur.

But is this assertion correct? And, for that matter, is Paul correct that his "non-interventionism" is true to the principles of the Founding Fathers?

On that score, one would do well to consider our war with the Barbary States, in which the Founders themselves undertook military action against Moslem states -- which were attacking American interests despite the fact that our military was nowhere to be found in northern Africa! The Musselmen were (as they are now) motivated to wage war by their own beliefs -- not determined to do so by America's actions.

So much for foreign aggression being all our fault and for the notion that our Founding Fathers saw no need to "intervene" in foreign affairs or, indeed, to project American military power halfway around the globe.

But to fully understand what is wrong with Paul's position and, incidentally, the American policies that give him an undeserved credibility, one must do what libertarians never do: consider what the purpose of government is. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of individuals from being violated by the initiation of force (or the threat thereof) from other individuals.

This is why -- to use Paul's language in a situation that (perhaps) even he can understand, we are "told by our own government that certain actions are off-limits to us". The government "tells us", for example, that we can't rob, defraud, injure or kill each other -- because such actions endanger the individual rights of other citizens. The government enjoys a legal monopoly (constrained by objective law) of the right of each citizen to use force in self-defense. It can, does, and should "intervene" -- when necessary and only when necessary to protect individual rights.

This goes equally well for when it protects us from foreign threats as it does when it protects us from domestic ones -- or from both at once, as in the case of traitors who would provide aid and comfort to foreign aggressors.

This is why our government engages in war against aggressive foreign powers, as it did with the Barbary States, and why it sometimes forbids citizens from trafficking with hostile regimes (as it does rather inconsistently now). To provide aid and comfort to an enemy state is to threaten the lives and rights of other citizens. For our government -- as Paul constantly advocates -- to not "intervene" in such cases would be for it to fail to protect freedom.

Having said that, Bush's failed attempt to "export democracy at the barrel of a gun" is no indictment of the proper "intervention" known as war because, as Dr. John Lewis has so ably argued, it is precisely the opposite of the type of policy our nation should be pursuing now -- which is the total defeat of all nations that support Islamic totalitarianism with their unconditional surrender as the goal.

George Bush and Ron Paul are both wrong: On the one hand, one cannot, as Bush would, grant a people whose culture is anti-freedom a republic through a ballot box forcibly presented. On the other, one cannot expect freedom and peace to reign for long if those who have it fail to protect it from those who do not.

Ron Paul is right on one score: Ideas don't have expiration dates. But With George Bush or Ron Paul in charge, the life-promoting ideas of our Founders, while not expired, will nevertheless remain unused and gathering dust on the shelf.

-- CAV

10-9-07: Added a clarification.

Slow and Steady

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

Scott Powell some time ago introduced me to the valuable work of personal productivity guru David Allen, whose advice has helped me get all manner of little, annoying things out of the way of what I really want or need to spend my time doing. One theme has resonated with me from my initial acquaintance with Allen, through my efforts to implement his ideas, and to the present, when I am beginning to see his system and my discipline really begin to pay off: Slow and steady wins the race.

A couple of weeks ago, Powell picked up on this very theme, but not from the nitty-gritty level of the trenches as he did when recommending Getting Things Done. Rather, he takes a benevolent (and humorous) look through the media of poetry and modern technology at an achievement whose progress he has enthusiastically followed for quite some time.

To see what I mean, read "It Couldn't Be Done", by Edgar A. Guest (aka, "The Poet of the People") over at his blog, and follow the links!

And for those of us contemplating difficult goals, but still at something of an impasse as to how, exactly, to reach them, I recommend taking a look at Dan Edge's post, Start a Journal, Make a List, and Check It Twice". I find that his post and the Edgar Guest poem complement each other very nicely.

-- CAV

And that's why they call him 'the decider'

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

My favorite part: "My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions."

That's right. He makes decisions. Lots of them. That's his job.

Bush: 'I make a lot of decisions'
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 3, 5:34 PM ET

Give the man a microphone and he'll talk about anything. For 76 minutes, President Bush prowled the stage Wednesday in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, giving a speech and answering questions about everything from his opposition to tax increases to his veto of a bill to expand children's health insurance.

But he covered a lot of other ground, too.

Bush gave an intriguing description about what happens when businesses expand, as was the case here at a company run by a woman.

"You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket ? in this case, a woman ? more money in her pocket to expand a business, they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building, somebody has got to come and build the building.

"And when the building expanded, it prevented (sic) additional opportunities for people to work. Tax cuts matter. I'm going to spend some time talking about it," the president said.

He offered a pointed description of his job.

"My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions," the president said.

He elaborated on that point later.

"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

Bush, known for his impatience when fellow leaders rattle on, acknowledged he was doing the same himself in his opening remarks.

"I'll be glad to answer some questions from you if you got any," he said. "If not, I can keep on blowing hot air until the time runs out."

The Seeker’s Anthem

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

Mistaken Consensus

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

Jim May writes in to inform me that John Tierney has written a must-read which appears in the New York Times on what he calls a "severe case of mistaken consensus".

Discussing the incorrectness of the pronouncements of a prominent scientific adviser to a past President, Tierney states that:

It may seem bizarre that [he] could go so wrong. After all, wasn't it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. [He] was expressing the consensus. He ... went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.

We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.

No, the article isn't about global warming, although it indirectly makes a good point about the current global warming debate.

I have argued here before that the biggest shortcoming in the global warming debate is that two separate questions are being confounded. These are: (1) Is human activity causing the climate to become warmer through emissions of greenhouse gases? And (2) If so, should the government impose economic regulations to counteract these effects? In our current debate, legions of non-scientists are fixated on the first question and failing to ask the second question at all, assuming that its answer is "Yes".

The government is the sole social institution that properly wields force (i.e., through the delegated rights of citizens to use force to defend their lives and rights). All questions regarding whether the government ought to "do something" are thus really questions about whether the government should use force. The proper answer to all such questions -- unless any given proposal would lead to the government better protecting the rights of all citizens -- is "No!" because the sole purpose of the government is to protect individual rights.

When the government acts for any purpose other than the protection of individual rights, it forces men to act in accordance to its dictates rather than in accordance with their own best judgement, just like a gun-toting thug saying "Your money or your life." Whether what the government tells you to do happens to coincide with what you might correctly decide to do on your own is irrelevant to the question of whether the government ought to force you to be doing it. The fact is, you are not free act otherwise.

The fact that the government can potentially force us to act in accordance with an incorrect conclusion since it is the "consensus" position eloquently illustrates what is wrong with letting the government run some aspect of our life, rather than protecting our freedom to decide what we ought to do for ourselves.

Tierney's piece is indeed a warning against blindly accepting the "consensus", as so many do in the global warming debate, but that is not the only lesson we should take from it. The real take-home message is that we ought to examine the wisdom of the consensus view that the government should act to save us from every apparent crisis.

-- CAV

Kid Care: The Trojan Horse of Socialized Medicine

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

“It’s a sideshow of a sideshow,” complained the British general in Cairo at the beginning of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, describing the war against the Turks and Germans in the Mideast during World War I. As history notes, the resolution of that sideshow by Western powers spawned greater problems for them in later decades, with the British and French creating the artificial regimes of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Kuwait had been a British protectorate since 1899, while Saudi Arabia is a consequence of Wahhabist campaigns of conquest since the 18th century. The seven members of the United Arab Emirates were also sired by Western political expediency.

Of course, these are all Islamic countries, and some have gone beyond looking the gift horse in the mouth by either demanding submission of the West or calling for its defeat and eradication. Others, such as the UAE are too busy fleecing the West in enormous and extortionate wealth transfers via petrodollars to bother with a jihadist campaign of conquest, though there is plenty of evidence they are passive enablers of it.

The “sideshow” discussed here is an action of Congress that would greatly expand the welfare state. According to a Los Angeles Times article of October 7, “President says he’d compromise on insurance,” the congressional bill “would spend $60 billion over five years to expand health coverage for children of the working poor and middle-class, and it would pay for it with higher tobacco taxes.”

The article reports that President Bush’s “long-promised veto Wednesday set off an ideological battle about who holds responsibility for extending health-care benefits to uninsured children: the government or the private sector.

“Bush has offered $30 billion, a 20 percent increase over current levels but not enough to maintain the existing enrollment in what is known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program [SCHIP], budget analysts say.

“The program is managed by states within federal guidelines and serves about 6 million children. An estimated 9 million children remain uninsured in the U.S., and the number has been rising as employers cut back coverages.”

Let’s subject this reporting to some rational analysis.

The “ideological battle” is a phony one. Both Republicans and Democrats subscribe to the idea that the government has a “responsibility” to ensure that all children and adults have health care. The Republicans are for only a “little bit” of coercion as a moral imperative; the Democrats are more consistent, wanting to enact a coercive program that would entrap everyone, with no spending limits at all. Most Democrats and Republicans never learn that, in politics, an innocuous amount of force is always an overture to wholesale force. The shrewder ones do know.

The “private sector” mentioned in the article is already heavily regulated and subsidized. One would have thought that it was the “responsibility” of children’s parents – the unnamed portion of that “private sector” – to take care of their children, and not a federal or state Nurse Rachett. But rarely do parents enter the picture of national health proposals (except as tax cows).

As evidence of the Republicans’ ignorance of what a “little bit” of coercion logically entails, consider the nature of Bush’s “ideological” opposition to the congressional bill, as reported by the Los Angeles Times:

“He continued to describe the measure that he vetoed as ‘deeply flawed,’ contending that the plan was ‘an incremental step toward their [the Democrats’] goal of government-run health care for every American,’ which he believes is ‘the wrong direction for our country.’”

Which direction is that? Bush did not say. He dared not say.

What he meant was socialized medicine, a term rarely employed by most politicians today. I can recall Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani using it once, perhaps twice. Bush, however, did not want to accuse the Democrats of advocating it. After all, if he is willing to compromise with the bill’s proponents and supporters, calling them closet socialists wouldn’t make negotiations easy, and he doesn’t want to appear to be against health care for children, not the advocate of “No Child Left Behind. ”

And the Democrats do not want to alert Americans that this is exactly what they have in mind. So the term has been swept under the thick rug of populist rhetoric. How childish of these adults to believe that if one doesn’t name a thing, it can’t exist, that it isn’t what one means, that it can’t be or won’t ever be.

One of the bill’s interesting provisions is that it would discourage states from “enrolling children in families that earn more than $60,000 a year.” Do the bill’s authors believe that a household income of $60,000 a year puts the earner in the same income bracket with Bill Gates or George Soros? Do they mean $60,000 before or after taxes, not including all the hidden and direct sales and excise taxes that the average household pays day in and day out? In 1910, $60,000 might have been a small fortune (and it would have been in genuine, non-inflatable gold and silver, no less); to consider $60,000 in fiat, paper money a fortune is too laughable an idea to even dwell on.

It is especially laughable when one knows that every Congressman and Senator pulls in far, far more than $60,000 a year, without performing a single day of productive, wealth-producing labor. Who came up with the arbitrary $60,000 figure? Ted Kennedy, living off his family’s ill-gotten fortune and who has voted and supported every piece of anti-American welfare legislation in his long and disreputable career? John Edwards, the glorified ambulance chaser who made his millions in medical malpractice suits? Multi-millionaire Hillary Clinton, whose transparent duplicity and power-lust are driving her political campaign?

Another interesting provision of the bill is that it would “boost tobacco taxes, raising the levy on cigarettes by 61 cents to $1 a pack.”

Remember the big tobacco industry “master agreement” of yore? It was supposed to fill state coffers so states could combat alleged tobacco-related illnesses and browbeat children and adults about the dangers of smoking. The tobacco industry is still coughing up billions, but all that money shortly was consumed by other state priorities and is still going to programs and pork barrels of the legislators’ eclectic choosings. Practically the only anti-tobacco ads one sees on television now are produced and paid for by Philip Morris.

On October 2, the Ayn Rand Institute published an Op-Ed by Don Watkins, “Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty.” It is worth quoting its opening paragraph:

“Across the country, state and local governments are banning smoking on private property, including bars, restaurants, and office buildings. This is just the latest step in the government’s war on smoking – a coercive campaign that includes massive taxes on cigarettes, advertising bans, and endless multi-billion lawsuits against tobacco companies. This war is infecting America with a political disease far worse than any health risk caused by smoking; it is destroying our freedom to make our own judgments and choices.”

Mr. Watkins can be forgiven for overlooking recent smoking bans in cars with kids as passengers and even outside one’s own home. Also worth mentioning are the fines and/or jail time some localities impose on adults for buying cigarettes for teens working “undercover” for cops. It's hard to keep up with the avalanche of controls at every level of government.

The subject of raising the tobacco tax merits more examination. About 70% of the price of any pack of cigarettes represents a combined levy of federal, state and local taxes, just as about 60% of the price of a gallon of gas represents mostly federal tax. But one of the alleged purposes of the “sin tax” on especially cigarettes is to discourage smokers from, smoking, and coerce them into living “healthier” lives. This is presumably to enable them to better and more efficiently fund the welfare state; which means: living for the state. The contradictory conflict in ends should be obvious here – call it statist schizophrenia – that a dramatic rise in the cigarette tax is supposed to both fund either the Democrats’ $60 billion expansion of the welfare state or Bush’s $30 billion version, and also help stamp out smoking.

Hypothetically speaking, if the anti-smoking campaign is successful in stamping out smoking, with the consequence that the tax generates little or no tobacco revenue to the government, what do the health care bill’s supporters think will fund this five-year program? Where will the money come from?

One errs when one thinks that legislators think beyond a certain effect. But behind such pernicious, liberty-destroying legislation is their knowledge that there are plenty of other “sins” being committed by the population that can be taxed. Foods loaded with trans-fats. Gas. The Internet. Telephone usage. The possibilities are endless.

The welfare of children has often served as a Trojan horse for legislation that eventually is extended to cover adults, from child labor laws to minimum wage laws to medical care for the elderly. Children are viewed by most politicians and advocates of paternalistic and collectivist legislation as helpless in an adult world. But, as Don Watkins points out in his Op-Ed, it is only a matter of time before the government views adults as unprotected, helpless and ignorant, as well, needing the velvet-lined mailed fist of government to oversee their welfare.

“To the extent the anti-smoking movement succeeds in wielding the power of government coercion to impose on Americans its blanket opposition to smoking, it is entrenching paternalism: the view that individuals are incompetent to run their own lives, and thus require a nanny-state to control every aspect of those lives.”

Sideshows such as the proposed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program have a tendency to become three-ring circuses, featuring the looted in one ring, the loot’s recipients in another, and in the middle a master of ceremonies wielding a whip, barking platitudes about sacrifice and the public good.

Ari Armstrong’s Letter to the Editor

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ari Armstrong recently submitted this multiply co-signed letter to the editor to Colorado papers:

Church/State Separation Endorsed by Colorado Voters

The signatories offer the following announcement as a non-exclusive letter to the editor.

As advocates of individual rights and free markets, we are deeply concerned about attacks on economic liberty and property rights. However, we also believe that the greater modern threat to individual rights is the attempt by some religious groups to make politics conform to their faith.

In coming election cycles, we will vote against any candidate who does not explicitly and unambiguously endorse the separation of church and state. We ask that candidates declare whether they:

1. Endorse the separation of church and state.

2. Oppose the spending of tax dollars on programs with religious affiliations, such as "faith-based" welfare.

3. Oppose the spending of tax dollars to teach creationism and/or intelligent design as science.

4. Oppose efforts to restrict the legal right of adult women to obtain an abortion.

5. Oppose bans on embryonic stem-cell research.

Signed,

Ari Armstrong, Westminster
Tom Hall, Louisville
Diana Hsieh, Sedalia
Paul Hsieh, Sedalia
Mike Williams, Denver
Leonard Peikoff, Colorado Springs
Richard Watts, Hayden
Cara Thompson, Denver
Hannah Krening, Larkspur
Erika Hanson Brown, Denver
Bill Faulkner, Broomfield
Cameron Craig, Denver
Bryan Armentrout, Erie

Ari also wrote up a version for individual voters, with the following note: "Voters have permission to reproduce and distribute the following declaration. The document may be signed by individual voters and sent to the candidates for whom they will have an opportunity to vote. The names and addresses of candidates generally can be found through regional newspapers and Secretaries of State." Those names and addresses can be even more easily found on Congress.org.

Dear Candidate,

I hereby add my name to the following declaration:

As an advocate of individual rights and free markets, I am deeply concerned about attacks on economic liberty and property rights. However, I also believe that the greater modern threat to individual rights is the attempt by some religious groups to make politics conform to their faith.

In coming election cycles, I will vote against any candidate who does not explicitly and unambiguously endorse the separation of church and state, whether on his or her web page or in direct correspondence. I ask that candidates declare whether they:

1. Endorse the separation of church and state.

2. Oppose the spending of tax dollars on programs with religious affiliations, such as "faith-based" welfare.

3. Oppose the spending of tax dollars to teach creationism and/or intelligent design as science.

4. Oppose efforts to restrict the legal right of adult women to obtain an abortion.

5. Oppose bans on embryonic stem-cell research.

Signed,

My hearty thanks to Ari for organizing this small effort for the separation of church and state.

Columbus: The Essence of a Man

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

Craig Biddle to Speak at UCLA

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This Thursday, October 11, at 7:00pm, Craig Biddle will be speaking on "Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's Morality of Egoism" at UCLA, Kinsey Pavilion (Knudsen) 1220B.

In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand set forth a new morality, which she called rational egoism. In contrast to altruism--the idea that one should self-sacrificially serve others--rational egoism holds that one should selfishly pursue one's own life-serving values. Against predation--the practice of sacrificing others for one's own ends--Rand's egoism holds that sacrificing others is immoral and impractical. In contrast to hedonism--the idea that pleasure is the standard of value--Rand's egoism holds that the long-range requirements of one's life and happiness constitute the standard of value. And against moral relativism--the notion that "anything goes"--Rand's egoism holds that morality is absolute: Nothing "goes" except that which promotes one's life while respecting the rights of others.

Rand's egoism is a system of observation-based principles regarding the requirements of human life, personal happiness, social harmony, and political freedom. In this talk, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, Craig Biddle presents the basic principles of rational egoism, contrasts them with the alternatives, and shows why everyone who wants to live happily and freely needs to understand and embrace them.

Craig Biddle is the editor and publisher of The Objective Standard and the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It. He is currently writing a book on the principles of rational thinking and the fallacies that are violations of those principles. In addition to writing, he lectures and teaches workshops on ethical and epistemological issues from an Objectivist perspective. He has spoken at Tufts, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Lawrence University, among others.

More information is available on the LOGIC website.

Craig Biddle is an excellent speaker, so I definitely recommend his lectures.

Are There "Bad" Emotions?

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

We know that emotions are the psychosomatic form in which one experiences his automatized value judgments. So if a particular emotional response is a reaction to a false judgment, is it a “bad” emotion? Should one judge himself negatively for habitually experiencing “bad” emotions? These questions recently came up in a conversation with a friend, and I want to share my thoughts on the issue here.

Consider some examples of people whose emotions are responses to irrational value judgments:

A man is taught at a very young age that pleasurable sex is dirty and immoral. He later discovers a rational philosophy and begins to integrate it into his life. He meets a woman who shares his new values, and he falls in love. But when she gives him pleasure, he feels ashamed and angry without knowing why. His lover senses this, and it causes negative tension in the relationship.

Or: a bright young woman discovers Objectivism in middle school, and begins to feel alienated from her peers. She develops a Malevolent People Premise, which she carries into adulthood. She constantly rages against the irrationality in the world. When she receives poor customer service at Walmart one day, it puts her in a bad mood for a week.

In both of these examples, a person’s emotions are reacting to false or inaccurate judgments. And in both cases, the problem is difficult to identify and may continue to exist for many years. The man who feels ashamed during sex is operating according to a false principle: that sexual pleasure is immoral. The woman who rages against poor customer service is also reacting to a false principle: that irrationality is of primary importance in her life. Are these “bad” emotions? Should these two judge themselves negatively for continuing to experience these emotional reactions, even after the problem is identified?

My answer to the former question is “no.” Emotional reactions are automatic -- not volitional -- and as such they are exempt from moral judgment. One cannot judge himself for things which are not under his direct control. Those who condemn themselves for their feelings only compound their psychological confusion. There is no such thing as a “bad” emotion. All emotions are good, in that they provide one with evidence about his automatized value judgments.

Nor is it immoral to retain irrational principles from childhood. A child’s mind is like a sponge, soaking up everything it comes in contact with. Children are not fully volitional in the adult sense. It is not until young adulthood that one gains the ability to sort through his mind’s contents and discard any false premises he may have absorbed.

This principle – that there are no “bad” emotions – is an important one for young Objectivists to recognize. Deeply ingrained contradictions do not disappear the moment one discovers a rational philosophy. It can take years of introspection and self-training to overcome these issues. I have seen too many young people ignore their emotional reactions because, according to their explicit philosophy, that’s not how they should feel. They are ashamed of their “bad” emotions and sweep them under the rug. This compounds their confusion, and the problem persists.

These people fail to identify the root of their psychological problems. It is not the emotion that is wrong, but the automatized judgment associated with it. It is only immoral if one pretends the problem does not exist.

For instance, if the man in the earlier example talks to his lover about his feelings, starts a journal, and ruthlessly introspects about the issue -- then his actions are perfectly moral. His emotional response to sex may not change immediately, but he has nothing to be ashamed of. He is working towards a solution. However, if he represses the emotional reaction because he doesn’t think he should feel it, and ignores the evidence his emotions provide about his automatized values -- then his actions are immoral. He is evading a contradiction.

An adult is certainly responsible for clearing up any false principles in his mind that may exist from childhood. But he cannot hold himself responsible for the emotional reactions to these contradictions. He must fix the problem at the root, and eventually his emotional life will fall in line with his chosen values.

--Dan Edge

Who's Staying and Who's Leaving

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

Social conservatives and Fiscal Conservatives, that's who's staying and leaving the Republican Party. Some of us pointed to this trend after the last elections, but now it's front page news on the Wall Street Journal.

Already, economic conservatives who favor balanced federal budgets have become a much smaller part of the party's base. That's partly because other groups, especially social conservatives, have grown more dominant. But it's also the result of defections by other fiscal conservatives angered by the growth of government spending during the six years that Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress.

The most prominent sign of dissatisfaction has come from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, long a pillar of Republican Party economic thinking. He blasted the party's fiscal record in a new book. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: "The Republican Party, which ruled the House, the Senate and the presidency, I no longer recognize."

The debate about which political party best serves our interests has been ongoing in Objectivist circles since before the start of the Iraq War. Many claim that we, and those who at least nominally think like we do are too small a population to make a difference, and that since the Republicans still have the business vote, they will serve our interests best. Look again. When the Republican party loses the business vote, what will it have that is of interest to anyone with Objectivist leanings? Answer: nothing.

Political dynamics in the US are much like swings in commodity pricing, where demand and supply is usually very balance, and small shifts in either cause huge swings in prices. So too, the country is split roughly 50/50 Republican/Democrat and that means that the swing vote calls the shots, so fewer voters need be of moderate persuasion to significantly impact election results. Witness the 04 election results. So it is that the so-called "fiscal conservative" or "libertarian" wing of the Republican party is a large faction and the Republican party cannot stay dominant without them, and the Democratic party would love to have them. And when factions are courted, one has an opportunity to try to make fundamental change.

I have no illusions that politics will change overnight, but it is the continued exercise of political will based upon rational principles, and the continued communication of those principles that will ultimately see shifts in both parties for the better.

Start a Journal, Make a List, and Check It Twice

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

Towards the end of 2005, I was at a very low point in my life. I had developed an array of bad habits that precluded me from achieving significant life goals. In fact, I had no explicit life goals, beyond the broad framework of principles ingrained into me by years of studying Objectivism. I felt very little passion or motivation for anything.

Late one night, I was talking to my wonderful future wife, Kelly, about my inner sense of suffocation and paralysis. As she so often does, Kelly had a brilliant suggestion for me -- "Start a journal." She advised me to get on my computer that evening, open a Word document, and write at least a few lines. "Just do it, even if all you do is write, 'I don't want to write in this journal right now, but here it is.'"

That's exactly how my first journal entry began. But then I kept going. A half hour later, I had written a page and a half. I decided ahead of time that I would never show the journal to anyone, so I spoke only to myself. Over the next few days, I introspected about the state of my life, my mind, and my emotional state. I began to form a battle plan about what direction my life was going to take. But I knew I needed to start simple.

Day 3 into my journal writing, I decided to make a simple list of tasks to be completed by the next day. These chores included: making my bed, cleaning my bedroom, paying a bill, and making another journal entry. The next day, after I had completed these goals, I placed a digital smiley face -- :) -- next to each completed task. I wrote a new list for the next day and added other chores.

When a particular task became automatic, and I no longer needed to remind myself to do it, I transferred it to a new list which I entitled "Automatized Tasks." Many of the new chores were smaller steps towards larger goals. In this way, I continued to become more goal-oriented an productive.

By the next week, I was working out every day, keeping the house tidy, training the dogs, and keeping close tabs on my finances. A month later, I applied for readmission to the University of South Carolina. Six months later, I finally completed my BA in Philosophy (ten years after I started going to school). About six months after that, I started my own business. It's now been over two years. A day planner has replaced the Word document with the digital smilies, but it serves the same purpose.

These days, I am very productive. I am the president of a small business, a sophomore in the OAC, a weekly blogger, a contributor to The Undercurrent (my article is in the next issue!), and I'm about to start a small eBay business buying and selling old NES video games. Kelly and I will be married in April, and we are in the process of planning our life together. Beyond that, I have found -- or rather created -- my rudder. I have become a deliberate, passionate, productive valuer.

I share this because I know there are others out there who know how to live in theory, but have not learned how to form a plan and execute. If you find yourself directionless and demotivated, I highly recommend keeping a journal and writing lists. Doing these things gives physical reality to your thoughts, goals, and emotions. It provides you with a structure through which you can charge passionately and deliberately in the direction of your dreams.

If this blog entry strikes a chord in you, then I advise you to do what I did -- start your journal tonight. Start simple. Start anywhere. But start tonight!

--Dan Edge

Marion Jones

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Marion Jones has admitted to using steroids. Her statement was forthright and sincere without any passing of the blame -- everything an admittance of guilt should be. Her medals should be taken from her and that should be an end to it.

(A more complicated question: should her teammates in the relays also lose their medals?)

She probably could have fought the accusations of performance enhancing drug use and won, given the idiocy of your average jury. Instead, she admitted everything, and she deserves credit for that. These days being honest and repentant seems like an act of heroism.

I would guess she was tired of living a lie, which takes a psychological toll. I believe OJ Simpson's book, If I Did It, was written out of the psychological need to tell the world (sort of) the truth. Being a weasel and a moron, sort of telling the truth is enough for OJ's psychology.

Like Michael Vick, Marion Jones has done the inevitable in these situations and "found God." To this atheist, finding God is the last dismal twist to these stories of disgrace. After destroying her integrity by cheating and lying about it, now Marion Jones is further destroying her mind by believing in a metaphysical fantasy.

And why do the disgraced and fallen always find God? Because it is the easiest way to get most people to forgive them and think they are good people. They turn to a supernatural creature for whom there is no evidence in order to get people to like them. Now, that's pathetic.

Imagine No Cindy Sheehan

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Cindy Sheehan promised to go away, but she continues to torment the world with her deep thoughts. Here she waxes eloquent about John Lennon's "Imagine".

Imagine no possessions: This is the crux of our problem. Going back to my brothers and sisters at the slot machines in Vegas, pulling almost catatonically on the lever of the One Armed Bandit, for what? To win the “jackpot” of course! How nice is it of the State of Nevada to allow gambling machines in their airports, so we can perchance live the American dream of buying higher stacks of stuff! On a day that George vetoed the health of over six-million children here in America, 16,000 children around the world died of starvation. In a week that we saw murder on a horrendous scale in Burma, more Iraqis were killed or forced from their homes by violence: to wander in the desert, or probably off to Syria where their daughters may be forced into prostitution to help support the family which should be able to live in peace and relative prosperity in their own country. Imagine that.

It was hard for me to imagine or envision peace when I am terrified because BushCo is contemplating even more slaughter in the Middle East in Iran and when Congress, Inc is busy supporting a murderous status quo that hurts humans within all borders, even our own.

Peace will only happen when every member of humanity is guaranteed prosperity, health and security which will not happen when we here in the US can’t even get off our asses to protest a war that is four and a half years and hundreds of thousands of bodies old, now.

We can imagine peace all we want but until each and everyone of us is willing to sacrifice some of our prosperity (because we have already had our security robbed from us by the rotten Republicans and complicit corporate Democrats) true peace—not just the absence of war—will be as elusive as a morsel of truth or modicum of courage coming out of Washington, DC.

Voluntary sacrifice is truly a revolutionary concept here in the United States of America.

So you say you want a revolution? Imagine that.

Why does she hate George Bush so much? He is for voluntary sacrifice also. Bush and Sheehan should spend a weekend working out their differences, then create a bipartisan fascist dictatorship and show us selfish Americans what happens when we do not sacrifice voluntarily. Imagine that.

Clarence Thomas and Ayn Rand

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

From time to time throughout his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve, I've heard the occasional fan of Ayn Rand speculate on whether Alan Greenspan might be some kind of Objectivist "mole", hiding his actual beliefs in order to slip under the radar to be in a position to avert disaster.

But Greenspan has over time demonstrated by word and deed -- so thoroughly that even Andrew Ferguson could grasp it -- that he is anything but an Objectivist.

He was once part of the novelist-philosopher's inner circle, but fell away from it. He never, to my knowledge, formally broke with the movement, although his past association has caused him to enjoy some measure of notoriety.

The question of whether Greenspan might "really" be an Objectivist indirectly brings up an interesting question: What would an example of the increasing influence of Objectivism look like in politics? Our cultural context would all but preclude one of us being elected to office any time soon and politics as it is today would preclude being effective once there. Besides, I can't imagine one of us wanting to live in the cesspool of politics enough to try either.

The advent of Objectivism as a strong cultural force would show up as many politicians feeling a need to run on a platform of reducing governmental interference of all kinds in our lives by cutting the size of the welfare state, getting the government out of the business of enforcing a religious agenda, and rolling back all kinds of other government meddling in our personal affairs.

You will notice that I have said nothing about a political party. This is both because the cultural change I am talking about is deep enough to be impossible through the means of a political party and because such a fundamental change in political attitudes would transcend political parties anyway. If the overall political trend -- dictated by the public in general having a firmer grasp of the importance and desirability of individual rights -- is towards freedom, our two major parties would merely differ in how (or how fast) they would move in that direction. No deep, fundamental debate ever occurs over an election.

That said, the Libertarian Party, which, despite evidencing a wholesale rejection of her philosophical approach, owes its existence to Ayn Rand, is only evidence that Objectivism has shown up on the cultural radar, but has not yet achieved real influence. The notion that Greenspan is an Objectivist or is what an Objectivist political figure might "look like" is arguably another such sign. Flash-in-the pan charlatans like Logan Darrow Clements are also examples.

Part of Objectivism achieving real influence will, perhaps counterintuitively, manifest as the mere mention Ayn Rand's name not being such a big deal. A figure who praises (or is associated in some way with) Ayn Rand will not automatically be taken as an advocate of her ideas or even, necessarily, of capitalism. People will expect substance and they will know it when they see it. If you talk the Rand talk, you will be expected to walk the Rand walk, and people will know what to expect.

It is when we start seeing on a regular basis political figures who, although not necessarily Objectivists, admit to having been fundamentally and positively influenced by Rand (and live up to that professed influence) that we will have an early sign that the tide is turning in the favor of individual rights.

As an example of what such a figure might be like, consider not the attention-grabbing Alan Greenspan, who long ago abandoned the gold standard in more ways than one, but the low-key Clarence Thomas, whose recently-released book Ann Althouse excerpts as follows:

It was around this time that I read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Rand preached a philosophy of radical individualism that she called Objectivism. While I didn't fully accept its tenets, her vision of the world made more sense to me that that of my left-wing friends. "Do your own thing" was their motto, but now I saw that the individualism implicit in that phrase was superficial and strictly limited. They thought, for instance, that it was going too far for a black man to do his thing by breaking with radical politics, which was what I now longed to do. I never went along with the militant separatism of the Black Muslims, but I admired their determination to "do for self, brother," as well as their discipline and dignity. That was Daddy's way. He knew that to be truly free and participate fully in American life, poor blacks had to have the tools to do for themselves. This was the direction in which my political thinking was moving as my time at Holy Cross drew to an end. The question was how much courage I could muster up to express my individuality. What I wanted was for everyone -- the government, the racists, the activists, the students, even Daddy -- to leave me alone so that I could finally start thinking for myself. [via Glenn Reynolds, bold added]

Thomas's appreciation for Rand seems genuine. Rather than dropping her name at every opportunity for attention, like some former associates of Rand (not including Greenspan to my knowledge -- but see Note 2), or implying more agreement with her than actually exists, like many libertarians, he acknowledges both his differences with her and debt to her. Most importantly, he has shown a lasting appreciation for what it was about Rand's thought that appealed to him the most:

Evidence of these leanings can be seen in the influence of libertarian [sic] icon Ayn Rand on Thomas. In Rand's work, Thomas saw a model for independence and self-sufficiency. Dating back to his days at the EEOC, and continuing once he got to the Supreme Court, he would require staffers to watch the 1949 film version of Rand's best-selling book The Fountainhead. The plot centers on an architect's struggle to preserve his integrity against the voices of conformity.

His judical philosophy has shown the mark of Rand's thought, although his view that Roe vs Wade should be overturned probably shows an inconsistency. (Although, to be fair, this ultimately depends on why he thinks this should be the case, a question I do not feel qualified to speculate upon.)

When we start seeing elected politicians like Clarence Thomas, we'll know that the cultural tide has turned, although I suspect we'll have plenty of other signs as well.

-- CAV

Notes: (1) A commenter provides a very good example of Thomas as not consistently upholding individual rights.

(2) Diana Hsieh notes of Greenspan that, "He endorsed Barbara Branden's smear of a biography with a laudatory quote printed on the back cover. (You can see it for yourself on Amazon.)" So much for Greenspan remaining loyal to Ayn Rand on a personal or philosophical level.

Updates

10-3-07: (1) Corrected passage on name-dropping. (HT: Toiler) (2) Added a note.
10-4-07: Added a second note.

E Pluribus Unum

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

Consonant with the inability of so many people to think in terms of principles in this day and age is the expressed befuddlement of a college professor quoted at the end of this news story.

Lunatics from the far left and the far right, it seems, want to secede from the union!

Harry Watson, director of the Center For the Study of the American South and a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said it was a surprise to see The Middlebury Institute conferring with the League of the South, "an organization that's associated with a cause that many of us associate with the preservation of slavery."

He said the unlikely partnering "represents the far left and far right of American politics coming together."

But is this really a surprise? The Middlebury Institute sees the United States as an evil empire "imposing its military might on 153 countries around the world" while the League of the South regards (and seeks to preserve) Christianity and Anglo-Celtic culture -- not individualism -- as essential to the character of some great Southern collective whose goal it is to protect above all else.

In more concrete terms, the Middlebury Institute would disarm its own citizens (after causing them to live in a small country by seceding from the world's only military power) whilst Southerners would encode Christianity and xenophobia into law:

If allowed to go their own way, New Englanders "probably would allow abortion and have gun control," Hill said, while Southerners "would probably crack down on illegal immigration harder than it is being now."

Secession appeals to each group for two reasons: (1) They can't make a convincing case for their particular flavors of tyranny, so they wish to wall themselves off with those they see as like-minded; and (2) to the extent that the federal government still protects individual rights by thwarting their tyrannical impulses, it is Enemy One.

Note that in each case, enmity to America as she is (and could be through reform) trumps the obvious advantages to the individual of living in a large, powerful country with a long tradition of respect for individual rights and rule by law. Nobody here wishes to win minds and thereby fix America. All want to impose their will on others through whatever tyranny they can get.

It is only when one refuses to be fooled by the many different species of tyranny and looks at their common denominator, a tendency to regard the purpose of government as other than to protect individual rights, that one finally realizes that these secessionists are natural allies, and wonders why they didn't get together much sooner.

And so we have one movement against America, the beacon of freedom to the world, out of many kinds of collectivist mentality.

-- CAV

The continuing debate over John Lewis' speech at GMU

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

It seems that the fallout from John Lewis' talk at George Mason continues to settle judging by some recent letters-to-the-editor printed in the campus newspaper. In this one, the writer alleges that the charges that Lewis' talk was disrupted by pro-Iranian sympathizers are overblown on the grounds that the only person ejected from the event by police was a Lewis supporter. Unfortunately for this claim, the person who was removed tells a far different story of his ejection in a letter his submitted to the student paper but was never published. I include the letter below:

I am writing with respect to your coverage of Dr. John Lewis' April 24 talk at your University. John Grimsley's article in the Broadside Online of May 4, 2007, titled "No Substitute for Conflict - 'Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism' Met with Protest" refers.

Mr. Grimsley wrote: "One audience member was kicked out over a dispute with another person."

This "dispute" was far more substantive than is suggested by the write-up. I am the person who was asked to leave, and my eviction by the school authorities was absolutely unjustified.

I am not a student at GMU but a visitor: a 33-year-old software engineer who attended the event in order to hear Dr. Lewis speak. I was seated at the back of the room before the talk began and moved to the front only because the unruly "protesters" were obscuring the vision and hearing of the rest of us in the audience. In my new seat, I happened to be in the second row, behind some of the College Republicans, and four seats to the right of three individuals who were noticeably antagonistic towards Dr. Lewis' remarks.

In the very tense and inhospitable atmosphere engendered by the "protesters," I asked a young woman two seats away from me why the (University) policemen present couldn't remove the "protesters," since they were so disruptive and obviously did not want to listen to the lecture. As she nodded in agreement, the antagonistic individuals to my left chorused, unsolicited, "Free speech!" My response was to ignore them, softly noting under my breath, "Not in here," for I am well aware that one cannot invoke free speech out of context. To invoke free speech on behalf of these "protesters" would be akin to doing so on behalf of a person who shouts "Fire!" in a crowded theatre for no reason.

As soon as I turned away from them, these individuals got up from their seats and went towards the back of the hall. Since I did not turn my head completely, I do not know what transpired there.

They returned about fifteen minutes later and proceeded to seat themselves *directly* around me. There was a large, heavily-bearded man in a suit behind me in the third row; another man in glasses in a longish shirt to my left; and a third fellow next to the large man behind me. The bespectacled fellow made menacing faces at me as he sat down. In the near-riot atmosphere, I wondered about my physical safety.

During the talk, which I found powerful in its identification of many truths, I and others stood up several times to applaud Dr. Lewis.

The lecture ended, and the question-and-answer period began. Two lines were formed on the floor, to the left and right of the stage, upon which the speaker, Dr. Lewis, stood. The heavily-bearded individual behind me stood up and joined the line on my left in order to ask a question. When his turn came, he identified himself as a Moslem and posed his questions. Dr. Lewis responded to his questions. The next person in line, a woman, asked her questions. While Dr. Lewis was delivering his answers to those questions, the heavily-bearded fellow, who was now back in his seat behind me, began to shout objections at Dr. Lewis' remarks. This effectively drowned out the speaker, especially for me, as I was so closely seated to the objector.

Acting on the assurances made by the leading university official present [the Director of Student Life for Multicultural Affairs, if I recall correctly] that disrupters would be warned and removed, I asked the man behind me to join the line if he wished to ask another question. When he bluntly refused, I warned that I would ask the authorities to remove him. In a most histrionic manner, he stood up violently and exclaimed, "Is that a threat?!!" This had the effect of drawing attention to both of us, especially as his bearing and tone implied that I had threatened him physically. As one security officer (male, dark-haired, medium-build) approached, I told him and all who cared to listen that I had not threatened my accuser in the way he had suggested. I then repeated what I had said to my accuser. The officer politely told me he would like to have a word with me by one of the lines formed near the stage. Because of my respect for the law and for lawful conduct, I stood up and followed the officer.

When we got to the stage, I stood there quietly, waiting for a calm investigation, as befits proper law-enforcement, to commence. One of the other security officers (bald, medium build), walking towards the doors, signaled to the man who had asked me to stand up. The dark-haired officer then asked me to walk out of the room with him. I asked him why. Gesturing toward the stage where the Director stood, he said a university official had asked that I be escorted out.

Not wishing to cause any commotion, I walked out, hoping to state my case more easily once in the lobby. To my amazement, I was accused of threatening to "break [my accuser’s] neck"!!

Did my accuser allege this, I asked? No, said the bald officer, who then maintained that *he* had heard me threaten my accuser. This lie was delivered with a straight face – without any moral compunction. I maintained my innocence, over which he bluntly ordered me to leave. I left quietly, stating "for the record" that his charges were false.

The above is my honest recollection of that evening’s events.

One can see that, in spite of my total, civilized co-operation, no benefit of the doubt was accorded me. I was judged without any hearing whatsoever. It is a mystery how the officer who said he had heard me could have done so, since no officer was seated in the audience and since even people seated two or three seats away from me have reportedly said they did not know anything was going on until my accuser raised his voice. Yet, the disruptive "protesters," who seemed on the verge of effecting bodily harm on the speaker, were allowed to operate freely.

It is a terrible shame that this injustice could have taken place at George Mason University, or at any American university for that matter. As an immigrant to the United States, I hold this country in the highest esteem, as the nation which symbolizes the very best of Western Civilization: the unimpeded use of man’s reason to seek truth by analyzing the facts of reality. American universities are the bastions of free inquiry, and American law and law-enforcement are centered on the protection of this inalienable individual right.

These university policemen did not seek to gather, much less analyze, the facts of a narrow situation such as occurred inside Johnson Cinema that Monday. They did not even attempt to question witnesses or bother to have my accuser repeat his charges to my face in the lobby. Civility was met with force, while the mob mentality prevailed.

If this is how George Mason University protects the rights of the individual, one can only wonder about the safety of its members.

Ayo Ogunshola

I find it deeply disturbing that Mr. Ogunshola was ejected from the Lewis talk under such circumstances, particularly when the people who were actually disrupting the talk were allowed to stay and continue with their disruption. I hope that the Mason community continues with its soul-searching over the importance of free speech and intellectual freedom on campus, and resolves to never surrender that freedom again.

The Influence of Atlas Shrugged

By Yaron Brook:

On the 50th anniversary of its publication, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's epic about a group of businessmen who rebel against a society that shackles and condemns them, is everywhere. Hardly a day goes by without a mention of the novel in the media or by some prominent celebrity or businessman as the most significant book he's read. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand's novels, including Atlas Shrugged, are being taught in tens of thousands of high schools. And last year sales of the novel in bookstores topped an astonishing 130,000 copies--more than when it was first published.

As executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, I see the impact of Atlas Shrugged on a daily basis. I'm continually amazed by how many people, from every walk of life and every part of the planet, from high school students to political activists in countries from Hong Kong to Belarus to Ghana, eagerly tell me: "Atlas Shrugged changed my life."

Scores of business leaders, from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, say they have derived great spiritual fuel from Atlas Shrugged. Many tell me that the novel has motivated them to make the most of their lives, inspiring them to be more ambitious, more productive, and more successful in their work. And many of America's politicians and intellectuals who claim to fight for economic freedom name Atlas Shrugged as the book that has most inspired them. I have no doubt that the novel has played a considerable role in discrediting socialism as an ideal and in making discussion of capitalism intellectually legitimate.

If you have read Atlas Shrugged and entered the universe of Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, and John Galt, you can understand why the novel has inspired so many in this way. Atlas Shrugged portrays great businessmen as heroic, productive thinkers, and it venerates capitalism as the only social system that leaves such minds free to create and produce the material values on which all of our lives depend. It gives philosophic and esthetic expression to the uniquely American spirit of individualism, of self-reliance, of entrepreneurship, of free markets.

But while many people appreciate these elements of Atlas Shrugged on a personal, emotional level, they are often uncomfortable on a moral level with the novel's arguments in support of business and capitalism.

Ayn Rand's ethical philosophy of rational selfishness--on which her admiration for successful businessmen and her impassioned defense of capitalism rest--constitutes a radical challenge to the dominant beliefs of our culture. Rejecting the prevailing ideas that morality comes from a supernatural being or from a societal decree, Rand holds that morality is a science that can be proved by reason. Rejecting the altruistic idea that morality consists of selflessly serving something "higher"--whether the Judeo-Christian God or a collectivist society--she maintains that the height of moral virtue is to rationally pursue your own selfish ends.

Socialism as a political ideal is dead. But the morality that spawned it--from each according to his ability, to each according to his need--still haunts us. So long as need and the "public interest" are regarded as moral claim checks on the ability of the productive, the continued growth of the government's control over the economy and our lives is inevitable.

Those who have read Atlas Shrugged are often struck by the similarity of the events in the novel to the disastrous events reported in the daily news--from the government's attempt to take over medicine to decaying infrastructure and collapsing bridges to the shackles on businessmen inflicted by Sarbanes-Oxley. The similarity is no accident: the justification for these government programs is the needs of the uninsured, the so-called public interest, and the necessity to curb the selfishness of businessmen. Without a moral revolution, we cannot win true economic or political freedom.

So while Atlas Shrugged has provided millions with inspiration and with some level of appreciation for the virtues of capitalism and the evils of statism, it has not had nearly the influence it could have had, had its underlying ideas gained wider understanding. Though it has changed individual lives, it has not changed the world. But I believe it could--and should.

Imagine a future America guided by the principles found in Atlas Shrugged--a culture of reason, where science is cherished and respected, not banished from biology classrooms and stem-cell research labs--a culture of individualism, in which government is the protector of individual rights, not its primary violator--a culture in which markets are not just regarded as the most effective option of an imperfect lot, but in which laissez-faire capitalism is recognized and venerated as the only moral social system--a culture in which business innovators understand that ambition, productive effort, and wealth creation are not just practical necessities, but moral virtues--a culture in which such innovators, proudly asserting their right to their work, are fully liberated and their productive genius fully applied to the generation of unimaginable economic progress.

This is the world that Atlas Shrugged challenges us to strive for. But in order to get there, the novel's full philosophic meaning must be grasped. This is precisely why the Ayn Rand Institute exists: to convey Rand's profound message. And her message is getting out, all the way to professional intellectuals, on campuses and elsewhere across America, who are taking up Ayn Rand's ideas with a seriousness that they never have shown before.

With more and more thinkers giving it the attention it merits, I am confident that the real influence of Atlas Shrugged has yet to be felt.

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization

By Thomas Bowden:

Columbus Day, observed this year on October 8, will celebrate the 515th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America.

"Although in recent decades Columbus Day has fallen out of favor in many circles, it is vitally important that we continue to celebrate this holiday with pride," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute.

"Columbus Day is, at root, a celebration of the worldwide spread of Western civilization--a value that is under attack from multiculturalists at home and Islamic totalitarians abroad.

"Multiculturalism, which rejects the idea that some cultures are superior to others, makes it possible for American Indian activists to get away with castigating Columbus as a 'cultural imperialist,' calling for abolition of his holiday and replacing it with 'Indigenous Peoples Day.' This is outrageous. Contrary to the multiculturalist position, it is possible to demonstrate objectively that one society is superior to another--by the standard of what benefits human life. By this standard, modern industrial society is incomparably superior to the barbaric, tribalistic Stone Age culture of the Indians who predated Columbus.

"Those who attack Columbus Day are attacking the distinctive values of Western civilization that America so proudly embraces--reason, science, individual rights, and capitalism. This is especially dangerous at a time when those exact values are under assault from Islamic totalitarians who terrorize us as part of their quest to destroy our civilization and replace it with a worldwide Islamic theocracy.

"Americans need to understand that their lives and happiness are at stake in the struggle to uphold the core values of Western civilization--a struggle that is epitomized by the continuing controversy over Columbus Day.

"We need not evade or excuse Columbus's flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion," Bowden said. "On Columbus Day, we must continue to celebrate that civilization, and declare our resolve to defend it against both its intellectual and political.

Auto Unions: A loss or a win

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

There's a wolf under that bonnet: I suppose I should gloat that the UAW pretend strike only lasted two days. Unfortunately, these guys are pretty slippery. From a few interview comments, it sounds like the UAW might try to spin this defeat into a victory, with the following message: "we are a less militant, more cooperative union... and that's a good thing".

The UAW has failed to unionize the US-based Japanese factories. Those workers have seen what has happened to Detroit. They know that the UAW is bad for them. Unions are pushing to do away with secret ballots, in the hope of using intimidation. While they're still trying that "stick" approach, they now want to spin their GM defeat into a "carrot".

Health Care Fund: GM will put money and some of its stock into a fund. The fund will take on all future health-care cost. Moving the money from one legal entity to another cannot increase it. Why did GM want to pay it out now? Because chances were that the liability would keep increasing. In a sense, the workers get less this way; but, GM going belly up would have been far worse. The fund puts a firm number on the liability, caps it, and cuts it off from GM.

Here's another twist: A while back, Wagoner, GM's CEO, suggested that the government should pick up part of the tab. Ten years from now, if there isn't a National Health Service, and if the fund is falling short, it will be a 100,000 person union asking the government for help.

An "ObjectivistKid" encounters religion

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

... Around kindergarten was the first time Z mentioned God. I think he suddenly made some type of matter-of-fact comment that God was listening to us, because He is everywhere...

Read more here.

Iraq's Failing Government

By Elan Journo:

Irvine, CA--In the wake of General Patraeus's report, the Iraqi government has come under fire for failing to govern and police the country. Sectarian death squads, for example, fearlessly slaughter their victims, and in one town Islamists set up a Taliban-like theocracy--all under the nose of the local authorities and national government. President Bush himself signaled his dismay at how Iraq's government has performed, and implored it to do more.

"But the deplorable conduct of Iraq's government should not be surprising," said Elan Journo, analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute.

"A proper government is one that protects individual rights; it ensures your freedom from the initiation of physical force by others. The principle of such a government--the principle of individualism--holds that every man is an independent, sovereign being, that he is not an interchangeable fragment of the tribe; that his life, liberty, and possessions are his by right, not by the permission of any group. But so many of Iraq's politicians are ethnic or religious collectivists, who regard the individual as subservient to the clan, tribe, sect. To them government is not the means of protecting individual rights, but of arrogating power to their group and wielding their sword over others. And as part of its suicidal crusade to bring Iraqis the vote, Washington avidly encouraged Iraqis to believe that their tribalism and devotion to Islam were legitimate foundations for a new government.

"So, Iraqis brought to power Islamists who are vehemently anti-American--an outcome that Bush had blessed in advance ('democracy is democracy' he explained). The current prime minister, like several of his predecessors, owes his job to the Islamist warlord-cleric Moktadr al Sadr, whose Madhi army has fought against American forces. Indeed, many politicians are little more than stooges for the various clans, sectarian groups, and private militias that operate their own death-squads with impunity. Little wonder that Iraq's leaders have neither enacted rational laws, nor enforced the rule of law, while armed tribal and sectarian gangs savagely eradicate their rivals.

"If Iraqis are ever to achieve a proper government they must learn that their current ideas and practices are incompatible with freedom and peace. They must recognize that they need to adopt the ideal of individualism."

The case for concealed carry . . .

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

Warning: Explicit language and violent content

Bidding Cox and Forkum a sad adieu

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

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is disappointed to hear that Cox and Forkum have decided to stop producing editorial cartoons. Alan Forkum offers his rationale here and one can hardly disagree with his reasoning. Nevertheless, this creative duo will be deeply missed.

As someone who grew up as a boy reading editorial cartoons in the Buffalo News, I recall how I used to eagerly flip to the editorial pages when the news truck dropped of the papers that I would deliver on my paper route. Invariability, the wry wisdom offered by Tom Toles or Oliphant would strike to the heart of the matter and reveal the hypocrisy of whomever was being lampooned. Yet as I grew up intellectually and came to agree with Objectivism, I found that most editorial cartoons seemed to do little more than serve as a mouthpiece for the shrill and America-hating left. Over time, I simply gave up on what had once been a special passion of mine.

Thankfully, that editorial drought changed when Cox and Forkum arrived upon the cartooning scene. For the first time in my adult life, there were editorial cartoons that defended my values—and did so with intelligence and aplomb. In the time that the pair were active, Cox and Forkum's cartoons served as a brilliant and wholly original beacon of light in the dull gray world of American politics. They heaped criticism on those who deserved it. They stood up and fought for the good like few others. They, like their ubiquitous Uncle Sam character, beat the drum of freedom and American pride with a sharp mind and an obvious glad heart.

So I thank Cox and Forkum for their insight and creativity. Since at least part of their reasons for shutting down are financial, I'd be the first to acknowledge that they gave more than they got back, and I'm saddened to see it. They were simply the best political cartoonists in America and in their absence they will be missed.

The Pharmaceutical Industry Under Attack

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

The Pharmaceutical Industry is one of the last industries where high value innovation occurs (the other being the IT industry). While Pharma is more regulated than IT, it has relative freedom within the U.S. to capture value for its product and in turn to fund development. This is evidenced by the strong Venture Capital market for young pharma companies, where it is still a viable financial bet to invest in companies whose products won't come to market for a decade or more. The only way this sort of investment is viable is if the possible payoff is huge and in Pharma, a successful blockbuster makes billions for its parent.

But witness a string of healthcare legislation, proposals from political candidates, and ongoing debates, all of which, if they make it to fruition will serve to continue to decimate pharma's long term prospects. Here's a round-up:

Drug Re-importation: under the guise of the government acting as an "efficient purchaser" of drug proposed legislation is nothing more than riding piggy back on European socialism. I had a whole post on this, and ARI's great op-ed beat me to it. Europe doesn't get better drug prices because they have access to volume discounts or to some magic to make pharma producers more efficient. They have them because they dictate the prices in their countries. Re-importing drugs through those countries is nothing more than adopting the same dictates, only in a seemingly "squeaky clean" Mafioso money-laundering style.

Post Vioxx increase in FDA's regulatory powers. From a recent Forbes.com article, "The Biggest FDA reform in a Decade", new legislation, quietly moving through congress, and attached to appropriations legislation would increase FDA's powers to meddle in pharmacuetical companies development programs. This includes dictating drug label claims to pharma companies, directing pharma companies to do post launch clinical trials, and forcing drug companies to make public all clinical trial results. All of these measures will serve to bottleneck and already too lengthy clinical trial process, increasing development costs even further.

Hillary Care 2.0. Another veiled attempt at socialized medicine. How many times must we see this kind of crap. ARI's again takes these to task, in both a letter to the editor (which I'll post when available) and a great op-ed by Noodlfood's Paul Hsieh.

We the Living

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm super-excited by the recent announcement from the Ayn Rand Bookstore that the audiobook of Ayn Rand's We the Living will be available on CD in October. Until now, it's only been sold on cassette. It'll be available on both regular CD and MP3 CD. The MP3 CD is just $45, whereas the regular CD is $120.

I love We the Living intensely: Kira is the Randian hero/heroine with whom I most strongly identify -- by a long shot. So I'm really looking forward to listening to it.

(I wonder if it will also be available for download via Audible. I hope so!)

Cats and Dogs

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Cats do not have conceptual consciousness; they don't have language and do not think in universals or concepts. By human standards their minds are terribly limited -- and yet, as limited as their minds are, no cat is exactly the same as other cats. Each cat has a style of doing things and little quirks of behavior that make him unique.

Cats form their personality early and then never change. For this reason, it's good to be careful when selecting a kitten. When you visit a litter, if a kitten comes to you, that is the one you want. It is friendly, unafraid and outgoing -- and will remain so until its death. The kitten that cowers in the corner and hisses when you approach will always be that way; you might establish some understanding with it, but it will never be friendly and outgoing.

A screenwriting teacher of mine at UCLA used to say, "Your hero can kick a cat, but not a dog." We recoil from abusing dogs, but we think abusing cats is funny. Why is this? In large part I think it comes down to the noise each animal makes when it is hurt. Dogs make a human-sounding YELP! and then they whine or moan. We sympathize with the dog's suffering. But as anyone who has stepped on a cat knows, they make an inhuman Satanic screech. That screech is just funny, especially on film. It's hilarious when the cat chews the Christmas lights cord in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

That teacher also said that having a hero pet a dog is one of the quickest ways to establish that he is a good guy. In a movie that one image of petting a dog is worth more than a thousand words from other characters testifying that a character is nice.

Much of our enjoyment of pets comes from projecting our humanity onto them. We think they love us the way we love them. I usually call this the "pathetic fallacy," but looking the concept up on the web, I see that it comes from a confusing essay by John Ruskin about art. We'll set the concept of the pathetic fallacy aside for now.

The behaviors we think of in human terms come from one major difference in cats and dogs: cats are territorial, whereas dogs are pack animals.

As pack animals that roam across large distances without regard to territory, it is vitally important that dogs maintain contact with the pack. This is why a dog will run to his master when he whistles. The dog sees humans as leaders of the pack and he wants to make them happy in order to fit into the pack. The pack has a pecking order that the dog respects.

As territorial beasts, cats do not have the need to run to the master when called. Some cats will run to you if they are trained to think they will get food for it, but many will ignore a call or respond with a meow, as if to say, "I'm here in our territory, as I should be." My cats do not like it when I approach them; they prefer me to be stationary so that they can approach me on their terms and when they want.

The old joke, "Dogs have a master, cats have staff," reflects the pack/territorial distinction. Dogs need a leader of the pack to whose dominance they submit. Cats can be more aloof as long as they know you're there. Cats can also be more egalitarian, if you will, although some cats are certainly bossier than others.

As pack animals, dogs can go to new places without blinking. They will walk happily on leashes into any strange territory. To a cat, a new place can be traumatic. The cat hides beneath a bed or behind some appliance and can take days to explore a new territory.

Introducing a new cat into the territory of another cat can be traumatic and if the two cats get off to a bad start they might never be happy together. The way to do it is to put the new cat in a bedroom or bathroom with food, water and a litter box, then close the door. Let the other cats in the house smell the new cat under the crack in the door for a few days. Then leave the door open a crack and let the cats explore one another on their own terms. The worst thing you can do is throw a new cat into the midst of other cats, because then you get hissing and spitting and fighting. Dogs, of course, can become friends in minutes. Compared to cats, they're like, "Dude, let's party! Whoo-hoo!"

When cats rub your legs, even that is a manifestation of territoriality. Cats have glands in their cheeks that they rub on your legs to mark you as theirs. And you thought they were just being affectionate. If you'll notice, they also do it to the legs of coffee tables and other furniture. (Now, dogs humping your leg is a mystery to me and I'm not sure I want to know why they do that.)

As rational animals, humans think in concepts. We form values that we act to gain and keep. Do dumb animals have values? I think on some low, limited level you could say they do. My cats follow me from room to room because they know I'm their meal ticket. They like to crawl all over me and curl up on my lap. They purr when I pet them, which is a communication of affection. But what is petting to a cat? They think I'm grooming the parts of their head that are hard for them to reach.

I suspect that we project values onto our pets far more than they actually have. Cats and dogs are incapable of loving the way humans love. They can know fear, but not envy or hatred. If they know love or anger, it is within their very limited, perceptual context of knowledge. The rest of their behavior comes from their nature as a pack or territorial animal.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Politeness in Intellectual Discourse

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

In The Chronicle of Higher Education is an interesting article which calls for politeness in intellectual discourse about the sacred texts of various religions. I disagree with several of author Carlin Romano's contentions, but I think that he does bring up a worthwhile point.

First, let me briefly address where I think Romano goes most damagingly wrong. While I fully agree with him that religious texts are worthy of intellectual attention due to their influence on the ideas, literature, and history of civilization, I cannot agree that such influence makes them "sacred".

The next question is thus whether sacred texts are sacred in any other sense than that they're God's handiwork. I say they are. Sacred means not only related to God, but also set apart in a particular way, worthy of uncommon respect, not open to easy violation. Here comes the twist on "Are Sacred Texts Sacred?" How atheists react to sacred texts, I submit, properly belongs as much to the history of etiquette as to that of philosophy or theology. Let me explain. [bold added]

Important, yes, but "sacred"? No.

Permit this atheist to consult another text, the dictionary, on this one, and to consider what "sacred" might mean to a nonreligious man. Here are the two most common nonreligious meanings of the term "sacred" according to dictionary.com, followed for obvious reasons by the meaning of the term "reverence":

sacred - - (4) reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object. ... (5) regarded with reverence.
reverence -- a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration.

I will add that one's feelings arise from how one's most deeply-held ideas affect his evaluation of the facts of reality. One must have some conception of the good to feel such emotions as "awe" and "veneration". I do not have time to discuss why here and now, but I will add that one need not be religious to have a conception of the good or to feel reverence.

Romano, by stripping the concept of the sacred of its moral dimension, commits grave injustices to those who believe in religious texts, the people whose lives they have affected, and to those devoted to the cause of freeing intellectual discourse in the field of philosophy from the tyranny of arbitrary claims. He is also, incidentally -- if not indirectly accepting that common (and arbitrary) charge by the religious that there can be no morality without religion -- committing that sin so common on the left of pretending that there in no such thing as morality.

Religious texts are an important vehicle by which certain philosophical ideas are handed down from one generation to the next, providing people with guidance for how they are to live their lives. In doing this, these works have real-world consequences through the actions they sanction as good and call on the religious to perform.

I trust that I need not recite a litany of atrocities -- justified by religious texts -- committed through human history to raise the question of whether these texts promote good actions on their pages, or the question of whether accepting on faith (i.e., without any investigation or critique) anything, particularly moral precepts, stated anywhere is good to do.

Consider a loved one dying from a prolonged illness whose prognosis nevertheless remains open. His disease has doubtless shaped who he is and to understand the man, one should understand how the circumstances of having his disease have shaped him over the years. Indeed, if one is to save him from his disease, one should study what it is that is killing him. His disease is of vital importance, but it is his life and that which promotes it -- not what it is that endangers it -- that is sacred. I regard the relationship between Western civilization and the Bible, for example, as analogous to this man and his pathogen. This means I regard Western civilization as sacred, but endangered by its longstanding Biblical influence.

Before moving to what I think Romano has gotten right, let me interject a thought about what constitutes the "sacred" by one atheist philosopher who rarely gets mention (and rarer still, her due) in such discussions: Ayn Rand:

I will ask you to project the look on a child's face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world -- inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you know that there is such a concept as "sacred" -- meaning: the best, the highest possible to man -- this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone. ["Requiem for Man", Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 303]

I regard religion, consistently held, as a systematic attempt to snuff out that spark Ayn Rand described. I regard it thus as thoroughly immoral and profane. My moral judgement does not necessitate that I browbeat others with it all the time, nor does courtesy preclude me stating it openly when appropriate.

And here -- ironically, in the realm of upholding the good -- is where Romano has (seemingly by accident) brought up a good point, albeit ineffectively since he will allude to the inherent tendency of religion to cause its followers to interfere in the lives of others -- and yet not pass explicit moral judgement against those who would do so. This point is best introduced through a quote he brings up about rudeness in the context of our pluralistic, religiously-tolerant culture:

One can, of course, line up the bolstering high-culture quotations on this side too, against the belligerent atheists ...[, including] Eric Hoffer's lovely line that "rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." [bold added]

America's tradition of religious tolerance and her Enlightenment heritage of reasoned debate permit people of even diametrically-opposed views to air them for evaluation by others. To the extent that someone respects this tradition and is open to rational debate, one should treat him politely even if one finds that he must express disagreement with his views.

There are times to express moral condemnation, but the opening of an intellectual discussion is not one of them. (If a potential opponent's immorality is widely known, as in the case of the Iranian President, one properly does not entertain him in the pretense of a debate.) For one thing, your interlocutor may hold religion inconsistently or even have serious questions about it. Failing to give him the benefit of the doubt is unjust and can prejudice him against your opinion by making you look unconfident in the merits of your position, and more concerned with "converting" him than with unearthing the truth.

Furthermore, thanks to the prevalence of moral relativism and even outright nihilism among those of the "secular" left, a disrespectful attitude during an intellectual debate can lend surface credibility (as I have alluded to earlier) to the notion that it is religion that is the source of the good. "Why are atheists always so hostile?" someone can quite legitimately wonder.

If one is really concerned with promoting the good and sees the threat that religion poses to the good, one will realize the vital importance of working to help as many people of reason as possible to see this truth to the extent that they are able and willing to do so. This means: (1) understanding (first and foremost for one's own benefit) the ideas that make the good possible, (2) presenting and defending them as lucidly as possible, (3) projecting through a polite and professional demeanor the certainty one holds in his ideas, and (4) politely joining a mutual pursuit of the truth.

For too many centuries, religion has made it its business to impose by force an arbitrary morality of self-sacrifice on mankind. In doing so, it has also perverted intellectual discourse -- transforming it from the trading of ideas for mutual benefit that it naturally is, to the imposition of a preconceived dogma through logical fallacies, rhetorical tricks, moral intimidation, or even threats. To browbeat someone about religion in the name of "debate" is not to promote the good, but to harm it, by emulating the evil in the name of the good.

And this brings up one last point: If not religion, then what is the source of guidance for man's life? This is where atheists, by opposing religion, but not presenting a viable alternative fail most catastrophically. And this is why, although I am an atheist, I do not focus merely on opposing religion, but in offering for consideration what I think is a viable alternative: Objectivism, the rational philosophy of Ayn Rand.

-- CAV

Updates

9-29-07: Corrected some typos.

The Infidel

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I find comic books and graphic novels too difficult to read: I just can't mange to alternate between looking at the pictures and reading the text without feeling overstrained. That's a lamentable deficiency on my part, as I really like the comic-superhero genre.

However, for those in possession of this elementary cognitive ability, the forthcoming graphic novel by ex-Muslim Bosch Fawstin might be of interest. It's titled "The Infidel." He describes the basic story as follows: "The Infidel is about American twin brothers from a Muslim background who have absolute opposite responses to 9/11: One becomes a counter-jihad cartoonist and the other becomes a born-again Muslim who goes jihad, and their choices force them to come head to head with one another after their break on 9/11."

That sounds promising! His blog has more information.

The Augustinian Christian's Dilemma in America

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This Christian laments that because Christians are ignorant they are easy targets for an ignorant atheist like Christopher Hitchens. She wishes Dostoyevsky were on the shelves of Christian bookstores. "Dostoyevsky exposed the evils of pride and self-devised 'justice.'"

Atheist characters such as Ivan Karamazov and Stavrogin are chilling portraits of nihilism. Only a Christian, with that religion's twisted and repulsive view of pride as sin, could think these self-destructive, dishonest characters have anything to do with the virtue of pride.

As an atheist I have read Dostoyevsky with great interest. He is a novelist of the first rank, who draws the reader into a world of moral drama and keeps him turning the pages with an exciting plot. It is true that Dostoyevsky was a Christian and his villains are atheists, but I don't see how anyone would be inspired to become a Christian from the example of his tormented Christian characters. Perhaps his novels are not in Christian bookstores because he serves Christianity straight and Americans want all that vale of tears stuff watered down with happy talk and "Jesus loves you." It's hard to sell Christianity to Americans by saying, "Accept Jesus as your savior and be miserable for the rest of your life."

Consistent Augustinian Christians are in a bind. They look down their nose at American Christianity, which is indeed shallow, sugary and idiotic. But this is the only Christianity that Americans, with their heritage of capitalism and individualism and their belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will accept. Worldly, happy Americans pick what they want to believe out of the Bible, a vast book full of contradictions. They choose to hear "Go forth and prosper" rather than all that stuff about rich men not getting into Heaven.

Pursuit of happiness is the opposite of how Jesus lived and how famous Christians such as St. Francis of Assisi lived. Consistent Augustinian Christians renounce this world and live in a cave. They wear hair shirts and drink dirty laundry water. They live lives of sacrifice and misery because this world is the realm of Satan, a fleeting illusion, and they will be rewarded for their sacrifice with happiness in the next world. By Augustinian standards the American dream is a Satanic dream. It's a damn hard sell to materialistic Americans.

I would advise Augustinians to look to the left for converts, especially to environmentalists. There they will find Americans who already hate prosperity and capitalism. In many ways they will find comrades in spirit. All the Augustinians have to do is persuade the leftists to destroy the remnants of reason they have and accept the Christian mythology of the big guy in the sky who sent his son to Earth to suffer for our sins.

With normal, happy Americans, the Augustinians must tread with care. Overplaying their hand will scare Americans away from Christianity entirely. It is a burden, but the Augustinian Christians can comfort themselves that this is the cross they must bear. In their suffering they shall know their savior.

Fair Winds and Following Seas

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

I would like to thank John Cox and Allen Forkum for their years of outstanding and entertaining work as editorial cartoonists. Yesterday, Allen Forkum announced that they will no longer publish their cartoons on a regular basis.

John and I have done pretty well over the last six years. We're fairly well known on the Internet, we have a few newspaper and magazine clients, we've self-published four books, and we've made some money, if not a living. But lately, for reasons I won't go into here, I can no longer afford to divert so much time and attention away from my publishing business and other personal concerns, such as my family.

I also want to stop focusing so much of my creative energy on negative aspects of daily life. There's still an ideological battle to be fought, not to mention an actual war, and I will stay engaged in some form and medium. But at this point, anything seems more appealing than immersing myself in the sewer of daily politics.

That said, I imagine we won't be able to resist creating an occasionally editorial cartoon. And if we do, we'll post it here.

I have really enjoyed Cox and Forkum's work, and found just knowing that there was a such pair of cartoonists out there and on my side more than comforting. It was also bracing.

As much of a sewer as the political world is, we do live in what is ultimately a benevolent universe. In the matter of our having to work against some very bad cultural trends, it is understating things to say that we are in a battle for our lives -- and yet, it is one we can win. Each cartoon was like a wink of encouragement in the very midst of that battle from a champion who knows deep down that victory lies just a little further down the road.

In the end, we fight our battles, including the intellectual ones, so that we might live, not the other way around. The whole point of Objectivism, the philosophy I share with Cox and Forkum, is to live one's own life on this earth. If continuing on in the arena of public opinion threatens to become a sacrifice of a more important aspect of one's life, then it is time to stop. I haven't been in the business of commentary for as long or with nearly as much success as they, but I feel like I appreciate this decision, at least to some degree.

Take heart. Our champion is not giving up. He is merely leaving this particular battle because he is needed elsewhere. He showed us the way and he's still out there. Both of those things mean a great deal to me.

-- CAV

Socialized Healthcare [Flickr]

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

HeroicLife posted a photo:

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

The Murderous “Mind-Sets” of Mysticism

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

Ayn Rand identified and named the two species of anti-man, anti-life mystics that have largely governed man’s history: the mystics of spirit, and the mystics of muscle.

It is rare that two prominent mystics appear on the world stage at the same time to deliver their ultimata: Pope Benedict XVI and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Pope Benedict’s appearance and utterances on September 23 passed almost unnoticed, while Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia University on September 24 garnered international headlines.

Columbia University’s invitation to Ahmadinejad to speak to an audience of students, faculty and the public provoked a firestorm of opposition, chiefly from those who challenged the propriety of extending the courtesy to a dictator who not only imprisons, murders and brutalizes people in his own country, but whose government funds international terrorism and whose agents are helping to kill Americans in Iraq.

Aside from the impropriety of inviting a self-proclaimed enemy to speak anywhere in this country, never mind at a noted university, there is the question of what President Lee C. Bollinger of Columbia thought he could accomplish by the invitation. He cited the prerogative of making such an invitation in the name of “free speech.”

Since the Press Law of Iran cited by Bollinger forbids criticism of the government in any form whatsoever, that is, forbids freedom of speech, why extend the right to a dictator responsible for the censorship and repression? Is the right to free speech extended to convicted criminals? By any objective standard, for having committed capital crimes, have they not forfeited the right to freedom of speech? Is not that forfeiture a part of their punishment and incarceration?

In defending his decision to invite Ahmadinejad, Bollinger said during his opening remarks at the event that “this is the right thing to do and, indeed, it is required by existing norms of free speech….”

What are those norms? Bollinger did not elaborate. Do those norms include welcoming a monster who, at his Nuremberg-like rallies in Tehran, regularly calls the U.S. the “Great Satan” and predicts and prays for its destruction at his hand?

One also must wonder what he believed he could accomplish by accusing Ahmadinejad of exhibiting “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” and by reading from a list of crimes committed by the dictator. Did he expect Ahmadinejad to acknowledge the truth of Bollinger’s damnation, suffer an incapacitating guilt attack, then wreathe and weep in heart-wrenching contrition? What was the point? If he was hoping for a “robust debate” of his charges against Ahmadinejad, the robustness of the “confrontation” was an eminently one-sided one. The vulpine Ahmadinejad demonstrated agility in evasive sophistry matched only by Hillary Clinton when cornered by facts and fault.

Bollinger’s list of charges against Ahmadinejad included the jailing and execution of Iranians for demanding freedom of speech, in addition to denying the Holocaust, advocating the destruction of Israel, funding terrorism, providing men and weapons to fight Americans in Iraq, and denying that Iran is working to develop a nuclear bomb.

Ahmadinejad slithered around every one of those charges and every one of the pointed questions put to him by members of the audience. Reading a transcript of his address, there is in it not a single direct answer to any one of Bollinger’s charges or an honest answer to any of the audience’s questions.

Bollinger expressed his subtle estimate of Ahmadinejad during his rationalization of why the dictator should be allowed to speak:

“It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament.”

But if the enemy is already known, and if one knows that his mind is evil (or what Bollinger characterized as Ahmadinejad’s “fanatical mindset”), why “confront” it in debate? Did we debate with Hitler of Nazi Germany or Tojo of Imperial Japan the rightness or wrongness of their aggression and atrocities?

Bollinger cautioned against “the very natural but often counter-productive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear.”

But Ahmadinejad has no idea but one: brute force. He does not wish to “engage” with ideas he dislikes and fears and which do not conform to his intrinsicist universe of Islam. Ideas emanate from minds, and it is minds he wishes to bypass and ultimately subdue or destroy – which is the leitmotif of Islam. He dismissed Bollinger’s moral indignation as irrelevant, almost comical.

Bollinger also revealed himself as an intrinsicist. His premise was that knowledge of the “good” was somehow an innate resident of Ahmadinejad’s mind as a repressed operative, and that what he wished to “discourse” with Ahmadinejad was why the dictator did not acknowledge it.

Ahmadinejad did not acknowledge it. He has his own set of intrinsic values, all subsumed under Islamic theology. He called Bollinger’s charges “insulting.”

Ahmadinejad’s address was not so much a speech or a lecture as a sermon, and he began it, appropriately enough, with an invocation. “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful….Oh, God, hasten the arrival of Imam al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers and those to attest to his rightfulness….”

Perhaps it was lost on or forgotten by Bollinger and the audience, not to mention the press, that Ahmadinejad regards himself as the next “Mahdi,” the expected spiritual and temporal leader of Muslims, and in that role he is preparing the way for the return of the Hidden or Twelfth Imam by laying the groundwork for Armageddon or the Apocalypse. The joke was on Bollinger and the audience; the Mahdi had arrived, and he was Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad’s sermon was such a vile and bizarre soufflé of Koranic references, prattlings about science, scholars, light and “realities,” oblique insinuations of the crimes of American “imperialism” past and present, commiserations about the plight of the Palestinians, and querulous babblings about the ill-treatment of Iran, that it would be fruitless to try to summarize it all here. Its general tone was a combination of an appeal to pity and an appeal to guilt.

(Ahmadinejad’s speech at the U.N. was even more bizarre. He lectured the General Assembly almost exclusively on the virtues of the Hidden Imam. But then, the U.N. is a bizarrely immoral, anti-U.S. institution anyway, which the U.S sanctions with its membership.)

If one wanted proof of Ahmadinejad’s mystical roots and fundamental irrationality, one statement of his at Columbia stands out:

“Realities of the world are not limited to physical realities and the materials, [they are] just a shadow of supreme reality. And physical creation is just one of the stories of the creation of the world.”

Ahmadinejad has read his Koran and his Kant. Both Bollinger and his “guest” are intrinsicists, but Ahmadinejad harbors a strong streak of whim-worshipping subjectivism, as well, against which Bollinger’s anger was impotent. He ended his rant with, “We are a peaceful, loving nation. We love all nations.”

He loves them enough to either conquer them or destroy them, just as Hitler loved Europe and Japan loved Asia.

One does not invite killers to a civilized venue to merely scold them for their crimes. One arrests them, or shoots them, or eradicates their murderous governments. Ahmadinejad in this instance was the enemy and should have been denied entry into this country. Instead, both Bollinger and the U.S., in the names of “fairness” and diplomatic protocol, allowed him to come here to take advantage of propaganda platforms, and he left “victorious and in good health.”

It was not Allah or God who was merciful and compassionate and who answered Ahmadinejad’s prayers. It was the State Department and the President of Columbia University. It is such mercy and compassion that will be the death of us.

Pope Benedict’s pronouncements on Sunday the 23rd were a kind of warm-up act to Ahmadinejad’s. In his own sermons, according to The Scotsman of the 24th, under the headline, “Pope urges rich to turn from Satan and help the poor,” he “denounced what he called the world’s ‘profit mind-set’…warning that money can turn people into ‘blind egoists’ as he urged the wealthy to share their riches with the poor.

“Benedict said life was about making choices between good and bad, between altruism and egoism, honesty and dishonesty….Ultimately, he said, it was about making the choice between God and Satan.”

Yes, life is about making choices, and knowing that those choices enable one to live – if one’s purpose is to live. If one makes the wrong choices, one suffers or dies. Benedict has those choices inverted, however. If one chose between good and bad by his criteria, one would indeed suffer or die. It requires honesty to assert that one owns one’s own life, and that one lives selfishly. It requires dishonesty to profess otherwise.

“…When the mind-set of sharing and solidarity prevails, you can correct your course and change it to a sustainable and equal development,” said Benedict.

“The pope called for a ‘conversion’ of economic goods,” said The Scotsman article. “’Rather than using them for self-interest, we should also think about the needs of the poor, imitating Christ,’ he said.”

Once a National Socialist, always a National Socialist. There’s a “mind-set” for you.

One might innocently pose these questions to Benedict: If the rich and the middle class heeded his altruistic homilies, and shared their wealth with the poor – then what? Who or what would generate more wealth to give away? Would not such a mass transfer of wealth trigger an economic collapse, and impoverish everyone? Would not everyone then be literally staring starvation and death in the face?

Aye, there’s the rub! That is the secret, unexpressed mutual goal of both Ahmadinejad and Pope Benedict. They are humanitarians, “lovers” of mankind, mystics of muscle and mind.

Rand had personal names for them: Attila and the Witch Doctor.

The Opposite of Googling for Objectivism

By Greg from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This is the latest incarnation of an email I've sent to a few friends to give some context and offer helpful leads in their investigations. Feel free to copy or adapt it for your own use!

Hi, Anonymized. You mentioned that you were looking around the web for information on Objectivism and Rand. Heh, that should prove entertaining: there are a lot of cranks and confusions to get tangled up in. So now I feel compelled to defend the honor by offering a few carefully-selected links for your propagandistic enjoyment. :^)

Seriously, though, it is a large topic and an extremely challenging one to assess fairly. She and her philosophy are recent enough that the signal-to-noise ratio regarding them are pretty horrid compared to the (still not exactly sterling) levels found with centuries-dead philosophers and their ideas -- and this goes for both detractors and defenders. With that warning, though, it isn't hopeless. Wikipedia, for example, is really weak in the more detailed articles, but the top-level entries for Rand, Objectivism, and the Objectivist movement are pretty reasonable to check out (with an extra dash of salt, of course).

However, if you want a clear overview from which to form your own judgment, I would suggest checking out some material from Rand herself, along with the top specialists in Objectivism. Summaries and explanations for any topic can range from elevator-pitch length, to a couple minutes for a hallway appetizer, all the way up to full volumes on the subject and then technical treatises on ever-narrower aspects of it. Probably the most productive way to approach a vast topic like this would be to begin with the anchor of an "elevator summary" and then spiral over the system at increasing levels of detail and completeness, amplifying on and further integrating what you've seen with each pass.

So with that path in mind, here is the best single-sentence summary of Objectivism I know of. It is by Rand, from an about-the-author appendix to her epic novel Atlas Shrugged, and while it is extremely broad, it really does nail the fundamental spirit of the system:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Then spiraling over that same domain again but in a different and more detailed way, there is a little single-page summary of the essentials of Objectivism by her, and the people at the Ayn Rand Institute also have a one-page discussion of what is important and distinctive about the philosophy.

Slicing through from another direction, here is Dr. Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, with a very nice series of bite-sized articles (one, two, three, and four) introducing people to the spirit of Objectivism as a moral philosophy for human life and happiness here on earth.

Taking it up another notch, you might enjoy this nice 11-page summary of the philosophy that was written for a general audience. It is from an excellent quarterly journal of culture and politics that presents analyses from an Objectivist perspective (the editor Craig Biddle wrote it to introduce and set some context for the journal).

Shorter and more technical, but probably the most impressive link I have on this front is a brief overview of Rand and Objectivism (a mere 2500 words), authored by Greg Salmieri and Dr. Allan Gotthelf for a dictionary of modern philosophers. They accomplished so much in so little space, and so brilliantly -- reading it feels almost like reading a poem.

Finally, there is this brief summary in about ten pages (fairly dense with more references to the history of philosophy) by Rand's top student, Dr. Leonard Peikoff, taken from the appendix of his first book. (His second book is a summary 50 times as long. :^)

Those are still only a taste, of course, and would (should!) leave lots of questions and concerns to be explored. The next pass in the spiral might best involve actually going through a book by Rand herself. A friend who went off to Chicago a few years back dropped me a note out of the blue asking for a lead on that, so I'll recycle my response below.

Happy exploring,
Greg

> I've never read Rand, but would like to. Where do you suggest I start?

How cool. Hmm, it depends a bit on your purposes. You didn't specify fiction or nonfiction, or ask about any particular branch or domain in philosophy (e.g., theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, aesthetics), so I'll stay away from purely nonfiction works that are more focused or dry and technical. That leads us to either of two great places to start, based on time and tastes:

1. The Ayn Rand Reader (500 pages, 194k words, about $14)

In the introduction, co-editor Leonard Peikoff talks about how Rand has a lot of published material and many time-pressed readers wouldn't know where to begin or how to select a representative sample. "The present book is designed to meet these needs. ... this anthology is intended as an entree for those who know little or nothing about her. Each of her four novels and [her nonfiction work in] every branch of philosophy are represented within its pages, even if only in brief excerpts. Whoever finishes the book, therefore, can say in all conscience that he knows the essence of [Rand] -- and that he knows it by means of actually having read her." (Please be careful, though: this book contains major spoilers and you'll seriously miss out if you read Rand's novels some day.)

2. Atlas Shrugged (1100 pages, 561k words, about $12 for the size that doesn't require a magnifying glass)

Rand's artistic and philosophic magnum opus, a novel that has rightfully earned a place in the Western canon. It is no hyperbolic exaggeration to call this an innovative and gripping story that both embodies and presents an entire, revolutionary system of thought in an astonishing display of literary and philosophic integration. As far as I know, that feat is unprecedented in the history of literature, and it would be impressive independent of whether or not the ideas made any sense at all. What's over the top from my perspective is that in almost two decades of poking and prodding and holding her ideas up to the harshest scrutiny I can find in myself or others, I have yet to discover an essential that she didn't nail. The chick was that good.

While you are waiting for one of those meaty tomes to arrive, you could entertain yourself with her little blockbuster gem of a novella, Anthem, written a decade before another big dystopian novel, Orwell's 1984. It is still in print and selling well, but also out of copyright and available on the web, and you could probably read the whole thing in about two hours. While stylistically unlike anything else by Rand, I can see why she described it as dear to her spiritually, a poem, a hymn.

Updates: a few tweaks; added Onkar's New Statesman article series (HT: Ergo); added spoiler disclaimer on the Reader (HT: Aeon)

The Face of Theocracy

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm horrified but not surprised by this news. The soon-to-be-retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently clarified his view of gays in the military by asserting that any homosexual with a sex life should be banned from the military because homosexual activity is contrary to God's law.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused a stir at a Senate hearing this week when he repeated his view that gay sex is immoral and should not be condoned by the military.

Pace, who retires next week, said he was seeking to clarify similar remarks he made in spring, which he said were misreported. "Are there wonderful Americans who happen to be homosexual serving in the military? Yes," he told the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing Wednesday focused on the Pentagon's 2008 war spending request.

"We need to be very precise then, about what I said wearing my stars and being very conscious of it," he added. "And that is, very simply, that we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God's law."

...Pace noted that the U.S. Military Code of Justice prohibits homosexual activity as well as adultery.

Folks, that's outright theocracy: government policy at the highest level is determined by appeal to Scripture.

Notably, the secular argument against allowing gays to serve in the military has been pretty thoroughly destroyed by the experience of Britain, which was forced to permit gays in the military by order of the European courts. None of the predicted disasters have occurred; all has gone very smoothly.

Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty

By Don Watkins:

Across the country, state and local governments are banning smoking on private property, including bars, restaurants, and office buildings. This is just the latest step in the government's war on smoking--a coercive campaign that includes massive taxes on cigarettes, advertising bans, and endless multi-billion dollar lawsuits against tobacco companies. This war is infecting America with a political disease far worse than any health risk caused by smoking; it is destroying our freedom to make our own judgments and choices.

According to the anti-smoking movement, restricting people's freedom to smoke is justified by the necessity of combating the "epidemic" of smoking-related disease and death. Cigarettes, we are told, kill hundreds of thousands of helplessly addicted victims a year, and expose countless millions to unwanted and unhealthy secondhand smoke. Smoking, the anti-smoking movement says, in effect, is a plague, whose ravages can only be combated through drastic government action.

But smoking is not some infectious disease that must be quarantined and destroyed by the government. Smoking is a voluntary activity that every individual is free to choose to abstain from (including by avoiding restaurants and other private establishments that permit smoking). And, contrary to those who regard any smoking as irrational on its face, cigarettes are a potential value that each individual must assess for himself. Of course, smoking can be harmful--in certain quantities, over a certain period of time, it can be habit forming and lead to disease or death. But many individuals understandably regard the risks of smoking as minimal if one smokes relatively infrequently, and they see smoking as offering definite value, such as physical pleasure.

Are they right? Can it be a value to smoke cigarettes--and if so, in what quantity? This is the sort of judgment that properly belongs to every individual, based on his assessment of the evidence concerning smoking's benefits and risks, and taking into account his particular circumstances (age, family history, profession, tastes, etc.). If others believe the smoker is making a mistake, they are free to try to persuade him of their viewpoint. But they should not be free to dictate his decision on whether and to what extent to smoke, any more than they should be able to dictate his decision on whether and to what extent to drink alcohol or play poker. The fact that some individuals will smoke themselves into an early grave is no more justification for banning smoking than that the existence of alcoholics is grounds for prohibiting you from enjoying a drink at dinner.

Implicit in the war on smoking, however, is the view that the government must dictate the individual's decisions with regard to smoking, because he is incapable of making them rationally. To the extent the anti-smoking movement succeeds in wielding the power of government coercion to impose on Americans its blanket opposition to smoking, it is entrenching paternalism: the view that individuals are incompetent to run their own lives, and thus require a nanny-state to control every aspect of those lives.

This state is well on its way: from trans-fat bans to bicycle helmet laws to prohibitions on gambling, the government is increasingly abridging our freedom on the grounds that we are not competent to make rational decisions in these areas--just as it has long done by paternalistically dictating how we plan for retirement (Social Security) or what medicines we may take (the FDA).

Indeed, one of the main arguments used to bolster the anti-smoking agenda is the claim that smokers impose "social costs" on non-smokers, such as smoking-related medical expenses--an argument that perversely uses an injustice created by paternalism to support its expansion. The only reason non-smokers today are forced to foot the medical bills of smokers is that our government has virtually taken over the field of medicine, in order to relieve us inept Americans of the freedom to manage our own health care, and bear the costs of our own choices.

But contrary to paternalism, we are not congenitally irrational misfits. We are thinking beings for whom it is both possible and necessary to rationally judge which courses of action will serve our interests. The consequences of ignoring this fact range from denying us legitimate pleasures to literally killing us: from the healthy 26-year-old unable to enjoy a trans-fatty food, to the 75-year-old man unable to take an unapproved, experimental drug without which he will certainly die.

By employing government coercion to deprive us of the freedom to judge for ourselves what we inhale or consume, the anti-smoking movement has become an enemy, not an ally, in the quest for health and happiness.

Don Watkins is a writer and research coordinator at the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Ayn Rand's Legacy of Reason and Freedom

IRVINE, CA--The 50th anniversary of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged on October 10 is an occasion to celebrate her legacy of defending reason and freedom, according to Michael S. Berliner, former executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Although she was born and raised in Russia, she became a truly American writer and philosopher. Her philosophy of reason and individual liberty is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the mysticism and tyranny that permeated her country of birth.

In 1926 she managed to escape the oppression of the USSR. Inspired by the skyscrapers in American films and taking the United States as her symbol of civilization, she came to America that year to stay. Sales of her first film scenario, play and novel in the 1930s launched her career. Her first best-seller, The Fountainhead, was published in 1943 and has become an American classic.

In 1957, her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged was published. In it she dramatized her philosophy, soon to be named "Objectivism." Her philosophy of reason, egoism and individual rights has changed many people’s lives: a survey by the Library of Congress placed Atlas Shrugged as second only to the Bible as the most influential book in readers’ lives.

Ayn Rand was unique. Writing best-selling novels with inspiring characters and intriguing plots, or creating a new philosophic system would justify anyone's fame. Ayn Rand did both. With virtues that matched the individualistic heroes of her novels, she emerged as a thinker who did not fall into any of the traditional categories. She was not a conservative, a liberal, an anarchist or a libertarian. Politically, she was a radical for capitalism; in fundamental philosophy, she was a champion of reason, selfishness and the individual's happiness on earth.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute.