April 30, 2008
Colombia Doesn't Need a Free-trade Agreement to Get Rid of its Self-destructive Tariffs (International Herald Tribune)
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogColombia Doesn't Need a Free-trade Agreement to Get Rid of its Self-destructive Tariffs
By David Holcberg (International Herald Tribune, April 19, 2008)
Colombia doesn't need a free-trade agreement with the United States to get rid of its self-destructive tariffs on products imported from America.
It is in the self-interest of Colombians, as it is in the self-interest of any people, for their government to eliminate all tariffs on imported products.
Such tariffs raise the price of imported products and rob buyers of the savings they would have pocketed if trade were free.
Moreover, governments have no moral right to force their citizens to pay tariffs for foreign products they want to buy. Any government that respects the rights of its citizens and is concerned about their welfare should eliminate its tariffs unilaterally, regardless of what other governments do.
The United States, as the leading capitalist country in the world, should phase out all of its protectionist policies and its tariffs on foreign products. The economic benefits to Americans would be incalculable, as tens of millions of producers and consumers would benefit directly from the savings that would accrue from the freedom to buy cheaper goods. In addition, such a principled stand on free trade might serve as an example to other nations, who could choose to be smart enough to follow America's lead or dumb enough to stay crippled by retaining their own protectionist policies.
Rational Egoism in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 25, 2008
Rational Egoism in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
Who: Andrew Bernstein, professor of philosophy and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A talk and Q & A examining The Fountainhead and explaining Ayn Rand's morality of rational egoism
Where: University of Maryland, Arts Building, Room 2309, College Park, MD
When: May 1, 2008, at 8 pm
Admission is FREE and open to the public.
Hosted by: the Terrapin Objectivists
Club Contact: anyborgh@umd.edu
Description: In The Fountainhead, novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand fully dramatizes the moral theory of rational egoism--the theory which holds that it is each person's responsibility to choose his goals and values by use of his independent reasoning mind; and that it is his right to pursue these goals in quest of his own selfish, personal happiness. Put another way, conscientious adherence to one's best rational judgment is the only appropriate means by which to live a fully human life--and success, creative achievement and personal happiness are its proper goals and ends. The theme of the novel is the virtue of independence in thought and action: the crucial importance of deriving your values and standards by the exercise of your own best judgment, as opposed to blindly following the judgment of others; and then pursuing these values consistently and indefatigably, as opposed to betraying or compromising them in practice. Dr. Bernstein explores how the plot and conflict of The Fountainhead convey this theme, including a detailed, in-depth analysis of the five major characters in the story--Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey, Gail Wynand, Dominique Francon, and the hero Howard Roark.
Bio: Dr. Bernstein is a visiting professor of philosophy at Marist College; he also teaches at SUNY Purchase (which selected him Outstanding Teacher for 2004) and formerly at Pace University and at Marymount College (which selected him Outstanding Teacher for 1995). Dr. Bernstein lectures regularly at American universities and appears frequently on radio talk shows. His op-eds have been published in such newspapers as The San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Times, Los Angeles Daily News and The Houston Chronicle. Dr. Bernstein is the author of three Ayn Rand titles for CliffsNotes: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Anthem. He also authored Penguin's Teacher's Guide to "The Fountainhead," and The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire.
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Andrew Bernstein is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrand.org.
For more information on this event and on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site. Founded in 1985 the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Please Note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI.
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam (panel discussion at NYU)
By from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam
A panel discussion at NYU
What: A panel discussion on the nature and threat of totalitarian Islam, followed by a Q&A
Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute; Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; and Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
Where: New York University, Kimmel Center, E&L Auditorium, New York, NY
When: Monday, May 5, 2008, at 8 pm
Admission is FREE and open to the public. All attendees must RSVP to nyuoc_president@yahoo.com
Description: What is the nature of totalitarian Islam--is it limited to terrorism or is it a broader movement? Are non-Muslims its only victims? Who precisely is the enemy? Does the West bear responsibility for creating this movement? What policies can defeat it?
Defenders of Islam around the world have striven to silence critics with threats, protests and acts of violence. How should the West respond to demands for censorship, as in the Danish cartoon controversy?
Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.
Bios:
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle East issues. Dr. Brook has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News's The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera; CNN's Talkback Live; CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money; and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a columnist for the New York Times Syndicate. Abroad, he appears weekly in Israel's Jerusalem Post, Italy's l'Opinione, Spain's La Razón and monthly in Australia's and Canada's Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is the single most accessed internet source of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al-Jazeera.
Flemming Rose is a Danish journalist, author and the cultural editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. In September 2005 Mr. Rose commissioned a series of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad. He was concerned about the tendency toward self-censorship in Europe and some Muslims' insistence on special treatment of their religious sensitivities in the public domain, which he wanted to bring forward for debate. The backlash from Muslims around the world caused an international crisis and the Danish government experienced its worst foreign policy crisis since the Nazi occupation during WWII.
For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org
Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after this event.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail:
Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
How Government Makes Disasters More Disastrous
By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogHow Government Makes Disasters More Disastrous
In a speech from New Orleans last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain lashed out at the Bush administration for its response to Hurricane Katrina. McCain's remarks, which appeared calculated to make disaster relief a key campaign issue, revived harsh memories of the savage storm that inundated the Mississippi Delta in late August 2005, leaving more than 1,800 people dead and causing widespread property damage.
Although the floodwaters long ago receded, government officials are still counting the disaster's costs. Earlier this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers disclosed that 489,000 claimants are seeking damages caused by poorly designed levees. Of those claimants, 247 want more than $1 billion each, including one whopper for $3 quadrillion (a stack of a quadrillion dollar coins would reach beyond Saturn).
The tax dollars spent resolving those claims will augment the tens of billions already paid to restore and repopulate New Orleans, a below-sea-level bowl situated precariously amidst a lake, a major river, and a gulf, in a known path for hurricanes.
Disasters can sometimes shock a nation into questioning entrenched practices. But Hurricane Katrina, perhaps the worst natural disaster ever to befall America, has failed to spark serious challenge to long-standing government policies that actively promote building and living in disaster-prone areas.
The Katrina tragedy should have called into question the so-called safety net composed of government policies that actually encourage people to embrace risks they would otherwise shun--to build in defiance of historically obvious dangers, secure in the knowledge that innocent others will be forced to share the costs when the worst happens.
Without blaming the victims for having followed their own government's lead, it is time to question whether those policies should continue.
The first strands of today's safety net were spun in the nineteenth century, as the Army Corps of Engineers shouldered the burden of constructing and maintaining levees and other flood controls along the Mississippi River. From then to now, Congress and the states have responded to each new flood by installing newer, higher, and stronger barriers at public expense, as if the preservation of a city like New Orleans in its historical location were a self-evident necessity.
Throughout the twentieth century, new strands were woven into the safety net, first in the form of loans to disaster victims, then by direct grants, infrastructure repairs, loan guarantees, job training, subsidized investments, health care, debris removal, and a host of similar rehabilitative measures.
In 1968, the National Flood Insurance Program began supplying subsidized coverage for structures and their contents in flood-prone areas. Similar state-subsidized insurance programs arose for hurricanes in Florida and earthquakes in California. In 1978, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was created to coordinate the increasingly complex job of government disaster response.
At each juncture, more aid was funneled to disaster victims without serious challenge to the wisdom of encouraging people to occupy vulnerable locations.
In response to Mississippi floods, Florida hurricanes, and California earthquakes, the number of major disaster declarations almost doubled from the 1980s to the 1990s, from an annual average of 24 up to 46. At century's end, Congress was paying an average of $3.7 billion a year in supplemental disaster aid, with state taxpayers contributing many millions more. As of August 2007, Katrina relief alone had cost federal taxpayers $114 billion.
By gradual steps, this disaster safety net became part of the legal landscape, taken for granted by private investors and owners deciding to undertake new projects or rebuild storm-damaged areas. Relief programs--by minimizing, disguising, and shifting the real risks of defying natural hazards--became an active force distorting private decision-making and inviting even worse future tragedies.
Thus if a pre-Katrina Mississippian asked himself, "Should I build my house 10 feet above sea level, a quarter-mile from the Gulf Coast?" the answer came back: "Sure, why not? The government will look after me if disaster strikes."
This entitlement mentality ensured that each new tragedy would generate fresh demands to expand the safety net. In Katrina's aftermath, those demands centered on State Farm, which dared to deny certain claims under homeowners policies that covered wind damage but expressly excluded floods. Mississippi's attorney general immediately sued to void flood exclusion clauses as "unconscionable" and "contrary to public policy" and even launched a criminal investigation of State Farm's claims adjusting practices.
Last year, a jury inflamed by adverse public opinion awarded $1 million in punitive damages against State Farm for having stood on its contract rights in a dispute involving a single house. That case was recently reversed on appeal, but the victory is cold comfort for State Farm, which in the meantime elected prudently to calm the litigation storm by paying tens of millions of dollars to settle claims for unproven wind damage. Voila! The safety net had a brand new strand, woven at the insurance company's expense.
Disgusted, State Farm announced last year that it would cease writing new homeowners policies in Mississippi.
As more private insurers withdraw from high-hazard areas--or raise their rates to reflect the staggering legal and public relations costs of offering disaster insurance--a predictable lament arises: the free market has failed, and government must fill the vacuum so that the statist safety net remains strong. Thus it surprises no one to hear Florida Gov. Charlie Crist challenging this year's presidential candidates to support creation of a federal catastrophic fund that would keep insurance premiums artificially low in disaster-prone areas across the country.
But the solution is not more of the market distortions and perverse incentives that have lured so many people into harm's way. The solution is to replace the prevailing entitlement mentality with a free market in disaster prevention, insurance, and recovery.
In a free market--without tax-paid levees, government disaster relief, or subsidized insurance--anyone who contemplates building or buying property in a high-hazard area will need to face hard facts about the local history of natural disasters, the efficacy and cost of preventive measures, and the availability of insurance.
For example, the high price--or total unavailability--of private insurance will resound like a clanging alarm bell, signaling the market's objective view that a particular building plan is abnormally risky compared to less dangerous locales.
With their own lives and wealth at stake, people will have every incentive to evaluate risks objectively. And if hardy souls still choose to occupy and fortify New Orleans, or build on an earthquake fault, or live in a tornado alley, the risk and reward will be theirs alone. No longer will government make disasters more disastrous by pretending that citizens have a right to defy the forces of nature at others' expense.
Set Yahoo! Free
By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogSet Yahoo! Free
By Alex Epstein
Yahoo! has just released its first-quarter earnings numbers, and neither the market nor analysts are impressed. What will be the company's next move? Multiple suitors claim that they can leverage Yahoo!'s online products and talented employees better than Yahoo!'s widely criticized management is doing. The leading bidder is Microsoft, whose $40 billion offer it is prepared to take directly to Yahoo! shareholders via a proxy fight. Other proposals said to be in the running are an advertising collaboration with Google, a merger with AOL, and a possible deal involving News Corp (including MySpace).
The stakes are high. The right move could lead Yahoo! to a new level of innovation and profit, while the wrong move could cause the company's value to plummet.
Unfortunately, the fate of Yahoo! will not be determined simply by who makes the best proposal to shareholders--but by whose proposal antitrust bureaucrats arbitrarily deem sufficiently "competitive."
Consider the Microsoft bid. If Yahoo! shareholders decide the Microsoft bid is best for their company, and want to move forward immediately with the challenging task of combining two companies with thousands of employees, they may be prohibited from doing so. Antitrust enforcers could hold up progress for months deliberating whether the merger is "anticompetitive"--and then possibly kill it altogether. Competitor Google is cheerleading this outcome, claiming on its official blog that "Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet."
But a Microsoft and Yahoo! combined market share offers no threat to competition whatsoever--a fact that search-giant Google should know, given that the once-puny company was able to out-compete the once-dominant Yahoo! and the mighty Microsoft. Whether a market is competitive is not determined by the number of competitors or the percentage of customers that choose to buy their products; it is determined by whether companies are free to attempt to outdo one another to win over customers with superior products. The fact that someone is winning in a market by a large margin does not make the situation anti-competitive. It illustrates that competitive freedom has produced a company with superlative products.
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have high market shares only insofar as their products are more appealing to consumers than are their competitors'. None of these companies, or any combination of two or even three of them, can force a single consumer to use its services instead of a more attractive search engine or web portal available--nor can it prevent competitors from outdoing it with superior products.
A Microsoft-Yahoo! combination could not threaten competition. To the contrary, it would be an act of free competition, an ambitious attempt by two companies to improve their products by combining strengths. What would actually stop competition would be to prevent the shareholders of these companies from making a move they regard as vital to their success.
The threat of antitrust prosecution is also impeding Google's own efforts to make a deal with Yahoo!. Google has proposed that Yahoo! outsource its search advertising to Google, a move that some analysts say could boost Yahoo!'s ad revenue by 25 percent. Unfortunately, if Yahoo! agrees to the deal, the government will likely kill it because, once again, the companies have a high combined market share. According to Reuters, "Antitrust experts said regulators would likely oppose any permanent alliance between Google and Yahoo." And, just as Google is calling Microsoft's bid anti-competitive given its market share, Microsoft is saying the same of Google: "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands," Microsoft's general counsel complained. "This would make the market far less competitive."
In reality, no deal between Google and Yahoo! is a threat to anyone besides inferior competitors; neither company can force even one person to click on http://www.google.com/. Yahoo! should be able to field and accept any offer from Google it chooses--including a full-blown acquisition. Indeed, it is very possible that if cash-rich Google were not terrified of antitrust prosecution, it, like Microsoft, would try to acquire Yahoo! outright. Such a deal might be Yahoo! shareholders' best option and make possible a whole new level of Internet content--but under antitrust, it won't even come to the table.
What we are observing in the battle over Yahoo! is not genuine, merit-based competition, but competition based on political pull. He who cajoles antitrust bureaucrats to endorse his deal and stop his competitors, wins.
Instead of attempting to outdo one another in crying to the government, Google and Microsoft should take a principled stand in favor of open competition for Yahoo!--a competition in which the company's fate is decided by who makes the best business proposal and not who has the craftiest lobbyists and lawyers.
More broadly, they--and we--should call into question the antitrust laws that make competition-by-pull possible.
The Teleology of Emotions
By Dan Edge from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogDuring my most recent one-on-one Tutorial for OAC class (the subject of which was my last article), Dr. Ghate introduced a very interesting formulation about the function of emotions that I would like to share here. As far as I know (and he knows), the formulation is unique to him, so: the Kudos Delivery Man is making his way to your house, Onkar!
In my paper, I described the function of emotions this way: “They give one an automatic, instantaneous response to percept(s) or imagination, based on previously formed judgments that are stored in the subconscious.” Dr. Ghate did not object to this sentence, but he asked if I could describe the function of emotions from a philosophical, rather than a psychological, perspective. I am used to thinking about emotions from a psychological perspective, so I wasn’t sure what he was looking for. To help clue me in, Ghate said, “Think about it this way. What is the function of the subconscious?” (To be clear, for the purpose of this article, when I use the term “subconscious,” I am referring to the aspect of consciousness that stores and retrieves data in the form of concepts.) Now this question, I had an answer for. I devoted a paragraph to the teleology of the subconscious in my article on Mind-Body Integration. I reproduce it below:
“The teleology of the subconscious must now be considered. Man is able to deal with vast quantities of information because his subconscious provides him information related to whatever his mind is focused on at any particular time. If one's mind is well organized in a hierarchical fashion, then the subconscious will provide information stored close by within the hierarchy. Conceptual units may be interrelated and cross-classified in a variety of ways, and the subconscious aims to provide the focal awareness with related information. For instance, if one is thinking about snakes, his subconscious will send him units related to snakes, like reptile, or animal, or some memory of an encounter with a snake, or some emotion related to snakes (like fear), etc. The information provided depends both on the organization of one's mind and the context in which the idea arises in the focal awareness.”
I gave Dr. Ghate some approximation of this paragraph (including the snake example) during our conversation. Once again, my tack on the question was much more psychological than philosophical. With more prodding from Ghate, I was able to reduce it down to a more fundamental point: The function of the subconscious is to make one’s knowledge immediately available to him. Now how does this relate to emotions? Dr. Ghate finally gave me his answer.
The function of emotion is to make one’s values immediately available to him. This formulation sounds similar to the one I started with, but the comparison to the function of the subconscious opens up more avenues of thought.
The subconscious provides one with an instantaneous stream of data related to whatever he is focusing on. If one is having a discussion about nationalized healthcare, for instance, his subconscious may stand at the ready with data about economics and capitalism generally, the pharma industry in particular, and a variety of related concrete examples. During the discussion, a rational (non-insane) man’s mind would not respond with information about puppies, black holes, and the Illiad, because these things are not directly relevant. This has survival value, because the data stored in one’s subconscious can become vast over a lifetime. If one had to manually sort through every piece of knowledge he ever acquired for each new process of thought, he would be utterly paralyzed.
Because the functioning of the subconscious is automatic, it cannot do one’s thinking for him. While one is discussing nationalized healthcare, his mind will provide him with many different items of knowledge. But one must choose which ideas to focus on, how to organize them in his focal awareness, and how to present them in conversation. If one were to simply blurt out everything that his subconscious brought to mind, he would be unable to utter a complete thought. He would wander from subject to subject, never completing a sentence, never communicating anything effectively, neither to himself nor anyone else. (Those who have known me for a while may recognize this as an exact description of the 17-year-old Dan trying to explain Objectivism :)
Also, even a healthy mind may provide data that are seemingly relevant, but which do not in fact lead one in the right direction. In thinking about the ills of government-sponsored health insurance, one’s mind may wander to whether or not he paid his insurance premium this month. One must keep his mind focused in order to filter out data that is nonessential in any particular context. One has a crucial epistemological responsibility to separate his conscious and subconscious mind, and always to organize and evaluate the ideas that are automatically provided by the subconscious.
Emotions, too, have survival value because they reduce one’s values into an instantaneous response to whatever one is focusing on. Just as one’s knowledge becomes vast over time, so one’s evaluations become vast. If every is implies an ought, then there are as many (implicit) evaluations stored in one’s mind as there are items of knowledge. If one had to manually sort though every judgment he ever made, or could make, before choosing a course of action, he would be paralyzed.
But emotions are also automatic, and they cannot be used as a substitute for thinking. When discussing nationalized healthcare, one may experience a negative emotional response, clueing him in to the fact that it is evil. This emotional response is based on a variety of related evaluations: the value of health care, the value of free trade, and the disvalue of government intervention, to name a few. But one must use his focal awareness to determine which evaluations are relevant in the present context. One’s emotions may conflict with his conscious evaluations, in which case only reason can resolve the conflict.
Also, even a healthy mind may provide automatized evaluations that are seemingly relevant, but are in fact nonessential. For instance, imagine that a doctor is having the nationalized healthcare discussion with a new acquaintance whom he judges to be fundamentally rational, but who retains some bad ideas. And this acquaintance is defending nationalized healthcare partially as a devil’s advocate. The doctor, who is intimately familiar with the evil effects of socialized medicine, may experience an overwhelmingly negative emotional response. He may feel himself growing very angry. But he is angry at the idea and its consequences, not at this new acquaintance who is honestly trying to unravel the issue for himself. It would be wrong of the doctor to lash out at his potential new friend. Again, one must keep his mind focused in order to filter out data that is nonessential in any particular context.
I think this comparison of the subconscious to emotions is brilliant, and I want to thank Dr. Ghate for the formulation. I must add that, while I think that Ghate would agree with most of what I wrote here, he only presented the formulation in general terms. The examples and extrapolations are all mine.
The broader point, and the one which I wish to develop further in the future, is that the mental mechanism for the subconscious and for emotions is the same. I believe that the mind treats automatized concepts, memories, physical motions, evaluations, and emotions as interrelated units. One can follow the development of this theory by reading The Psycho-Epistemology of Acting, Mind-Body Integration, and The Psycho-Epistemology of Sexuality (especially part III.) I’ll get around to writing a book about it one of these days.
Thanks for reading,
--Dan Edge
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D'Souza: "Moderate" Islam and Classical Liberalism Go Together.
By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlogThanks to Ari Armstrong for posting this item on Dinesh D'Souza's Townhall column "What Muslims Really Think." In his column he does something that find stunning. He asserts the hypothesis that most Muslims are freedom-loving individuals.
The problem for most Muslims is Western liberalism. But here we must distinguish between two kinds of liberalism. There is the classical liberalism of the American founding. Call this Liberalism 1. This liberalism is reflected in such principles as the right to vote, to assemble freely, to debate issues, to trade with others, to practice one’s religion, political and religious toleration, and so on.
Then there is the modern liberalism of the 1960s. Call this Liberalism 2. This liberalism is defined by such tenets as the right to blaspheme, the complete exclusion of religious symbols from the public square, the right of teenage boys and girls to receive sex education and contraceptives, the right to abortion, prostitution as a worker's right, pornography as a protected form of expression, gay rights and gay marriage, and so on...
Now we are in a better position to understand Islamic attitudes regarding the West. The vast majority of Muslims worldwide embrace Liberalism 1 while rejecting Liberalism 2. They are generally comfortable with classical liberalism while abhorring the tenets of modern liberalism.
Let's understand this. A religious, conservative commentator actually wants us to believe that it is religious traditions, both Christian and Islamic that are compatible and benevolent towards classical liberalism? The implication is no different than the philosophical interpretations of conservative legal intellectual Robert Bork in his Slouching Towards Gomorrah, which I blogged about recently. Except D'Souza gives it a religous basis, and in so doing, finds more in common with Muslims who tolerate radical hatred of the West.
Freedom and liberty exist to the extent that government is limited to the province of protecting individual rights, not trampling them in the name of some sort of social morality. Islam is not a peaceful religion held hostage, but is instead implicitly tolerant of the ideas that the radicals preach.
Our newest Oblogger, Kostubh, highlights the same argument being made half a world away, in his latest, "The Myth of Moderate Islam." In it he points us to an Indian review of a Pakistani film “Khuda Kay Liye” (For God’s sake) which attempts to equate the violence of radical Islam and the response of the US to the 9/11 attacks. And the author is wise to spot the contradiction.
What interested me most about the film was that in seeking to show Islam in a good light, it accidentally exposes the prejudices that make moderate Muslims the ideological partners of jihadis. In painting America as the villain of our times, the prejudices against the West that get exposed are no different from what Mohammad Siddique, one of London’s tube bombers, said in the suicide video he made before blowing himself up. In the video, that surfaced during the trial now on in London, he describes himself as a soldier in the war against the West: ‘I’m doing what I am for Islam, not, you know, for materialistic or worldly benefits.’
The same contradiction exists in D'Souza's piece of course. In mis-identifying the essentials of classical liberalism and liberty as the outgrowth of religious traditions, he unwittingly shows us his distaste for the very basis of individual rights. Notice the contradictions inherent in his lists of Liberalism 1 and Liberalism 2. The right to "debate the issues" unless your side of the debate questions the existence of God (blasphemy); the "right to vote" and submit to the will of the majority if the vote doesn't go your way on something like abortion; the "right to toleration" unless you're gay. ; the right to "trade with others" unless that trade involves paying someone to teach your kids the way you desire or to perform certain "questionable" medical procedures on your own body.
What interests me about the D'Souza piece is that in justifying the idea of a "moderate" Islam, he shows us the very mechanism through which "radical" Islam is allowed to perpetrate it's crimes. For if the blowback against elements of liberty that one finds distasteful is justified, in idea, then how long will it be before someone straps a bomb to their chest and puts the idea into practice? And who will actively oppose them?
That D'Souza would draw a line in the sand and side with religious influence shows me the true extent to which religious intolerance has become a force in today's society. In doing so he is uprooting classical liberalism from its secular grounding. If he wishes to see the logical end of such an association he need only look to the best example of it's logical, consistent end in today's world, radical Islam.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
April 28, 2008
The New Pyramid Builders II
By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogIf you thought the cosmology of the Koran was absurdly irrational and a kind of parody of the Bible's, a meeting of Muslim scientists and clerics recently claimed that the Koran contains scientific proofs, among them that Mecca is the center of the earth. As a consequence, reported BBC News on April 21, they "have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT."
"Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers. The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice. One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north. He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.Just as their fundamentalist Christian opposite numbers are "unearthing" and publicizing Biblical explanations for everything, from the true age of the universe to the fate of the dinosaurs to the squirms of bacteria. Actually, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by international agreement and refined in the 1920s by astronomical scientists from around the world. Force had nothing to do with it. But perhaps the most bizarre news from Qatar is the announcement of a special Muslim watch.
"The underlying belief is that scientific truths were also revealed in the Muslim holy book, and it is the work of scholars to unearth and publicize the textual evidence."
"The meeting also reviewed what has been described as a Mecca watch, the brainchild of a French Muslim. The watch is said to rotate anti-clockwise and is supposed to help Muslims determine the direction of Mecca from any point on Earth."This must earn a special reward for sheer irrationality. But, the "scientific" conference of Muslims is evidence of the hubris Islamists are experiencing as they throttle and subjugate the West. Christians are not the only mystics who wish to make science the servant of religion.
Moving from backward-running Muslim watches and the Koran as the foundation of the Periodic Table of Elements to another species of bizarre but real behavior, Walter Williams of George Mason University, in an April 16th Townhall column, "Foreign Trade Angst," wrote
"The United States is the world's largest recipient of foreign direct investment. According to the Economic Report of the President, in 2004, foreigners owned $5.5 trillion in U.S. assets and had $2.3 trillion in sales. They produced $515 billion of goods and services....According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2006 alone, foreign investors spent $184 billion investing in U.S. businesses and real estate, the highest amount foreign investors have spent since 2000...."Williams can be forgiven for not noting it - his focus was on the anti-free trade sentiment in the U.S. - but many of those "foreign investors" are Mideast potentates of the Persian Gulf who control what are called "sovereign wealth funds" (SWFs), which total over $1 trillion. An April 12th article on the MoneyNews site, "Mideast Wealth Funds Rescue Developers," notes that
"Flush with cash and looking for better-than-modest returns, several Middle East sovereign wealth funds are putting money into carefully selected U.S. real estate ventures.Note that the term "sovereign" means "government" - and the term includes the so-called "personal wealth" of about 50,000 royal family members spread between Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, their particular family heads being the government. As for the real meaning of the term "wealth," in the context of OPEC and Arab medievalists, it means "loot." The "loot" is the revenue generated by private Western oil properties which Western governments, particularly those of the U.S., Britain, and France, should never have allowed the Arabs to nationalize or otherwise expropriate from the oil companies. The oil companies, for their part, seeing that their properties were not going to be protected by their respective governments, pragmatically entered into "partnerships" with the tribalist ruling cliques in that region, over the decades expanding and improving the properties and cementing their survival on those partnerships.
"The funds, controlled by their governments of origin, have already pumped billions of investment dollars into U.S. companies and enterprises, but cash allocations to real estate ventures is a relatively new phenomenon." (Italics mine.)
Apparently, no Ellis Wyatts or Francisco d'Anconias were in charge in the 1950's to destroy those seized properties.
Someone might object: All those billions being invested in this country represent money, which, although extorted from us, is being put to legitimately productive use. It's unfortunate that it went to sustain tyrannical and religious regimes, but it is coming back.
However, it is irrelevant that the medievalists are assuming the role of risk takers. The money the medievalists are putting into U.S. companies is money that hypothetically should have gone directly to them without being first diverted to the Mideast. That money would have gone to reward risk-taking stockholders and not to the medievalists to allow them to erect their new pyramids.
The concept of "risk" cannot apply to the medievalists for as long as they have a stranglehold on the West. Regardless of the losses they may experience in their portfolios of government instruments, Treasury notes, private stocks, bonds, and the like, and regardless of the failure or poor performance of companies they may have controlling interests in, their fabulous oil revenues will always be guaranteed - provided the West's economy does not first collapse.
On March 18, WorldNetDaily carried an article by Jerome R. Corsi, "U.S. Treasury fears Islamic strings on investments."
"The U.S. Treasury is struggling with how to handle any political or Islamic ramifications as Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds look to make substantial investments in capital-poor American banks and securities firms.SWF investments in the genuinely productive Western economies are tantamount to our own federal government buying controlling or minimal interests in private corporations, which technically would be fascism. What does the infusion of SWFs in private corporations portend?
"WND previously reported sovereign wealth funds in six Persian Gulf countries, including Kuwait, the U.A.E. and Qatar, have now amassed $1.7 trillion, positioning them for attempts to control major banks and securities firms in the U.S.
"Since the beginning of the year, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two of the largest U.A.E. states, have been in discussions with the U.S. Treasury, offering reassurances that their investments in U.S. bank and security firms would not impose restrictions usually dictated by Islamic law, commonly known as Sharia."
SWFs will not be invested in Exxon's or in any of the other major Western oil companies' exploration and drilling projects in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, or on the West Coast, provided they are ever approved by Washington, not unless they can buy controlling interests in such projects, the better to control oil production.
Do not forget that "trade" with the medievalists is not trade in the normal sense, in which values are exchanged to no party's loss. SWFs are loot, and the looting has lasted as long as it has because of especially American energy and foreign policies. One might speculate on the number of congressmen who are in thrall to the medievalists and who block any proposal to allow oil exploration and drilling in areas that are now environmentally "off limits." It is certain that the sheiks, princes and emirs of the Mideast chuckle or gloat over every victory of the environmentalists in Congress and the White House. They must have danced in the streets when ethanol was mandated by the government, and cheered heartily over the biofuel and "clean energy" programs.
Thus, the looters are encouraged by the West's irrational policies. They, like any other criminals or gangs, are counting on the absence of reason and self-assertion in their victims. This is not to say, however, that the medievalists are aware of these concepts in any explicit form; nor is it to claim that the victims are conscious of the crucial, necessary role they play in their survival. The evidence, based on the pragmatic, short-range policies of Western governments, suggests that they are either ignorant or disdainful of such concepts. They are unable or unwilling to learn that, given the bind in which they have placed their countries, the "practical" is inevitably and inarguably impractical.
Overlooked in virtually every discussion of the phenomenon is the political leverage the medievalists can acquire in the West by the redirection of their "wealth." As the Treasury Department article above indicates, even American officials see the potential threat of especially Saudi influence on the character and course of American foreign policy and are meekly asking for assurances from the medievalists that they will not, for example, arm-twist the U.S. into abandoning Israel, or recognize Hamas as a legitimate political party, impose censorship on critics of Islam, or even replace Greenwich Mean Time with Mecca Mean Time.
(Notwithstanding our arms sales to it, the U.S. is not much of an ally of Israel since our current policy is to compel Israel to compromise with its mortal enemies and to "cooperate" and help negotiate the formation of a hostile Palestinian state. The U.S. arms deal with the Saudis is bigger by many more billions of dollars. For the nature of the Saudi threat to the U.S., see my commentary of December 13, 2006, "Our Saudi Foes.")
It is interesting to learn that after 9/11, according to an article on the Saudi-American Forum site in September 2003, "The United States Must Not Neglect Saudi Arabian Investment," between that infamous date and the spring of 2002, some $200 billion of Saudi SWFs fled the U.S. In 2003, when the Saudis and other Persian Gulf medievalists saw that the U.S. was not only fighting the wrong enemies, Iraq and Afghanistan, but was going out of its way to assure them that they were not perceived as the true enemies, SWFs began to flow back into the country.
Peppered throughout the article, however, are complaints about "discriminatory" actions taken by Americans objecting to Arab investments, together with cautious warnings and admonitions to the U.S. that unless America does something about individuals and organizations that implicate the Saudis with 9/11 and terrorism in general, not to mention Saudi-funded political activism through front organizations such as CAIR, then the Saudis will withdraw their investments and place them elsewhere.
The author of the article writes that
"...Recently thwarted FDI [foreign direct investment] projects in the United States reveal that organized interest groups have sought to target and derail Saudi investments. Locals who objected to Saudi Arabian investment into their community have made a comparison of legitimate Saudi investments to suspect illegal organizations. One project failed as a small group of activists launched a media campaign accusing [sic, alleging?] terrorist ties.The author, Tanya C. Hsu, protesteth too much, very likely under the instructions of her Saudi employers. Note that the Saudis group themselves with other "foreigners," as though they were in the same class with private British, French, or other non-governmental foreign risk takers who have invested money in American companies. Note also that the Saudis pose as "victims" of actions taken by Americans who fear an economic takeover of the U.S. by powers hostile to its republican character, without mentioning proven Saudi complicity in funding terrorism, or Saudi-funded political activist groups such as CAIR, or Saudi "libel tourists" who sue authors and publishers to suppress publication of books that demonstrate the links between Saudi money and terrorist activities.
"Many Saudi investors are also concerned about becoming victims of lawsuits. Saudi and other foreign investors with no complicity whatsoever with 9/11 or links to terrorism nevertheless perceive the aggressive efforts of an army of U.S. lawyers and entrenched interest groups to 'link and accuse' foreigners in a broad net of litigation. The threat of becoming ensnared in such lawsuits has been reason enough to avoid long-term investments in U.S. markets. If plaintiff efforts to freeze and tie up investments in advance of any evidence of guilt succeed, foreign faith in U.S. financial markets will suffer." [Italics mine to underscore one of the veiled threats.]
Gag your citizens, demand the Saudis, scrap the First Amendment, forget 9/11, or we will see to it that you suffer your just desserts.
A Washington Post article of February 11, 2002, "Enormous Wealth Spilled Into American Coffers," briefly touches on the political connections between Saudi money and government officials.
"One American financial institution that has attracted Saudi investments is the Washington-based Carlyle Group, whose principal officers include several members of the Saudis' favorite American government of modern times, the first Bush administration. Its principals, who have made millions of dollars from the firm, include former Office of Management and Budget director Richard Darman, former secretary of state [and now defense secretary] James A. Baker III. Former president George H.W. Bush is also a well-paid advisor to Carlyle. Bush has traveled to Saudi Arabia on Carlyle's behalf." [Carlyle, incidentally, failed at the same time as Bear Sterns in the government-caused sub-prime mortgage debacle.]No doubt Bush Senior has often visited Saudi Arabia with his $100 million buddy, Bill Clinton, whose presidential library in Arkansas received $10 million in donations from the Saudis and untold millions from other Persian Gulf billionaires. Clinton's own Arab connections are probably greater than what has filtered through the media sieve.
However, The New York Sun, in a November 22, 2004 article, "Saudis, Arabs Funneled Millions to President Clinton's Library," provides some details, but not the whole picture, of the Clinton-Arab connection.
"President Clinton's new $165 million library was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week."In exchange for what? For practicing grand scale political chicanery to enfeeble America and deliver it in a state of dhimmitude to its destroyers.
The Sun article also mentions that George H. W. Bush's presidential library received significant Saudi donations, as well. When his son, George W. Bush, begins planning his own presidential library, doubtless it will receive generous Saudi and Persian Gulf donations, especially given his "special" handholding relationship with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But, being bought off by the medievalists is not an exclusively Republican venality, as the Democrats like to claim.
How can the medievalists exercise political power over the U.S.? By having politicians like the Bushes and the Clintons in their pockets, in the White House and outside of it.
What will be the end, the dreadful climax? We can put ourselves in Dagny Taggart's place in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, as she listens to another set of looters express their own ambitions, and imagine the same thing with the appropriate substitutions:
"Then she saw the answer; she saw the secret premise behind their words. With all of their noisy devotion to the age of science, their hysterically technological jargon, their cyclotrons, their sound rays, these men were moved forward, not by the image of an industrial skyline, but by the vision of that form of existence which the industrialists had swept away - the vision of a fat, unhygienic rajah of India, with vacant eyes staring in indolent stupor out of stagnant layers of flesh, with nothing to do but run precious gems through his fingers and, once in a while, stick a knife into the body of a starved, toil-dazed, germ-eaten creature, as a claim to a few grains of the creature's rice, then claim it from hundreds of millions of such creatures and thus let the rice grains gather into gems." (p. 948, hardcover)Or into pyramids in the Mideast deserts. Are Americans willing to starve and toil as environmentally acceptable germ-eaten creatures to help the Islamic rajahs of the Persian Gulf build them? For that is the secret means and end of the wielders of SWFs. It remains to be seen.
But Americans are getting no guidance on the matter from the presidential candidates, none of whom dares raise the subject. The depth of their moral depravity is as great as Jimmy Carter's, who recently laid a wreath of roses on the grave of Yasir Arafat.
Tore Boeckmann on Ayn Rand
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogTore Boeckmann was recently interviewed for EdNews on the creativity of Ayn Rand. The interview is short, but worth a read.
I should also mention that Tore Boeckmann's essay "Anthem as a Psychological Fantasy" in Robert Mayhew's anthology Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem was one of the very bright highlights of that book. The essays in that volume are of consistently high quality, but the essays by Tore Boeckmann, Onkar Ghate ("Breaking the Metaphysical Chains of Dictatorship: Free Will and Determinism in Anthem"), and Greg Salmieri ("Prometheus' Discovery: Individualism and the Meaning of the Concept 'I' in Anthem") were way beyond stellar. I highly recommend reading them, if you haven't already.
Are Mathematical Truths Discovered or Invented?
By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogThis question is one of the topics in the upcoming June 2008 issue of the European Mathematical Society Newsletter. As Science News reports, this subject "has provided fodder for arguments among mathematicians and philosophers" for thousands of years, with no seeming resolution.
On one hand, there are Platonists who believe this:
...[A] mathematician discovers timeless truths independent of human observation and free of the transient nature of physical reality. "The abstract realm in which a mathematician works is by dint of prolonged intimacy more concrete to him than the chair he happens to sit on," says Ulf Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, a self-described Platonist.But the Platonists are forced to deal with some tricky implications of their views:
Those who espouse discovery note that mathematical statements are true or false regardless of personal beliefs, suggesting that they have some external reality. But this leads to some odd notions. Where, exactly, do these mathematical truths exist? Can a mathematical truth really exist before anyone has ever imagined it?In contrast, there are those who believe that such talk of an abstract realm is just mystical hogwash:
Brian Davies, a mathematician at King's College London, writes that Platonism "has more in common with mystical religions than with modern science." And modern science, he believes, provides evidence to show that the Platonic view is just plain wrong. He titled his article "Let Platonism Die."But the latter school is faced with a different set of intractable questions:
...Reuben Hersh of the University of New Mexico ...rejects the Platonic view, arguing instead that mathematics is a product of human culture, not fundamentally different from other human creations like music or law or money.
On the other hand, if math is invented, then why can't a mathematician legitimately invent that 2 + 2 = 5?The solution to this millenia-old argument is to abandon both the intrisicist approach of the Platonists and the subjectivist approach of their opponents. Instead, mathematical concepts (like all concepts) are neither intrinsic nor subjective but objective. It is in debates like this where the Objectivist approach to epistemology and concept formation prove their value -- in being able to cut through the errors made over the centuries by struggling philosophers and mathematicians.
...The challenge, [Hersh] admits, is to explain why it is that mathematical statements can be definitively true or false, not subject to taste or whim.
Of course, properly applying Rand's theory of concept formation to the philosophy of mathematics is a non-trivial task. Concepts of number are both seemingly self-evident, but also represent feats of tremendous abstraction. But scholars such as Dr. Pat Corvini have made a good start. Her course at the 2007 OCON, "Two, Three, Four and All That", was on precisely that topic -- namely how to apply the Objectivist theory of concept formation to concepts of number:
The concept of number as used in science today is one of man's greatest achievements: a grand-scale integration capping centuries of effort and enabling a vastly expanded efficacy in all areas of life. But the growth in complexity of the number system has rendered the meaning of number ever more mysterious; number is seen both as a touchstone of certainty and as an arbitrary human construct whose applicability to the real world is a deep mystery. This is because the nature of number has not been properly identified; and as Ayn Rand pointed out, that imprecision is dangerous.She is also offering a follow-up course at this year's 2008 OCON, "Two, Three, Four and All That: The Sequel":
This course clarifies the meaning of "number" by examining it in the light of Miss Rand's theory of concepts. Recognizing the objectivity of number provides a new framework for resolving both historical and modern debates, and yields a heightened appreciation for the science of mathematics as a whole—further reinforcing the value of Objectivist epistemology.
Science shelves of bookstores are today awash in accounts of modern extensions of the idea of number, including infinity and the continuum, set theory, transfinite numbers, and the like. Many of these ideas, and the "mysteries" that proceed from them, figure prominently in modern philosophy and in popular discussion of the nature and limits of reason.I have long had an interest in those topics such as foundations of set theory, the nature of the concept "infinity", etc. Hence, if her 2008 course is as good as her 2007 course, then it promises to be a real treat. Diana and I have already signed up for it.
In this course, Dr. Corvini explains and evaluates some of the most influential of these ideas, using as a frame of reference both their historical context and the view of number as objective developed in her earlier courses. By identifying the fundamental nature of the ideas and of the errors involved, we see again the importance of a proper theory of concepts, and clarify the differences between an objective approach to mathematics and the more traditional views.
Although I have a degree in mathematics (B.S., MIT, 1984), her courses do not require any advanced math background. Dr. Corvini is a very clear and engaging lecturer, and she is excellent at explaining the relevant mathematical concepts to a general audience. If you can count to 10 and you are a normal intelligent adult, then you can follow her lectures.
So if you want to see how the power of the Objectivist theory of concepts can resolve questions that have stumped some of history's greatest minds for thousands of years, check out her courses!
(I don't believe that her 2007 course is available yet through the Ayn Rand Bookstore, but I expect that it will be eventually. It was available for purchase by 2007 conference attendees as part of the usual post-conference package, and hence I think it will eventually make it to the main bookstore listing.)
Self-Defense on Campus
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogOn April 15th, the Colorado Springs Gazette published my letter to the editor in response to its excellent editorial advocating concealed carry at CU in Colorado Springs. Here's my letter:
I want to thank The Gazette for its editorial advocating concealed carry on campus ("UCCS students want their guns," Our View, April 13).On April 22nd, I participated in the "Empty Holster Protest" at CU Boulder. It was sponsored by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. As for the importance of concealed carry on campus, John Lott recently published an op-ed on the dangers posed by gun-free zones like college campuses.
I'm a graduate student instructor at CU Boulder. Since 2001 I've been licensed to carry a concealed firearm in Colorado. Every time I hear of a new school shooting, I worry that some psychopath might unleash his rage on my campus. University policy forbids any firearms on campus. I obey that policy but it won't stop a killer from waltzing onto campus armed to the teeth. So if my students and I were in his path, we could only cower in fear in a corner of the classroom, helplessly waiting for him to kill us.
If the university respected my concealed carry permit, my good aim could protect my students from such an unthinkable end. Since I'm a law-abiding citizen trained in the proper use of firearms, my gun poses no danger whatsoever to other peaceful people.
CU's anti-gun policy is wrong. It ought to be changed, not just in Colorado Springs, but in Boulder, too.
I applaud the efforts of the UCCS chapter of Concealed Carry on Campus.
Such efforts are just starting at Boulder, too. Students and parents wanting to advocate concealed carry at CU Boulder should contact Jim Manley at james.m.manley@colorado.edu.
Diana Hsieh, Sedalia
Many Objectivists are lukewarm on gun rights, particularly on concealed carry. If you're one of them, you might wish to read these essays:
- Jeff Snyder: A Nation of Cowards
- Eric Raymond: Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life
- Heartland Institute: Taking Aim at Gun Control
Unreasonable Search and Monitoring
By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlogA few years ago, a man returning from Philippines was stopped at LAX airport and his laptop was searched. Child porn was discovered and he was prosecuted. He claimed that the evidence could not be used because of his 4th amendment rights.
The right of the people to be secure in their ..., papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,....In 2006, the district court of California ruled in his favor. The ruling stated: "The government ... argues that, even if the minimal Fourth Amendment standard of reasonable suspicion applies to such searches, its search of Arnold's laptop... comported with that standard."
It might seem odd that returning from the Philippines is "reasonable suspicion"; but, the officers also questioned him. Without knowing the details, I'll simply assume that there was something suspicious about his answers. So, that part does not concern me.
What does concern me is something else the government claimed: "... that the border search of information stored in a computer hard drive is not subject to Fourth Amendment protection."
This claim is far more serious, because the government is claiming the right to search laptops of anyone at the border, without any suspicion whatsoever. Even if one grants the legitimacy of customs searches for contraband, how can the government claim the right to extend such a search beyond the physical?The case then went to the circuit court, where the government won, with the court saying that the search was permissible under “the border search doctrine", and saying that the man "failed to demonstrate why the laptop search was “logically any different” from luggage searches,..".
So, can the TSA can search a laptop's contents -- more than just physically for bombs etc., -- on domestic flights? No, probably not yet, but the government is probably one step closer. I couldn't locate the text of the recent decision, so I'm not sure if the court made it abundantly clear that being a "border search" was the clincher.
Imagine this situation: Certain types of covert surveillance are not allowed without an order from a court. Now, in the wake of terrorism, a law is passed, allowing these types of surveillance, but leaving the situations open-ended to apply to all law-breaking. Given the existence of such a law, it is only a question of time before a government employee, trying to do his job, decides to use whatever legal means he can. He sees that the law is not restricted to terrorism, so he can use it to put a local drug-dealer under surveillance. Why would he not do so?
In the U.K., there is some talk of using their camera to fine people who are littering, even though that was far from the reason they were installed. And now, there's a story of a U.K. city-council that put a family under surveillance using the law originally written in the wake of terrorism. The suspected crime: claiming to be residents of the city, to get their kids into a good school district.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson
April 25, 2008
And You Thought It Was Your Room
By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogAyn Rand Institute Press Release
And You Thought It Was Your Room
April 16, 2008
Irvine, CA--Is it legal for a roommate locator service to match up customers according to their mutual preferences: male or female, gay or straight, have children or childless? Probably not, according to a recent federal appellate court decision in Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com. That's because the federal Fair Housing Act and a similar California law ban discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, or marital status in housing transactions.
"This lawsuit attacks individual liberty in a particularly sensitive area," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Adults who contemplate sharing living space should have absolute contractual freedom to use a roommate-matching service that treats their own individual preferences as paramount.
"It's perfectly obvious that an incompatible roommate can make life miserable, as anyone who has occupied a freshman dorm room can testify. People should not have to get government permission to arrange their private affairs according to their own best judgment.
"The government's job is to protect you against physical force and fraud, not to overrule your preference for a roommate who shares your sexual orientation--or not; who is of the same sex--or not; or who has children--or not.
"The law should respect and protect the right of Roommates.com, or any other such matching service, to design a questionnaire that suits their customers' needs. Roommate seekers who object to a particular questionnaire are free to find another matching service, or to start their own.
"This case illustrates why the Fair Housing Act, which does nothing but infringe on freedom of contract in the housing market, should be repealed."
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Mr. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor, who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.
Thomas Bowden is available for interviews.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213
For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
The Danger of Environmentalism
By Michael S. Berliner from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe Danger of Environmentalism
By Michael S. Berliner
Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.
The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.
In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power--and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.
Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.
The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment." Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheer--at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.
The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man--the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do.
They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. "The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!'" In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.
The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the "needs" of the nonhuman.
To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a "balance" between the needs of man and the "needs" of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy that makes life on earth possible.
Michael S. Berliner is cochairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
This Op-Ed was published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Calgary Herald, and El Nuevo Herald (April 22, 2004)
Woodstock's Legacy: The Rise of Environmentalism and the Religious Right
By from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 17, 2008
Woodstock's Legacy: The Rise of Environmentalism and the Religious Right
Who: Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A Ford Hall Forum talk that will consider how the opposing forces of reason and emotionalism have manifested themselves in American culture in the four decades since Woodstock, with special focus on the rise of religion and environmentalism. A Q&A will follow.
Where: Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street, Boston, MA
When: Thursday, May 8, 2008, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
The public and media are invited. Admission is FREE.
Summary: In 1969 Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum talk, "Apollo and Dionysus," addressed the nearly simultaneous events of Woodstock and the first lunar landing. Employing Greek mythology's god of the sun and god of wine, she compared the awe-inspiring accomplishments of NASA's Apollo space program to the famous three-day concert that has come to exemplify the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era." Almost four decades later, Dr. Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, reflects on her words and explores the implications of how American culture since Woodstock has valued individualism relative to collectivism and civilization relative to primitivism.
Bio: Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and is a contributing editor to The Objective Standard. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications. He is frequently interviewed in the media and appears weekly on the new Fox Business Network to debate and discuss current economic and business news. His columns and opinion-editorials are published on forbes.com and in many major newspapers. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.
For more information on this talk, please e-mail events@aynrand.org
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Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: larryb@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
Established in 1908, the Ford Hall Forum is celebrating one hundred years of hosting public lectures in Boston, Massachusetts, by leading cultural figures, politicians and intellectuals. From 1961 to 1981, Ayn Rand was a frequent speaker at the Forum. Several of her lectures were subsequently published as essays in such books as The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought. Since her death, Dr. Leonard Peikoff has spoken at the Forum on a number of occasions, most recently in 2003. Dr. Brook spoke at the Forum for the first time in 2006.
Tax Code Should Not Be Used to Dictate Our Values
By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogAyn Rand Institute Press Release
Tax Code Should Not Be Used to Dictate Our Values
April 17, 2008
Irvine, CA--In "Life And Taxes," an opinion piece published today on forbes.com, Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that the government has no right to use tax policies to influence anyone's behavior.
The government's job, according to Dr. Brook, "is not to dictate your values but to protect them. In a free country, you choose values and then use your own money as a tool to achieve them. But a value-rigged tax policy reverses this cause and effect--it uses your money against you, bribing you with tax breaks that let you keep some of your earnings in exchange for abandoning your preferred values."
Our current tax policy, Dr. Brook explained, "works by attaching financial incentives to a long list of values deemed morally worthy. If you want to maximize your wealth come tax time--and who doesn't?--you must look at the world through tax-colored glasses, 'voluntarily' adjusting your behavior to suit social norms and thereby qualifying for tax breaks. In this way, the social engineers of tax policy preserve the impression that you're exercising free choice, while they're actually dispensing with your reason and your judgment."
If government were restricted to its proper functions of defending individual rights and stopped trying to socially engineer our behavior through the tax code, concluded Dr. Brook, "a great burden would be lifted, not just from the economy, but from our lives."
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Expelled Gets an F
By Keith Lockitch from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogIrvine, CA--Today Ben Stein's anti-evolution documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens in theaters. The film claims that advocates of "intelligent design"--the view that life is so complex it must be the product of a "higher intelligence"--are the persecuted victims of a "scientific establishment" dogmatically committed to evolution.
"The premise of Expelled is that proponents of 'intelligent design' have been shunned, denied tenure, and even fired because of a conspiracy to quash the scientific evidence supporting their theory," said Dr. Keith Lockitch, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But the truth is: there is no evidence supporting their theory. Intelligent design is completely devoid of any positive scientific content, and consists of nothing more than a religiously motivated attack on evolution. To the extent intelligent design advocates are facing obstacles in academia it is because they are not doing real science: they haven't been 'expelled' they have flunked out of the scientific community, just as a faith healer would flunk out of medical school.
"Observe that intelligent design advocates have pumped millions into publicity-seeking, rather than appealing to scientists with facts and logical arguments. They have spent more time at Christian 'apologetics seminars' than scientific conferences, and have attempted to use the courts to force schools to teach their ideas. Now they are hoping to dupe the movie-going public with a film that misrepresents Darwin's theory and the array of facts that support it--just as the makers of Expelled misrepresented the nature of the film in order to bamboozle respected evolutionary scientists into participating in it.
"Intelligent design advocates will do anything to advance their views--except science.
"The reason for that is simple: doing science has never been their goal. Their goal is to make biblical creationism appear scientific in order to skirt the constitutional ban on religion in public schools. Contrary to the film's claims, the real dogmatists are not the defenders of Darwin, but the religiously motivated advocates of intelligent design."
800-365-6552 ext. 213 (office)
949-838-5137 (cell)
larryb@aynrand.org
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam (panel discussion at Berkeley)
By from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam
A panel discussion at Berkeley
What: A panel discussion on the nature and threat of totalitarian Islam, followed by a Q&A
Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute; Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; and Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
Where: UC Berkeley, 2050 Valley Life Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA
When: Tuesday, April 29, 2008, at 7 pm
Admission is FREE and open to the public.
Description: What is the nature of totalitarian Islam--is it limited to terrorism or is it a broader movement? Are non-Muslims its only victims? Who precisely is the enemy? Does the West bear responsibility for creating this movement? What policies can defeat it?
Defenders of Islam around the world have striven to silence critics with threats, protests and acts of violence. How should the West respond to demands for censorship, as in the Danish cartoon controversy?
Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.
Bios:
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle East issues. Dr. Brook has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News (The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN's Talkback Live, CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money, and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a columnist for the New York Times Syndicate. Abroad, he appears weekly in Israel's Jerusalem Post, Italy's l'Opinione, Spain's La Razón, and monthly in Australia's and Canada's Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is the single most accessed Internet source of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, O’Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al-Jazeera.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall courses in military history and classical culture. Mr. Hanson received his PhD in classics from Stanford University in 1980 and is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, scholarly papers and newspaper editorials. He has written or edited 16 books.
For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam (panel discussion at Harvard)
By from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam
A panel discussion at Harvard University
What: A panel discussion on the nature and threat of totalitarian Islam, followed by a Q&A
Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute; Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; and Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch
Where: Harvard University, Emerson Hall, Room 105, Cambridge, MA
When: Tuesday, May 6, 2008, at 7:30 pm
Admission is FREE and open to the public.
Description: What is the nature of totalitarian Islam--is it limited to terrorism or is it a broader movement? Are non-Muslims its only victims? Who precisely is the enemy? Does the West bear responsibility for creating this movement? What policies can defeat it?
Defenders of Islam around the world have striven to silence critics with threats, protests and acts of violence. How should the West respond to demands for censorship, as in the Danish cartoon controversy?
Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.
Bios:
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle East issues. Dr. Brook has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News's The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera; CNN's Talkback Live; CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money; and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a columnist for the New York Times Syndicate. Abroad, he appears weekly in Israel's Jerusalem Post, Italy's l'Opinione, Spain's La Razón, and monthly in Australia's and Canada's Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is the single most accessed Internet source of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al-Jazeera.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of seven books on Islam and jihad, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth about Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer is a weekly columnist for Human Events and FrontPage magazine, and also writes a weekly Qur'an commentary for HotAir.com. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the
For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org
Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after this event.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail:
Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
A Goddamn Loss
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogHere is an interesting signpost of how America is changing. Up to the '70s, one heard "goddamn" in polite conversation. It might have been considered salty, but it was something adults said regularly, kind of like saying "hell." You can find the expletive in Ayn Rand's novels.
I remember being surprised in the early '80s the first time a religious man asked me not to say "goddamn." I could hardly believe this person took the idea of God so seriously as to object to a meaningless swear word. Hell, I was an atheist saying the curse. It's not like I meant "Let a supernatural creature come forth and consign thee to the everlasting bonfire!"
Today the word has become less common. I think it has joined the four-letter words as a dirty word one should not say. I take this as another indicator that religion is taken more seriously today.
Lawrence Auster objects to the use of this word in the title of a book by William F. Buckley. 30 years ago, Auster would have been dismissed as a puritanical freak. Today I fear he is the future of conservatism.
Freedom and Toleration
By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlogThis post is inspired by the State of Texas’ recent abduction of 416 kids from a polygamist compound.
One way to measure the degree of freedom in a society is by looking at the kinds of associations made by its members. A free people can choose to enter into any association they wish, and are not forced into any associations against their will. By associations, I include both social associations, such as friendships, meeting, publications, and marriages, as well as material associations, such as gifts, trade, business agreements, and common property. Voluntary associations are those entered into by mutual consent to mutual benefit. Non-voluntary associations (the status of minors aside) include taxes, crime, restrictions on trade and commerce, and any other regulation of consensual behavior that is imposed on individuals against their own judgment.
A free society requires a certain kind of tolerance for other people’s beliefs and associations. Because the term is unclear, it is necessary to distinguish two kinds of toleration. Political toleration is equal treatment under the law - the presumption that every human being has the same rights as everyone else. A violation of this kind of toleration is only possible in interactions that involve the threat or use of force. Political discrimination includes preferential or detrimental treatment of any group or individual based on any criteria other than an individual’s respect for the rights of others. Examples of political intolerance include laws that favor the rich or poor (such any government tax or fee that is not fixed), racial quotas, or limitations on contracts based on sexual orientation or the market share of one’s business.
In contrast to political toleration, social toleration is non-judgmentalism. As applied to cultural distinctions, it is known as multiculturalism. A total commitment to social toleration requires the presumption that no particular culture, way of life, or value system is superior to any other. Practically everyone engages in various kinds of social intolerance when they issue moral praise and condemnation, or choose to associate or dissociate with various people or groups based on their beliefs or identities. There are many levels of intolerance — we might buy our groceries from someone we would not necessarily want as a business partner or spouse.
I believe that a free people must be politically tolerant, but socially intolerant. Political tolerance is necessary because the freedom of association requires that individuals be able to establish any voluntary association they choose, including those that the majority disapproves of, such as polygamous relationships. A society that does not respect this right will eventually succumb to pressure group warfare followed by dictatorship, as conflicting moral views battle in the political arena until one seizes power by force. Social intolerance on the other hand, is necessary because in a society that does not use political means to prohibit destructive (but voluntary) behavior and ideas, people must rely on their own judgment for moral guidance. In order to live successfully in a politically pluralistic society, individuals need to use their own judgment to decide which associations are harmful or beneficial within the context of voluntary associations. (In this context, a presumption of innocence is equally important in social as well as political tolerance.)
Politically, freedom means the freedom to disagree - to be free to make choices regardless of the approval of others. A free people must be free to create and join religious cults, no matter how absurd their beliefs or how self-destructive their practices are. Socially, freedom requires an ethic of self-reliance and independent moral judgment. To survive and thrive in a free society, we must decide which people and groups to join and which ones to condemn and avoid.
April 24, 2008
EXPLOIT THE EARTH
By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlogHow did you manage during Earth Day?
"Greenwash Guerrillas Pie Thomas Friedman on Earth Day."
Earth Day '08
Here is an excerpt from Craig Biddle's post, On April 22, Celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day.
Exploiting the Earth—using the raw materials of nature for one’s life-serving purposes—is a basic requirement of human life. According to environmentalism, however, man should not use nature for his needs; he should keep his hands off “the goods”; he should leave nature alone, come what may.
Environmentalism is not concerned with human health and wellbeing—neither ours nor that of generations to come. If it were, it would advocate the one social system that ensures that the Earth and its elements are used in the most productive, life-serving manner possible: capitalism.
Capitalism is the only social system that recognizes and protects each individual’s right to act in accordance with his basic means of living: the judgment of his mind. Environmentalism, of course, does not and cannot advocate capitalism, because if people are free to act on their judgment, they will strive to produce and prosper; they will transform the raw materials of nature onto the requirements of human life; they will exploit the Earth and live. (The Objective Standard - Principles in Practice, 04/17/08.)
Election Thoughts
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogWhat do we conclude from Hillary Clinton's 10-point win in Pennsylvania?
I don't think it matters which one wins, Obama or Clinton -- they're both Dead Democrats Walking. Neither can beat McCain. Clinton carries more baggage than a Greyhound bus. Obama, if he won the nomination, would be the furthest left-wing candidate for a major party in history.
More is coming out about Obama's terrorist friends, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. They remain anti-American to this day; four decades of experience have failed to dent their radical premises. Dohrn is the only prominent voice who expressed approval of the Charles Manson murders. These are the people Obama chooses to hang around.
The more I watch Obama, the less I think of his intelligence. This is not something the MSM talk about at all. I suspect his vapidity and lack of substance come from a slow mind. The way he got rattled and incoherent in his last debate is more evidence. The guy is not sharp.
Obama makes Clinton look experienced, competent and of sound judgment. So Obama has accomplished something remarkable in his life after all.
I base my thoughts about Obama's hopelessness on what we have seen in Presidential elections since 1972. One big X factor could prove me wrong: have the American voters changed significantly? Is there a new "paradigm"? We keep hearing about these new voters, the Millennial Generation, who are always reported as the most altruist-statist-collectivist (and therefore, I would add, stupid) generation in history. These young Americans, we are told, are not afraid of the government, unlike those cynical older generations.
I wonder if liberal reporters are not projecting their premises on the Millennials. They see young people, who are typically idealistic, and think, "If they're idealistic, then they must be liberals, because right-wingers are selfish and immoral."
Leftists have always hoped to change human nature and form people who act as selfless cogs in the state machine. In the USSR they strove to create homo sovieticus. In the Millennials, they hope they have found the novo homo americanus.
But. But... maybe they have succeeded in creating voters so lacking in independence and pride that they will go along with the mob at the orders of a dictator. Young people are voting for Obama over Clinton, for whatever that's worth.
Of course, this election is complicated by the Republicans electing a big government candidate, John McCain. It's still too early to decide -- I intend to wait at least until Labor Day -- however, at the moment I think the candidate who would accomplish the least amount of damage to American freedom would be Hillary Clinton. It would not be for lack of trying on her part, but that she is so widely hated that she would have little support for any big sweeping changes. And the Republicans in Congress would be energized to fight her every step of the way.
History’s TOP 40 (Books)!
By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlogWhat if your personal library could contain the best history books ever written?
Thomas Jefferson’s library at Monticello once numbered perhaps as many as 10,000 volumes. It was the largest personal collection of books in the United States of the Founding Era.
When the British burned the Capitol in 1814, Jefferson offered to sell his library to the government, providing a core of new reference materials for the representatives of the still young republic. Concerning the scope of the materials offered, of which 6500 volumes were eventually purchased, Jefferson commented, “there is in fact no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.” (Read more about Jefferson’s library here: Library of Congress.)
Of course, most of us do not have reason or occasion to amass a library of 6500, let alone 10,000 volumes. But wouldn’t it be great to have the books your really need?
What if you could build a history library of only the most essential texts, which would allow you to research any important historical topic and provide you with a gateway into the vast store of human knowledge about the past?
As my own collection of history books approaches the 2000-volume mark, I’ve decided to share my list of top ten books on four different crucial historical topics, for a total of only 40 books.
This includes my top ten books on each of these four topics:
- History of America
- History of Europe
- Ancient History
- The History of the Middle East
You don’t have to scour libraries and bookstores, and spend thousands. I’ve done that! Take advantage of my groundwork, and build a great library with only forty. Over the next weeks, I’ll be sharing with my mailing list subscribers which 40 books out of my 2000 book library I would save if there were a fire in my house!
Don’t miss it! The first issue of this four-part series, I cannot live without books!–an exclusive e-zine series for Powell History mailing list subscribers, comes out this weekend. Be sure to join the Powell History Mailing List to get your recommendations, learn about Powell History products, and receive special offers for current and upcoming courses.
April 23, 2008
The "Reservation" system in India
By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlogIndian castes: Traditionally, India had four major "castes": priests, warriors, traders/artisans and miscellaneous "lower" people (with many sub-castes within each of these). The lowest caste were dsicriminated against for centuries, treated as second class citizens.
Independence and Reverse Discrimination: On independence (1947), important India leaders wanted the government to help "untouchables" overcome centuries of being treated as second class citizens. Legal equality -- like allowing untouchables access to (say) the good village well -- is just. However, many wanted to give "lower castes" a leg up via special privileges. Faces with objections about such reverse discrimination, a compromise was reached: the government would practice some amount of reverse discrimination, but only for 10 years. Private companies were free do what they liked in this regard.
"Scheduled" castes: The government created a schedule, listing targeted sub-castes. It reserved a percentage of government jobs, college admissions, etc. for such "scheduled caste" folk. In addition, certain electoral districts were declared as only open to "scheduled caste" candidates for 10 years (even though the majority of the voters in them were not of those castes).
Vested Interests: Ten years later, the cry was "we need more time...these people are still underrepresented, etc. ". Fast forward to 2007, 60 years later, and the system is still in place, and getting stronger. Vested interests grew up around the system. Members of parliament who had been elected from "reserved" districts did not want to relinquish control. Other sub-castes began agitating to be included on the list, claiming that they too had been discriminated against in the past. The list grew, instead of shrinking. India now has "Scheduled Castes", "Scheduled Tribes", and "Other Backward Classes". The whole system is based on family heritage, not economic status.
By the 1980s, in some states more than half the college admissions (most colleges are government owned) were "reserved". In one state, 69% of seats are reserved. Since many of the richer, better educated families often traced their ancestry to the "higher" castes, children from these families had a hard time getting into colleges. (The Indian Supreme court recently ruled that a majority of seats cannot be reserved, so the maximum reservation must go down to 49.5%! )
Growing worse: Though all this, the government insulated certain elite institutions: the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the "Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs)", keeping reservations to a minimum. Finally these (government controlled) entities have given in. They worked out a "compromise": for a budget increase, they'll increase the total number of students, and also increase the percentage of reserved admissions. The IIT has also agreed to keep aside "only" 27%.
Another recent trend has been calls to extend the system to India's private sector.
Shifting to an economic base: Some of those to were admitted in the "reserved" quota, were good students, from well-off families, who used the quota as a way to get a final little edge in the extremely competitive Indian college entrance. This is bad, of course. However, now, people have begun to question why the system is based only on ancestry, and are suggesting that its intent is to uplift the poor. Therefore, the argument goes, anyone from a "scheduled caste" who has made it (has a decent family income), should not be allowed to use the quota. By keeping out those who were "gaming" the intent of the system (claiming incompetence where there was none), this new approach will allow even less competent people. This will make a bad system even worse.
An observation: Sometimes a friend will comment that attitudes in India are more capitalistic than in the U.S. , citing polls that show people in India reacting more positively to terms like "profit" and "capitalism". This is a mistaken view. Since the economy in India was so tightly controlled, what people are positive about are the new-found freedoms and the results. It does not follow that they want to be like the U.S. in politics. The basic political philosophy still aims for a mixed-economy, just not as socialist as before.
My personal visualization of this is : India is racing upward toward the "goal" that is Western Europe, while the U.S. is drifting downward toward that same goal.
A Lesson : A lesson I take away from India's reservation system, is that it's tough to rollback a government-given privilege. If I apply the lesson to U.S. politics today, I think it is critical not to allow the Federal government to make any significant move toward universal healthcare. If they do, it will become like public schools, where the NEA is a strong lobby against change, and where parents routinely vote against change from a fear of change.
April 22, 2008
The Earth Day Alternative
By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogI wrote this op-ed for the Atlanta Journal Constitution for Earth Day 2002. The message applies equally today. NP
The Earth is Mankind's Garden
If the welfare of human life was the standard by which we judged industry and technology, there would be no reason to have a day like "Earth Day." Rather than the environmentalists parading their assault on anything and everything that is a mark of human existence on the planet, we would instead celebrate industry and technology as the very means by which mankind has moved into an era of happiness, health and prosperity.
Looking at a figure as basic as life expectancy, it is obvious that people today live a lot longer than they did in the pre-industrialized world of 200 years ago. Today we enjoy such an abundance of foods, medicines and a whole host of labor-saving technologies that if a person from 200 years ago could see us now, he would be amazed that it is even possible that so many human beings can live together for so long and in such splendor.
Yet, the environmentalists tell us the sky is falling. Turning the popular trail mantra "leave no footprint" against all of humanity, the environmentalists say our farms threaten the ecosystem, our cars are destroying the atmosphere and "sprawl" will consume the wilderness. On Earth Day, every aspect of human life and human consumption represents a threat to the Earth.
Notice, for example, that there is not an existing, practical method of energy production that the environmentalists support. Environmentalists oppose gas, coal, nuclear and hydro power. If the environmentalists were honest, they should love nuclear power, for it clearly has the least ecological impact of all the practical means of generating power.
Yet it is nuclear power that the environmentalists despise the most. Consider the argument that the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the 1970's is proof that man can not properly harvest the power of the atom. In fact, the accident showed just the opposite. Three Mile Island showed that man could build a reactor that could survive a near total failure, including a hydrogen gas explosion within the reactor core and still have no impact on the surrounding environment. While Three Mile Island was still a costly accident, it showed the strength of our science and technology, not its shortcomings.
Yet the environmentalists still cry "foul." Why? Because the real premise behind Earth Day is that mankind is an unnatural despoiler and a threat to the earth. Of all the creatures that live on the planet, it is rational, tool-making, resource exploiting man that doesn't quite fit.
There is an alternative to the environmentalist argument. It is one that says the Earth is man's garden and that man's mind as fully competent to meet the challenges of living in his garden, whatever those challenges may be. It is an argument that recognizes that the ultimate resource is not oil, coal, caribou or even the energy of the atom. It is an argument that recognizes that the ultimate resource is a free, unfettered human mind.
April 21, 2008
Recommended Reading on the Story of European Union
By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlogAlthough I am usually loath to recommend any history book written after 1920, when the subject matter itself postdates WWI, you simply have no choice. And, truth be told, I have read more than a handful of quite excellent histories from modern writers, despite the dreadful state of the profession, so I’m willing to give credit where credit is due.
When it comes to the topic of European Union, the title I recommend is The Community of Europe by Derek Urwin. Although not quite fitting in the category of “excellent histories,” this work has many virtues.
The theme of this work is European integration. No historical topic can be more relevant to anyone wanting to understand Europe’s current course.
Ever since the disaster of WWII, Europeans have been trying to fashion a non-belligerent way of life amongst themselves, to create a “community” of nations. Their answer to this challenge has been the concept of “supranationalism.” In recent weeks, I have posted some of my thoughts on this topic in my essay on Europism (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 coming soon). In simple terms, supranationalism is the attempt to assert a broader collective self-identification in order to justify the creation of a “United States of Europe.”
Urwin looks mostly to the bleak years of post-WWII Europe when presenting his thesis. This is a reasonable approach, because it highlights the first tentative steps of the supranationalist agenda and shows how the European Union was formed in the period of European subordinacy to the Cold War superpowers. (Especially interesting is the role of Charles de Gaulle’s anti-Americanism in directing the early progress of the Union.)
The most important value of Urwin’s book is that it presents the basic progression–the story–of European integration from the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) and European Economic Community (1957) to the Maastricht Treaty of European Union (ratified in 1993).
Two things are missing in this presentation: 1) The advent of supranationalism in the context of nationalism and internationalism is not sufficiently treated. To truly understand the genesis of the new approach one must understand the failure of its predecessors and how the former is derived from the latter. 2) A philosophical evaluation of supranationalism is also wanting. What the modern student of Europe needs to understand is the collectivist roots and nature of supranationalism and the collectivist responses of its opponents. Urwin provides the material for the student of political philosophy to work with, but he does not aid in the integration himself. That is up to the reader.
Still, the treatment is brief and relatively accessible. Consequently, you won’t too often find that the details are distracting or discouragingly complex–especially if you have the benefit of an initial orientation through my two-lecture history of Europe in the Twentieth Century, coming soon (part of “A First History for Adults,” Part 2). [Get the full course here!]
Also coming soon: Thomas Jefferson’s library had 6500 volumes it. Find out how you can be fully informed with just 40!I cannot live without books!–an exclusive e-zine series for Powell History mailing list subscribers– will help you create the ultimate history library. Be sure to join the Powell History Mailing List to get your recommendations.
Quick Roundup 322
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogSocial Engineering through Tax Law
Yaron Brook discusses an aspect of tax law that has always made my eyes glaze over: How it manages to slip the government's priorities into every decision an individual wants to make.
Tax policy works by attaching financial incentives to a long list of values deemed morally worthy. If you want to maximize your wealth come tax time--and who doesn't?--you must look at the world through tax-colored glasses, "voluntarily" adjusting your behavior to suit social norms and thereby qualifying for tax breaks. In this way, the social engineers of tax policy preserve the impression that you're exercising free choice, while they're actually dispensing with your reason and your judgment. [bold added]This is, of course, on top of all the wasted time and effort this obscene ritual costs Americans every year. (HT: Paul Hsieh)
Beginnings and Ends
I hadn't particularly planned on posting about taxation today, but I did unearth a couple of interesting tax-related items this weekend.
First, there is a PDF of the very first Form 1040, which is more straightforward, but might confuse graduates of today's public schools. One actually had to use arithmetic to calculate one's taxes!
And then there's this interesting map from the Tax Foundation of "Tax Freedom Day by State, 2008". You will also find a table ranking the states in terms of when Tax Freedom Day occurs as well as one that lists when Tax Freedom Day has occurred historically at the Tax Foundation web site. (There is one minor oddity with this map: The rankings are backwards. The higher the number, the faster your state reaches Tax Freedom Day.)
A Common Admission
SB does an excellent job analyzing the common Christian "argument" that reason is just another form of faith:
There is an implicit confession in this attack, which astonished me when I first noticed it. It reveals that some faithful apparently know that they are on shaky ground. They go to great lengths to evade it, but at least on some level they know that reason is valid and faith is not. This is indicated by the logic of their argument.Burgess Laughlin also draws an interesting analogy in the comments. (HT: Kendall J)
Gear Up for Exploit the Earth Day!
Drat! On top of not having time to fire up my grill tomorrow, I'm going to be in Boston next year, where I probably won't have a yard -- or even, God forbid, space to store my own barbecue grill -- thanks to the low standard of living.
(And those damned Puritans have probably banned charcoal anyway. Bear with me. I'm still mentally adjusting to the looming move away from my natural habitat.)
So for me, the real celebration of what I like to call "Life on This Earth Day" will be delayed until some time in early May.
In the meantime, I commemorate the occasion by posting the image to the right, courtesy of Principles in Practice. Parent publication The Objective Standard is selling tee shirts and mugs for the occasion, by the way.
The Beauties of Exploitation
Via the OList, I learned of this must-see video tour of Earth's cities as seen from outer space at night:
Doug Peltz, curious as to whether a common image of Earth at night was realistic, eventually found this video.
... I officially started dating my movie buddy -- the woman you now know as Mrs. Van Horn!
Yes, using a personal calendar program has its advantages, but you still have to input the year correctly!
Luckily, I have a wife to correct me about such things.
-- CAV
April 20, 2008
Animal Minds
By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe March 2008 issue of National Geographic recently published an interesting article on research into animal minds. If the reported facts are reliable, then animals may have some ability to isolate similarities and differences between percepts. Here is an excerpt from the article on scientist Irene Pepperberg and her parrot Alex:
...[B]ecause Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird's basic understanding of the world. She couldn't ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex's eye.Of course, researchers have to be extremely careful not to anthropomorphize when interpreting such results. And even if animals are able to perform this sort of mental integration and differentiation of their percepts, this is not the same as being able to reason in the human sense. Hence, this post should not be construed as endorsing any form of "animal rights".
"What's same?" she asked.
Without hesitation, Alex's beak opened: "Co-lor."
"What's different?" Pepperberg asked.
"Shape," Alex said. His voice had the digitized sound of a cartoon character. Since parrots lack lips (another reason it was difficult for Alex to pronounce some sounds, such as ba), the words seemed to come from the air around him, as if a ventriloquist were speaking. But the words—and what can only be called the thoughts—were entirely his.
For the next 20 minutes, Alex ran through his tests, distinguishing colors, shapes, sizes, and materials (wool versus wood versus metal). He did some simple arithmetic, such as counting the yellow toy blocks among a pile of mixed hues.
But it is plausible from an evolutionary perspective that the human mental abilities that allow us engage in concept formation and reasoning would have primitive precursors in some of the higher animals, and that human cognition has a foundation based on those pre-existing building blocks. Hence, the exact abilities of various animal minds is a fascinating scientific subject worthy of study, even if it may not have any primary philosophical import.
(I've been told that some Objectivists believe that animals are essentially automatons without any feeling or consciousness, like rocks or plants. In my opinion, this is untrue, and data such as this is further evidence against that erroneous position.)
April 19, 2008
Business Regulation, Consumer Protection?
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogIn my recent letter to various public officials opposing proposed legislation on mandatory insurance, I wrote:
If your goal is to fix the genuine problems in our health care system, then you MUST advocate FREE MARKET reforms. Eliminate the tax incentive for employer-provided health care. Eliminate all mandates and other regulations on health insurance. Eliminate regulations on medical providers. Gradually eliminate welfare programs.A few days ago, I received the following e-mail inquiry about the implications of that paragraph in particular. It said:
Do you advocate eliminating most or all business and financial regulations in addition to the medical regulations mentioned above? If objectivism and the business/economic beliefs of Ayn Rand were to be law of the land, for lack of a better phrase, how would such a government prevent abuses by businesses and protect the consumer's rights from being trampled on?Those are excellent questions. I'll answer them briefly here, and I hope that others will chime in with more in-depth analysis in the comments.
Yes, I do advocate the repeal of all business and financial regulations. However, that does not imply that the law has no proper function to serve in markets. In the purely capitalist economy that I advocate, the legal system serves an indispensable role: it protects the rights of all people, particularly the rights of property and contract. If a business engages in false advertising, fails to deliver the contracted-for goods, or sells dangerously defective products, then individuals should be able to resort to the courts to remedy the violation of their rights.
In contrast, when the government establishes regulations "prevent abuses by business" and "protect consumer's rights," then it is actually violating the rights of both producers and consumers, not protecting them. Regulations violate everyone's rights to acquire, use, and dispose of their property as they see fit. Regulations violate everyone's rights to contract for mutually agreeable terms. In essence, regulations use government force to prevent people from acting according to their own best judgment. That's morally wrong and practically disastrous.
If I'm dying of cancer with three months to live, the FDA forbids me from taking a promising experimental drug because it's not yet been proven "safe" and "effective." As if that matters: I'm dying! Supposedly, FDA regulations exist to protect me, the consumer.
If I lack work experience, minimum wage laws forbid a business from hiring me except for more than I'm actually worth. So I'm forced into unemployment, even though I'd be happy to gain experience and reputation as a good worker by working for less than minimum wage for a time. Supposedly, minimum wage laws exist to protect me, the worker.
If I'm a good cook looking to start a small catering business, I would be stopped dead in my tracks by the myriad regulations required to serve food and liquor. So my potential consumers have to pay more for their catering because the cost of entering the market is so high, even if they'd rather hire me. Supposedly, those health regulations exist to protect my consumers.
Government regulations of business preemptively punish all producers as would-be criminals. They treat all consumers as helpless dolts unable to choose wisely. They grant government bureaucrats unlimited power over our lives. That's not good, to say the least.
The proper approach is to (1) punish only actual instances of force and fraud in the market, (2) treat adults like the rational creatures they are, (3) limit government power to only protecting individual rights. To do that would require eliminating all government regulation of business -- and that's why I advocate doing so.
Trader Joe's, Behind the Scenes
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogI love Trader Joe's -- so much so that the lack of TJ's in Colorado is my only serious regret about leaving California. I'm still enjoying the care package of Trader Joe's goodies that Paul and I mailed ourselves while in Maryland visiting my parents. Consequently, I could enjoy this BusinessWeek article on the business model of the chain: Trader Joe's Recipe for Success. The tagline reads, "By limiting its stock to specialty products at low prices, Trader Joe's sells twice as much per square foot than other supermarkets." I'm not surprised. Supermarkets are a mixed bag of good stuff and crud, but Trader Joe's is chock full of delights!
(Yes, Paul and I do mail ourselves a care package from Trader Joe's whenever we visit a place blessed with the store. That's just how much we miss it.)
Ben Stein's Exposed
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogIn the course of some recent research, I kept running across ads for a "documentary" about Intelligent Design Creationism by Ben Stein called, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This morning, via Arts and Letters Daily, I ran into an excellent article about the movie by Michael Shermer, Director of the Skeptics Society.
I like the article for two reasons. First, it does a good job of indicating that the "case" against the Theory of Evolution is smoke and mirrors, while Creationism is being propped up by one lie after another.
In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory, not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible as true that you had to be a creationist. What I knew about evolution came primarily from creationist literature, so when I finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school I realized that I had been hoodwinked. What I discovered is a massive amount of evidence from multiple sciences -- geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology -- demonstrating that evolution happened.And this thread just gets better.
It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein's anti-evolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speech writer for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.
Actually they didn't. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein’s screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, Associate Provost for Research and Chair of Natural Science at Pepperdine, "the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and the staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university." And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film. [bold added]
A second strong point about the article is that it explains the big fuss that fundamentalists make about evolution. This is, as it turns out, more subtle than just the fact that evolution does contradict the Bible. Shermer offers some further insight on this score.
Even more disturbing than these distortions is the film's other thesis that Darwinism inexorably leads to atheism, Communism, Fascism and the Holocaust. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of religious believers fully accept the theory of evolution, Stein claims that we are in an ideological war between a scientific natural worldview that leads to the gulag archipelago and Nazi gas chambers, and a religious supernatural worldview that leads to freedom, justice and the American way. The film's visual motifs leave no doubt in the viewer's emotional brain that Darwinism is leading America into an immoral quagmire. We're going to hell in a Darwinian hand basket. Cleverly edited interview excerpts from scientists are interspersed with various black-and-white clips for guilt by association with: bullies beating up on a 98-pound weakling, Charlton Heston's character in Planet of the Apes being blasted by a water hose, Nikita Khrushchev pounding his fist on a United Nations desk, East Germans captured trying to scale the Berlin Wall, and Nazi crematoria remains and Holocaust victims being bulldozed into mass graves. This propaganda production would make Joseph Goebbels proud. [bold added]In other words, evolutionary theory contradicts the Bible, yes, but this attack is against reason as such, and is based on (and justified by) the false premise that freedom has no rational basis.
I would have liked the article to have also noted that Intelligent Design is an inherently religious and unscientific doctrine, but Shermer has provided an invaluable glimpse into the mindset of the proponents of Intelligent Design Creationism.
They claim to be defending freedom and that freedom has no rational basis. They are wrong on both counts, but those premises make their willingness to lie through their teeth suddenly make a lot of sense.
-- CAV
PS: There's more on Expelled over at Ari Armstrong's blog. (HT: Monica, who notices that the religious right now calls real science "Big Science" and links to the trailer.)
Updates
Today: (1) Corrected typos. (2) Added link to Ari Armstrong. (3) Linked to Monica's post.
April 17, 2008
The digital revolution transforms art history
By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe world is full of great art the vast majority of people will never see. Even the world traveler who tours Chicago, New York, Paris, and St Petersburg several times over, will not see all the collections in great detail, much less a single painting. Any visitor to the Louvre will undoubtedly want to see the Mona Lisa, but he is not likely to see it in any detail, without a crowd urging him to move on, or a curator keeping him from examining the detail too closely. Once viewed, the image of a painting fades quickly from memory, with postcards, coffee table books, and even high quality reproductions offering a poor substitute for the original.
I can’t speak for other art admirers, but to me, a painting is ultimately just information. For me, the canvas is just an imperfect container for the data. It is valuable only insofar as it represents an irreplaceable source, from which all copies and memories must come from. It’s a very imperfect source – fragile, singular, and inevitably decaying in time, destroying its precious cargo as it slowly succumbs to entropy.
Imagine however, if we could clone the canvas – and not only clone it, but create a superior container for that information, one that not only does not decay over time, but reveals more information than the original source. A perfect digital representation of a painting could contain not only its state at the time of its digitization, but the record of its lifespan, including its original state, as well as the creative process itself. With a global network, such a representation could be accessed instantly from anywhere in the world. It would not be like seeing the original – it would be better than the original, representing far more information than merely viewing the canvas can provide.
Lumiere Technology is a company which hopes to do just that. They intend to digitize the world’s art and make it available (for a price) to art students and fans worldwide. Their multispectral scanning process captures images in more detail than ever before, not only in terms of resolution, but in 13 wavelengths, from ultraviolet to infrared. (45 min YouTube video.) Their digital restoration process can strip away faded varnish and hundreds of year of wear to show images in their original color. It can highlight certain wavelengths for the colorblind, or look beneath the painting in infrared.
Lumiere’s scans are certainly not the last word in digitization, but they might be the harbinger of a revolution. I can already imagine the day in which the motivation to see the original artwork is a curiosity, done for bragging rights rather than a means of studying it. Undoubtedly, a small but vocal minority will persist in silly claims that there is something to be gained from seeing the “warmth” of the original.
“Liberation” Ideology II
By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogWhile searching the Internet for what else presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were up to in the Senate, I came upon what Obama had to say in the Senate on March 15, 2007, about the riots, killings and repression in Zimbabwe over a year ago. His statement was obviously intended for the record and not as a point of vigorous debate. It is an interesting trail mix of truths, gaffes, and glosses.
The occasion was Robert Mugabe’s reaction to protests by the chief opposition to him during a prayer meeting, during which participants were beaten and jailed. Morgan Tsvangiral, head of the Movement for Democratic Change and a presidential contender, was severely beaten, and scores of followers imprisoned. One protester was shot and killed.
Of course, Obama expresses his plastic outrage over the events – as plastic as Hillary’s smile and McCain’s grin – and urged the United States, the United Nations and the European Union to more stringently oppose Mugabe’s government.
“Mr. President, the United States must continue to stand strongly against the Mugabe government’s abuses of power in Zimbabwe. We must join with our European allies, the United Nations, and – most importantly – the countries and institutions of the region to press for positive change in Zimbabwe. That means a peaceful democratic transition in 2008, and support for economic growth and opportunity – including the lifting of sanctions – once the dark cloud of Mugabe’s rule is lifted, and Zimbabweans are able again to reach for the new horizon they deserve.
“I call on President Mugabe to immediately release all political detainees and repeal the ban on political rallies, to end the use of violence and torture in the jails, permit a free media and abide by the rule of law….”
This was transparently a statement meant for press and public consumption. But if it were a sincere statement, did Obama really expect a murderous dictator to heed the urgings of a junior senator from Illinois? Does the statement reflect a genuine understanding of the true nature of collectivism, of tyranny, of power held for the sake of power? Does it reflect even a milligram of comprehension that Mugabe is a thug who has no “good side” to appeal to, that he is beyond reason? No, to all questions. But, then, Obama wants to negotiate with Iran, another dictatorship, a regime that wants to destroy this country.
One thing Obama glossed over was the character of the “sanctions” imposed by the U.N. and the European Union. These were against any and all financial dealings with members of the government, designed to prevent Mugabe and his minions from profiting from any foreign aid or subsidies and moving the lucre to safer havens abroad. They were not directed against the country’s economy. If Zimbabwe’s economy is in so dire a condition that it is practically nonexistent, it is a consequence of Mugabe’s policy of looting, skimming, and redistributing the chaff and the scraps to hangers-on and the “public.” That’s Marxism in practice, sanctions or no sanctions. A cursory study of the Soviet Union, Red China, or Cuba ought to have driven that lesson home for Obama – provided his collectivist sympathies permitted him to search for the truth.
Obama also demonstrated his ignorance of history. In his Senate statement, he claimed that
“When Robert Mugabe became president over a quarter century ago, there was great hope. {There’s that “hope” again.] Zimbabwe had emerged from British rule, claiming its freedom and its future for itself.”
Well, no. Zimbabwe did not emerge from “British rule.” It emerged from Rhodesian rule. Ian Smith declared Rhodesia independent in 1965 and withdrew it from the British Commonwealth. What followed was a brutal guerilla war led by Marxist nationalists Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, a war which Smith might have won had his government not been pressured to negotiate with Mugabe and his allies by Britain and the United States for the sake of “black majority rule.”
Smith himself advocated white supremacist rule in Rhodesia, and while there can be no legitimate argument for that policy, either, it is likely that blacks would have fared far better under Smith’s rule – Rhodesia prospered under greater economic sanctions in this period than Zimbabwe has under far milder restrictions – than they have under the total racist collectivism of Mugabe.
Obama does not mention or even allude to in his Senate statement the plight and fate of the whites in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. They are invisible to him. Presumably, under Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s tutelage, he thinks that they got what they deserved. Nor does he mention or allude to the fact that Mugabe is a killer whose political “career” began as a butcher of defenseless whites and blacks during the struggle for “liberation.” In Obama’s universe of moral equivalence, one man’s killer is another man’s “freedom fighter.”
The question is: Does Obama believe that a “freedom fighter” is one who fights, not against tyranny and oppression, but against freedom? Listen to his campaign rhetoric, and judge for yourself.
For the full transcript of Obama’s Senate speech, go to:
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/070315-statement.
Bad News for Philosophy Majors
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogThis graph is why parents aren't always thrilled when their children tell them that they've decided to major in philosophy.
(Yes, philosophy can be a fine major. No, I don't think that this graph says much about long-term earning potential. Many philosophy majors go to law school, and that has a good effect on long-term earnings. It's philosophy graduate school that kills a person's earning potential!)
Ten Beers to Try
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogA week or so ago, reader Doug Peltz, who had noticed my appreciation for good beer, emailed me to exchange beer recommendations.
I regard myself as still on the journey from beer snob to connoisseur, but I enjoyed thinking of this list, perhaps in no small part because I haven't had time to stop by any of my favorite pubs lately.
Since I haven't much time to blog either this week, I'll kill two birds with one stone by posting some slightly modified excerpts from my reply to Doug.
... I have to try [Pilsener Urquell] again. I keep hearing it's good, but the time I tried it I might have gotten a bottle that went bad. If I see it on tap and my mood is right, I'll give it another chance.
Ten Beer Recommendations (In No Particular Order)
- Lindemans Gueuze. If you've never tried a lambic before, this style may take some getting used to. I do not recommend drinking it after anything hoppy.
- Kostriker Schwartzbier. This is a black lager from the eastern part of Germany. Very tasty, but probably overwhelming to people who prefer or are used to lighter beers.
- Schneider Aventinus Weizenstarkbier. Very complex flavor. My wife likes it, too. The same brewer makes a good Eisbier.
- Avery Czar Russian Imperial Stout. As I once put it on my blog: "The iron fist of the alcohol is felt through the velvet glove of the mouthfeel." (If you held a gun to my head and asked me to name a favorite style of beer, I'd probably say, "Russian Imperial Stout.")
- Full Sail's Session. A very tasty lager. Only one person I have ever introduced this to has not liked it. Yes. There are good light lagers out there, even for people like me who prefer ales. Don't let Budmiller cause you to write off all lagers.
- St Arnold's Elissa IPA. You'll have to go to Houston to try this as St Arnold's is a small, local brewery. I regard this as their best non-seasonal ale.
- Sierra Nevada IPA. This is listed at their site as a "specialty draft", so that may be hard to come by. (My recollection is that it had a red label, unlike the dark green one at the link. Now I'm beginning to wonder just a little bit whether I had another one of their hoppier beers and am recalling the wrong name. Nothing at their site rings a bell for me.)
- Left Hand Brewing Company's Milk Stout. Called "milk stout" for the lactose, which sweetens it and makes for a creamier mouthfeel.
- Black-and-Blue. Not really a beer, but a nice variant of the "black and tan" serving style. Some bars may call it by a different name, but what you want to ask for is a "black and tan" made with Guinness and Blue Moon.
- Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. They craft a different one each year during the holidays. Typically big beers, and never disappointing. Some of my friends have succeeded in storing these for two or more years. (Follow "specialty draft" link at #7 above.)
Cheers!
-- CAV
PS: And if you're in Southern California, you should stop by here some time. Yes, Doug. I am jealous. Very jealous!
April 16, 2008
Big Brother is watching your can!
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog
Usually, when businesses "go green", at least the particular assaults on freedom they're trying to "exploit" for good publicity damage themselves the most. But here's an example from Down Under of a business employing slick new technology to make itself look concerned for Mother Earth -- technology which could easily be turned around to demolish a nice chunk of the individual freedom now enjoyed by private citizens.Tucked away under the rim of wheelie bins found in two Sydney councils are small radio frequency tracking devices collecting information on a household's waste habits.The data are, so far, being kept between council officials and their contractors, but the predictable whining of green busybodies who want this turned into a tool for the enforcement of nonobjective law has already begun.
Randwick Mayor Bruce Notley-Smith told The World Today they are the way of the future.
"We will be able to find out the weights of the various bins and collect the data, the entire amount, as opposed to the quantity that is recyclable," he said.
The garbage truck reads the data on the bin, weighs the bin, and the data is collated on a computer.
"We've aimed to increase or target problem areas in the city where there's a lower level of recycling," Mr Notley-Smith said.
"The fact is that 50 per cent of the city of Randwick is multi-unit dwellings and we have faced a number of challenges there with getting compliance with recycling."
The data collected will allow the council to confirm which areas are recycling and which are not. [format edits, bold added]
(I am unclear whether the term "council" here is being used to denote a unit of local government or an apartment complex or, if the latter, whether it is privately-run. The answer to that question has more to say about the status of freedom in Australia than the impropriety of the government monitoring garbage cans for compliance with recycling laws.)
It is bad enough that we're reaching the point where we can't toss out an aluminum can without facing the prospect of a fine. The end for which we face this prospect is even worse, however.
Recycling makes economic sense only when it costs less to recover the materials from waste than to obtain them from raw materials. For the kinds of materials most municipalities try to force us to recycle, doing so is a waste of time and effort. (And even if it weren't, the government has no business dictating how we spend our own time or dispose of our own property, so long as we violate the rights of nobody else in the process.)
Time is irreplaceable. To the extent that the government holds a gun to our heads and makes us recycle, it is effectively forcing us to send irreplaceable moments from our lives to the landfill in lieu of the junk that properly belongs there.
Who knew that high technology, low meddling, and widespread ignorance of the proper purpose of government could come together to make us discard time from our lives as if it were refuse?
-- CAV
“Liberation” Ideology in Practice
By Edward Cline from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogScant news coverage has been devoted to the continuing chaos and brutality in Zimbabwe, once the “breadbasket” of Africa when it was known as Rhodesia (and for a few years after its “liberation” from white rule). It is now a destitute, starving nation whose citizens choose flight to neighboring states in search of food and employment. Nearly a third of the country’s 12 million population has fled.
The life expectancy of males has dropped from 60 years to 37, and for women, to 34 years. Unemployment stands at over 80 percent. In 2005, the government decided to embark on a program of “urban renewal,” and demolished the shantytowns and black markets that had sprung up around Harare (formerly Salisbury) and other towns and cities as a consequence of the systematic impoverishment of farm workers and city dwellers by the government. New housing was promised but never built.
Private schools were marked for extinction through the regulation of tuition, and government-run schools, when they are open, are worse than even the worst American public schools. Over more than a generation, since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, adult literacy has fallen from 90 percent to about 40 percent.
Occasionally one will see brief reports on the morning or evening news of the arrest and beatings of opposition leaders, of journalists, of long queues of people waiting to buy scarce commodities from the bare shelves of stores. Inflation is currently measured at 150,000 percent and climbing (after the issue of new paper currency, it is a “mere” 1,700 percent, but that does not disguise the true inflation rate); it takes a wheelbarrow of paper money to buy a small bag of flour, when it is available.
President Robert Mugabe’s Marxist government has banned foreign journalists, and the few who have ventured into the country have broadcast their reports with hidden cellphones. BBC News, Sky News, and CNN have been banned from the country. Independent newspapers were bombed and not permitted to reopen. The government controls the television and radio stations and its remaining newspaper is state-run.
It is interesting to note that Mugabe’s party, Zanu-PF, originated decades ago as a solely Marxist rival to other “black power” guerilla factions. After a short flirtation with “free trade” when it came to power, the party returned to its founding ideology, one of whose goals was to redistribute white-owned farmland to the black poor. This campaign began in violent earnest in 2000, when mobs of squatters and “war veterans” (who purportedly fought in the guerilla war against Ian Smith’s Rhodesia) invaded white-owned farms. Whites were murdered, raped, beaten, driven from their homes. Paramilitary patrols of whites attempted to protect lives and property rights and to ensure the safety of the farms. But a Marxist government determined to impose racial “justice” (or any kind of collectivist “justice”) is inherently lawless and renders such efforts hopelessly doomed to fail.
The production and export of the chief crops of tobacco, soya, and maize plummeted dramatically after the farms were expropriated by government-supported squatters and cronies of Mugabe’s.
The economy followed suit. Once second only to South Africa as the most prosperous economy in Africa, Mugabe has reduced Zimbabwe to a condition only a slightly better than the Darfur region of the Sudan.
A presidential election was held on March 29, and in spite of the best efforts of Mugabe’s party to rig another “unanimous reelection,” all indications are that he lost it, just as he did in 2000. Several Western newspapers prematurely wondered how he would make his exit after this defeat, where he would settle, and how much he would take with him. The Zimbabwean court, doubtless under pressure from Mugabe, has postponed revealing the election results.
Several election officials were arrested and charged, reported the Daily Telegraph of April 8, with “under-counting votes cast for Mr. Mugabe.” An election run-off is scheduled for April 19. Whether or not it will occur is a matter of speculation. Voters suspected of casting ballots for Mugabe’s political opponents – whose solutions for turning the country around are not much better than the policies that are destroying it – have been accosted by soldiers and youth gangs and beaten up, or have been threatened with death if they vote against Mugabe in the run-off.
To distract attention from his apparent loss, Mugabe, reports the Daily Telegraph, in an attempt to extend his 28-year rule, has dispatched new gangs to invade and expropriate the country’s remaining 200 white-owned farms. Once there were 1,500 of them. He also blames “British imperialism” (Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are imperialists? British imperialism is dead, and Britain itself is under siege by the European Union), United Nations sanctions, foreign bankers and other external factors for the country’s state.
The original plan was to buy the farms with foreign aid under a “willing buyer-willing seller” land reform program, the “willing buyer” being the government. But when the money never materialized to buy the farms, or when farmers were not willing to sell, Mugabe’s solution was simply to resort to force.
Recall the government’s staged riot to justify the “nationalization” of Readen Steel in Atlas Shrugged, or its expropriation of Ellis Wyatt’s oil property in Colorado. It is as though Mugabe and his government were following a playbook of the novel with the express purpose of destroying the country. That, however, would be giving Mugabe and his cronies too much credit. In the face of the destruction of the country with policies that do not “work,” they still “believe” in the efficacy and justice of collectivism.
So do the Western critics of Mugabe, who believe that the idea is noble and feasible, but that he was the wrong man to apply the idea. This is the same rationalization that many Western communist and socialist intellectuals made when they saw the consequences and horrors of collectivism in Soviet Russia, Red China, and other communist regimes.
Western and African politicians have little to say about what is happening in Zimbabwe. “Zimbabwe situation ‘embarrassing’ – AU [African Union] chief,” reads a Reuters headline from March 14. They are more or less mute. What is “embarrassing” is that their collectivist dreams are being exposed for what they are: prescriptions for destruction, collapse, death and near civil war.
However, it is not as though Mugabe were looking for answers to why the country is in a state of economic, political and social free-fall. He is a psychopathic tyrant; reality is his enemy, and his answer to it is force. “Liberation,’ in any political sense, is basically theft, by legerdemain or by naked force.
The chief subject here is the racist nature of this brand of collectivism. Before being “colonized” by mostly British whites (under the aegis of Cecil Rhodes in the 19th century), the region was just another African backwater populated by people who had no drive, reason or imagination to exploit the region’s potential. Their cultural glory, such as it was, lay centuries in the past. It is not as though blacks there were inherently unable to generate Western ideas and reason and profit by them. The historical fact is that those values originated and thrived in the West. Conversely, whites are not inherently susceptible to those values; Nazi Germany and other disastrous and costly European collectivist movements explode that myth, as well. Reason and rational, pro-life values are a matter of choice, of volition. Race is not a determinant of anyone’s character or the contents of his mind.
Mugabe’s own “liberation” ideology is fundamentally the same as that of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s spiritual guide and mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, which is to make whites “pay” for “exploiting” blacks. It is surprising that Wright has not made a pilgrimage to Zimbabwe to see his malicious ideology in action. He might observe that it is chiefly blacks who are suffering, starving, and dying under Mugabe’s regime. Perhaps if he did travel there, his mind would be shaken and he would emulate Eldridge Cleaver, who, as a fugitive, lived in a few “third world” countries, but returned to America a changed man.
But, having watched Wright’s performance as a rabble-rousing, emotionalist preacher, I doubt that his fundamental malignancy could undergo an epiphany. I believe his mind is so poisonously venomous that he is beyond correction. He consciously appeals to looters, thugs, and killers. He appeals to a desire for the unearned. He appeals to racism.
Kyle-Anne Shiver, in an article in American Thinker, “Obama’s Politics of Collective Redemption” on February 11, observed that
“Little has been made in the mainstream press of the brand of black liberation theology preached by Obama’s pastor and spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., who holds a master’s degree on world religions with a focus on Islam, and who has traveled to Middle East countries in the company of Louis Farrakhan. Rev. Wright created and presides over the Center for African Biblical Studies, whose mission is African-centered Bible studies: “We are an African people, and we remain true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”
In short, Wright contends that blacks are born with certain uncorrectable attitudes and dispositions and should remain loyal to them. Blacks who reject racism, who wish to act as individuals and to be treated as individuals, are the equivalent of Muslim apostates, to be despised, reviled and ostracized. Note how prominent pro-reason, “conservative” black intellectuals, thinkers, teachers and columnists are shut out of any kind of ‘discourse’ about race, how they are treated as non-persons by the liberal/left black establishment. Reason, rationality and self-respect as individuals in blacks are deemed corrupting instruments of “black exploitation” in a “white” culture.
Do Obama’s undefined notions of “change” and “hope” and “bitterness” differ in essence from any from Hitler’s notions of them? Hitler’s chief siren song was how the “pride” of Germans and Germany was injured by the Versailles Treaty, how Germans, as a race, were “victimized” by a conspiracy of international bankers and financiers, all controlled by the Jews, to keep Germany poor and dependent.
Wright, for his part, is as much a racist as was Hitler. The hysterical shrillness of his speaking style is reminiscent of the Fuhrer’s. Obama, as a member of Wright’s church, must have witnessed this vociferous brand of religious/political demagoguery countless times, and read the racist propaganda that appeared in the church publication.
Barack Obama is a much more soft-spoken and articulate public speaker. His smooth sophistry has charmed and inspired the unwary and the unthinking; it is no less calculated than is Wright’s to appeal to emotions, not minds. If he wins the White House in November, soon after his swearing in – but not before that -- we should expect to hear again calls for “black reparations.” Never mind the fact that the blacks who lived in slavery are long dead, as well as their enslavers; never mind the fact that no American black has lived in slavery for generations, and that, logically, living blacks today cannot be “owed” anything by any living white (nor by Americans of Asian, Latinos, or European descent). Reason is not his oracle, not his guide, not on the issue of racism nor on any of his other policy positions.
Fact-based logic is the enemy of racial or collectivist “logic.” As the sins of white ancestors are “inherited” by living whites, regardless of whether or not they are descendents of slave owners, the suffering and injustices endured by black ancestors are likewise inexplicably transmitted to or “inherited” by living blacks, regardless of whether or not they are descendents of slaves. Ergo, they must be “compensated.” That is a form of Hitler’s demand for lebensraum, that is a yearning for liberation from reality.
For this reason alone – aside from whatever other irrationality he is the symbol of – because Obama has not publicly and without qualification repudiated that brand of ideology, but merely papered it over with sentimental, excuse-laden apologies, he cannot be absolved of complicity in its advocacy by the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan – and Robert Mugabe.
April 15, 2008
A Recent Conversation
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogI had this conversation with a fellow actor the other day:
ACTOR: I tried out for this play by Ann Rand.
ME: Ayn.
ACTOR: Ayn. I forgot the title.
ME: Night of January 16th.
ACTOR: Yeah, that's it. I decided not to do it. It's got her philosophy in it.
ME: I know all about it. I'm an Objectivist. I subscribe to her philosophy.
ACTOR: Oh. (Pause.) Yeah, well, it seemed like kind of an old-fashioned play, so I decided not to do it.
I never thought there was much philosophy in the play myself, but it bothered this fellow -- until he learned he was talking to someone from whom he would get neither agreement nor sympathy. Then he switched his objection to the play being old-fashioned, which it is (and that's a good thing).
I think a great deal of the antipathy to Rand comes from people who lack the virtue of independence and go along with our cultural leaders because they don't have the spine to do otherwise. Once Objectivism begins to spread, I suspect there will come a moment when the "go along to get along" types become sympathetic as they see that others have paved the way and made it safe. It will be a watershed moment. Right now altruists on the left and right can still scare the weak into line with a sneer and a contemptuous laugh.
Death Spiral
By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogHere is an interesting way of displaying mortality statistics.
As the Wall Street Journal notes:
It's tough to resist a graphic that begins, "Total odds of dying, any cause: 1 in 1."
Recessions are created by greedy politicians, not businessmen
By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlogSen. John McCain this morning said “greedy” Wall Street investors are partly to blame for what he said is probably an economic recession the nation is now suffering.
“There has to be a modification of the greedy behavior of some of these people,” he said, using the word “greedy” repeatedly in remarks to the Associated Press annual meeting at the Washington Convention Center today.
By “modification” McCain means that he wants to replace the greed of investors, whose rational self-interest motivates them to maximize wealth, with the greed of politicians and government bureaucrats, whose greed motivates them to create as much economic destruction as possible, in the attempt to maximize their political prestige and power. Such economic destruction, in the form of the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of interest rates and Congress’ hampering of markets is precisely what is responsible for the economic recession McCain would like to see happen. Honest businessmen thrive in a booming market – it takes an economic crisis (real or invented) for political crooks like McCain to justify the expansion of political power.
PHR Middle East Watch - News Worth Noting #3 - 04/14/08
By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlogCut through the clutter in the news concerning developments in the Middle East. Find out what really matters. Tune in to Powell History Recommends Middle East Watch. Each week, I’ll be monitoring the news for historically significant events in the region’s major countries, and passing them on to you, with brief commentary about why these events deserve your attention.
Noted Reformist Cleric Jailed in Iran (Associated Press)
Much attention continues to be focused on Iran’s influence over the Iraqi insurgency and to its posturing over its nuclear program. Certainly these deserve attention, but any treatment of these topics has to be informed by a proper assessment of what Iran is. It is an oppressive Islamist theocracy that continually violates the rights of its own citizens by denying a fundamental principle of moral civilizations: the separation of church and state.
Turkey Court Takes Politically Explosive Case (NY Times)
PHR will be following developments in Turkey closely in the months to come, because Turkey’s supreme court has accepted a case that could lead to a ban on the ruling party. The AKP party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, though democratically elected, has a platform that contradicts the secularist tenets of Turkey’s constitution. If it isn’t stopped by the court, another military coup is likely to occur.
Egypt: Elections and Future of the Muslim Brotherhood (RightSideNews)
This article runs down the current political situation in Egypt, and points to problems that are likely to occur when Mubarak kicks the bucket. Egypt’s biggest problem is that Nasserism was ideologically vacuous. The country’s run-of-the-mill state socialism is economically destructive and may very well produce the kind of widespread discontent that Truman era thinkers worried would lead to world communism. In this case, however, it’s Islamism that will profit.
The Rational Man's Approach to Emotions
By Dan Edge from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogThis assignment was written for my "SARPO" class at the Objectivist Academic Center, and is the property of the OAC. It does not necessarily represent the views of the OAC or the Ayn Rand Institute. I reproduce it here with permission.
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Explain, by means of an example(s), the “crucial epistemological responsibility” [OPAR p.161] which follows from the fact that emotions are not a means of grasping reality. What is a rational individual’s approach to emotions and their role in his life? Explain in some detail.
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Objectivism holds that reason is man's only means to knowledge, i.e., his only faculty for identifying reality. Emotions, by contrast, are not tools of cognition, but are a derivative response to automatized evaluations. In OPAR, Dr. Peikoff argues that one has a "crucial epistemological responsibility" to "grasp the distinction between reason and emotion." This short essay will discuss how a rational man ought to view the role of emotions in his life.
Emotions are one's psycho-somatic response to his automatized evaluations about the world around him. They give one an automatic, instantaneous response to percept(s) or imagination, based on previously formed judgments that are stored in the subconscious. For instance, one will be saddened by the news that an old friend has died. One does not have to think about all the good times he spent with his friend, or about the many virtues his friend possessed, or about the value one places on friendship as such. All of these judgments and memories are stored in the subconscious, and when one hears that his friend has died, sadness is the immediate, automatic response. On the other hand, one will experience joy when he perceives some aspect(s) of reality that he believes is good for him, like an admissions acceptance letter from his college of choice. In both cases, one's emotions are responding to something he perceives, as evaluated by automatized generalizations stored in his subconscious.
It is crucial to acknowledge that emotions -- as an automatic, derivative response to previously formed judgments -- do not provide direct evidence about reality. Emotional responses are not volitional. Without the use of reason, one has no means of determining whether his emotions are responding to valid or invalid evaluations. Emotions can never be used as a substitute for logical thinking.
The "epistemological responsibility" to maintain a proper distinction between reason and emotion is necessary because it is not always clear to what, precisely, one's emotions are responding. For instance, one could see a woman on the street and get a bad feeling about her, but be unable to identify the source of his emotion. Perhaps she resembles his mother, whom he secretly hates. Perhaps she reminds one of himself, whom he loathes. Perhaps she has the shifty manner of a thief. There could be any number of reasons why one may get a bad feeling from looking at someone, some rational and some irrational. The only way to tell the difference is to explicitly identify the source of one's subconscious evaluations -- and to evaluate them using his full focal awareness.
While emotions and reason are naturally in harmony, they can sometimes seem to be in conflict. Reason and emotions do not in fact conflict, they only seem to do so. It is ideas that conflict. There are no contradictions in reality, so if one's reason and his feelings appear to be in opposition, then either his conscious or subconscious evaluations are flawed, and he must use reason to resolve the conflict. For instance, one may feel anxiety as his young business grows. The cause for this may be that, on some level, he does not believe that he deserves success. On the other hand, perhaps he is anxious because, despite his current success, he is letting things lapse in the business (like proper accounting practices or quality control).
In the first example, the man's emotions are reacting to an irrational premise in his subconscious. There's nothing actually wrong with his business's success, but he feels as if it's a bad thing. He feels this way because of a false, unchecked idea stored in his mind: that he does not deserve success. If he focuses his mind on the source of his anxiety, he can (given time) discover this unchecked premise and work towards expelling it from his subconscious. But only reason can identify the source of the emotion and determine whether or not it is valid. The feeling itself provides no automatic guidance to evaluate its cause.
In the second example, the man's emotions are reacting to rational premises, and are warning him about dangers that he has failed explicitly to identify. Success in business cannot last if one allows his accounting practices and quality control to lapse. But in the excitement of the moment, one's failures in these areas could be overlooked. If he endeavors to discover the cause of his anxiety, he will find that his subconscious is giving him a reasonable kick in the butt. Again, the feeling itself provides no automatic guidance to evaluate its source -- only reason can provide such guidance.
If one experiences a reason/emotion conflict in an emergency situation, then he must act according to his best (reasoned) judgment in the moment, without full knowledge of the nature of the conflict, and then work to resolve it as soon as possible after the emergency is over. For example, a battered woman thinks that her life will be in danger if she stays with her husband. But she still loves him, and does not want to leave. If in her best judgment, she truly believes her husband is a threat, then she ought to leave and try to untangle her mixed emotions for him after the immediate danger is over.
In all these cases -- and in any case where reason and emotion seem to conflict -- the rational man uses reason as the final arbiter of truth, and the ultimate guide to his actions. He does this because reason is his only connection to reality. Emotions are automatic responses to previously formed generalizations, some of which may be mistaken, or left over from childhood, or simply forgotten about. Reason and emotion are naturally harmonious, but this harmony is only possible to the man who acknowledges reason as his only means of knowledge.
Reason/emotion conflicts are not always the result of vice. Their source can be perfectly innocent, like irrational premises left over from a bad childhood, or simply honest error. But it is not enough to acknowledge that the conflict should not exist. One must explicitly identify the source of the error and correct it. Sometimes there are a web of errors tangled up in one's subconscious, and deciphering them can take years. While one is working towards bringing his reason and emotions into harmony, he must keep in mind the continual need to make the implicit explicit.
For the rational man, there are no "bad" emotions. Emotions are neither good nor bad -- they are automatic, and cannot be evaluated as such. Of course, one can evaluate the ideas behind the emotions, but this does not mean that an emotion that responds to an irrational idea is "bad." This is an important distinction, because some people wrongly ignore what they judge to be "bad" emotions. For instance: after a young Objectivist has sex for the first time, he feels dirty without knowing why. But he knows that there is nothing wrong with sex. The young man believes that he isn't supposed to feel dirty after sex, so he simply ignores the emotion, and discards it as unimportant. This is a serious error, as it leaves the fundamental psychological conflict unresolved.
It must be stressed that Objectivism does not advocate emotional repression. The rational man does not ignore his emotions, he uses them as a guide to his own psychology. But this is not the same thing as using emotions as tools of cognition. Emotions have survival value because they provide an immediate awareness of one's automatized evaluations. Such information can be useful in helping one decide what he ought to focus on. Consider the example above about the man who feels anxiety when his business starts to succeed. This feeling of fear, whether rationally justified or not, gives one a clue that something is wrong here. Whether his feelings are responding to a fundamental lack of self-esteem or an actual problem with his business, one is prompted to look at the conflict and untangle its cause. If he strives to identify and fix the problems, whether they are problems with his psychology or his business, then either way he will have become a better man.
Only the rational man can experience a life rich in emotional depth. When one's subconscious is free of contradictions, then his emotions are undiluted by conflicts. All of his values, explicit and implicit, are in unison. A deep, intense feeling of happiness is the rational man's reward for a life well-lived.
--Dan Edge
April 14, 2008
ISLAMIST ENTANGLEMENT AND USA
By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlogIn the second lecture you will follow the United States of America's role in the Middle East from the early contacts in 1917 and to Jimmy Carter's "rude awakening" in 1979. America has now taken over the role as the dominant force.
The first two lectures are done from the Western perspective, first Great Britain and now America. The reaction to the domination would lead to a collective identification as a form of nationalism and then to Islamism in politics. In lecture 2, Scott Powell starts out with repeating the five important milestones (1683 - Siege of Vienna, 1798 - Battle of the pyramids, 1839 - Westernization of the Ottoman Empire, and then the backlash with the nationalization of the Suez canal in 1956 and then culmination with the Iranian revolution in 1979.).
The main part of the lecture has the title, The Middle East as a means to American ends. Woodrow Wilson approves the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Americans discover oil in Saudi Arabia in 1933. [Editor's note: I wonder if the "lend-lease" Persian Corridor during 1941 - 1945 gave fuel for Iran's hostility against the Americans later on.]
The next part is called early cold war domination and started out with the Truman Doctrine in 1947. In my latest post on this course, I wondered why America forced Great Britain to back down regarding the control of the Suez canal. Now I understand that America's cold war problem with the communism threat did "collide" with Great Britain's wish of a strong presence in the area. The problem with using conflicts in the Middle East as strategic assets, is that you got an increased resentment towards the Western world and a new development into the Islamic entanglement. Jimmy Carter thought "Iran was an island of stability."
Harry Truman was an intricist, fighting the cold war and took Israel as an ally by default. Eisenhower was a pragmatist, using a "cost - benefit" calculation on the potential outcome. Johnson and Nixon thought they had the answer by doing a merger of two issues. Be a friend with Israel and at the same time giving arms to a future enemy, Iran.
Recommending reading by Scott Powell: A Concise History of the Middle East by Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.
Around the World Wide Web 58
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog1. Boortz makes a remarkable assertion:
Much of this mortgage crisis came along when the loony left started demanding that mortgage lenders do more to bring minorities and people with marginal credit into the wonderful world of home ownership. As a result of threats from leftists in government the subprime mortgage business was born. Now we see the results.
Is this true? Are subprime loans a PC welfare scheme that would not exist in a laissez-faire capitalist economy?
It makes me wonder how many hidden economic distortions there are because of our mixed economy. How radically would life be different if we had a separation of state and economy?
2. Mike Huckabee has begun running for President -- in the 2012 election. And if you don't think he's a serious candidate, remember this recent news about Paul Weyrich, Mr. Conservative:
The room—which had been taken over by argument and side-conversations—became suddenly quiet. Weyrich, a Romney supporter and one of those Farris had chastised for not supporting Huckabee, steered his wheelchair to the front of the room and slowly turned to face his compatriots. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Friends, before all of you and before almighty God, I want to say I was wrong.”
In a quiet, brief, but passionate speech, Weyrich essentially confessed that he and the other leaders should have backed Huckabee, a candidate who shared their values more fully than any other candidate in a generation. He agreed with Farris that many conservative leaders had blown it. By chasing other candidates with greater visibility, they failed to see what many of their supporters in the trenches saw clearly: Huckabee was their guy.
Indeed, Huckabee is the conservatives' guy. He might bring socialism to America, but by golly, he believes in God!
3. The Return of Big Government.
The return of Big Government? The smart-aleck response here would be something like "Really? I didn't know it ever left."
I confess, that was my first reaction to that headline.
Here's a little straight talk: Whether you pull the lever (or fill in the oval or touch the screen) for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or even John McCain in November, you're probably still going to end up in 2009 with a push for Big Government of the sort not seen in a generation. More taxes. More regulation. More spending. "It's going to be like watching That '70s Show," says Daniel Clifton, political analyst at Strategas Research Partners, which provides research to institutional investors.
Great. Our taxes will go up to pay for the second mortgages of Washington bureaucrats who stand around the water cooler all day doing Jim Carrey impressions.
4. At first I thought this SKYY Vodka response to the Absolut ad was a parody because of this:
“Don’t get me started on the Gadsden Purchase,” continues Karraker. “I think the folks in Tucson and Yuma would be rubbed the wrong way if they hear this landmark deal was somehow nullified as suggested by Absolut, a Swedish-owned brand.”
Nobody seriously says "Don't get me started on the Gadsden Purchase." Looks like Karraker is trying to be funny and cash in on Absolut's controversy at the same time.
6. Just one more reason why Obama would be a disastrous president:
If elected President, Senator Barack Obama plans to delay Project Constellation for at least five years, putting the saved money into a new $18-billion-a-year education program that would, in essence, nationalize early-education for children under five years old to prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten and beyond.
Nationalized early education?
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.
Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.
Ludwig Von Mises, Liberalism, p. 114
The boy must be transformed into the man; in this school he must not only learn to obey, but must thereby acquire a basis for commanding later. He must learn to be silent not only when he is justly blamed, but must also learn, when necessary, to bear injustice in silence.
Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.
Benito Mussolini, from "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism," 1932.
He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
The latest weapon to keep Ayn Rand out of the classroom: intimidation
By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogCraig Biddle does an excellent job demolishing Wall Street Journal blogger Heidi N. Moore's smear in the form of a question at Principles in Practice. There Biddle writes:
On the website of the Wall Street Journal, under the heading "Capitalism Shrugged: Should Ayn Rand Be Required Reading?"-and after stating a few uncontroversial facts, several inaccuracies, and some inconsequential fluff-Heidi Moore gets to her point:Click here to read all of Biddle's post.Rand has a bit of a reputation problem among those who have not drunk the Kool-Aid. . . . Deal Journal readers, we put the question to you: Should there be more Ayn Rand to instruct young, impressionable minds? Or is the problem with capitalism today too much Rand already?Gosh, Ms. Moore, since you put it that way, how could readers of the Wall Street Journal possibly answer in the affirmative? How could self-respecting, independent thinkers bear the prospect of being regarded as Kool-Aid-drinking cultists for holding that reality, reason, self-interest, individual rights, freedom, and the like deserve the attention of college students?
In reading through Moore's post myself, I thought that it was telling that she relies on Oliver Stone's Wall Street as one of her sources to describe Rand's ideas in action. She quotes the character of Gordon Gecko, Wall Street's representation of the preeminent cooperate raider as he gives a speech at the annual meeting of a company he aims to take over:
"I am not the destroyer of companies; I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed--you mark my words--will not only save Telidar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."Gecko's use of the word "greed' in his speech can not be equated to its use by the advocates of ethical egoism; the characterization of vicious businessman named after a reptile cannot be mistaken for a spokesman for self-interest. After all, nowhere in the real world of 1980's investment was there a real Gordon Gecko. The parallel that Stone seeks to establish in Gecko is to men such as Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, yet this parallel falls flat upon proper analyses.
Why? Because in contrast to Wall Street's portrayal of the workings of the market, the corporate raider phenomena of the 1980s was driven largely by underperforming management teams that failed to deliver the best possible use of a firm's resources. The idea that the raider loots a firm, while the existing management protects the firm's interests under a saintly cloak is absurd. A productive enterprise has value and it is the right of its owners to see that they get the most return on that value. A corporate raider simply uses his knowledge of the market to determine a company's full potential for profit and identifies new courses of action for firms that under-perform.
Yet by equating self-interest with a synonym for avarice, Wall Street communicates little more than the view that self-interest is immoral. Judging by her article, Ms. Moore thinks that any ideas Ayn Rand might have to offer in opposition is "Kool-Aid" taken in self-suicide. Perhaps Moore should examine her own ideas; after all, she attacks Ayn Rand under the masthead of a paper that is ostensibly dedicated to covering capitalists and their productive exploits in the marketplace, not smearing them.
April 13, 2008
McCain Runs Unopposed
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogSteve Huntley of the Chicago Sun-Times issues a warning to the Democrats: Keep attacking McCain like this and you will lose the Presidency -- again -- to the Republicans.
The best indicator of Republican John McCain's surprisingly strong presidential prospects in what should be a slam-dunk Democratic year is not his solid general-election poll numbers but rather the increasingly shrill attacks from Democrats.Huntley is correct that poorly-aimed smears which also play loose with easily-checked facts stand an excellent chance of killing the Democrats.
The latest was a grotesque slam from Barack Obama supporter Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. In a newspaper interview in his home state, Rockefeller let loose this stinker: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."
Never mind that laser-guided missiles hadn't been invented during the Vietnam war. Bombing is a part of warfare, and McCain was serving his country as have legions of other bomber airmen. Rockefeller smeared them all. One further point: McCain was a prisoner of war in Hanoi when U.S. planes bombed the city, on the orders of McCain's admiral father.
So wrong was this that Rockefeller not only quickly apologized, but his office also later made a point of saying that McCain had accepted his apology. [bold added]
Unfortunately, the Democrats have precious little choice but to take this route. This is a shame, because this hawkish pro-capitalist can think of numerous reasons to vote against McCain. The executive summary is that he wants to continue pretending that a massive program to export welfare handouts to Iraq is a war, and that he wants to run our entire country like the military.
But as I said, the Democrats have basically no choice. They do not have anything to offer that differs in substance from what McCain offers, and this is because they agree with McCain on the following fundamental premise: The individual exists -- not to pursue his own happiness -- but to serve the state. All three of the major presidential candidates agree that the American citizen is a sacrificial animal.
The Democrats have held this premise for decades and have learned over time that running openly on it -- See George McGovern. -- or governing openly on it -- See Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. -- loses elections. So they smear Republicans and pretend to be in favor of a more humane version of capitalism (which is, in itself, a smear of capitalism).
On only one issue, whether we should fight in Iraq or withdraw, do the Democrats appear to differ from the Republicans, but this is just a case of the Democrats not openly advocating pacifism. And pacifism is just a different way than digging toilets in the desert to sacrifice American lives to foreign enemies. A loyal opposition opposing the current war would do so on the grounds that we should fight a war of self-defense or quit wasting our money (which we can, at least, replace) and the lives of our soldiers (which we can't).
For decades, the Democrats have -- often luckily for America -- painted themselves into the corner of having to run dishonest political campaigns. But now that the Republicans have gradually adopted their whole agenda under the guise of capitalism, our nation finds itself in need of an able opponent to McCain, but trapped in that same corner with these fools.
(And until most American voters stop looking at themselves as wards of the state, we will remain in this corner.)
I have not decided yet whether I will vote against McCain or abstain from the presidential election, but Huntley's warning to the Democrats shows me that it -- how I vote or whether the Democrats hear him -- probably won't matter.
I weep for my country and fear for liberty.
-- CAV
The end of Founders College at Berry Hill, Pt. II
By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogI have no problem with people speaking freely about the issue at bar here, provided that they remain objective. That said, bleating "J'Accuse . . ." though anonymous comments smacks me as a bit much.
But since we do have the finest people visiting here and at least one of them thinks that I should feel guilty because I supported the school and thus some may have acted based upon my support, let me say that I am in no way burdened. I know all the people who acted upon my advice. We've talked, and believe me, they're cool about it. Similar to me, they liked what they initially saw in the college and they chose accordingly.
For example, when I heard Gary Hull speak at an open house about Founders' educational philosophy, I was struck with his command over the issue, as was everyone else in attendance. Everything that he said and every question he answered reflected the mind of someone with an expert's knowledge of both Objectivism and the philosophy of education. In contrast with the claims of some, there certainly was nothing to indicate that Founders was a half-baked endeavor.
"Well, you obviously don't know as much about education as we do," I imagine my critics will say. Perhaps, but I've read your commentary too. You didn't persuade me; he did.
At the same time, later on, I did serve a week at Founders as an unpaid intern with nontransferable college credit (heh) and I was able to see what I consider to be a telling side of the operation. I was still hopeful at the time, but I was not impressed.
I'll share with you an example: I keep on mentioning how brilliant Gary Hull's speech was, but I didn't take notes, because I never would have imagined that would have been the end of it. It was. You know how I can say this? Because I had to do things like explain to the marketing director non-trivial points like "Founders is not classical education" or "Founders is not great books." The intern. With non-transferable college credit. And Gary Hull was simply nowhere to be found.
In my view, Founders needed Gary Hull on site to communicate Founders' differentiating message in the way the chief visionary of a start-up must. Let there be no doubt about it: this was his baby. The project needed a person with his level of expertise and acumen to be able to broadcast the message with the precision demanded. Without that guiding force (and without some sort of written manifesto that I alluded in my initial post) I think the marketing (and the college) suffered accordingly.
I confronted Tamara Fuller with Hull's inexplicable absence at the opening celebration. I asked her point blank why Hull withdrew from the project. She looked me dead in the eye and said "I wish I knew. Why don't you go ask him."
Perhaps I should have asked him. On a slim-to-none chance, as outside supporter, that could have been one of the interventions the project needed to help get it back on its legs. I can't say, but coupled with Fuller's well-documented management style that did not engender either initiative or confidence in her subordinates, I think it was part of the caustic mix that killed the concept and I'll sign my name to it.
The faculty was up to the task and they did the job asked of them. The few students they had were any professor's dream. The location was exquisite. All I can say now is that I feel deeply for all who have suffered as a result of this meltdown.
Chinese Spy Awakes
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogWow: Chinese Spy 'Slept' In U.S. for 2 Decades:
Prosecutors called Chi Mak the "perfect sleeper agent," though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night.Having read many of Viktor Suvorov's fascinating books on Soviet spying on the US during the Cold War, I find the prospect of Chinese spying quite worrisome.
Eventually, Mak's job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China -- fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say he had been planning since the 1970s.
Mak was sentenced last week to 24 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge who described the lengthy term as a warning to China not to "send agents here to steal America's military secrets." But it may already be too late: According to U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials, the Mak case represents only a small facet of an intelligence-gathering operation that has long been in place and is growing in size and sophistication...
Fire Sale
By Kendall J from The Crucible & Column,cross-posted by MetaBlogI learned something interesting in a meeting this week. I was sitting in an demand planning meeting for one of my products and discovered that we had a few orders that were delayed. It seems that booking export containers and ships is getting increasingly difficult. What with the devalued dollar and everything, U.S. exports look pretty cheap and stuff that normally would never leave the country is flying off the shelves. Sure enough I found a similar article that day in The Wall Street Journal, Container Shortage Puts US Export Boom in a Box. For those of you who didn't know, exporting US goods to places such as Asia used to be dirt cheap. So many inbound containers from places like China were piling up that freight rates were held very low just to find something to put in them so they wouldn't head back to China empty. Now, there's a shortage!
That's great right? Sales. Revenues. Profits. The economic stimulus the FED has been doing must be doing the trick. Wrong. This is simply a temporary spike and the brick wall we're going to slam into on the other side of this spike is made worse by the FED's recent attempts to keep the domestic economy going.
Here's how it works. The FED has devalued the dollar. US goods look cheap to other countries. They buy lots more than they normally wouldn't. US volumes spike up, and revenues and thus profits are higher. All looks great. Until US firms have to buy new raw materials to replenish those goods they sold. Guess what. It's a global economy. A lot of those raw materials come from overseas. A ton of finished consumer goods also come from overseas. We have to pay more to get them because our dollar is devalued. Oops. That means the prices we were charging before have to be increased. It takes a while for all those costs to trickle in, but if you watch key import commodities like oil you'll see what we're headed for. Now we're forced to increase prices and hoping to continue selling our goods. But wait, our prices will eventually get back to the levels they were before the dollar was devalued, and foreign countries won't want our exports any more.
Sure enough the signs are there. Today's Wall Street Journal, "Dollar Slips Below 7-Yuan Barrier". We used to blame the Chinese for messing with our currency, but releasing the Yuan from it's peg to the "boat anchor" of the dollar was smart, and now we see the devaluation clearly. And from yesterday's "U.S. Trade Deficit Widens" - import volumes ticking up along with exports. And the most telling, "Import Prices Show Broad Rise"
Import prices surged in March, lifted by not only oil but also the biggest jump in non-petroleum costs on record, a worrisome sign for inflation.
Petroleum import prices increased 9.1% last month and fell 1.9% in February; prices soared 60.0% in the 12 months since March 2007. Between March 2006 and March 2007, petroleum import prices climbed by 3.1%.
Excluding petroleum, all other import prices rose 1.1% in March, after increasing 0.7% in February. Prices excluding petroleum increased 5.4% in the 12 months since March 2007, nearly double the 2.8% climb between March 2006 and March 2007.
The FED has done the equivalent of announcing a "fire sale" on the US economy in the hopes that all while all that merchandise is going out the door no one will notice that we're actually destroying value by selling our goods too cheaply. On the other side of that is an even deeper slump. All the while the FED keeps pumping more money into the economy, and demanding greater regulatory authority. Argh.
We're headed for Jimmy Carter-era stagflation folks, and the FED is putting its foot on the accelerator to get us there. All the while they blame the financial markets for the woes that they directly caused. The solution is not going to be pretty. I wouldn't be surprised if we see double digit interest rates again before this is all over.
The real solution is not more government regulation over the economy, it's less, nay no government regulation of the economy. Lasseiz faire! The FED caused this mess. Had monetary policy been privatized, this wouldn't have happened. It's going to get much worse before it gets better, folks.
Barack Obama Will Require You to Work
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogThis speech by Michelle Obama is chilling.
I know that Michelle is not Barack. Neither are Barack's radical preacher, his terrorist friends and his communist father. Barack himself prefers to speak in vapid generalities that make young Democrats swoon and send a tingle up Chris Matthews's leg. Still, this is his wife, and marrying her says something about Obama's judgment.
Her statement of altruism is forthright:
We have lost the understanding that in a democracy we have a mutual obligation to one another. That we cannot measure our greatness in this society by the strongest and richest of us. But we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done.
All done at the direction of the state, of course. Which Michelle goes on to admit:
...Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.
Do you see how this follows logically from Michelle Obama's altruist premise? If we all must sacrifice to the least among us, then we need a leader to direct our sacrifice. It would be irresponsible and immoral for a President to do otherwise. You will not be allowed to remain in your comfort zones.
No one gets a free ride in a fascist state. No one is allowed to opt out, to live for his own sake; that would be selfish. We have a mutual obligation to one another.
Your life belongs to the state.
Barack Obama will require you to work. Arbeit macht frei.
UPDATE: Revision.
April 11, 2008
Quick Roundup 320
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogWhat a rarity! My wife is awake and here while I'm composing a morning blog post!
Thursdays, I typically have to rush to get in earlier than usual, so when she asked me whether I was going to post about how much I love her, I said, "Oh, I don't know! I'm probably just going to throw some stuff out there and get out of here."
I love Mrs. Van Horn!
So there! I never said what I was going to "throw out there", did I?
New Blogger Feature
It's in Beta, but Blogger is in the process of making it possible to compose a blog post in advance and have it automatically show up at a pre-set date and time.
Once I move to Boston, I will likely have to make major changes to the way I blog if I wish to continue doing so and further my non-blogging writing career.
And I wish to do both.
All Atlas Can Do...
A reader pointed me to this column in the student newspaper of Columbia University by a student who had recently read Atlas Shrugged and decided to make the case for its inclusion in his school's core curriculum. He does a pretty good job:
[T]he most important thing that Rand does is make one question one's beliefs. I always wondered how capitalism could be morally justifiable, whether or not the rich should be shunned as most of society does, why the welfare state is inherently bad, how selfishness could be perceived as anything but appalling. In a word, where in my heart I was scared to be an egoist, Rand showed me that I should not hate this impulse, but I should embrace it, and that if all were to embrace it, the bounds of human progress would be limitless. I learned that striving to achieve and putting thought to action was the highest goal that I could seek, and that this would lead to my ultimate happiness. [bold added]Ben Weingarten earlier indicates the growing intellectual influence that Ayn Rand has had over the past few decades.
Whether or not Atlas Shrugged lives up to Weingarten's claims -- and I think it does -- that it stimulates critical thought about philosophical beliefs, there is no excuse for not including it as part of a collegiate core curriculum. Either Weingarten is right, and students are missing out on an enjoyable and profitable learning experience, or he isn't, and students are being deprived of the chance to learn what's wrong with it first-hand.
I doubt Weingarten will succeed in shaming Columbia into changing its curriculum. Shame is, after all, one of the few emotions modern intellectuals refuse to indulge. But I think that in raising this issue, he and those who read his column will learn just how small the modern intellectual is.
All knowledge has value.
Two Roundups
Bo posted another submarine-blogger roundup last week and Rational Jenn's hosting the weekly Objectivist roundup today.
Who Watches the Watchers?
Amit Ghate's been on fire lately. Tuesday, he notes a key unspoken assumption about government regulation and points to a relevant news story:
One of the key assumptions underlying arguments for government regulation is that when people switch over from the private sector to the public sector, they're somehow transformed from devils to angels. I've never understood any part of this -- most people I see in the private sector are more conscientious and harder working than those I see in the public sector; and more importantly, the market provides an incentive to do good, honest work lest a competitor unseat you -- no such mechanism is at work in the public sector.And yet his preamble still doesn't prepare you for the orgy of theft by government officials covered in the article. Take a look.
Congratulations to Joseph Kellard!
And I also enjoyed what he wrote on the subject of his recent promotion. You will, too, if you haven't seen it already.
Oh, but that ribbon is different!
I must say that I fully support C. August's "blue ribbon campaign" for ethical sophistication!
And, on a serious note, I am very intrigued by that
Neal Stephenson's trilogy, The Baroque Cycle, is a must read if you are interested in any of the following: history, The Enlightenment, science, philosophy, reason, how ideas shape world events, the birth of capitalism, pirates, battles, or love stories. Yes, this isn't so much a book review as a trilogy review, but the books can't really be separated. [link dropped]That's as far as I've gotten so far. Or something like that.
-- CAV
Updates
Today: Added link to OBlogger roundup.
Against Mandatory Insurance
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogThis morning, Ari Armstrong and other FIRM Activists strongly encouraged writing in opposition to Massachusetts-type legislation requiring all Colorado residents to purchase individual insurance. For the reasons that Paul recently detailed in this Denver Post op-ed and on the FIRM blog, such legislation would be a disaster for Colorado health care. So, I just wrote and sent the following letter (or a slight variant thereof, depending on the recipient) to the sponsors of the bill, the members of the Colorado Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, my Colorado representative and senator, and to the Colorado governor.
It's particularly important to vocally oppose mandatory insurance, as it's widely supported by Republicans and Democrats. To the Democrats, it's just a more trendy form of universal health care than "single payer" plans. To the Republicans, it's a way to force people to "be responsible." Happily, FIRM has changed the minds of some Republicans in Colorado -- but given that three of the five sponsors of this bill are Republicans, obviously we have more work to do!
Dear So-and-So,I'm sure my letter could have been more eloquent and polished, but sometimes activism is just about what's possible in the time that you have available.
I am writing to ask you to oppose Senate Bill 217, which would impose mandatory health insurance in Colorado.
The government of Colorado ought to respect and uphold our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That requires allowing people to make their own decisions in life -- whether right or wrong.
Mandatory health insurance would violate those basic American rights. It would force people to spend THEIR money as THE GOVERNMENT sees fit, regardless of the circumstances of their lives. This legislation would force people to spend money on health insurance -- at prices inflated by other mandates requiring coverage for services they don't want and won't use and by massive government welfare programs and regulations. As a result, many people will not be able to afford goods of greater value to them -- like an apartment in a better neighborhood or tutoring for their child.
No one should have to sacrifice even a trivial pleasure like a night at the movies because the government forces them to spend their money to pay for services they won't ever need -- like alcohol rehab, the HPV vaccine, autism treatment, prostate cancer screening -- as this legislation would do. (Those are already-existing Colorado mandates. This legislation would encourage even more, as special interest groups lobbied for their "indispensable" service to be covered.)
That's not the end of the wrongs of mandatory insurance -- by any stretch of the imagination. As shown by the less-than-shining example of Massachusetts, this law would drive health care costs upward, encourage doctors to retire or move to another state, decrease access to quality care, create a massive new bureaucracy, and imperil the state's finances.
This legislation is MORALLY WRONG. Please DO NOT support it.
If your goal is to fix the genuine problems in our health care system, then you MUST advocate FREE MARKET reforms. Eliminate the tax incentive for employer-provided health care. Eliminate all mandates and other regulations on health insurance. Eliminate regulations on medical providers. Gradually eliminate welfare programs.
Then, health insurance might become what it should have been all along: a person's own safety net for major injury or illness, with all ordinary medical expenses paid for out-of-pocket. That's how other forms of insurance work -- and they work well as a result.
I support Freedom and Individual Rights in Health Care -- see http://www.westandfirm.org -- and I hope that you'll do the same.
-- DMH
Diana Hsieh
Sedalia, Colorado
Ph.D Candidate, Philosophy
University of Colorado, Boulder
Star Trek and the Fascinating World of Historical Concepts (Part 1)
By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlogImagine a conversation that goes something like this:
Person A: “Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett — at the Alamo, after twelve days.”
Person B: “Washington crossed the Delaware; the Hessians, the long sleep.”
Person A: “Napoleon…Waterloo.”
Person B: “Napoleon — at Lodi, the Little Corporal!”
In case you need to brush up on your history, the conversation went as follows:
Person A: “I think I have an insurmountable problem. It’s going to be the death of me.”
Person B: “When things are at their worse, you have to make a bold move.”
Person A: “Honestly, I think I’m out of options this time.”
Person B: “Don’t give up just yet, this could be an opportunity to make a name for yourself.”
The two conversations are the same; only the latter is expressed in fully generalized terms — “universals,” whereas the former is expressed almost entirely in historical concepts.
I imagine that while reading this some of my readers will immediately have been reminded of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the crew of the enterprise attempts to communicate with an alien species called the Tamarians that uses historical concepts exclusively.
In this story, when the Captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, greets his counterpart, he says something to the effect of “I come in Peace”–i.e. the usual Federation protocol.
The answer, however, is not expressed in universal terms. His opposite number responds, “Rai and Jiri at Lungha, Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons…”
This and subsequent exchanges are, of course, extremely frustrating for both sides.
The reason is that the aliens are in effect handicapped by permanently operating on a lower level of abstraction that the humans. The only solution to the problem, orchestrated by the alien captain, is to try to forge a bond of common experiences, and thus build up a common vocabulary of historical terms around them. (The two captains are forced to work together to fight a strange creature that inhabits the planet where their ships have met.) When the individual that operates on the higher level of abstraction—Picard—is able to understand the basic mode of communication of the less advanced species and determine the universal equivalents of the historical referents the aliens rely on, he can communicate in the alien’s idiom. (The reverse would be impossible.)
In the final exchange, the fact that the two species have come to understand each other is expressed by Picard, in purely historical terms, using his own name and that of the other captain and the location of their shared ordeal:
“Picard and Dathon at Eladril.”
The episode itself is wonderfully imaginative and satisfying. It is just one example of the portrayal of human efficacy in the series, which is especially uplifting about Star Trek: The Next Generation in general. If you’re tired of drunks, depressives, terrorists, cheating housewives, and back-stabbing reality show competitors, rent it on DVD. It can reinvigorate you with a sense of the grand and the heroic.
It’s the issue of historical concepts, however, that I really want to look at.
Although the idea that a space-faring culture could possibly communicate on an exclusively historical level is ludicrous, it is interesting to note that people who use general concepts do also use historical concepts in certain instances.
For instance, when someone uses an unorthodox solution to solve a seemingly impossible problem, one might say he cut the Gordian knot. (This refers to an episode in the life of Alexander the Great, in which he literally cuts through a knot, which, as local legend would have it could only be “undone” by the man who would rule the world.)
Another example of a historical concept that people use to this day is that of a Pyrrhic victory. When someone wins a contest or struggle of some sort, but the cost is so high that he emerges with no advantage or so crippled by the victory that he cannot leverage it, then he has won a Pyrrhic victory. He might as well have lost! (This happen to Pyrrhus of Epirus, a Greek king who’s victory over the Romans in southern Italy was crippling to his fortunes in the long run.)
To “cross the Rubicon” is to make a fateful choice, with enormous consequences for yourself and others, as Caesar did when he cast the die and invaded Italy in a bid to become Emperor of Rome.
These types of terms, though few and far between in current usage, represent one of a surprising variety of cognitive tools that people are able to use to grasp reality beyond general concepts. In the next installment of this series I’ll talk about why I think these terms are important, and why the fact that we don’t have more of them in the language today is a symptom of a serious problem in our culture.
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April 9, 2008
BLOG TIL YOU DROP
By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlogFrom Matt Richtel's article, In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly. (New York Times, 04/06/08.)
Here are two voices from the blogosphere:
- Blog and Die: The NYT Says We Blog 'Til We Drop by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Profy, Inc.
- ‘Newspaper till you drop’ vs. ‘Blog till you drop’ by David Rothman of TeleRead.
Related: My post, EGO BLOG IS NOT BURNED OUT...YET...
A Charter Madrassa
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogMany people favor making our economy freer, but haven't thought that deeply about some of the difficulties of actually achieving that goal. And many of these same people innocently support such measures as charter schools or voucher programs, thinking of them as viable alternatives to public education, or even as steps towards privatizing education.
Unfortunately, decreased government regulation will not, yanked out of the greater context of the need to protect individual rights, necessarily lead to private education or even a freer economy. In fact, half-measures such as charter schools can backfire spectacularly, as we can see in Minnesota.
Recently, Amanda Gertz, a substitute teacher who filled in at Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, volunteered some very interesting news to a reporter whose efforts to learn more about the charter school had been met with stonewalling:
Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day's schedule included a "school assembly" in the gym after lunch.Certainly, Moslem parents should be free to send their children to a Moslem school -- at their own expense. A private system of education would not prevent that. But it would prevent ordinary citizens who -- like myself -- would never voluntarily donate money towards the spread of Islam, from being forced to do so through taxation.
Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform "their ritual washing."
Afterward, Getz said, "teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day," was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man "was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered."
"The prayer I saw was not voluntary," Getz said. "The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred."
Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. "When I arrived, I was told 'after school we have Islamic Studies,' and I might have to stay for hall duty," Getz said. "The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one -- the board said the kids were studying the Qu'ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other."
... [B]uses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. [This is despite it being an "optional" activity. --ed]
It could conceivably be that something like charter schools or voucher programs will one day serve as a transitional step from our current socialized system of education to a free market system. But such programs must avoid state funding of religious instruction. This is clearly difficult to do, which is why such programs would deserve support only if there is a definite plan to privatize the entire system on a definite timetable.
In a mixed economy, controls breed controls (and not just in the economic realm), making all arrangements inherently unstable. This is partly because of distortions in the economy created by the controls, and partly due to the fact that there are always people willing to take loot when it's being passed around. In other words, mixed economies foster bad decision-making and dishonesty.
The longer a provision, such as that which allows for charter schools, is on the books, the more likely it will be to invite widespread and spectacular abuses. (And as we have seen, the public system is already being subverted for such tax-funded indoctrination as religious instruction and leftist reeducation!) Without a clear movement towards capitalism, many such measures are better left on the cutting room floor.
-- CAV
Around the World Wide Web 57
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog1. Greg Ransom drops a bombshell about Barack Obama. After closely reading the Senator's autobiography, Ransom noticed some mysteries. Among them: Obama claims he was driven by his father's ideals -- but the content of those ideals is never revealed. Ransom did some research and found that Obama's father was an anti-American communist who advocated confiscating property and nationalizing foreign businesses, among other things.
Of course, any Republican who asks Obama about all this will be attacked by the left for "Swiftboating," "McCarthyism" and so on. But facts are facts. Obama grew up admiring his father's ideals, which were uncompromising, hard-line communism and which Obama avoided in his autobiography. What does Obama think of his father's ideal today?
2. What American knucklehead said this?
We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world.
And this?
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
And what ignorant socialist railed about...
...capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.
Those statements all came from Martin Luther King, Jr. Jeff Cohen complains that King's anti-militarism is "silenced" today, but I think he should be relieved Americans don't know more about King. It's hard to worship an anti-American leftist as a saint.
3. Comrade McCain wants to use state power to control how much money filthy capitalists can earn.
"If there's ways we can motivate shareholders and boards of directors to punish these people we should do it," the Arizona Republican said. "If there's ways we can prevent this from happening again, we should exercise those options."
Oh, excuse me -- he didn't say "control," he said "motivate." Yes, the power of the state's guns is an excellent motivator.
4. Liberals lay the "chickenhawk" line on the wrong guy.
(HT: AmSpecBlog)
OAC Early Application Deadline
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogAn announcement from the Ayn Rand Institute:
The Early Admissions deadline for the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC) is April 16, 2008 -- just a few weeks away!As I've said before, the courses offered by the Objectivist Academic Center have exceeded my wildest expectations. I cannot recommend the program highly enough.
The OAC is a distance-learning program of the Ayn Rand Institute offering classes on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, as well as on the methods of objective thinking and communication. If you are interested in Ayn Rand’s ideas and would like to study them in greater detail under the guidance of ARI staff intellectuals, then the OAC is the program for you.
By applying early, you greatly increase your chances of acceptance into a limited number of openings. Also, those who are not offered Early Admission are reconsidered during the Regular Admissions process on an equal basis with other applicants, giving them, in effect, two chances to be admitted. The application process is quite competitive, so we urge you to apply today!
Visit www.objectivistacademiccenter.org for more information. If you have any questions about the program, please contact oac@aynrand.org.
Early Retirement Is Selfish and Unpatriotic
By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe March 26, 2008 Baltimore Sun has printed a disturbing OpEd by Andrew Yarrow, in which he makes the claim that Americans who retire early are "selfish and unpatriotic". Here are a few excerpts:
Early retirement selfish, unpatrioticThere are a few noteworthy unstated premises in his argument.
...But there's just something - make that lots of things - wrong, in general, with retiring at 55, 62 or even 65. I would go so far as to call it profoundly selfish and unpatriotic.
Dropping out of the work force while still in one's prime means ending one's contributions to America's strength, mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's future and leeching trillions of taxpayer dollars from the economy.
...Thus, working longer would increase national output and personal wealth. And given our nation's crying need for teachers, social service workers and public servants, millions of "seasoned citizens" could serve our communities while giving meaning and money to people with decades of life and activity left in them.
...For everyone's good, Americans should at least be able to work as long as their shorter-lived, poorer grandparents did. By doing so, they would be unselfishly helping preserve and strengthen our nation's future by alleviating - rather than worsening - our national debt and making hands-on contributions to our children and communities.
(1) Your life is not your own; instead service to others is the highest good.
(2) Selfishness is opposed to patriotism; in other words looking out for your own interests is harmful to the USA.
(3) When you stop working, you are "leeching" off of others.
Of course, the current system of Social Security taxes are just a giant Ponzi scheme. The government attempts to promote the fiction that you are paying your own money into the system when you work and you are "getting it back" when you retire. At least Yarrow is correct in stating that retirees are collecting other people's money.
As the Social Security crisis deepens over the next decade or so, I expect we'll here more such collectivist arguments, in an attempt to forestall intergenerational resentment amongst American.
But the solution is not to force people to work longer for a mythical "common good". Instead, it is to phase out and eventually eliminate the collectivist system of Social Security altogether and let people truly fund their own retirement with their own money. Yes, there will be some painful transition costs. But if we do nothing, we'll pay in the form of vastly more economic pain in 15-20 years, with interest.
The end of Founders College at Berry Hill
By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe Gazette Virginian reports the following on Founders College:
Founders Land Company has assumed management at the Berry Hill hotel and resort property, according to a Monday press release issued by John E. Powell, director of marketing.As someone who thought that the Berry Hill property was an exquisite setting for the college, this news comes as a disappointment. In fact, all of the news to come out of Founders College of late has been a disappointment.
"The Berry Hill Estate is under new management," according to the press release. "On April 3 the lease to Founders College Education ended. On that date the owner of the property, Founders Land Company, assumed direction of management."
"The exclusive focus of new management will be on hotel operations rather than the college," continuted (sic) the press release. "Its goal is to develop this historic local treasure to its full potential as a destination hotel, resort and center for important events in the South Boston community."
So what went wrong? My frustration rests in that the project was never truly able to communicate its intellectual distinctiveness in a way that resonated with college-bound students and their parents. Yet when I talk to members of Founders' faculty, it becomes clear to me that the actual idea of Founders as a center for hierarchal and integrated learning was sound.
For example, one professor friend of mine in economics talked about how the professors from other disciplines sat in on his classes and vice versa and how this participation upped the quality of the presentation. In the extended after-class sessions that took place at the on-site tavern, each professor would integrate their disciplines with each other over dinner. Students, who of course tagged along, got to sit in as various experts in their fields talked with one another about how seemingly disparate ideas drew upon a common source and integrated together toward a common end. My friend relayed that he had never experienced anything quite like it in his long career and that the experience was quite enriching (and from what I heard, the students got a lot out of it too).
For me, this anecdotal story was revealing. Out of the simple expectation that Founders professors were to be aware of what their colleagues were teaching and expected to look for commonalities, this emergent property developed in a way that you don't typically see elsewhere. That's important. But was this story and other important stories successfully conveyed to the public? Not that I can see, and perhaps that is one reason why Founders lost its campus so quickly.
Since hindsight is twenty-twenty, if I am ever fortunate enough to be in a position to launch a college, I would not do it until there was some sort of intellectual manifesto that fleshed out the ambitions of the movement behind the launch. The progressives had the works of John Dewey to inspire them and rally behind; my own paternal grandparents were both part of that movement, with one working in public education and the other working at a private progressive grade school that was founded in the 1920's for the sole purpose of carrying out Dewey's educational program. Founders' need for its own intellectual justification and rally point was little different, but Founders never had such a manifesto, at least not in an explicit and easily packaged form that could have been easily shared with the public. In hindsight (and added to all the management and financial woes) that absence was a key defect because it allowed critics to dismiss Founder's promises as mere marketing hype and not the underpinnings of a great sea-change in education.
Founders could have been. Founders should have been. But in the end, it wasn't. I think that is a deep tragedy, but like all tragedies, there is a lot that can be learned from it--and we should. The core problems in education that made an idea like Founders even worth considering in the first place will continue to plague us until those inspired by Ayn Rand's ideas can apply her philosophy to the practical problem of education--and apply it in a marketable, profitable and economically sustainable program.
Dangerous Nonsense in Illinois
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogVia the OList, I have gotten wind of a recent display of anti-religious bigotry by a government official. Here is a transcript (via Qwertz), but do watch the video embedded below when you get a chance.
Here we have Illinois State Representative Monique Davis -- a government official -- "informing" a citizen, atheist activist Rob Sherman, that he hasn't the right to freedom of speech because of his beliefs concerning religion.
Davis: … What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it's dangerous--While Davis does have the right, as a private citizen, to "spew and spread" such dangerous nonsense, her doing so in the context of a government hearing constitutes a threat to Sherman's freedom of speech. As such, it is morally wrong, contrary to the proper purpose of a government (if not illegal), and completely unacceptable.
Sherman: What's dangerous, ma'am?
Davis: It's dangerous to the progression of this state. And it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you'll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!
Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I'm sure that if this matter does go to court--
Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon. [bold added]
As you will notice from the video clip, she sounds like she's ready to round up a lynch mob.
Opinion polls regularly show that atheists are one of America's most distrusted and despised minorities. Having been born in 1936, well before Jim Crow ended, Davis should be able to remember something about what government persecution of individual members of minorities means. Her willingness to turn around and do the same thing in and of itself demonstrates that her faith is anything but a sound basis for understanding or protecting individual rights.
After I showed this video to my wife, she asked whether I would like to hear an atheist rebuttal. "No, sweetie," I said. "Most atheists have a such a poor command of the issues involved that they will do more harm than good."
I had forgotten, though, about an excellent series of discussions about "Reason vs. Faith" posted to YouTube by the Ayn Rand Institute. Fortunately, Davis reminded Amit Ghate of those. I recommend watching them and link to each at the end of this post.
I am an atheist and have been for more than twenty years. I disagree with Christianity and regard it as a moral and practical impediment to happiness at best and to life itself at worst, when it is practiced. And it is a threat to life and freedom any time it is incorporated into government. But I have never said and never will say that a Christian "has no right" to hold or state his opinion, or to practice it so long as he does not interfere with my rights.
All men have rights that inhere in our nature as rational beings, and the right to discuss facts and opinions -- which Davis refuses to recognize or protect -- is one of those rights. I recommend that anyone in Davis's district first complain about this display of bigotry and incipient tyranny, and then work to unseat her in the next election.
And then, for anyone who might wonder why I think rejecting religion would be to anyone's benefit as a rational being, I refer you -- as a start -- to the following "Reason vs. Faith" videos from ARI. Each raises a question and answers it, so click on a number and watch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Rejecting religion alone will not lead to morality or happiness, but taking a rational approach to the kinds of questions religion attempts to answer eventually can, as Ayn Rand demonstrated.
Contrary to the approach of faith that countless Christians have advised over the ages, nothing worth doing -- like living a happy and fulfilling life -- is ever as easy as just taking someone's word wholesale on a host of life-and-death issues, or following orders.
Enjoy!
-- CAV
Weep For the Bloggers?
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogAce of Spades links to an article about the stress of blogging that made me laugh:
SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Yes, let us pity these hapless souls who work at home, get creative satisfaction in their job, reach thousands of readers every day, make their own hours, can blog naked and smelly if they want and need not worry about bosses looking over their shoulder. Cue the violin.
I will admit that I'm glad I'm not a professional blogger. I'm happy being an amateur blogger, because if this became my job, then it would be, well, a job. Then I would have a responsibility to produce. I could not ignore this blog for days at a time as I occasionally do.
I won't even put a tip jar on this blog. It's not that there is anything wrong with blegging (ghastly neologism, that). Asking for contributions is perfectly moral. But it changes everything. With money received from readers comes an implicit trade agreement: for money received the blogger will continue to produce content. I don't want any obligations to anyone. I'm sitting here tapping away on my keyboard because I enjoy it. If it ever becomes a job, I'll shut it down. I already have a job, thank you.
Of course, it's easy for me to dismiss professional blogging because this blog is peanuts and it always will be. I started this blog on November 19, 2005 with no readers. As I write sitemeter says I average 93 visits a day, and I am grateful for every last one of them. I communicate to readers not just in America and Canada, but in faraway places such Germany, India and Brazil. I could not have reached those 93 readers a day before the internet; considering that I get to do this for free, the whole deal is sweet to me!
I could never be a big-time blogger. If you write about politics, you should be a pure partisan like Right Wing News or Daily Kos to get the kind of numbers you need to go pro. As an Objectivist and a radical for capitalism I don't fit either party. Also my focus is too diffuse for this blog to prosper. I write about whatever grabs my interest. Most readers want a narrow focus; they go to, say, a Lakers blog to read about the Lakers. Fortunately, there are at least 93 people in the world who have active minds and enjoy reading about a variety of topics.
UPDATE: I should clarify that I'm not saying there is anything wrong with making money. Money does not make an activity "impure." My point is not Platonic. In fact, there is other writing I do, such as playwriting, that is more important to me than blogging -- and I do aspire to get paid for it. This blog, however, is a form of recreation. Take it for what it is.
Opposite Sex Friendships
By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe just-married Dan Edge -- Congratulations, Dan and Kelly! -- recently posted a very interesting essay on opposite-sex friendships. His general policy is that he refrains from developing intimate friendships with women when he's in a committed relationship.
I agree with his overall analysis, particularly as applied to married or to-be-married persons. (Before that point, with some exception for long-term couples, I wouldn't regard the relationship as "committed," although it might be "exclusive.")
Contrary to our culture's common sappy mysticism, love is not a magic glue that holds people together, come what may. That love can be imperiled fairly quickly -- if a person fails to consistently make his/her spouse (or partner) the most important person in his/her life. One common way of failing in that basic task is to cultivate emotional intimacy with a person who might (absent the primary relationship) be a love interest. That kind of friendship saps time and energy away from the love relationship. Issues discussed in depth with the friend are not likely to be discussed again with the spouse, or at least not discussed so deeply. That weakens the bond between the couple, while strengthening the bond with the friend. Sexual feelings for the intimate friend will have to be suppressed -- but at some point, the requisite self-control might fail. In that case, the affair didn't "just happen," as many people would say. Disaster was deliberately courted, probably over the course of months.
Of course, those considerations apply only to intimate friendships -- not merely friendly friendships. Friendly friends talk about their work, hobbies, politics, mutual interests, and so on. They talk about matters that they'd discuss with pretty much anyone they like. They talk on occasion or when convenient. Intimate friends discuss private thoughts and feelings, depend on each other's discretion, and regularly carve out private time to spend together. Mere friendly friends (of whatever sex) are not a danger to a romantic relationship. Intimate friends of the opposite sex can be, precisely because such intimacy is so central to romantic relationships.
(Oy, that was less coherent than I was hoping, but oh well. More fodder for debate in the comments, I suppose!)
Egypt’s “Sense of Nationhood”
By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlogIn my recent “roundup” of bloggers tackling history, I missed one who shouldn’t be missed. He’s one of my keenest and ablest students, ”SB”, over at One Reality.
His recent post Digging for Artifacts relates to Egypt’s backward looking culture and a theme I discussed in my fourth lecture of the Islamist Entanglement: Egypt’s “sense of nationhood.”
Ayn Rand coined the term “sense of life.” By that term she meant “a pre-conceptual equivalent to a metaphysics,” or an implicit sense of one’s place in reality. In my research on Egypt I’ve become convinced that Egypt exhibits a cultural-historical analog: a “sense of nationhood.”
Simply put, this sense of nationhood is the view that Egyptians are a great historical nation. It is an implicit premise embedded in Egyptian thinking that extends back to its “glorious” pharaonic past, of which the ever present pyramids and temples provide a constant reminder. This self-identification also involves a 2400 year history of foreign occupation that began with an invasion by the Persians c.600 BC , and lasted through to Ottoman Rule, which ended in 1798. Egypt’s sense of nationhood is a kind of subconscious estimate of the value of the people and their past which has been a major factor directing them to where they are today.
Mahmoud Moktar’s sculpture ”Egypt’s Awakening” is an allegory of its sense of nationhood.
Interestingly, there is no real philosophy of nationalism in Egypt. In his essay, “Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution,” Nasser explains and exemplifies this fact. Nationalism — a European ideology — did find a receptive audience among Egypt’s intellectuals starting in the 1870s. This movement, common to many Middle Eastern countries, culminated in the formation of the Wafd party, which tried to have Egypt’s case for nationhood heard at the peace confereences of Paris in 1919. But Egypt’s sense of nationhood never took off as an ideology. The basic reason is that Egypt’s nationalists failed to achieve independence. They were stymied by a combination of British meddling and monarchical intrigue, and were politically discredited.
In the wake of that failure, Egypt faced a desparate choice between two alternatives: Islamism and Nasserist military dictatorship. Although it is true to say that Nasser was more politically astute then the Muslim Brethren of the time, and connived his way into power, I think it’s fair to say that if Egyptians hadn’t felt that he was the great upholder of their “sense of nationhood,” he would not have held on to power. It was because of Egypt’s emotional baggage about its past that Nasser was able to develop himself as a cultural hero for Egyptians, and why, even after his terrible defeat to Israel in 1967, he had overwhelming popular support. (Of course, Eisenhower gave Nasser an incalculable boost, by spanking the British over their Suez Crisis response.)
What is interesting about Egypt’s current position is the interplay between its sense of nationhood and Islam, the only explicit metaphysics and code of values its people widely accept.
The two are incompatible and have been in constant tension since Nasser came to power. Because the latter is an all-encompassing and explicit system of ideas, and it has no ideological rivals, it’s only a matter of time before it takes over. In fact, I predict an Islamist takeover within a generation. That does not mean, however, that Egypt will necessarily succumb to participating in some kind of new Caliphate, even though Islamism is on the rise throughout the Middle East. Egypt’s sense of nationhood should continue to act on an emotional level to keep Egyptians apart from their fellow Muslims.
Learn more about this topic in my lecture on the emergence of modern Egypt.
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist
Who: Dr. Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute.
What: A talk and Q & A examining Ayn Rand's view of egoism and how it can enable each of us to live more successful, happy lives.
Where: University of Chicago, Harper Memorial Library, Room 140, Chicago, Illinois
When: Wednesday, April 16, 2008, at 7 PM
Admission is FREE.
Summary: Ayn Rand is well known for advocating selfishness, yet the substance of that selfishness is rarely understood. This lecture presents Rand's ideal: a virtuous egoist.
Dr. Smith explains why a person should be an egoist, the kind of egoism that Rand does and doesn't commend, and the kinds of virtues that a person must exercise in order to actually advance his self-interest. Along the way, Dr. Smith differentiates Rand's rational egoism from hedonism, materialism, and predation, and sketches Rand's egoistic account of two vital but widely misunderstood virtues: honesty and justice.
Bio: Tara Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, where she currently holds the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism. She is the author of the books "Moral Rights & Political Freedom," "Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root & Reward of Morality," and "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist," as well as numerous articles.
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Dr. Tara Smith is available for interviews now and after her talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
For more information on this event and on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at www.aynrand.org. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
Why Unregulated Capitalism is the Only Moral Social System
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 9, 2008
Why Unregulated Capitalism is the Only Moral Social System
Who: Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A lecture and Q&A explaining the philosophical and moral basis of capitalism.
Where: UCI, Crystal Cove Auditorium, Irvine, CA
When: Monday, April 14, 2008, at 7 PM
Admission is FREE.
Description: Capitalism is blamed for exploitation, environmental destruction, cut-throat competition, sweatshops, child labor, and the rising cost of education. But are these claims true? What is capitalism's essential nature? How can it be considered good? Find out the answers
Bio: Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and is a contributing editor to The Objective Standard. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications. He is frequently interviewed in the media and appears weekly on the new Fox Business Network to debate and discuss current economic and business news. His columns and opinion-editorials are published on forbes.com and in major newspapers. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.
For more information on this talk, please e-mail events@aynrand.org.
### ### ###
Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at www.aynrand.org. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI.
Sales of Ayn Rand Books Reach 25 million Copies
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogAyn Rand Institute Press Release
Sales of Ayn Rand Books Reach 25 million Copies
April 7, 2008
Irvine, CA—Since the publication of Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, 72 years ago, sales of her books increased exponentially, having recently reached the mark of 25 million copies, a staggering figure considering the length of her two major novels and the philosophical nature of their themes and ideas.
We the Living, whose theme Ayn Rand described as "the supreme value of a human life and the evil of a totalitarian state that claims the right to sacrifice it," had a small initial printing of three thousand copies. The novel, which tells the story of three individuals facing an all-powerful communist state, steadily gained popularity through word of mouth, as did all of Ayn Rand's novels, and 70 years later has sold more than 3 million copies.
Anthem, Ayn Rand's shortest novel, was published two years later, in 1938, and so far has sold more than 4 million copies. Anthem portrays the struggle of an individual to discover his ego and gain his independence in a futuristic society where individualism is ruthlessly suppressed and the word "I" is no longer used--in conversation or thought.
The recurring theme of the conflict between individualism and collectivism is also present in Ayn Rand's third novel, The Fountainhead, published in 1943. This conflict is dramatized in the story of Howard Roark, an architect whose independent vision and unbreakable artistic integrity pits him against the mediocrity and conformism prevalent in his own profession and in the society of his time. Sales of The Fountainhead reached 20,000 copies in its first six months of existence, climbed to 150,000 copies two years after its initial publication, and recently surpassed 6.5 million copies.
Ayn Rand's last and most important novel, Atlas Shrugged, was first published in 1957 and, like The Fountainhead, has sold more than 6 million copies since its release. With a theme stated by Ayn Rand as "the role of the mind in man's existence," it sought to demonstrate "a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest" and to present a "moral defense of capitalism." The plot of Atlas Shrugged involves the mysterious disappearance of the most able and productive individuals in a collectivist society that oppresses and exploits them while refusing to recognize their need to function in freedom.
The powerful themes and gripping plots of Ayn Rand's stories gained the attention and admiration of millions of readers who, over the span of seven decades, have bought 20 million copies of her novels. Ayn Rand fans also bought 5 million copies of her nonfiction writings, which include essay anthologies such as For the New Intellectual (1 million copies sold), The Virtue of Selfishness (1.25 million copies sold), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (600,000 copies sold) and the Romantic Manifesto (350,000 copies sold).
In 2007 alone, more than 800,000 copies of Ayn Rand's novels were sold, along with 60,000 copies of her nonfiction books--both figures all-time annual records.
According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, the enduring appeal of Ayn Rand's writings should not be surprising: "Ayn Rand offers readers the opportunity to experience masterful plots with heroes who show us the crucial importance of reason and the supreme value of pursuing our own individual happiness. Based on the growing popularity of her books since their publication, we can confidently predict that sales are bound to increase--and that's a hopeful development not only for the future of capitalism in America but also for the future of freedom on Earth.”
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Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. He is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and is a contributing editor to The Objective Standard. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications. He is frequently interviewed in the media and appears weekly on the new Fox Business Network to debate and discuss current economic and business news. His columns and opinion-editorials are published on forbes.com and in major newspapers. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.
To book Dr. Brook for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550, ext. 213 (office)
949-838-5137 (cell)
media@aynrand.org
April 8, 2008
Religion vs. Morality
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 7, 2008
Religion vs. Morality
Who: Dr. Andrew Bernstein, professor of philosophy and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A talk arguing for a secular, rational basis for morality. A Q&A will follow.
Where: University of Colorado, Boulder, Wolf Law Building, Room 207
When: Thursday, April 10, 2008, at 7 pm
Description: Conventionally, most people believe that morality can only be based in religious faith that in a world without God no principles of right and wrong could exist. Related to this, philosophers have long held that no objective, fact-based, rational code of values is possible.
Regarding both points, this talk shows that the exact opposite is true. The purpose of morality is to guide human life on earth and religion is utterly incapable of it. Flourishing life requires a code of secularism, rationality, egoism and freedom. Religious faith clashes with every principle of a proper moral code, and, as such, has led, and can only lead to, hell on earth.
Bio: Dr. Bernstein is a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Marist College; he also teaches at SUNY Purchase. Dr. Bernstein lectures regularly at American universities and appears frequently on radio talk shows. His op-eds have been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Daily News, and The Houston Chronicle. Dr. Bernstein is the author of three Ayn Rand titles for CliffsNotes: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem. He also authored The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire.
For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrand.org
### ### ###
Andrew Bernstein is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: larryb@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
Please Note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
Global Capitalism: The Solution to World Oppression and Poverty
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 7, 2008
Global Capitalism: The Solution to World Oppression and Poverty
Who: Dr. Andrew Bernstein, professor of philosophy and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A talk arguing for the morality and practicality of global capitalism. A Q&A will follow.
Where: Rogers State University, Will Rogers Auditorium, Claremore, OK
When: Wednesday, April 9, 2008, at 7 pm
Description: The opponents of global capitalism overlook the key points in the debate. The capitalistic nations of Europe, North America and Asia are by far the wealthiest societies of history—with per capita incomes in the range of at least $20,000 $30,000 annually. But capitalism is not merely the system of prosperity; fundamentally, it is the system of individual rights and freedom.
Capitalistic nations protect their citizens’ freedom of speech, of the press and of intellectual expression. Similarly, their citizens possess economic freedom, including the right to own property, to start their own businesses and to seek profit. By stark contrast, the pre-capitalist systems of history, and the non-capitalist systems of the present, are politically oppressive and economically destitute; their citizens have no rights and, consequently, little or no wealth.
What deeper principles make possible the freedom and wealth enjoyed under capitalism—and lacking in its political antipodes? How has capitalism already greatly enhanced the lives of millions of human beings in formerly impoverished Third World countries? What can the men of the free world do to further promote the spread of capitalism into the repressed nations of the globe?
Bio: Dr. Bernstein is a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Marist College; he also teaches at SUNY Purchase. Dr. Bernstein lectures regularly at American universities and appears frequently on radio talk shows. His op-eds have been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Daily News, and The Houston Chronicle. Dr. Bernstein is the author of three Ayn Rand titles for CliffsNotes: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem. He also authored The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire.
For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrand.org
### ### ###
Andrew Bernstein is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: larryb@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
Please Note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
The Real Meaning of Earth Hour
By Keith Lockitch from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogThe Real Meaning of Earth Hour
By Keith Lockitch
On the evening of Saturday, March 29, cities around the world turned off their lights for one hour to "raise" awareness about global warming. In observation of Earth Hour, iconic landmarks such as the Sears Tower and the Sydney Opera House went dark, while participating individuals turned off residential lights.
The purpose of Earth Hour, according to its organizers, who plan to make it an annual event, is to encourage people to think about how they can reduce their energy consumption. While the event itself--one hour with the lights off--admittedly had little effect on carbon emissions, what matters, say the organizers, is the symbolic meaning of the event. So what is the meaning of Earth Hour?
We hear constantly that the debate is over on climate change--that it is now an indisputable fact that human carbon emissions are causing a planetary emergency. Earth Hour is intended to showcase public concern about global warming and to inspire people to take practical actions to reduce their "carbon footprints."
But it is far from indisputable that we face any sort of planetary crisis. Predictions of catastrophic global warming have long been disputed, and continue to be disputed, by numerous serious scientists skeptical of the global warming "consensus."
Furthermore, what is never mentioned is the fact that reducing greenhouse gases to the degree sought by global warming activists would, itself, cause great harm.
Politicians and environmentalists, including those behind Earth Hour, are not calling on people just to change a few light bulbs, they are calling for a truly massive reduction in carbon emissions--as much as 80 percent below 1990 levels. Because our energy is overwhelmingly carbon-based (in 2005, fossil fuels made up 86 percent of world energy production), this necessarily means a massive reduction in our energy consumption.
People don't have a clear sense of what this would mean in practice. We, in the industrialized world, take our abundant energy for granted and don't consider just how much we benefit from its use in every minute of our every day. We drive our cars to work and school, we sit in our lighted, heated homes and offices, powering our computers and countless other labor-saving appliances, and we count on the indispensable values that industrial energy makes possible: hospitals and grocery stores, factories and farms, international travel and global telecommunications. It is hard for us to project the degree of sacrifice and harm that global-warming policies would force upon us.
This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits. It sends the comforting-but-false message: Cutting off our use of fossil fuels would be easy and even fun! People spent the hour star-gazing and holding torch-lit beach parties; restaurants offered special candle-lit dinners. Earth Hour makes the renunciation of energy seem like a big party.
The participants of Earth Hour spent an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, but all the while they remained safe in the knowledge that the comforts and life-saving benefits of industrial civilization were just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what our lives would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that global-warming activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.
What is really needed is greater awareness of just how indispensable carbon-based energy is to human life. Forget one measly hour with just the lights off. How about Earth Month, without any form of fossil fuel energy? Let those who claim that we need to stop emitting carbon dioxide try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or generators; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible. Those who claim that we must cut off our carbon emissions to prevent an alleged global catastrophe need to learn the indisputable fact that cutting off our carbon emissions would be a global catastrophe.
It is true that the real importance of Earth Hour is its symbolic meaning. But that meaning is the opposite of the one intended. The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights going out. Its call for people to abandon their use of energy and to rejoice at the sight of skyscrapers going dark makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: what Earth Hour represents is the renunciation of industrial civilization.
Don't Drink Absolut
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog 
Question: can a foreign vodka be sold to Americans using an ad that insults America? For this ad is a multiculturalist slap at America. The idea that American land should be returned to Mexico is a fantasy of MEChA, a leftist organization of "Chicanos."
Don't give me the "Hey, lighten up -- it's a joke" line. It might be a joke (though not a terribly funny one), but it is a dishonest joke that uses humor to smuggle in a bad idea. The use of humor is not an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card.
Born Again Redneck urges a boycott of Pernod, the company that owns Absolut. I'm with him, although I don't drink much anyway.
Blacklisted By History
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogHistory is written by the victors, and there can be no doubt that the left has dominated American culture since the Progressive Era. Exhibit A is what we know, or think we know, about Senator Joseph McCarthy. The left created a myth that has become history.
I've ordered Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joseph McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies by M. Stanton Evans, but have not yet read it. The book looks to have an astonishing store of facts that no one else has cared to examine. Evans has been working on this story in one way or another for over half a century.
The revelations in this book review alone are breathtaking:
In short order, 20 million people a day would be watching the Army-McCarthy hearings on live television. In those hearings -- in which no proof was offered that Cohn had threatened investigative action against the Army to get favors for Schine -- McCarthy would suffer a blow from which he would never really recover. It was delivered by the sanctimonious Army special counsel Joseph Welch, who baited McCarthy into blurting out that one of Welch's law firm associates, Fred Fisher, had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, a Communist front.
In a scene that has been played and replayed countless times in the ensuing five-plus decades, Welch delivered an Oscar-worthy performance:"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never fully grasped your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to Harvard Law School and came with my firm and is starting what looks like a brilliant career with us.... Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad... I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you.
"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you left no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
His eyes reportedly filling with tears, Welch wound up:
"Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have been within six feet of me, and could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have brought it out. If there is a God in Heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it with you further."
There was only one problem: Welch himself had "outed" Fisher six weeks earlier. As the New York Times reported in a story about the Army filing formal allegations against Cohn and McCarthy:
"The Army charges were signed by its special counsel, Joseph N. Welch. Mr. Welch today [April 15] confirmed news reports that he had relieved from duty his second assistant, Frederick G. Fisher Jr. of his own Boston law office, because of admitted previous membership in the National Lawyers Guild, which has been listed by Herbert Brownell Jr., the Attorney General, as a Communist front organization."
To this day you will not hear it reported that this big dramatic moment that slew the McCarthy dragon was a calculated, bald-faced lie. The irresponsibility of the establishment media in perpetuating this lie boggles the mind.
It's a story about "group think," about the left's remarkable ability to conform ideologically, to stay obediently within "political correctness" and to shun any independent thought. It reminds us how dangerous is public education (government schooling). Americans spend their youth learning to conform; they are NOT taught to think independently, but instead they are "socialized" by progressive education. This ideological conformity is critical to the left.
It's a story about the left's cynical "the end justifies the means" premise. Words are mere weapons to the communists, to be used as necessary to defeat their enemies. As we have seen from the history of communism in practice, those who can flout the truth can commit any atrocity, no matter how big.
Most important, the Joseph McCarthy story is about how communists manipulated the Democrat Party and the media into spreading outright lies about the man. It's a story of smears and character assassination, something that continues on the left to this day (see Borking). We think of the Democrat Party as especially bad today, but it has long been a party full of radical leftists, communist sympathizers and useful idiots.
I look forward to reading the book.
Economics Lessons From the First Thanksgiving
By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlogCaroline Baum, the Bloomberg financial columnist who has written favorably about Ayn Rand, once wrote an interesting essay about economic incentives and the first Thanksgiving.
Here are some excerpts from Baum's essay. (The material in quotes is from William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony for 30 years between 1621 and 1656):
...The Pilgrims' first winters after they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and established the Plymouth Bay Colony were harsh. The weather and crop yields were poor.I don't know if Ayn Rand was familiar with the Pilgrims' story when she wrote her fictional history of the Twentieth Century Motor Company in Atlas Shrugged. (Of course, her direct personal experience growing up in the USSR undoubtedly provided her with ample evidence of the importance of property rights, without having to study the history of the Pilgrims!)
Half the Pilgrims died or returned to England in the first year. Those who remained went hungry. Despite their deep religious convictions, the Pilgrims took to stealing from one another.
...One of the traditions the Pilgrims had brought with them from England was a practice known as "farming in common." Everything they produced was put into a common pool; the harvest was rationed according to need.
They had thought "that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing," Bradford recounts.
They were wrong. "For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte," Bradford writes. Young, able-bodied men resented working for others without compensation. They thought it an "injuestice" to receive the same allotment of food and clothing as those who didn't pull their weight.
...After the Pilgrims had endured near-starvation for three winters, Bradford decided to experiment when it came time to plant in the spring of 1623. He set aside a plot of land for each family, that "they should set corne every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to themselves."
The results were nothing short of miraculous.
Bradford writes: "This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content."
The women now went willingly into the field, carrying their young children on their backs. Those who previously claimed they were too old or ill to work embraced the idea of private property and enjoyed the fruits of their labor, eventually producing enough to trade their excess corn for furs and other desired commodities.
...With proper incentives in place, the Pilgrims produced and enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623 and set aside "a day of thanksgiving" to thank God for their good fortune.
"Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day," Bradford writes in an entry from 1647, the last year covered by his history.
We now know the Pilgrims' good fortune had nothing to do with luck. In 1623, they were responding to the same incentives that, almost four centuries later, have come to be regarded as necessary for a free, productive and prosperous society.
But the parallels are striking, because the principle is the same. Trying to live by the credo of "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need" leads only to misery and poverty, and turns decent people into criminals. On the other hand, respecting property rights results in happiness and prosperity.
If only more Americans had remembered the economic and moral lessons of 1623, then we might have avoided some of the painful mistakes of the 20th century.
Quick Roundup 319
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogMaps and Maps
So many neat maps, and so little time!
En route to other things this weekend, I ran across a web site that hosts an atlas of presidential election results, which allows you to view the results of any presidential election in the history of the United States simply by selecting it from a drop-down menu.
In the meantime, Myrhaf comments on a tasteless, pandering, map-themed vodka ad in Mexico that I noticed over at The Drudge Report on Friday, but didn't have the time or inclination to discuss.
All I will say about that is that in an "Absolut World", that company's sales would be nowhere near what they are today since the American Southwest would have turned out much poorer under Mexican rule than it did.
And then Amit Ghate posts an interesting map of religious denominations by county for the United States. You will notice that all but two counties in Mississippi are Baptist. Until around the time I was in high school, their influence over state politics was strong enough that it was illegal to advertise alcohol (except, possibly, beer) on television, and we had some pretty ridiculous blue laws.
And yes, when I have more time, there are more maps where that came from!
Good Line for Pundits
I have quite a backlog of interesting reading in the hopper. Among the books is Always in Pursuit, by Stanley Crouch. In a random moment this weekend, I picked it up and looked inside. I enjoyed the opening two sentences from "King of Narcissism", a chapter about Michael Jackson:
It used to be that if one didn't hurry up and say something about an event, the op-ed scow was gone, leaving the slowpoke commentator at the dock. But now, with the oceanic marketing campaigns calculated to continually flop up sales, one can put two cents in and be right on time for months.If you want to be a good writer, it pays to read good writers. Mr. Crouch just moved up in the queue.
But yeah. That's my two pennies you hear being rubbed together as I wait.
Range-of-the-Moment Social Metaphysics
I am probably being redundant on some level....
The hallmark of the criminal mind is a second-handedness so severe as to blind the criminal to other aspects of the world around him, sometimes to an astounding degree. (Instead of "second-handedness", was about to say, "the premise that one can act as a predator in human society", but even that borders on ascribing too much intelligence and power to the criminal.)
A criminal is a parasite. He refuses to trade with others and instead opts for a position of weakness. He needs to take from other people to meet the material requirements for his continued existence -- while he must escape their attention in order to avoid rightful retaliation.
But he also needs to prop himself up in the spiritual realm by extorting pseudo-respect from others at the same time, which can contradict his need to escape detection.
A killer who escaped from a Pennsylvania prison in a trash can was captured in California after boasting of an appearance on Fox's America's Most Wanted, state police said Sunday.He knows he's a stupid chump, so he has to convince himself otherwise by eliciting awe from other people. So he tells the world what a genius at getting out of jail he is. Nice.
Malcolm Kysor, 54, was arrested Saturday in a Bakersfield, Calif., park after someone notified police about the claim, police said.
"Basically, it's a citizen's tip. He was in a park and he started bragging," Trooper Donald Claypoole of the Girard barracks said.
Kysor had been serving a life sentence since 1988 for an early 1980s slaying in Erie County. [bold added]
Kysor's all-out war against reality will continue soon in a prison near you.
-- CAV
Updates
Today: (1) Minor edits. (2) Corrected number of non-Baptist counties in MS.
April 7, 2008
IMMIGRATION POLICY
By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlogIn the news: Report: Anti-immigrant feelings fuel hate groups - USA Today (03/10/08). Read the Intelligence Report by Southern Poverty Law Center.
Yaron Brook on Immigration Policy (1 of 2).
Related: My post, IMMIGRATION REFORM.
Of Ribbons and Wristbands
By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlogOver at Sp!ked is a book review of Ribbon Culture, in which British academic Sarah Moore takes a look at a cultural phenomenon I will doubtless become much more familiar with than I care to in a few months: the sanctimonious practice of wearing colored ribbons and rubber bands to display allegiance to various causes, most of them tainted to some extent by altruism and collectivism.
There is much I disagree with in this book review, much of it arising from the moral premise of altruism, held by author, ribbon-wearer, and reviewer alike. For example, the understandable desire to integrate such adornments into a pleasing overall fashion aesthetic and "commercialism" are saddled with the blame for the fact that ribbon-wearing is, on some levels, basically, a mindless fad.
And how mindless is the fad?
As there are clearly more causes than there are colours, a particular coloured ribbon could denote a number of different things that the wearer could be seen to be raising awareness of. Not that this potential confusion matters all that much: as Moore remarks, a few of her ribbon-wearing interviewees had to be reminded which causes their ribbons represented, while one teenage collector of wristbands proudly described to her "a gold anti-poverty band, a particularly rare wristband that he had given to his girlfriend as a present":I guess after I move to Boston, I can take some solace in the comic relief the question, "What does that ribbon stand for?" can afford me from time to time.
"When I asked him whether he thought it a little contradictory that an anti-poverty wristband should be gold [What? This is the one thing I can think of that a ribbon campaign has gotten right! --ed], he was genuinely surprised at the observation; absorbed in the task of locating rare bands, choosing which to display and which to give as gifts, he hadn’t given consideration to the meaning of the objects he collected." [minor edits, bold added]
But on a more serious note, one sees, without even having to read between the lines, that despite the many tangled errors in the piece, it makes a very good point.
In many respects, Ribbon Culture is an analysis of several apparently contradictory aspects of contemporary culture. The ribbon is, explains Moore, "both a kitsch fashion accessory, as well as an emblem that expresses empathy; it is a symbol that represents awareness, yet requires no knowledge of a cause; it appears to signal concern for others, but in fact prioritises self-expression". [minor edits]Add to this the countercultural origins of this fad, and two trenchant observations by Ayn Rand do much to explain what is really going on here.
First, it is not "commercialization" that is to blame for the superficiality of countercultural fads, but the superficiality of the counterculture itself. Ayn Rand, commenting on the counterculture in 1970, observed that not only it did not actually oppose the altruistic ideas of the culture it purported to rebel against, one of the forms of its false rebellion demonstrated that it was hardly substantive:
Avowed non-materialists whose only manifestation of rebellion and of individualism takes the material form of the clothes they wear, are a pretty ridiculous spectacle. Of any type of nonconformity, this is the easiest to practice, and the safest. ("Apollo and Dionysus" in The Objectivist, Jan. 1970, p.775)The fact that companies are trying to make money from this foolishness isn't new, either. The only thing, incidentally, that corporations can be blamed for here is aiding in their own self-destruction -- by helping leftists express their solidarity as they continue to attack capitalism.
Second, the fact that it is impossible to live a life of self-sacrifice consistently implies that altruism necessitates hypocrisy or death sooner or later. So life and moral rectitude are at loggerheads in altruism, and this sets up a sort of obscene type of "trade", whereby one's profession of support for giving the unearned to others in the material realm is exchanged for an unearned moral status in the spiritual realm. What these ribbons give their wearers is prestige:
The desire for the unearned has two aspects: the unearned in matter and the unearned in spirit. (By "spirit" I mean: man's consciousness.) These two aspects are necessarily interrelated, but a man's desire may be focused predominantly on one or the other. The desire for the unearned in spirit is the more destructive of the two and the more corrupt. It is a desire for unearned greatness; it is expressed (but not defined) by the foggy murk of the term "prestige." …What could be more unearned than moral credit obtained for doing little and thinking less about something?
Unearned greatness is so unreal, so neurotic a concept that the wretch who seeks it cannot identify it even to himself: to identify it, is to make it impossible. He needs the irrational, undefinable slogans of altruism and collectivism to give a semiplausible form to his nameless urge and anchor it to reality -- to support his own self-deception more than to deceive his victims. ("The Monument Builders," The Virtue of Selfishness, 88.)
In an important sense, it makes no difference what ribbon someone chooses to wear when the culture is saturated enough with altruism that wearing a ribbon is commonly regarded as a sign of good moral character. The message to anyone who might beg to differ with the idea that he exists to serve others, is this: "You will have to fight everyone. Give up or be alone."
Slamming the ribbon-wearers for not immolating themselves enough is just icing on the cake for the more committed altruists who set the terms of the public debate for the less independent-minded.
-- CAV
Grand Hotel
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogJames Wolcott, a leftist with a stinging style, makes some acute observations about the movie Grand Hotel:
Watching Grand Hotel on TCM, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that the world was never more beautiful than it was in classic Hollywood black and white. Certainly women never were. Black and white gave their eyes and skin a glisten, their hair a backlit aurora, that now seems to belong to some now-gone mechanical age of the gods. Grand Hotel seems all ink and ivory, with little intermittent gray. The image of Garbo's ballerina, crumpled on the floor, her tutu a luminous tissue paper white, intercut with John Barrymore's profile as he tenderly spies on her, his presence shielded in shadow--it makes you wish the movie could dispense with the Old World weariness of the dialogue and just keep on contemplating itself. (Dinner at Eight, so much more fun.) In Joan Crawford's scenes with Wallace Beery, you can see each eyebrow, mouth corner, pupil, and shapely ankle individually doing its dramatic bit to create a composite portrait of a secretary to a tycoon type leveraging her assets while maintaining a cool deposit of pride and reserve.
I have long thought the first hour of Grand Hotel is the pinnacle of romantic movie acting. Garbo and Barrymore are more than human; they are gods. They are so beautiful and noble that the soul soars when watching them. If the world can produce such people, then anything is possible.
All this glamour and heroism is disastrously contradicted and undermined by Grand Hotel's theme: money is the root of all evil. (The movie is a product of Hollywood's "red decade," the 1930's.) The plot deteriorates into sordid naturalism in the last half of the movie, with Wallace Beery's character -- a communist's caricature of a capitalist -- brutally beating someone to death with a telephone.
As always with evil, the theme of the movie is a parasite on that which it condemns. Hollywood built the best sets money could buy, hired the best actors money could buy and filmed a story about glamorous rich people, all to get an audience and make a profit -- and then the Hollywood Reds told that audience that money and capitalism were bad. The hypocrisy of the commies would be laughable if communism in practice were not an unspeakable enormity.
Let us be grateful to the Reds for providing a place for the gods to dance before us. Nothing else matters. The anti-capitalist theme seems dated today -- perhaps a indication that the West is already better due to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Watch Grand Hotel for those gloriously romantic scenes with Barrymore and Garbo, despite the malevolence and tragedy of the plot and theme. (And enjoy a hot young Joan Crawford before she became that creature with the eyebrows in her later career.)
The old saying, "They don't make 'em like that anymore," is true about '30s movies. The growth of naturalism in our culture has destroyed Hollywood's ability to make a movie like Grand Hotel. Today's filmmakers would not know where to begin. We watch such a movie and marvel, as travelers in the Dark Ages looking at Roman ruins must have done. "How did they do it," those wanderers in the Dark Ages must have asked. "How did they achieve such greatness?"
Battle of the Sexes
By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlogIs there anything as silly as hating the opposite sex? You know, men who think all women are lying whores or women who think all men are lying womanizers. Surely you've heard people of both sexes make similar claims about the other sex.
It's an unthinking form of collectivism to make such a sweeping generalization -- and one easily refuted by thinking up examples of honest men or women. But still, there are sad souls who go through life burdened by the premise that the other sex is the enemy. It's a cynical idea that can only lead to unhappiness and failure.
The idea comes when people get hurt by a lover -- and who has not felt the pangs of unrequited love, or worse, betrayal? The pain can be devastating. I've known men who are otherwise rational and sane sent temporarily out of their mind by a cheating wife. We're talking about intense passion here, the stuff of drama.
In this time of great suffering people often make the big mistake: they generalize from their loved one to the entire sex. They don't think, "X lied to me," they think, "All women are lying bitches like X." It does not occur to them that a sample of one is hardly enough to leap to conclusions about all men or women.
The phenomenon is complicated by feminism. Consistent feminists hold men as the enemy. Feminism, like many New Leftist ideologies, is a form of egalitarianism. Throughout history men have had power and privilege; women have been stuck with child raising and fixing dinner. It's not fair and the greater freedom women have been afforded by the end of feudalism and the rise of capitalism is all to the good.
You can see feminist assumptions in movies, TV and literature, though not often explicitly. The implicit message of feminist stories is that men are bad. Men are the enemy. Men are a necessary evil with which women must cope. There is no "masculinist" school of art that stereotypes women as the enemy; such stories would be unegalitarian, therefore they are unthinkable by the New Left.
I've been surprised to observe that women who support Hillary Clinton make a wholly feminist argument. They don't talk about the policy differences between Clinton and Obama -- it would take a subtle mind to find them. The women I have talked to have focused exclusively on the "sexual politics" aspect. They talk about how "the old boy network" decided Obama was their man. One Democrat woman complained to me about Obama's condescending body language around women.
"Women Push Back in Support of Clinton" shows the typical thinking of Clinton's female supporters:
Debra Starks has heard the calls for Hillary Rodham Clinton to quit the presidential race, and she's not happy about it.
The 53-year old Wal-Mart clerk, so bedecked with Clinton campaign buttons most days that friends call her "Button Lady," thinks sexism is playing a role in efforts to push the New York senator from the race. Starks wants Clinton to push back.
...
"Women have always been asked to step aside if it was somehow for the greater good. In this case, Clinton, and a lot of her female supporters, clearly feel that she would make the better president and that it would not be for the greater good for her to step aside," Wilson said.
It's hard for feminists to get beyond sex. One might want Clinton to step down because of her high negatives or her "baggage" of scandals past. Clinton's strange memory, which shows her to be either a liar or out of touch with reality, is reason enough not to support her. I won't even mention Clinton's statism, as Democrats would admire that. With Democrat women, the only thing that matters is that Clinton is a woman and her opponent is a man. (Is it any wonder that liberals often seem unintelligent to us non-liberals? Their ideological premises that reduce everything to biological collectivism make liberals stupid.)
Republicans should not enjoy the spectacle of the Democrat Party being torn apart by multicultural tribalism, not when biological collectivism is held as an ideal and indoctrinated to our children in government schools. Tribalism threatens to tear apart Western Civilization. The Obama-Clinton clash between race and sex is a canary in the coal mine.
Individualism is the antidote to all forms of collectivism. Every individual man and woman chooses his character. No one's character is determined by his sexual identity. Those who get burned in the pursuit of love must make the extra effort to think rationally and well. Hasty generalizations about men and women infect a mind with crude collectivism.
Bloggers Tackle History
By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlogAs a teacher, I can say with confidence that the best way to make sure you understand something is to write about it. The process of collecting, ordering, and transmitting your thoughts in written form requires a greater rigor that speaking. There’s a dimension of finality to what you write that forces you to think it through just that much more. So I’m especially glad to see that some of my students out there are doing their best to tackle the material we’ve covered in The Islamist Entanglement by writing about it.
One of the assignments that I’ve challenged them with has been the production of a distilled narrative integration. That’s fancy talk for the shortest possible paragraph that captures the essential storyline. So far they’ve done a fantastic job. I have a number of students who already have genuine command of the basic history of the Middle East after just four lectures, and we’ve got six more lectures to go!
Others have also chosen to summarize each of the lectures for themselves as they proceed, or to pick up on particular themes. Here’s a “roundup” of interesting writing by my students around the blogosphere.
Titanic Deck Chairs
New blogger C. August has been especially busy with some good insights. His post EU Asserts Democracy at Turkey’s Peril looks at the fascinating conflict of Secularism vs. Islamism in Turkish culture. He also has a nice analysis of how altruism has undercut American foreign policy in his piece on A Brief History of President Doctrines. I agree with August’s evaluation of the Monroe Doctrine wholeheartedly. It is the single best foreign policy doctrine ever proposed. And the so-called “Roosevelt Corollary” is the most pernicious corruption of a crucial value to America I can think of, matched only by Roosevelt’s virulent attacks on capitalism through his “trust-busting” initiatives.
Armchair Intellectual
Gideon Reich writes about the current situation in Afghanistan in his post We Continue to Refuse to Win. Reich is right that the Afghanistan situation cannot be isolated from the situation in its neighbors, Iran and Pakistan. This isn’t new, of course. You here about the connections in the media all the time, but America’s leaders do continue to evade that the situation in the Middle East requires an integrated perspective–and, that the purpose of fighting a war is to win. (I’ll be looking at the history of Afghanistan in lecture 5 of The Islamist Entanglement — available in full as a separate product for only $20.)
I also like how Gideon highlights McCain’s recent speech for its historical content in Bush, McCain, and Why Republicans Are Not Worth Voting For. It is indeed a myth that Republicans stand for self-interest and uniltareralism, and it makes complete sense for McCain to identify with the Truman Doctrine.
Powell History Around the World!
Martin Lindeskog of Sweden at egoist.blogspot.com has been enjoying the course so far. He has a post about lecture 1 on his site. (Warning, Martin–a true capitalist–has a lot of externally linked ads on his blog–it can take a while to load. I recommend his sign-up box so that you can get his posts via e-mail.)
Over in New Zealand, Peter Creswell runs “Not PC,” which takes aim at political correctness in that quarter of the globe. Peter has a some nice things to say about Powell History in his post Economics and History By Essentials. Peter’s blog has a neat mix of materials from philosophy to visual art and architecture. I especially enjoy seeing his posts on Frank Lloyd Wright. Check it out!
The Originality of Atlas Shrugged
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA 92606
March 27, 2008
The Originality of Atlas Shrugged
What: A talk analyzing the theme and content of Atlas Shrugged. A Q&A will follow.
Who: Tore Boeckmann, speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute
Where: Tufts University, Barnum Hall, Room 104, Medford, MA
When: Monday, March 31, 2008, at 8 pm
Admission is FREE.
Description: Ayn Rand said that "creating a new, original abstraction and translating it through new, original means" is "my kind of fiction writing." Tore Boeckmann tests the originality of Atlas Shrugged in regard to both abstract theme and concrete means by comparing the character of Francisco and the event of the tunnel disaster with similar concretes from Friedrich Schiller's plays (Fiesco and Mary Stuart). The comparison highlights non-obvious ways in which Atlas Shrugged concretizes its theme.
Bio: Tore Boeckmann's mystery short stories have been published and anthologized in several languages. He edited Ayn Rand's The Art of Fiction, and has lectured at Objectivist conferences in America and Europe. Recent publications include "The Fountainhead as a Romantic Novel" and "What Might Be and Ought to Be: Aristotle's Poetics and The Fountainhead" in Essays on Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," edited by Robert Mayhew.
For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org
### ### ###
Tore Boeckmann is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: larryb@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at www.aynrand.org. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
Religion vs. Morality
By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlogPRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA 92606
March 27, 2008
Religion vs. Morality
Who: Dr. Andrew Bernstein, professor of philosophy and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A talk arguing for a secular, rational basis for morality. A Q&A will follow.
Where: University of Michigan, Angell Hall, Auditorium C, Ann Arbor, MI
When: Thursday, April 3, 2008, at 8 pm
Description: Conventionally, most people believe that morality can only be based in religious faith that in a world without God no principles of right and wrong could exist. Related to this, philosophers have long held that no objective, fact-based, rational code of values is possible.
Regarding both points, this talk shows that the exact opposite is true. The purpose of morality is to guide human life on earth and religion is utterly incapable of it. Flourishing life requires a code of secularism, rationality, egoism and freedom. Religious faith clashes with every principle of a proper moral code, and, as such, has led, and can only lead to, hell on earth.
Bio: Dr. Bernstein is a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Marist College; he also teaches at SUNY Purchase. Dr. Bernstein lectures regularly at American universities and appears frequently on radio talk shows. His op-eds have been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Daily News, and The Houston Chronicle. Dr. Bernstein is the author of three Ayn Rand titles for CliffsNotes: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem. He also authored The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire.
For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrand.org
### ### ###
Andrew Bernstein is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: larryb@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213
Please Note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.