Highlights from OCON: Day 1

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm attending the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON this week. So in lieu of regular blogging, I thought I'd try to post a few brief highlights each day.

Lin Zinser on "Health-Care Activism: Saving the Life Savers," Class 1 of 3:

• An excellent first class. Inspiring review of the accomplishments of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM). Fascinating discussion of the rise, fall, and rise of state laws licensing doctors to practice medicine.
  
  
• Kind of Activism: Intellectual activism means changing the ideas of honest, intellectually active people. Political activism means directing your legislators on how to vote. Political activism is not primary: the real change must be in the culture.

Yaron Brook on "Cultural Movements: Creating Change," Lecture 1 of 3:

• A fascinating overview of the successes and failures of the economic defense of free markets from the 1960s to the 1990s and the environmental movement from the 1970s to today. (I'm eager to hear the rest of these lectures! They'll definitely be worth buying.)

... drumroll please ...

Yaron Brook on "State of ARI":

These are just a few highlights:

• ARI has shipped 1.1 million books as part of the "Free Books for Teachers" program. So if the books have a lifespan of four to five years, then four to five million students are reading Ayn Rand's novels in their English classes. By the end of the decade, over seven million kids will have read Ayn Rand.
  
  
• BB&T has funded 38 programs in the southeast US for the study of capitalism and philosophy.
  
  
• DC Office will be opened with four staff members just five blocks from the White House in August.
  
  
• Yowza! An anonymous donor donated one million and one dollars just this afternoon. That's ARI's largest single donation ever -- by a dollar. So ARI's projected revenues for 2008 will be nine million dollars.

That's all for now!

Highlights from OCON: Day 1 Addendum

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In my first report on OCON yesterday, I forgot to mention that OCON is huge again: over 400 people are attending. The sheer number of people I don't know is rather overwhelming.

By way of context, last year, over 500 people attended for the 50th anniversary of celebration of Atlas Shrugged in Telluride. Before than, around 300 was average. So it seems that the conference has experienced more than just a transient increase in size over the past two years.

Highlights from OCON: Day 2

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here are some more highlights from the second day of the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON).

Lin Zinser on "Health-Care Activism: Saving the Life Savers," Class 2 of 3:

Today, Lin discussed some strategies for successful activism, connecting those lessons to her own experience with FIRM. (Some of her stories would be very surprising to most people -- in a good way.)

Robert Mayhew on "Thales and the Birth of Philosophy in Ancient Greece":

This lecture was a fascinating discussion of the birth of philosophy, particularly the radical departure from primitive supernaturalism that began with Thales in ancient Greece. Thales inaugurated the study of philosophy as an explicit discipline on the basis of observation and rational argument -- as opposed to relying on traditional myths to explain natural phenomena. Mayhew clearly showed the radical differences between the methods of Thales and those of thinkers in other cultures at the time. Mayhew also traced the unique factors in ancient Greek culture that made possible (but not necessary) the development of explicit philosophy.

I particularly enjoyed the lessons for the prospects for Objectivism at the end of the lecture.

(The lecture was related to Dr. Mayhew's essay criticizing Robert Tracinski's analysis of the role of philosophy in history, posted to NoodleFood in January 2007.)

Pat Corvini: "Two, Three, Four, and All That: The Sequel," Class 1 of 3:

This course examines three modern ideas in mathematics: (1) equivalent sets, (2) the postulational method, and (3) the continuum and actual infinities. Today, Pat explained the basics of Cantor's arguments about comparisons of sets, with a few hints of the criticisms to come. (I remembered that somewhat fuzzily from my undergraduate course in philosophy of mathematics.) Tomorrow and the next day, she'll lay out the standard the postulational method, and then discuss the Objectivist approach to these topics. (Very cool!)

This course is a sequel to her excellent course of last year: Two, Three, Four, and All That.

That's all for today!

Yellow Science

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

James Kerian has penned a must-read article in the Wall Street Journal that draws an analogy between Yellow Journalism and the deterioration of science that is happening now, and being greatly accelerated by government funding:

The first, and most obvious, temptation for this sort of willful blindness is financial. Hearst made only a fraction of his estimated $140 million in net worth from yellow journalism. Global warming, on the other hand, has provided an estimated $50 billion in research grants to those willing to practice yellow science. Influence in the public sphere is another strong temptation. It might not be as impressive as starting the Spanish-American War, but global-warming alarmists have amassed a large group of journalists and politicians ready to silence any critics and endorse whatever boondoggle scheme is prescribed as the cure to our impending climate catastrophe.

Finally, one should not underestimate the temptation of convenience. Just as it is far easier to publish stories without verifying the sources; so is it much more convenient to practice yellow science than the real thing. It takes far more courage, perseverance, and perspiration to develop formulas, make predictions, and risk being proved wrong than to look at historical data and muse about observed similarities. Yellow scientists have fled the risks of science that Albert Einstein described when he said, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right, a single experiment can prove me wrong." [bold added]

This is a thought-provoking article, and it brings up many issues worth spending some time thinking about. The most prominent one in my mind is the role of government funding of science in its decline. Aside from violating the rights of those whose money was taken from them, such government funding obviously increases the lure of free money in terms of the amount obtainable and how many people can get their hands on it. Having said that, it is wrong to blame the deterioration of science entirely on government interference, or to assume that the buck stops at politics.

The temptation to wield power (which Kerian cites as a contributing factor to the decline of science), for example, would not even exist for the vast majority of scientists in America, were government already confined to its proper role of protecting individual rights. The matter of convenience, though, gets us closer to the heart of the matter. That would always be an issue to some degree.

There have been "scientists" with pet theories throughout the history of science, and there always will be. But what ultimately stops them are three things: (1) the facts of reality that contradict their theory, (2) the freedom of men to investigate those facts, and (3) the willingness of some scientists to do so.

Government that does not respect individual rights reduces the second and third of these. How long will a real scientist last if he can't get funding because an entrenched majority of his "peers" is in charge of reviewing his grant applications (which most often go to a government agency that taps his peers for review)? How long will he care to fight against a majority who are wrong (if that) and indifferent or hostile to the truth? How demoralizing would it be to see nitpicking studies based on junk science funded all the time while his own elegant experiment that might challenge the prevailing "consensus" remains financially out of reach?

Government funding and other interference in science is a great evil, and goes a long way towards explaining the hastening eating-away of science, but the reason government is doing what it does is ultimately because the public -- which largely thinks that the individual exists to serve others and implements this destructive notion through redistributionist programs -- insists on it.

It will only be when the public demands the protection of individual rights -- rather than handouts -- from the government, that this ironic danger to the scientific progress it imagines a government can grant it will end.

-- CAV

Blood Feud

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Democrats struggle to unite behind their candidate.

After a long primary campaign, Barack Obama is now the Democratic nominee for president. The dream of America advancing to the point where it could elect the first woman president must be deferred and no one can say for how long. Women who feel they have waited a lifetime for a chance to vote for a woman for President now must wait even longer. In addition to this disappointment, there is real anger about how the campaign was conducted and covered in the media.

All this acrimony over what? Obama is a black man and Clinton is a woman. This is all that has driven the division among Democrats. Ideologically, Obama and Clinton are Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.

Will Obama being a black man or Clinton being a woman make either one a better President? No, it has nothing to do their philosophy, their policies, their experience. Democrats have made the symbolism of nominating "the first black man" or "the first woman" more important than which candidate would actually be a better President.

I have to think that if FDR or JFK were brought back to life, they would not recognize this campaign as the Democrat Party. Hubert Humphrey saw the beginnings of the New Left in the streets of Chicago in 1968. Now those rioters are the party elders. What a decline in 40 years!

This is how the premise of multiculturalism distorts priorities in America. Instead of making America a color blind culture that focuses on character and ideas, it makes us an intensely racist and feminist culture. People are considered first by their race and sex, then by their character.

Note that the conflict between Obama and Clinton was heated and emotional, but there was very little rational argumentation of ideas be both sides. All Clinton had was mud to throw, and she threw a dump truck full. At one point she even called herself the candidate for white people, a statement that would have ended any Republican's career. Obama threw some mud back, but being in the lead he was able to take the high road and play Messiah to the masses.

How much can reason do in multiculturalist conflict? When people take sides because of biology instead of ideas, there's no point in arguing. Only force can decide such a dispute. Allegiance to blood leads to blood on the streets. The conflict between Obama and Clinton was not violent -- it descended only to the level of smears and demagoguery -- but it portends a bleak future. Multiculturalism can only lead to violence and hatred as various ethnic pressure groups fight for their turf in the welfare state.

A Moral Example of Salami Slicing

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Remember that technique which showed up in the plots of movies like Superman III, Hackers, and Office Space, where someone would change bank software to take fractions of cents from transactions like interest payments and funnel them all into one account? Nobody misses a fraction of a cent -- but given enough transactions over time, the sum can really add up! That's what they call "Salami Slicing."

Of course it is stealing in cases like that, but the same idea of accumulating vast numbers of tiny values that are hardly noticeable could legitimately pay off, too.

Consider this fact about driving your vehicle: left turns often require waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, taking a little more time and gas on average than right turns do. Now, this doesn't make all that much of a difference to most of us (just like the above fraction of a cent we may or may not get in interest from the bank) -- but if you have a fleet of 90,000 big brown trucks that follow the routes you schedule for them each day to deliver packages, then adjusting your software to minimize left turns could really add up!

Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas...

That's some serious scratch, especially with the price of gas today! I love it -- kudos to the brain at UPS who saw and brilliantly exploited this little fact.

[HT: Jason]

Put the "Independence" Back in Independence Day

By Michael Berliner from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Put the "Independence" Back in Independence Day

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit.

To see a video version of this op-ed click this: INDEPENDENCE 

By Michael S. Berliner

America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues in celebration of the Fourth of July, the 232nd birthday of America. But one hopes that the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country.

What we hear is that independence is outdated, that we've reached a new age of "interdependence." Our presidential candidates call for more and more sacrifice--sacrifice to the needy, sacrifice to the nation, sacrifice to the world community, sacrifice to the environment. But this message of sacrifice is the direct opposite of what America stands for, of why America became a beacon of hope for the oppressed throughout the world. They have come here to escape poverty and dictatorship; they have come here to live their own lives, where they can exist by right and not by permission of the government, the community or any collective.

"Independence Day" is a critically important name for a holiday. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia and Washington at Valley Forge pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." For what? Not for mere separation from England, not--like most rebels throughout history--for the "freedom" to set up their own tyranny. In fact, Britain's tyranny over the colonists was mild compared to what most current governments do to their citizens.

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What are these rights?

The right to life means that every individual has a right to his own independent life, that your life and property belong to you, not to others to use as they see fit.

The right to liberty means the right to freedom of action, to act on your own judgment, the right not to have a gun pointed at your head, forcing you to obey another’s commands. And the right to the pursuit of happiness means that an individual may properly pursue his own happiness, e.g., his own career, his own friends, and his own hobbies. It means that he does not exist as a mere tool to serve the goals of others. The Founding Fathers did not proclaim a right to the attainment of happiness, knowing that such a policy would carry with it the obligation of others to make one happy and result in the enslavement of all to all. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration against servitude, not just servitude to the Crown but servitude to anyone. (That some signers of the Declaration still owned slaves does not negate the fact that they established the philosophy that doomed slavery.)

Political independence is not a primary. It rests on a more fundamental type of independence: the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisaged by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and the freedom to act on one's thinking. If human beings were unable to reason, to think for themselves, there would be no autonomy or independence for a government to protect.

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is "the only oracle of man," and Thomas Jefferson advised us to "fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God." That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to your neighbors, the church, the race, the state, or the nation.

Independence is the foundation of America. Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day. That is the legacy our Founding Fathers left us. It is a legacy we should keep, not because it is a tradition, but because it is right and just.

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From Flat World To Free World

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

From Flat World To Free World
By Yaron Brook (Forbes.com, June 16, 2008)

Considering the many jubilant boasts by "flat world" devotees in recent years, you might have been tempted to regard economic globalization as a juggernaut, powered by inexorable forces of technology and history.

continue reading >>

Collegiate Wristbands

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

Fairly recently, I commented upon the vacuous practice of seeking moral prestige by the wearing of colored rubber bands around one's wrists. Summing up the mindless second-handedness of the fad and its resulting aspect of intimidation, I said:

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."

In higher education, the institutional equivalent of the wristband is the campus pledge, and it illustrates my point perfectly.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, animal rights activists are slowly getting small colleges that do not participate in animal research that might cause "severe" pain to laboratory animals to sign non-binding pledges ... not to do animal research that causes "severe" pain.

Amherst College, Fairfield University, Francis Marion University, and 10 other institutions, none of which are known for conducting animal experiments, recently signed a pledge not to subject any research animals to "severe" unrelieved pain or distress. The pledge was written by the Humane Society of the United States, which has sent it to a total of 301 presidents at similar institutions.

...

"I said to myself, How could I not sign this and have a conscience?" says John M. Carfora, director of the office of sponsored research at Amherst. He said he hoped his signature might influence researchers elsewhere to reflect anew on the necessity of unrelieved pain in their laboratory animals.

...

Officials of Francis Marion University, a public institution in South Carolina, view the pledge as "a humane gesture" that is "reasonable and symbolic," says Elizabeth I. Cooper, vice president for public and community affairs. Faculty members there have done some surgery on anesthetized animals, she adds.

However, she says, the pledge, which offers some examples of procedures likely to cause severe pain, is not "a legal document" that would prevent the university from one day expanding the scope of its research. [bold added]

This is curious. How can a non-binding pledge not to do something you're already not doing have any moral import? This seems about as upstanding and heroic as -- oh, I don't know -- wearing a rubber band around one's wrist.

But remember: The second-hander is a pack animal, and lives for the approval of others, and every pack is led by its more dominant members. Functionaries of college bureaucracies are no exception. Recall what I said about fighting alone? Conformity is the name of the game here, and past acts of domestic terrorism by animal "rights" activists provide an unspoken, threatening subtext to the friendly-seeming invitations to conform:

Signing the pledge was easy, said officials on some of those campuses, because no such research went on there. And that is just what the advocacy group is counting on: a wave of no-fuss pledge signings that will put pressure on larger universities, which do conduct extensive animal research, to follow suit.

...

The document attempts to strike a collegial approach -- for example, the society offers to discuss with signatory institutions any instances of noncompliance it learns about and not to publicize them. (!) That's a different approach from the picketing and vandalism that more-extreme activist groups have carried on at the University of California at Los Angeles and other campuses in a bid to end all animal testing. [bold added]

A "different" approach, eh? Oh, yeah. I forgot about fear of slander and legal harassment.... When you have those, who needs a bunch of stupid kids waving signs around or breaking things?

When you don't have a persuasive argument, you can either accept the fact that others will not agree with you and move on -- or you can try to force them to act the way you want. The animal "rights" movement proved long ago that it has chosen the second tack, and this is more of the same.

In answer to John "How could I not sign this and have a conscience?" Carfora of Amherst, I would say that having a conscience is a matter of honesty and independent judgement, not public perception, and that following one in the face of irrational opposition is not always easy or pleasant. Unless, that is, one realizes the importance of what is at stake: Namely, the freedom of the academy to follow observation and logic wherever it may lead. But when you don't have a conscience, selling out that which it is your job to foster is, as the article says, "easy".

Mr. Carfora is so proud of his little pledge, and yet, if he really knows what it means, he isn't letting on. And that is exactly what the Humane Society wants.

-- CAV

To Abstain Or Not To Abstain

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Scott Powell considers voting neither for Obama nor McCain this November:

Like so many people, I have thought over the coming election and studied the field of candidates. As a result of my analysis of the coming vote and especially of its historical significance, I have tentatively switched to the “None of the Above” camp.

Judging from the comments to Powell's post, abstention might be a popular choice among Objectivists this year. Obama is the farthest left candidate in American history. McCain is a "national greatness" conservative who consistently sneers at the pursuit of profit and believes the state's role is to direct the people in sacrificing for something greater than themselves. Hitler and Stalin would have approved of McCain.

(John Stossel looks at McCain's latest ignorant statement:

"I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil. There's a lot of things out there that need a lot more transparency and, consequently, oversight.")

For many who have been voting for the lesser of two evils all their life, this choice is just too much evil to suffer.

The way to abstain, for those who decide that way, is to take the time to go vote, but don't vote for President. Then one's non-vote shows up in the numbers. If this caught on, it could make a powerful statement. Imagine news reports that began, "Two million voters were so dissatisfied with the candidates that they did not vote for any of them." (Well, you wouldn't read this in the New York Times because it makes the Democrat look bad.)

It's too early to decide how to vote yet. We still have the conventions and the VP picks. The campaigns don't really get serious until Labor Day.

At this point I have reservations about abstention. It reeks of agnosticism. In metaphysics the agnostics refuse to take a side on the existence of God. Despite the lack of evidence for the existence of any supernatural being, which makes the idea arbitrary, the agnostic can't make up his mind either way. Like the political moderate, the agnostic thinks the superior choice is to take no choice and look down on those who do as unenlightened fools determined by their passions. Agnosticism is fundamentally subjectivism, which makes it very modern indeed.

Beneath all the condescension and logical fallacies of the agnostic lies cowardice. The agnostic is afraid to take a stand.

If one of the candidates will be worse for America, should one not vote for the other guy, however bad he is? My thinking is that McCain will be worse because he will be more effective in power. The Republicans in Congress would go along with whatever he wants, whereas they would make Obama's life hell every step of the way, just as they did to Clinton. The Democrats in Congress would only fight McCain on foreign policy.

What if, because I wanted to feel good about myself by not stooping to vote for either candidate, McCain was elected and then he instituted a national service program in which every young person was forced to serve the state for two years of his life? How would I feel then about not soiling myself with a vote against this monstrous Republican?

By this reasoning, I should wear a gas mask and vote for... Obama.

Ugh. Have you read about this guy? He is the purest demagogue to be nominated by a major party in my lifetime. He seems to bask in the adoration of mass crowds like an American Mussolini. Watching him turns my stomach. How can I vote for someone with a radical Marxist background who at the same time seems to have no principles but like Peter Keating will say what people want to hear? The more I think about Obama, the more attractive abstention looks.

My thinking at present is full of confusion. The fact that this decision is agonizing to individualists and lovers of freedom says something about the decline of America. We're worse off than we were 20 years ago. A lot worse off.

Given my confusion, it's probably best that I have not yet made up my mind. But the time to decide will come soon enough.

UPDATE: Literatrix agrees with Scott Powell.

Don’t Talk to the Police

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here is a fascinating 30-minute lecture by Regent University law professor James Duane about the 5th amendment. He is speaking to law students, explaining why he uniformly advises his clients (and everyone) that they should they never, ever, under any circumstances, talk with the police -- guilty or innocent, a suspect or not, even if they are smarter than Aristotle and Newton combined, articulate as all get out, an expert in the law, and pure as the wind-driven snow. Never.



He explains how talking to the police can't ever help, and will in all likelihood hurt even innocents. This last is the part that really stood out: even the most innocuous statements by the most innocent of people could put them in jeopardy -- it depends on context they don't control. An officer misremembering an answer could bring a conviction; so could misremembering the question. Taping interviews is no guarantee, either: even some fuzziness in the contextual information that floated by before the interview could be disasterous!

His examples are striking. "I don't know who killed Joe. Of course I didn't shoot him: I don't even own a gun -- heck, I haven't ever touched a gun in my life!" Suppose that's all perfectly true. What could possibly be incriminating about sharing that? Well, just consider an officer on the stand responding with "I never mentioned anything about a gun." Toast.

But wait, there's more! It isn't just you or officers who might make a mistake that hangs you, but anybody with whom the police might come in contact. (See the video. Oh, and here is the second half with the other fellow.)

Quite an argument for improved epistemological hygiene in our legal system -- and for very careful engagement with it. While exercising 5th amendment rights is widely associated with guilt, Duane explains that it wasn't designed for that -- it is for protecting innocent people in epistemologically perilous circumstances.

[HT: Jason]

The Foreign Policy Implications of Stupid Money Policy

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

Short post. I just wanted to raise one issue, the incredible magnitude of destructive potential of stupid money policy, this time in relation to foreign policy.

Inflationary policy in the US helps anyone who holds large baskets of commodities. It's why your house is normally considered an inflation hedge. So the owners of the world's largest inflation hedges are countries owning oil reserves. As I mentioned in my previous post, those owners in many cases are not friendly to the US, and/or are blatant dictatorships.

So I did a little back of the envelope calculation. Take the several oil producing nations who have ill or mixed intentions to the US (Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq). Now since inflationary effects take time to trickle through an economy, those people who sell the base commodities that drive the economic cost structure get to spend inflated dollars before prices have all inflated to match, essentially getting free money.

So I took the oil production capacity of these unfriendly countries, assumed that the delta from $70 to $130 /bbl oil is due to inflation, and assumed that time delay in price increases would give them essentiall one year's worth of free money. The result: we just gave our enemies something in the range of $400-600 BILLION in free money. That's roughly equivalent to the total esimated direct cost of the Iraq War.

Stunning... and monstrously self-defeating.

Michael Berliner on Independence Day

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Independence Day is my favorite American holiday for reasons that Michael Berliner makes crystalline clear in this new ARI video.

The vicious lie behind the global warming scare

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

The environmentalist movement believes that unless immediate and drastic measures are taken to combat global warming, “disease, desolation and famine” are “inevitable” on a scale that might spell the end of life on earth, making earth “as hot as Venus.“  Surely, such an apocalyptic threat demands immediate action.  Given the resistance to curtailing industrial production (not to mention the economic destruction and mass death that such a curtailment would entail), environmentalists should eagerly supports experiments that attempt to compensate rather than eliminate the impact of industry on the environment.

In fact, a number of relatively simple, low-cost measures have been proposed by scientists and entrepreneurs, one of which is documented in the June 2008 issue of Popular Science (PDF). As early as 1988, oceanographers proposed seeding the oceans with iron, which would cause an algae bloom that could rapidly compensate for the entire effect of industrial civilization for far less money that it would cost to eliminate CO2 emissions.  Seeding experiments by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have demonstrated that the technique works, although further experimentation is required. A number of entrepreneurs, such as Russ George of Planktos Corp (TED video) stepped forward to carry out the required work.

How would you expect environmental groups to react to such an opportunity?  If you guessed outright or even cautious optimism, you would be dead wrong.  “I don’t think any quick geo-engineering fixes are going to work,” said one Greenpeace scientist.  “There are only two ways that we’re going to solve climate change: reduce the amount of energy that we use and dramatically change the methods we use to generate it.”  According to Scientific American, environmental groups were essentially united in the belief that “if society relies on quick techno-fixes to ameliorate global warming … people will stop putting in the hard work necessary to cut carbon emissions.”

Think about what that statement means.  “Hard work” means government coercion to destroy the industrial production that feeds (sometimes barely) a rapidly growing human population.  “Quick engineering fix” means a fast, cheap, technological solution that allows us to have our cake (the wealthy, healthy life that industry makes possible) and eat it too (literally, algae eating CO2).  Notice that their objection is not that iron seeding won’t work, but that it eliminates the incentive to destroy industrial civilization.

As the article make clear, environmentalists are violently opposed to even exploring any measure that attempts to neutralize the “threat” of global warming rather than deal with the cause.  Lies and intimidation are integral to the movement: the terrorist group Sea Shepherd, which has sunk nine ships since 1979, threatened any future seeding experiments, their PR machine used fear of nanotechnology to claim that iron ore (plain rust) is “engineered nanoparticles,” while their political branch got the Spanish government to ban seeding on the grounds that it constitutes “toxic waste” dumping.

As should be clear by now, environmentalism is not actually opposed to global warming - ending the “threat” posed by global warming is the last thing on their agenda.  Their real goal is to use the global warming scare to bully the developed world into reverting into the pre-industrial, pre-civilized age. They oppose viable alternative energy sources for the same reason that they oppose viable fixes to the crises they invent – they oppose nuclear energy, hydro power, and they are organizing to oppose wind power just as it has become viable. If solar panels ever become viable, they will certainly invent reasons to oppose them too.

(Note that I am not actually advocating iron ore seeding.  I am not convinced that the climate is warming as rapidly as claimed, or that CO2 is the cause, and even it is, it is likely that higher CO2 levels and a warmer climate offer tremendous benefits to both plant and animal life.  If anything, we should be encouraging measures that make our world greener and more comfortable.)

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More Inflation Shenanigans

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

I've had this post brewing in me (is that what they do, exactly, brew?) since I got home from Spain.

In my previous post on monetary policy, Fire Sale, I highlighted indicators of the effects of the Fed's disasterous monetary policy as reflected in the most recent run up in the price of oil (or should I say decline in the value of the dollar). In that post I predicted what the future indicators were that this cycle was playing out as an indicator of Fed's causing of inflation, namely that the initial profit surge seen in the economy due to export volume would have to cease and be followed by subsequent rise in the prices of products.

Once again, it seems, my blogging life has intersected with my professional life, as on 5/28, CEO of my company Andrew Liveris, announced a broad price increase on Dow's products of up to 20% due to rising raw material costs, namely crude oil, and energy. Dow is a perfect barometer of the effects of monetary policy as it's primary feedstock, oil is denominated in dollars and will see the effect of inflation of the dollar. Several petrochemical companies have followed suit with similar announcements. This is the first step of the inflationary effect and it took about a quarter or two to manifest itself in the first step on its journey toward the consumer. Give it another two to three quarters to manifest itself broadly in the economy. Recognize that prices are going up in a depressed economy which means demand destruction, and stagnation soon follow.

And our illustrious Fed? What was it doing at the same time? As a June 5th Wall Street Journal Editorial, "The Buck Stops Where?" pointed out, after several years of rising commodity prices, and falling dollar valuations, relative to major currencies that aren't pegged to the dollar, it seems the Fed and Chairman Ben Bernanke has now expressed concern over possible inflation.

This week current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke waved the white flag over Mr. Volcker's point by declaring his own public concern "that the dollar remains a strong and stable currency." Apologies accepted, provisionally.

The tragedy is that this is big news. The Fed has monopoly power over dollar creation, and concern for its value ought to go without saying. Yet so great has been the Fed's dollar abdication in recent years, and especially since last summer, that Mr. Bernanke's words have come as a great global relief. As the dollar has strengthened in welcome response, the price of gold and oil has fallen in each of the last two days.

The question now is whether the Fed will follow up its new words with action. "We are attentive to the implications of changes in the value of the dollar for inflation and inflation expectations," Mr. Bernanke said on Tuesday, a sign that the Fed may be waking up to the inflation threat. But the Fed chief also signaled that he isn't about to tighten monetary policy any time soon because current "policy seems well positioned to promote moderate growth and price stability over time."

Price stability where? Not in the U.S., where every economic report shows rising price pressure...

The Bernanke Fed has also been oblivious to the fact that it runs a global dollar bloc. Central banks in dozens of countries peg or otherwise link their own currencies to the world's reserve currency, which is the dollar. They do so for the sake of exchange-rate stability, which helps with trade and investment flows. They essentially subcontract their monetary policy to the U.S. central bank.

The Fed's dollar indifference has sent an inflation shock through those dollar-linked economies. This week alone, we've read about price riots in Vietnam; inflation hitting 10.1% in Kuwait; Abu Dhabi contemplating price or wage controls; South Korean and Indonesian central bankers considering rate hikes; and the Chinese letting the yuan rise ever higher to curb inflationary pressures imported from the U.S.

Many of these countries are now delinking from the greenback. Meanwhile, the dollar plunge has translated into a net transfer of trillions in wealth from the U.S. to the rest of the world. The result has been the largest decline in America's global economic influence since the 1970s.

If the editorial language strikes anyone as incredulous, it's no surprise. While oil prices dropped on this news, they were soon back up. I'm not sure why they would have dropped in the first place since Bernanke's stance to not tighten monetary policy belies its complete misunderstanding of the situation. In a June 18 follow-up "FED Mood Titls Away from Rate Increase" it's clear that this inflationary pressure does not worry the FED as much as it might think.

As the editorial points out, the FED has complete control over inflation of the dollar. If there's inflation out there, it is due to inappropriate monetary actions by the FED. Notice how in most of the FED's language it treats inflation as some causeless effect out in the world. As such the FED's action to curb inflation are never viewed as self-correction, but rather as attempts to keep the unruly market in check.

The misguided policy is that the FED wishes to believe that it's stimulatory actions (keeping interest rates low) will "stabilize" the housing market before it has to deal with inflation. But let's go back to our lead story and price increases. It takes time for prices to trickle through to the consumer. When it does its destabilizing effects will overwhelm any stimulus the FED thinks it's injecting in the short term. Inflation has already been unleashed, and is a torpedo headed for the housing market. Since the FED is the only agent that can act to head it off, keeping a "steady as she goes" monetary policy is a recipe for disaster! If the housing market is bad now, it won't be helped when the cost of materials that go into new starts and renovations skyrockets, as it is sure to do.

Congress isn't blaming the Executive Branch for failed monetary policy. Instead it's hauling oil company CEO's before committee's and proposing laws to regulate "speculators"

And today we have an even larger signal of this effect as in no less than 3 weeks after it's first announcement, Dow has again announced broad pricing increase of up to an additional 25% on it's products. Including these increases and the ones most chemical companies have been making over the last 12 months that's more than doubling of prices!

The FED will not make substantive moves (whole digit percentage points move upward in interest rates) until the furor over inflation reaches a deafening roar. It will not do so because it believes it is helping the situation instead of the primary cause of it. It misunderstands its own cause and effect and the consequences will be disastrous. It doesn't see that it has launched the inflation torpedo now working its way through to consumer product prices. Leading indicators of this? Look at airlines and chemicals. Airlines are highly dependant on oil, and are a direct pass through of oil costs to the consumer. Chemicals are only one step removed from oil, and manufacture products that are ubiquitous in almost all downstream markets. Both these industries are reeling with price increases and reduced demand.

The FED will make time-delayed reactionary moves. Free markets on the other hand act in an anticipatory manner moving ahead of the impact based upon actual cause and effect. This in fact is the best empirical case to be made for privatization of monetary policy. Businessmen cannot afford to wait until a crisis exists to act. They must anticipate it. As long as the FED is oblivious to its own shenanigans, it cannot act in this fashion.

The cure is known, and can be enacted now, but it is not popular. It's essentially a tightening of the money supply, as was effected by the Reagan FED to head off stagflation of the late 70's, and it rests primarily in the hands of our money regulators. If the free market were running monetary policy it would already be in effect. Of course one could argue that we never would have gotten into this mess in the first place.

Lasseiz faire!

Galileo Blogs on Speculation

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

By the way, the economic disaster that is US energy policy is terribly on my mind in the past weeks. I work for the company mentioned in my previous post, and my life over the last several weeks has been divereted into crisis mode of, you guessed it, raising prices. I have several different issues with the whole fiasco, but I'm too damn busy raising prices to get decent posts out! :)

SO instead I'll point you to other posts that I think address some of the same issues. Galileo over at Galileo Blogs has a great post on the most infuriating aspect of Congress' "non-action" actions toward this whole situation: the creation of the speculative scapegoat.

Biblical Law Versus Freedom of Religion

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Hooray! Last Thursday, the Vail Daily published my letter to the editor opposing the proposed personhood amendment to the Colorado constitution.

Re: "Protect reproductive rights"

Thank you for your editorial opposing the proposed "personhood amendment" to the Colorado constitution.

Unfortunately, some people in Colorado are eager to impose their religious dogmas on others -- by whatever means necessary. They demand that everyone submit to their values, including people who disagree with their dubious interpretations of scripture, deny the morality of blind obedience to divine commands, and reject faith in God as irrational superstition -- as I do.

By any rational standard, that demand for submission is morally wrong.

These theocrats reject the very principle protecting their own freedom to worship: the separation of church and state. Under that principle, each person practices whatever faith he chooses, including none at all -- as a matter of right. He may live as he sees fit, according to his own values, without forcible interference from others. So if opposed to abortion, he can refuse any involvement with the procedure.

The proposed "personhood amendment" embodies the opposite principle: government entanglement with religion, particularly the enforcement of Biblical law. Adopting that principle would subject matters of private conscience to government meddling. Everyone who wishes to live in a free country should vigorously oppose it.

Diana Hsieh, Sedalia

It's time for me to start writing op-eds on this topic, I think!

Galileo and Oil

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As too brief a respite from the turmoil on Earth - from the politics, from Islam, from the diminishing scope of men's concerns and the consequent meanness of their goals - I will go to Mars, to Venus, to the planetary systems of other stars via the Internet, but chiefly to planets and bodies in the solar system where Man has sent querying spacecraft and robotic investigators, just to see some evidence of success in his long-range endeavors.

Of course, I do not think our government should be conducting any kind of space exploration, except for military purposes, to maintain the nation's security. Since every potentially habitable body beyond Earth is uninhabited and therefore absent of any property status, space exploration rationally should be a private enterprise to develop a body's potentiality, and not just focus on mere "pure" scientific investigation and the acquisition of knowledge that can never be applied to sustain human life. But the magnitude of thought, planning, technological finesse, and commitment to achieving a rational goal required to put a single satellite in Earth orbit, never mind around Mars or Jupiter or Saturn, is something for which, for me, the words appreciation and admiration seem inadequate.

Launched during a space shuttle mission in October 1989, the Galileo probe reached its destination, Jupiter, in December 1995. Even though the craft was hampered by a faulty communications array, for almost a decade it transmitted data and pictures of Jupiter and probed the nature of some of its moons. The catalogue of Galileo's accomplishments is astonishing.

So, it saddened me to read late in 2003 that Galileo's mission was nearing an end, because, among other minor problems, its propellant, used to maneuver it in orbit around the planet, was nearly depleted. NASA announced that it was going to use the last of it to send the craft into Jupiter. The newspaper article reporting the decision said that this was to prevent Galileo from possibly crashing onto any of Jupiter's moons, especially Europa, and contaminating it with terrestrial organisms.

Why? I asked myself. Why not let Galileo remain in orbit around Jupiter as evidence of Man's achievement? I emailed the Galileo team that question. I received a brief iteration of the concern about contamination. I replied: Aside from the unlikelihood of Galileo falling onto one of the moons, so what if it crashed on Europa or Io? Given how thoroughly these probes and landers are scoured of all microscopic life before launch, "contamination" of another planet or moon would be as likely as algae growing in the super-hot oven of Venus or on sun-blasted Mercury as on frigid Europa or sulfurous Io. And that is not factoring in the fourteen years Galileo was exposed to life-ending solar radiation and cosmic rays coupled with the inhospitableness of a vacuum.

Further, why the bias against terrestrial life in favor of extraterrestrial, even if the latter were proven to exist on any of those bodies? Why the bias against it even if no life existed on them? If Western civilization lasts long enough to land men on Mars, will they be expected to immolate themselves to protect and ensure the existence of Martian microbes, or the pristine lifelessness of the Martian deserts?

I received no reply. Shortly after that exchange, Galileo was sent plunging into Jupiter, where it disintegrated and its parts were presumably vaporized by Jupiter's heat and their atoms sublimated into the roiling, lifeless atmosphere. I recall a Jet Propulsion Lab manager announcing, "Galileo is now a part of Jupiter."

Evidence erased.

What prompted me then to ask the Galileo team was something I remembered Ayn Rand wrote in 1969 at the end of her article on Apollo 11:

"If the United States is to commit suicide, let it not be for the sake and support of the worst human elements, the parasites-on-principle, at home and abroad. Let it not be its only epitaph that it died paying its enemies for its own destruction. Let some of its lifeblood go to the support of achievement and the progress of science. The American flag on the moon - or on Mars, or on Jupiter - will, at least, be a worthy monument to what had once been a great country." 1.

What moved NASA to deliberately destroy one of its most successful probes when there was no demonstrable point to it, or for any "earthly" value or reason?

In a word: environmentalism. Or an infection from it. Extraterrestrial life, hypothetical or real, benign or virulently destructive, had acquired the same elevated status as spotted owls, whales and wolves on earth, possessing some extra-human value equal to or above human existence. And in any conflict between human existence and other "life forms," it is human existence which is imperiled. Logically, ultimately, it is man who would be expected to erase himself from existence in such a conflict in deference to the defenseless, non-volitional species.

Of all the "life forms" that exist on earth (or in the solar system), man is the only one with the capacity for reason, and if he chooses to discard it, act on faith, and religiously commit suicide in conformance with that Kantian "virtue," it is because he is convinced that the "right" of other life forms to exist overrides that of man. If the meek shall inherit the earth, environmentalists want to guarantee that they will be animals, plants and rocks. There is a crucial link between religion and environmentalism. The environmentalists mean it. To them, man is a contaminator and a contagion. Their theological ancestors are the proponents of Original Sin.

And if men exhibit reluctance to commit slow or immediate suicide, environmentalism's vituperative priests and thuggish altar boys are here to remind them of their "duty," or to make sure that they perish even if it means committing murder. To claim otherwise, that man has no such duty to defer or die, is to commit apostasy and heresy vis-à-vis conventional "wisdom." Observe, for example, how scientists who "deny" man-caused global warming are shunned, ostracized, and ignored by the political and scientific establishments and the news media, and how the unthinking religious position on global warming is propagated and perpetuated in schools, in the press, in politics, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.

What has the fate of the Galileo to do with rising gas prices and the oil industry here on earth? Environmentalists wish to destroy the oil industry - and Americans' standard of living - in the name of their god, a nature unaltered and undisturbed by man. To say that they wish to reduce Americans to the standard of living of the Dark Ages is to grant them a partial life-premise; actually, they would prefer that "nature" reclaim the entire North American continent, and the whole globe, and that man, together with his ruins and all evidence of his existence, be sublimated and made one with nature - as a corpse.

No sooner had someone ventured that perhaps federal and state governments were responsible for rising gas prices because of taxes, environmental regulations, restrictions, and prohibitions, than the "greens" screamed foul.

"Four-plus dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that increased domestic oil production is needed to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable gasoline. But even if the Greens lose the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), they're nevertheless way ahead of the game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of that oil eases our gasoline crunch."

So wrote Steven Milloy on June 12 in a Junk Science report, which describes just how dedicated the environmentalists are to squelching any expansion of drilling for oil and of any new construction of refineries or the expansion of existing ones. For example:

"The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block ConocoPhillips' expansion of its Roxana, IL gasoline refinery, which processes heavy crude oil from Canada, reported the Wall Street Journal (June 9). The project would have expanded the volume of Canadian crude processed from 60,000 barrels per day to more than 500,000 barrels a day by 2015."

"Meanwhile, in California, Green groups are working through the state attorney general's office to block the upgrade of the Chevron refinery in the city of Richmond. The $800 million upgrade would essentially expand the useable oil supply by permitting the refinery to process lower quality, less expensive crude oil."

According to Milloy, the state attorney general (leftist ex-governor Jerry Brown) and the city of Richmond are pulling an expensive "carbon credit' extortion scam on Chevron. Its purpose, as he quotes an official saying, is to "protect low-income minority communities in the Richmond area, which already suffer disproportionate pollution impacts."

Long before gas prices in the U.S. began to climb this year, a Peak Oil News report of September 2006, "Oil Refinery Capacity Bottleneck," reported that "high oil prices [then at $63 a barrel] are still being propped up by a shortage of refinery capacity and there is little sign of the bottleneck easing until 2010, industry executives and officials discussing OPEC's future have warned."

"'The need for downstream capacity is just as important as other issues,' said Claude Mandil, executive director of the International Energy Agency at a two-day conference...."

Which proves that even bureaucrats are minimally connected to reality. That article chiefly discusses the concerns of OPEC members, most of whom want oil companies to build sixty-six new refineries. Of course, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Venezuela and other oil "producers" have no environmentalists obstructing their plans, nor are they much concerned about carbon emissions or environmental "impacts." These are tyrannies or dictatorships that seized Western oil fields and refineries and are now lecturing especially the U.S. on the need to "conserve."

Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama has advocated a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies "profiting" from rising oil and gas prices, thus revealing his ignorance of - or indifference to - the state of the oil industry.

"In 2005, the head of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association testified at a House hearing that the rate of return on investment in refining averaged just five and a half percent from 1993 to 2003."

Regardless of the rate of return that the oil companies earn, here, for example, is Exxon's tax bill for 2007: $30 billion. That's just Exxon.

Furthermore,

"Existing refineries have been running at or near full capacity since the mid-1990's, but are failing to meet daily consumption demands. Yet there hasn't been a new refinery built in the U.S. since 1976."

The Wall Street Journal of June 20 carried two interesting editorials that underline the environmentalist obstacles facing the oil companies and the nation. The first, "Bush's Drill Bit," discusses President George Bush's reluctant concession that "leaving most of America's immense offshore oil-and-gas resources off-limits was 'outdated and counter-productive,' and he called on Congress to end its quarter-century ban." But the editorial also describes the natural and man-made obstacles to drilling for untapped oil:

The second editorial, "Judge Ahab and the Whales," reports that Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter has been sued by the NRDC "for conducting training exercises off the coast of California, as the Navy has done for 40 years."

"The NRDC claims the use of medium-frequency active sonar - a type of sonar especially useful for anti-submarine warfare - might harm whales, or at least confuse them."

Two courts have upheld the suit and the injunction against further training, thus hamstringing the Navy. The editorial stresses that both the suit and the courts are not only jeopardizing U.S. readiness, but also nullifying the Constitution's separation of powers for the sake of whales. As absurd as it may sound, would it not be an exaggeration in today's political climate to foresee the day, if the U.S. were attacked by China or Iran, when our military would not be allowed to respond before submitting an environmental impact statement for committee review? Of course, before the Navy or Air Force could even order its lawyers to compose a statement, we would be dead.

The environmentalists would not mind. Just as Muslims the world over cheered when the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11, environmentalists would welcome the destruction of the U.S., and through lawsuits and "eco-terrorism" are working to bring it about. One does not ever hear them commiserate with the survivors of natural catastrophes, when tens of thousands die in earthquakes, tidal waves, and typhoons. One would not hear them wail over the destruction of New York, or if Islamists invaded Washington, dynamited the Jefferson Memorial, and put a match to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (as they are doing now through financial jihad). Environmentalism is as much a religious ideology of nihilism as Islam.

Their mutual goal is to put an end to all Galileos.

1. "Apollo 11," in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, by Ayn Rand. Meridian-Penguin softcover, 1990, p. 178. See also her "Epitaph for a Culture," p. 179, in the same volume, in which she discusses the beginnings of the environmentalist movement and the "theology of the earth."

Albrechtsen on "Fairness"

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

Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist for The Australian, writes a perspicacious blog posting against threats coming from the Left in America of bringing back the "Fairness" Doctrine. On two points, she is spot-on.

First, she describes it as a violation of property rights, which it would be:

Mandating equal time on privately owned radio stations and television stations is the appropriation of private property for political purposes. This is not the same as a legislative requirement for balance and diversity of views on a publicly funded broadcaster. This is interfering in the free market to entrench progressive views that the talk back airwaves have, by and large, rejected. [bold added]

Second, she notes the hypocrisy of how this "fairness" would be implemented and sees it for the admission of intellectual impotence that it is:

The push for mandated equal time of radio for progressive views is a clear acknowledgement that without some legislative oomph, left-wing ideas won't survive in the free market of ideas. If liberals were confident about the merits of their ideas, why would they feel a need to force left-wing voices on television and radio?

Ouch! And why should we tolerate having them crammed down our throats?

On only one thing do I fault her piece. She gets one issue only partly right, thereby missing a chance to strike a further blow for individual rights:

The only time we should mandate balance is where media is financed by the public. That's because taxpayers from one side of politics are entitled to see their money is not used to finance the unfair promotion of the other side's views. But if a publisher or media owner wants to promote his preferred side of politics on his own nickel he should be entitled to go for it. It would be a pointless as passing a law requiring more balance in Pravda on the Yarra. If The Age wants to cater for a left-wing audience, let them. [bold added]

Certainly, if we are going to have public broadcasting, it should be as objective as possible and not cater to any one particular viewpoint. However, the confiscation of money from ordinary citizens to pay for such public media is just as much a violation of their property rights as telling them what to do with their own property.

If we shouldn't bring back the Fairness Doctrine -- and Albrechtsen is absolutely right on that score -- then we should also abolish public broadcasting.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 7:00 A.M. on June 24, 2008.

Is the Only Answer Not to Vote?

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

The Price Will Come Down

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Back in the 1990's I had an argument with a coworker about the price of computers. I had just paid something like $3,000 for my computer, monitor and printer. I argued that the price would come down dramatically in the coming years. My coworker scoffed because, you see, the corporations would never allow the price to go down because they're greedy.

It is true that they are greedy, and there is nothing wrong with that. IBM wants to make every penny of profit it can; that is their purpose as a business. Unfortunately, Dell, Compaq, Apple and a host of other computer manufacturers also want to make a profit. Each manufacturer will do what it can to win market share from its competitors, such as undercutting their price.

Prices always come down in a free market. At first only the rich can afford new gadgets. The first transistor radio was $150. The first ball-point pen was $25. This was back when $150 was real money. The profits from all those disgusting rich people engaging in an orgy of conspicuous consumption and "keeping up with the Joneses" was reinvested into the production of more radios and pens. Production became more efficient and the price plummeted. Now you can buy cheap pens for pennies.

Moog Music has just released a new guitar that has infinite sustain. You can check out their promotional video here. The price? $6,495. Lou Reed can afford one, but most people will pass. The price will come down big time, especially when other guitar makers produce guitars that do the same thing but don't have the prestigious Moog name attached. Pretty soon any garage band will have a guitar with infinite sustain if they want it.

I bring this up because I see today that Dell has a desktop that starts at $269; IBM's start at $409. You can get the whole set-up with monitor and printer for well under $1,000 with a processor and hard drive memory that make what I bought in the '90s look like a Model T. (To carry this analogy farther, the electric typewriter is the horse and buggy.)

When you consider that inflation has devalued the dollar at least by half in the last 10 years, not to mention all the other economic distortions caused by government intervention in the economy, it's clear that I won the argument.

Some people might object that this economic principle does not apply to gas. The price of gas is artificially high because of government intervention. Factor in inflation and take away all taxes and the price goes way down. Another complication is the restriction on production caused by the environmentalist movement. As I recall reading, there have been no new refineries built in the USA in the last 30 years. The environmentalists are capitalism's (and freedom's) greatest enemy because they don't want prosperity, they want deprivation.

An Inspiring Story of Courage:"Infidel"

By Gina Liggett from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an extraordinary woman who grew up in an East African tribal-Islamic society, experiencing first-hand the endemic brutality and repression of the culture. By virtue of her courageous spirit and questioning mind, she freed herself and fled to the West. Her autobiography, Infidel, is a truely inspirational read. I've written a review of this book that was published in the March 2008 issue of American Atheist Magazine.

You can read the review here.

You Say That as If It’s a Bad Thing . . .

By Paula Hall from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Bubble Bursts, Perhaps for Now

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

Rich Lowry pens a column to the effect that the global warming bubble has burst and illustrates at the very same time why, if he is correct, something else will quickly replace global warming as an excuse to limit the freedom of Americans.

Before I begin, I will note that I don't regard the global warming bubble as having burst just because the Senate ceased debating national fuel rationing for now -- nor will I even if such a cap never comes to pass. Let's see a new oil refinery or two get built and some offshore drilling first. And then let's toss in some significant repeals of environmental regulation. My point is that -- as is the case with socialized medicine, which has been foisted on us incrementally for decades -- freedom needn't be slain in dramatic "up or down" fashion. A slow death by poisoning will make it (and us) just as dead.

Furthermore, "climate change" is merely the latest marketing gimmick of many used by statists (from both the left and the right) to push for greater government control over our lives. If the idea that man has rights and its corollary, that the government's sole proper function is to protect them, do not eventually win the day, their opposites will -- whether starving children, "racism", or the weather provides the excuse.

Just look at these excerpts from Lowry's column to see what I mean:

1. The cost-benefit analysis of battling global warming is never going to make sense for Americans.
2. We should feel a moral obligation to aid Bangladesh and similar places with mitigation measures, when (and, again, if) the time comes. Until then, our consciences should rest easy, given the $20 billion annually we spend on development assistance, including billions of dollars fighting AIDS, malaria, and other diseases affecting people whose suffering isn't theoretical.
3. If we can't get China to quit jailing dissidents and arming a genocidal Sudan, what hope is there of getting it to stop something -- rapid economic development -- that's otherwise unobjectionable? With hundreds of millions of Chinese people living in abject poverty, the country's economic growth is one of the world's most important initiatives against human misery.
4. Finally, there's the global-cooling spell. The world hasn't been warming since 1998, and an article in the journal Nature says warming won't pick up again until 2015. Since global warming is a long-term trend, a decade-long or more stall in temperatures doesn't mean much -- except that environmentalists have banked so much politically on whipping up hysteria based on imminent catastrophe. [bold added]
   

Lowry's account for the demise of the fuel ration (for now?) amounts to saying that the abstract goal of the global warming alarmists -- American self-sacrifice -- is noble, but that it is impractical: Americans would be willing to fulfill their alleged moral obligations (2), but not willing to misdirect those efforts (1), or see them so easily undercut (3) or wasted on a manufactured crisis (4).

And now that I've lain these four points out, I see a part of the global warming puzzle that has been partially obscure for me all along. I have maintained for quite awhile that the scientific debate over whether there is warming (and why) should not be confounded with the political one over what (if anything) ought to be done about it. Nevertheless, it has struck me as odd that more opponents of global warming hysteria haven't caught on.

Yes, there is widespread intellectual confusion over the nature of government today, but there is also widespread support for altruism and its collectivist expression in politics. The only question for most people is merely about whose will is to be imposed on everyone else.

This is why, for example, fundamentalists who are well aware of left wing propaganda being promulgated in our public education system don't seek the repeal of socialized education, but fight for prayer in the schools -- to take that system over for themselves. Most people today are altruists and have no moral objection to collectivism as such. They merely oppose manifestations they find distasteful. Or, to put it another way, they all like different flavors of Kool-Aid.

And this is why we have a conservative, a supposed champion of free enterprise, heaving a mild sigh of relief about China's unwillingness to go along with fuel rationing. Americans have just as much right to burn the fuel we need as the Chinese, and man's life is an end in itself. If more people understood and accepted those ideas to begin with, there would never have been a global warming bubble in the first place. And we'd have no other similar shams to look forward to in the future.

We have the right to live our own lives. Real Americans don't wring their hands and then say, "I'm off the hook because of China."

-- CAV

Hollywood's Idiot Comedies

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

During this blog's hiatus in 2006 I posted a review of Talledega Nights on my myspace page. I look at that page infrequently these days. I don't understand the attraction of myspace. There is no intellectual stimulation; it's just people asking other people to be their friends. It's like a cyberspace cocktail party without any witty banter -- a party full of people who say "dude" and "LOL." I'm surprised when I hear people say they spend hours on myspace. Doing what?

I hate to sound elitist, but the overwhelming popularity of mindless pursuits such as myspace unsettles me. I mean -- these people are voting. Ben Franklin, when asked what kind of government the Constitutional Convention would give the nation, replied, "A republic -- if you can keep it." How can we keep it with an ignorant, intellectually lazy populace? People with passive minds are susceptible to the emotional appeals of any cheap demagogue, such as one who promises nothing specific but "change we can believe in."

But I digress.

I just reread that review of Talledega Nights; it makes an argument I have not read elsewhere, so here it is reposted in its entirety.

****

Talledega Nights

Talledega Nights is a funny, absurd comedy that is ruined because the movie romanticizes the hero and makes him learn something at the end. The arrogant Ricky Bobby learns humility and the movie becomes a tedious bowl of mush.

An unrealistic comedy about fools is more interesting and honest if it refrains from making its cads and morons better people at the end. The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Beavis and Butthead and Dumb and Dumber leave their idiots as idiots and that is the right way to do outrageous comedy. An actor as homely and goofy as Will Ferrell should not try to be Cary Grant in a romantic comedy.

Why does Hollywood insist on destroying the integrity of its comedies by giving their morons a character arc? Several reasons I can think of. First, when you go the idiot-stays-an-idiot route, you lose the women in the audience. Women don't like the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy; these characters exist in a permanent boyhood without romantic interest. Women like grown up men who have sex and fall in love and get married.

Second, star comic actors are rarely content to remain idiots. They all yearn to show off their serious and romantic sides. Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and now Will Ferrell all make boring movies because they try to be leading men. They should remain the Fool to Robert de Niro's King Lear, instead of trying be King Lear. Steve Martin has never been as funny as he was in his first movie, The Jerk. You watch him in a depressing, naturalistic bomb like Pennies From Heaven and wonder what the hell he's thinking. Doubtless, the early deaths of John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley spared us heartbreaking dramas of misunderstood fat guys.

Imagine if Moe of the Three Stooges had said one day, "I want to make something serious and meaningful." He'd have been laughed off the studio lot. Today, no one dares tell a Steve Martin or Jim Carrey that serious and meaningful is not such a good idea.

Actors hate my point of view. They don't want to be stereotyped. Doing both comedy and tragedy is fine if an actor can pull it off; Jack Lemmon did. But most of today's comic actors come from sketch comedy and stand-up. They spend their youths being funny, they train being funny and they gain success being funny. It takes an extraordinary comedian who also has acting talent and romantic charisma to be able to act serious. Most of them are just not that interesting when they get away from funny.

Finally, you have producers with their vapid ideas of what a movie should be. They force creators to romanticize their idiots: give them a love interest, a character arc, redemption, a happy ending. Hollywood's precepts suck the life out of comedy and turn it into predictable swill.

Mind you, I'm not opposed to romantic comedy. I love it! But it has to make sense. If your hero is Butthead for 85 minutes, I don't buy him becoming Jimmy Stewart for the last five minutes of the movie just to satisfy Hollywood's template for successful box office. The more outrageous a comedy is, the less I buy a realistic character change. Talledega Nights wants to be both outrageous and have a realistic character change.

Objectivist Round-up - June 19, 2008

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

Sorry for the delay folks! Without further adieu, here is this week's round up.

Kim presents A Big Ol' NASA Commercial posted at Kim's Play Place, saying, "What's NASA's next mission? According to them it's establishing a moon base. As far as I can tell, it's convincing school children that NASA is required for most technological advances."

Peter Cresswell presents Not PC: Opera House For Dubai By Zaha Hadid Architects posted at Not PC, saying, "It's well known that back before he abandoned drawing identifiable figures, Pablo Picasso could draw like an angel. In an opposite twist, now that former deconstructionist architect Zaha Hadid has elected to produce actual buildings -- and in this stunning piece of architecture for the shifting desert sands of the Emirate's thriving megalopolis she has done that and more -- she's revealed as a woman with talent to burn, which was what she had mostly been doing with it up to now."

Ari Armstrong presents Should Government Own Wilderness? posted at FreeColorado.com, saying, "Why not give some politically-owned lands to the groups complaining most loudly about their management?"

Paul McKeever presents Meridianfrost as Jim Taggart: Contrived Laughter in Lieu of Rational Counter-argument posted at Paul McKeever, saying, "I was audiobook-listening to Atlas Shrugged the other day, and got to the final scene between Jim Taggart and Cherryl. Almost immediately thereafter, I viewed a video on youtube in which a post-modernist's response to an Objectivist's video was, essentially, a video of the post-modernist viewing the Objectivist's video and laughing. In this short blog entry, I consider the similarities between Jim Taggart's debating strategy, and that of the youtubing post-modernist. Along the way, you may find yourself being introduced to a fellow Objectivist in the trenches: Brandon Cropper."

Paul Hsieh presents NoodleFood: Police Corruption in Chicago posted at NoodleFood, saying, "Why you should worry about corrupt police, even if you aren't a drug dealer." 

Rational Jenn presents Once Again posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "This is the latest update in my first real experience with civil disobedience. We've refused to complete the hideous "American Community Survey" and I've been urging fellow recipients to do likewise. This has been going on since December. And I am still getting hits on my blog that are originating from the Census Bureau in Washington, DC. Will they keep coming?"

K. M. presents Civil Service and The Constitution (Part 1) posted at Applying philosophy to life, saying, "This is the first of a now concluded 3 part series on the Indian constitution and its effects on the bureaucracy."

Diana Hsieh presents Raw Milk posted at NoodleFood, saying, "This posts discusses some of the insane bans and regulations on raw milk, including my need to buy a share of a cow to obtain it."

Edward Cline presents The Year of the Long Knives: Part III posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "While the Democrats wish to destroy the American Revolution, the Republicans seem to have forgotten it ever happened, which explains not only why they have never been able to defend it, but have been complicit in its steady destruction. Republican presidential candidate John McCain is not any kind of reactionary alternative to Barack Obama. If the current political environment can be likened to a coin, then heads it is altruist, tails it is collectivist, and McCain is simply the ridged edge on its side."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of objectivist round up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

oh, and almost forgot! Sorry C. :)

C. August presents Institutionalized Snooping in Sweden posted at Titanic Deck Chairs.

Technorati tags: objectivist round up, blog carnival.

BIG BROTHER SNOOP LAW IN SWEDEN

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here is a short blog post between the regular "broadcast"...

From The Local: 'Yes' to surveillance law.

Swedish lawmakers came down in favour of a fiercely debated surveillance bill in a vote at the Riksdag on Wednesday evening. (06/18/08, TheLocal.se.)

Big Brother will watch my email correspondence, financial trading with currencies, etc.

Here is an excerpt from Danny O'Brien's post, Sweden and the Borders of the Surveillance State.

A proposed new law in Sweden (voted on this week, after much delay) will, if passed, allow a secretive government agency ostensibly concerned with signals intelligence to install technology in twenty public hubs across the country. There it will be permitted to conduct a huge mass data-mining project, processing and analysing the telephony, emails, and web traffic of millions of innocent individuals. Allegedly these monitoring stations will be restricted to data passing across Sweden's borders with other countries for the purposes of monitoring terrorist activity: but there seems few judicial or technical safeguards to prevent domestic communications from being swept up in the dragnet. Sound familiar? (06/15/08, Electronic Frontier Foundation.)

Australia's Exploding "Fat Bomb"

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

Via Matt Drudge comes a news story that illustrates perfectly what is wrong with the West. It leads with the recent finding that, on the whole, Australians are more likely to be obese than Americans and then notes the "necessity" of the government taking action to combat this "problem".

Why am I placing the term "problem" in quotes? Even if being overweight always doomed someone to poor health, what difference would it make to me, in a society where the government does not force me to pay for someone else's carelessness (through socialized medicine in this case) whether someone else is overweight? It would be that person's problem and not mine.

But under a mixed economy such as Australia's, the opposite is true.

Titled "Australia's Future Fat Bomb," the study compiled the results of height and weight checks carried out on 14,000 adult Australians in 2005.

...

The study predicted there would be an extra 700,000 heart-related hospital admissions in the next 20 years due to obesity and almost 125,000 people would die because of the condition in that period.

The report calls for a national weightloss strategy on the scale of smoking and skin cancer campaigns, including subsidising gym memberships and personal training sessions.

It suggested hospital waiting lists could be prioritised on the basis of weightloss, to give obese people incentive to slim down. [bold added]

Those call for a triage on the basis of a patient's personal habits (along with calls for the government to start meddling with them) will sound very familiar to regular readers here. Outright denial of services by individual physicians and similar proposals to expand the government have been heard from Britain recently.

On that score, this is just more of the same: The government discourages personal responsibility by doling out a necessity for "free" and then, when the economic cost of countless bad decisions becomes apparent, someone proposes to give the government an even greater improper role.

The West has been doing that for decades. Controls breed controls, as many economists point out, but don't go far enough when they do. What's so interesting here is how the West, which many conservatives and libertarians seem to think is trending towards greater freedom, speaks capitalist-sounding language even as it hastens its death spiral towards tyranny.

Just look at the talk about "incentives" here. The distinguishing characteristic of the government is that it is the sole social institution which can legally force people to do things or harm them. Properly, this physical force would be used only to protect the individual rights of citizens, but otherwise, when it is wielded, it will violate someone's rights, and all such instances also set the dangerous precedent that such is acceptable.

By its nature, then, when the government tells you what to do, it is basically doing so while pointing a gun at your skull. Government "incentives" to do anything other than respect the rights of others are morally equivalent to the "incentive" any street thug offers when he says, "Your money or your life."

So we already have one of the world's freer societies confused about individual rights and the proper role of the government -- and operating an altruist-collectivist medical system that rewards irresponsibility at the expense of the able and productive,

This is bad enough, but then Pragmatism, the rejection of principles on principle, rears its ugly head (and probably alongside that of ignorance of the nature of a better political system, capitalism). The one thing absent from this discussion of "incentives" is the one thing that best puts to work incentives -- the real incentives of the goal of self-preservation and betterment. That would be greater freedom.

If Australians were personally responsible for their own medical bills, each could consider for himself whether he regarded being overweight (or smoking, or whatever) as unhealthy and, if so, as worth the risk. Those who made good decisions would spend less on medical care to the extent that one's health depends on good habits, and those who did not would burden no one but themselves.

What boggles the mind is that all this talk about "incentives" you hear floating around all the time these days is directly because there is some appreciation out there for the efficiency of a market economy. But this often goes only so far, and only to the extent that some short-term goal -- evaluated wholly out of context -- is made to look easier to accomplish. So you get a proposed government control -- forcing the obese to the back of the line -- being called an "incentive".

The proper purpose of a government isn't to reduce the spending of confiscated money to some lower level by issuing orders to its citizens. it's to protect their right to live free from the threats and harm that come from other men initiating physical force. In this case, Australia shouldn't just refrain from hectoring its people about their habits: It should stop stealing their money and ruining their medical system.

In the meantime, something that would preserve freedom for all Australians; usually save prudent, virtuous, and productive Australians money; and incidentally, probably encourage many to make better personal choices is swept under the rug: Capitalism.

Australia's real "fat bomb" isn't a projected rise in public expenses caused by a government-encouraged neglect of personal health: It's the huge and growing level of involvement of its government in every aspect of the daily lives of its citizens. not only that, the real "fat bomb" isn't just ticking. It's going off. Now.

The "fat bomb" cited in this study is, incidentally and ironically, merely a symptom, and the proposals laid out there would be as wise as treating a symptom while ignoring the disease.

-- CAV

PS: I have just noticed that Paul Hsieh has posted on mandatory waistline checks in Japan.

Updates

Today: (1) Added the word "legally" to description of government. (2) Added "of the nature of" between "ignorance" and "a better political system".

Thompson on Taxation

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

I was pleased to learn that C. Bradley Thompson, whose seminal "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" I frequently cite here, appears in the newsletter of Glenn Beck, a popular conservative commentator.

His editorial is titled, "Individual Rights, Taxation and the Proper Role of Government". Here is an excerpt:

How one thinks about taxes depends more fundamentally on how one thinks about the nature and purpose of government which in turn depends on how one thinks about the rights of individuals. Taxation is a social barometer measuring the degree to which a society is prosperous or poor, free or enslaved, good or evil.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans had a very different conception of government than we do today. At the time of the American Revolution, the American people believed that the sole purpose of government was the protection of individual rights - the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Various attempts by the British Parliament during the 1760s and '70s to tax the colonists without their consent provoked the Americans to revolt, to declare their independence from Great Britain, and to develop a radically new conception of government founded on the moral principle of man's rights. [bold added]

I have noted before that I am great admirer of Thompson's ability to apply his pro-reason, pro-individual rights perspective to American history and I hope that Beck features more of his work in the future.

The newsletter is free and I subscribed this morning. So far, my subscription has been confirmed, but I have yet to see whether subscribing today will get you the issue with that editorial.

I'm just back from Boston and swamped. If anyone subscribes today and gets that editorial (or knows how to access any archives), do please leave a comment.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added hyperlink.

Government Medical System in Japan Requires Mandatory Waistline Checks

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

According to the June 13, 2008 New York Times, government officials in Japan have instituted a mandatory program where all men and women between ages 40 and 74 must have their waistlines measured and recorded by the government. The purpose of this program is to reduce costs from obesity-related health conditions, because the government health system must pay the bills:

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.

...To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country’s Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check.

The ministry also says that curbing widening waistlines will rein in a rapidly aging society's ballooning health care costs, one of the most serious and politically delicate problems facing Japan today. Most Japanese are covered under public health care or through their work.

The government limits are very strict -- "33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women" -- literally a "one-size-fits-all" standard.

One Japanese man did express his disdain for the new regulations:

...Kenzo Nagata, 73, a toy store owner, said he had ignored a letter summoning him to a so-called special checkup. His waistline was no one's business but his own, he said, though he volunteered that, at 32.7 inches, it fell safely below the limit. He planned to disregard the second notice that the city was scheduled to mail to the recalcitrant.

"I'm not going," he said. "I don't think that concerns me."

Once a government starts violating individual rights by creating a "universal" health care system, this inevitably leads to further infringements of individual rights. This is not unique to Japan.

For instance, universal health care in Great Britain has led to infringements on the right to free speech. In 2007, the British government banned television stations from playing classic 1950's-era humorous advertisements encouraging people to have an egg for breakfast, on the grounds that "the ads do not encourage healthy eating".

When a government has to pay for everyone's health care, it will naturally demand a say in whether people are leading a "sufficiently healthy" lifestyle, as defined by the government.

Colorado writer Steve Schweitzberger made a similar point in this June 30, 2007 letter in the Rocky Mountain News, referring to universal health care advocate and filmmaker Michael Moore:

If Michael Moore has a toothache, it is not my responsibility to pay for his dentistry. If it were, then I would have the right to tell him not to eat sweets. I don't want that kind of government-paid medical policy. Do you?

This is a question that all America should be asking.

(Cross posted to FIRM blog.)

The Men of the Mind Strike Again: Oil 2.0

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I just love to learn about how people are using their brains and turning important problems inside out to slam-dunk in some novel way.

Try this on for size: they have produced genetically-modified organisms that "feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw [...and] excrete crude oil." Isn't that outrageously cool? So much for the "finite supply of fossil fuels."

Oh, and the guys pulling this off have a nice angle aimed at those who are out to destroy industrial civilization:

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy -- as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel - they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this "Oil 2.0" will not only be renewable but also carbon negative -- meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

So if they go big with this, we get to enjoy the resulting cognitive dissonance in the guys who consider the invention of the internal combustion engine the low point of human history. Sweet.

Brooks in the Woods

By Paula Hall from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open again. He did it right after coming back from knee surgery, the recovery from which was still causing him pain. He did it after a must-make putt for birdie in regulation to force an 18-hole playoff. He did it by making yet another birdie putt when the score was still tied after the playoff. It was brilliant. He is awe-inspiring.

My husband and I have, from time to time, wondered aloud why we tend not to root for the underdog against Tiger Woods. We decided it was from sheer admiration - we are grateful to Tiger for creating in himself someone to admire. Of course, we appreciate anyone working hard to beat a statistical favorite, as Rocco Mediate did. Statistics don't describe individuals, and individuals must always fight. On the other hand - watching someone as accomplished as Woods is as close as an atheist will ever come to worship. He is just inspiring. Inspiration is food for the soul.

Now, contrast this attitude with that shown by David Brooks in his recent New York Times column on Woods's victory. The column is a blatant demonstration of sneering at and denigrating the good because it is good.

Brooks appears to start off well. The first one-and-a-half paragraphs of his column describes Woods in positive terms. But as the column progresses, terms commonly used pejoratively creep in. "Frozen." "Stone-faced." Then it gets a little worse, as Brooks starts to employ caricature (emphasis added below):

As an adult, [Woods] is famously self-controlled. His press conferences are a string of carefully modulated banalities.

And:

He's become the beau ideal for golf-loving corporate America, the personification of mental fortitude.

Now clearly, Brooks recognizes Woods's greatness, because Brooks's column is also filled with unambiguously positive descriptors of Woods, just a few of which are: "focused," "embodiment of immortal excellence," "exemplar of mental discipline," "precosity" and "athletic prowess." But Brooks gives with one hand, while with the other he taketh away. For example:

[Woods] achieves, they say, perfect clarity, tranquility and flow. We're talking about somebody who is the primary spokesman for Buick, and much of the commentary about him is on the subject of his elevated spiritual capacities.

Here, Brooks notes others' glowing praise for Woods -- and then belittles the praisers for their failure to note that Woods is a highly-paid spokesman for a car company. The implication: you can't use elevated terms to praise someone who trades the value of his good name and reputation for money. Snarky enough, but then Brooks does it again:

The ancients were familiar with physical courage and the priests with moral courage, but in this over-communicated age when mortals feel perpetually addled, Woods is the symbol of mental willpower. He is, in addition, competitive, ruthless, unsatisfied by success and honest about his own failings.

This paragraph reminds me of the way Ayn Rand defined the conjunction "but" in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. To paraphrase, Rand explained that the conjunction "but" was to be used prior to introducing information that contradicts what would ordinarily be inferred from what was previously communicated. The first sentence of Brooks's paragraph implies that Woods is something positive, a throw-back to an era where men recognized greatness. But the second sentence is clearly meant as an insult, as a "but," because Brooks assumes (probably correctly, for most Times readers) that the column's readers share his appraisal of "competitive," "ruthless" and "unsatisfied" as derogatory terms.

Perhaps, by describing Woods's obvious excellence (usually through others' eyes), Brooks is hoping his readers will credit him with an ability to recognize and appreciate greatness. Perhaps Brooks is hoping his readers will miss the snide swipes at the character and virtues that made Tiger Woods's accomplishment possible, and credit Brooks with graciousness instead of metaphysical sour grapes.

Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps Brooks is counting on his readers sharing his disdain for achievement. Because the first sentence of the column's two-sentence final paragraph begins:

You can like this model or not.

I submit that the one thing a writer is aware of is that the last words penned are the most powerful in fixing in readers' minds the message the writer wishes to convey. The message in Brooks's last words? Whether you admire virtue and achievement is a mere matter of taste.

My last words to Mr. Brooks: speak for yourself. To anyone considering Tiger Woods's victory at the U.S. Open, I would ask, rather, "What's not to like?"

The Year of the Long Knives: A Postscript

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here are some observations I did not think appropriate to include in Part IV of these commentaries on Barack Obama, or which I omitted for length considerations.

In the New York Magazine article, "Money Chooses Sides," note the composition of the photograph that accompanies it. I do not think it is accidental. I do not know if the photographer (or even Obama himself) intended the tableau, but of all the pictures doubtless taken of the event, this was the one selected by the magazine's editors to illustrate Obama's influence. Their motive may have been mockery of the guests or unintended adulation of Obama. That is irrelevant. The picture captures the essence of Obama's appeal.

Obama seems to descend the stairs, microphone in hand, looking very preacherly as he brings the "gospel" to the mortals below. All the mortals gape up at him with undisguised worship, as though he were indeed a messiah or savior, and are hanging on his every word. Remember that these are all Park and Fifth Avenue millionaires there by RSVP. A good political cartoonist could render the photograph to show Obama in Moses-like robes, one hand raised with an instructive finger pointed in the air, the other arm cradling two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments of socialism (the words, however, would be fuzzy and nearly illegible).

The only person not gaping at Obama is George Soros, seated directly behind Obama's left. He looks vaguely bored but also smugly content with what he is hearing and with the undivided attention of the other guests.

Then, another point I did not dwell on, for I wished to leave the reader to make his own inferences, is why so many wealthy people are throwing their money and support behind Obama. Basically, and this is connected to his making them feel good, it is a form of penance for and expiation of the "sin" of wealth, not unlike that being performed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. This picture was taken long before Obama "resigned" from Jeremiah Wright's church, but one cannot help but suspect that he and his campaign managers were consciously but subtly instituting the Obama Church of Hope, Change, and Salvation.

I end this postscript with a brief excerpt from Book II: Hugh Kenrick, of the Sparrowhawk series (pp. 115-116). Political and charity events to raise money from the wealthy and the politically influential are nothing new. The place is London, the time, 1755:

Bucklad House had undergone lengthy renovations, and the Pumphretts wished to mark their completion with a concert, to which were invited a list of London worthies. Lady Chloe, wife of Sir Henoch Pannell...was the mover behind this event. A donation of five guineas per person was levied, the receipts to be given to Lady Chloe's own organization, the Westminster Charity for London Waifs. "She's doing her penance early," confided Sir Henoch with sly derision to friends in the Commons who had been invited to the concert, "so that she may enjoy the rest of the season without the encumbrance of conscience. She is essentially a moral woman."

Congrats, Valedictorian! Now Get Out of Our Country

By noreply@blogger.com (Dan Edge) from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This blog entry was posted on The Undercurrent blog on June 12, 2008.

A high school valedictorian in California, whose parents fled violence in Armenia when he was two years old, is being deported. Arthur Mkoyan dreams of applying to medical school after he finishes high school next week, but instead immigration officials plan to send him back to Armenia ten days after graduation.

Arthur has petitioned California Senator Dianne Feinstein to pass a “Private Bill” which would allow his family to stay in the country. Very few such bills are ever passed, but with all the media attention this story is getting, there’s a chance. Arthur has asked the major news organizations to publish his email address (artmkoyan [at] gmail [dot] com) so that he can forward letters of support to Mrs. Feinstein. I will write such a letter to him today, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

This story, which may soon become a tragedy, is an instance of the horribly broken immigration policy of the United States. For a rational view of immigration policy, read Rebecca Knapp’s excellent article on immigration from a 2006 issue of The Undercurrent.

–Dan Edge

**Update - According to one website, a Private Bill has been filed on behalf of the Mkoyan family and their deportation has been delayed. I could not confirm this news elsewhere.

What Does "Complicated" Mean?

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

I recently heard an interesting description of the burdensome and complicated security arrangements Israel has in place to keep aspiring murder-suicide bombers from crossing into Israel from the barbaric lands that surround it.

These arrangements -- not to mention the whole situation in Palestine, the geographic area that contains Israel and some of these barbaric areas -- were described again and again as "complicated".

This is not the first time I have heard either described with this word nor will it be the last, for the word is a reflection of the state of our culture in the West. In our current culture, the differences between wealthy, civilized Israel, and the poverty-stricken barbaric areas that border it are attributed to anything but the moral differences between the people who live in each area.

I would submit that the place this crucial difference is missed or evaded the most is within Israel itself, for the description of "complicated" came from someone who had just been there and who had learned much about the facts on the ground. My distinct impression is that the Israelis used this term themselves.

But facts on the ground cannot be meaningfully interpreted without proper principles. For example, Israel is much greener and has many more trees than the surrounding areas, even though all have the same climate and similar soils. This is directly because during the decades Israeli settlers spent irrigating the land, farming it, and planting trees, the Arabs did not.

Even now, the hostile Arabs in Gaza -- existing by the grace of Israeli moral paralysis and massive welfare payments from the West -- are building bombs to attack Israel rather than following its example and improving their own lot through hard work and long-range planning. Or supporting their terrorist leaders. Or tolerating those who do. Or not doing what they can to resist or leave forever.

Everyone knows these things, but since morality is so commonly thought not to apply to the matter of furthering human life, no moral import is granted to these questions. Instead, the "plight" of the "Palestinians" immediately nullifies all other considerations. They are in need -- never mind that it is largely their own fault -- and thus, Israel (and the West) must continue feeding this pack of wolves leering at them from such a short distance.

In one sense, this is a very simple situation. Israel should cut off all access from the "Palestinian" areas and the West should stop all aid. Access to the West or trade should be banned until the inhabitants renounce all hostilities towards Israel and agree to be militarily occupied until they propose a form of government that will not threaten Israel.

What "complicates" this situation are the dominant philosophies in the West. Pragmatists (and those influenced by Pragmatism) disavow any need for abstract principles to guide man's actions at all and, as such, make it impossible for many people to evaluate information available to all and draw proper conclusions. And altruism, the dominant morality, motivates the continued feeding of the wolves even in the face of their implacable hostility and the mortal threat they pose to Israel.

So despite many indications that there are clear moral differences overall between the people of Israel and those who plot and scheme against them from next door, these are swept aside, making many people unable to see for very long after the latest bombing that a state of war exists between Israel and "Palestine".

The combatants, their sympathizers, and those who might work against them if they saw clearly that it would be in their interest do do so -- all of these are allowed to live as if the actions of "Palestine" are a normal part of daily life. In the meantime, Israel has to adopt elaborate and intrusive security measures so its citizens can remain alive even as they maintain the fiction that "Palestine" deserves statehood rather than the choice of supervised reform or annihilation.

In the sense that, say, check-in procedures at the Israeli border or the political arrangements within Palestine involve many details, they really are complicated. But in a moral sense -- in the sense that there is a clear, if very unpleasant course of action for Israel and the West to take, the only complications arise from an inability or refusal to recognize that course of action brought on by Pragmatism and altruism.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 8:00 A.M. on June 16, 2008.

Ted Kennedy vs. Universal Healthcare: A Double Irony

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Someone sent me the following excellent OpEd on Senator Ted Kennedy and universal health care from the June 9, 2008 edition of Capitalism Magazine. It was written by Dr. Richard Parker, a Dallas physician. I've already sent this to interested physicians on my own mailing list and will also be posting it to the FIRM blog.

Ted Kennedy vs. Universal Healthcare: A Double Irony
by Richard Parker M.D. (Capitalism Magazine; June 9, 2008)

Senator Ted Kennedy recently underwent an operation to remove a brain tumor at Duke University. Besides Hillary Clinton, no other politician in America has devoted as much of his political career to the enslavement of physicians. The name Ted Kennedy (and Clinton) is nearly synonymous with the anti-concept "Universal Healthcare."

It was reported that Senator Kennedy chose his surgeon for this difficult operation after very careful research and consultation with his physicians in Boston. Using his free and independent judgment, Kennedy chose Dr. Allan Friedman, a surgeon renowned for his experience and expertise in the field of neuro-oncological surgery.

No government regulations restricted the Senator in this extremely important personal choice. Facing a life threatening illness, no bureaucrat forced the Senator to chose his surgeon nor hospital from a government "approved" list--a list not generated by Kennedy's independent and free judgment, but by "public servants" whose expertise is not Kennedy's life, but the arbitrary and byzantine politics of "pull", of favors owed and collected, of political pressure groups and the bitter reality of healthcare rationing. No, Kennedy was not forced to sacrifice his life, liberty nor property in the name of the so-called "greater public good."

The surgeon he chose, Dr. Allan Friedman, has freely devoted his life to treating patients with neurological tumors. Dr. Friedman wasn't coerced into medicine; his patient load is not presently rationed nor stipulated by bureaucrats. Dr. Friedman was still free to accept Senator Kennedy as his patient and was free to choose the best surgical approach for treating the Senator's tumor. No bureaucrat stipulated how many patients per day, week, month or year Dr. Friedman may accept and treat during the long decades he spent perfecting his life-saving skill. Dr. Friedman is still relatively free to use his expert judgment in the face of the awesome responsibility he assumes with each patient he treats.

Ironically, however, if Senator Kennedy succeeds in his ambition of forcing a government financed (and therefore government controlled) healthcare system onto the American people, all these life altering and personal freedoms will vanish with the strokes of a few pens in Washington. This is the reality of any government enforced healthcare system—both patients and physicians will face a vast increase in taxation and the loss of additional property (fines) and liberty (imprisonment) if they violate the morass of arbitrary and contradictory regulations that will descend on a healthcare industry that is already all but crippled with the slow but steady creep of government controls over the past 50 years.

In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand predicted one of the most pernicious aspects of so-called "Universal Healthcare"—the refusal of talented minds to be forced at the point of a gun. Dr. Hendricks, a neurosurgeon in Atlas Shrugged, describes the indignation that lead him to leave medicine:

"Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? . . . I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything--except the desires of the doctors . . . . I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind--yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating room table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn."

Ted Kennedy will undoubtedly continue his push for the enslavement of physicians with what remains of his political career. What he will evade, of course, is that his surgeon chose to go to medical school and spend decades training for and practicing neurosurgery in what is still the freest healthcare system in the world. What Kennedy will refuse to acknowledge is that under his vision of "Universal Healthcare" he would never have had the absolute freedom to choose his surgeon, nor would his surgeon have had the absolute freedom to treat him.

The fact that "Universal Healthcare" will destroy what freedoms in American medicine still remain (and thus all the Dr. Friedman's under whose virtue the fate of Kennedy's brain now lies), will be not only evaded but explicitly denied—never mind that Kennedy chose not to go to one of the many "industrialized countries that provide 'Universal Healthcare'." Apparently, Kennedy ignored Michael Moore's claims of the excellent healthcare provided in other "industrialized" communist and socialist nations that provide "Universal Coverage", albeit this is precisely what Kennedy seeks to bring to America at the point of a gun.

While the successful outcome of Senator Kennedy's operation depended on freedom, Kennedy has devoted his political career to legislating freedom out of existence. This is an irony that America's news media will evade, much less report.

* * *

Richard Parker is a practicing physician in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He holds and MD from Brown and MD from Yale University. He has published in the scientific literature and has written Op-eds for the Ayn Rand Institute and Capitalism Magazine.

After I posted this to the FIRM blog, I received the following e-mail from a physician who trained in Canada but now works in the US. I am posting this with his permission:

When I was a radiology resident at the University of Toronto, Toronto General Hospital ran short of funds. In order to ration funds the radiology department closed the MR scanner at 5 pm even for emergencies.

One evening however I was paged to interpret an emergent MRI. A member of parliament had developed acute back pain and we fired up the MRI scanner and performed the study. He happened to be the head of the NDP (New Democratic Party). The NDP is the socialist party and evolved from the CCF party. The CCF party was founded by Tommy Douglas, the original creator of Medicare [the Canadian socialized medical system]!

Socialist leaders usually are the best fed and get the best medical care. It is easy to support socialist ideals when you are so rich that taxes and budgets are irrelevant.

Thank you for sharing this.

From Flat World To Free World

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yaron Brook has a new column on Forbes: From Flat World To Free World. It begins:

Considering the many jubilant boasts by "flat world" devotees in recent years, you might have been tempted to regard economic globalization as a juggernaut, powered by inexorable forces of technology and history.

Big mistake. There's no preordained direction for the world economy--only an undetermined future that will take the shape of whatever ideas and policies we choose to uphold. The lack of an intellectual defense of capitalism has left free markets vulnerable. "The power of the state is reasserting itself," said Daniel Yergin, co-author of The Commanding Heights and a free-market optimist, in The Wall Street Journal recently.

I particularly liked the explanation for the retreat of globalization. So... read the whole thing!

The State of the War

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute has written a good op-ed on the disturbing state of American foreign policy vis-à-vis Islamic terrorism. Read it for yourself:

Bush's War Policy: The Top Campaign Non-Issue?
By Elan Journo

It's staggering to think that as we march toward a seventh year at war, Iraq (let alone Afghanistan) is hardly an issue on the campaign trail. Of course, nobody has forgotten about the war. But there's been no substantive debate on it, either.

John McCain, echoing many conservatives, regularly touts the supposed gains of the "surge." Upon his return from visiting Iraq, he declared, "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground." Barack Obama even grudgingly conceded, at one point, that the "surge" was working. And when liberals do challenge President Bush's war policy, they complain not about its goals, but about the crushing financial cost.

The war's a backburner issue in the campaign because--strange as it may sound--critics and cheerleaders of the President's policy judge it by the same spurious benchmark. They focus myopically on whether insurgents have been kicked out, for the time being, from one street, in some neighborhood of Baghdad. If that's success, then the issue can be pushed out of mind.

But nobody would have bought that as a vision of success, in the devastating aftermath of 9/11. And nobody should buy it now. The only rational benchmark for success is whether Washington's policies have made the lives of Americans safer from the threat of Islamists. Judged by that standard, Bush's war policy is an abject failure.

Bush vowed to "pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism," and warned that either "you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Bush's war policy, however, was not to target the greatest threat, but instead to minister to those in greatest need. It was to show compassion to oppressed Iraqis and Afghans, to raise them out of poverty, to give them elections.

Six-plus years into a "war on terror," Washington has done nothing to counter the spearhead of the global jihadist movement, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States has allowed it to grow stronger. Iran races to acquire nuclear weapons; it taunts and threatens our naval vessels; it arms and trains insurgents in Iraq in attacking Americans; it backs jihadists across the region--all with impunity.

What about Iraq? Four thousand-plus U.S. troops died so that hostile Iraqis could elect a new gang of anti-Americans to sit in Baghdad's parliament. Iraq's government is still dominated by Islamist groups, which still operate death squads, and it is still deep, deep in Iran's pocket.

Across the Middle East, Washington campaigned for elections in the strongholds of various Islamist groups--such as Hamas and Hezbollah--that it should have worked to destroy. Many people, true to their ideological beliefs, voted to give these groups more political power. Naturally, the jihadists feel encouraged. According to a new study, the Iranian-backed Hamas has amassed at least 80 tons of explosives in Gaza since 2007, and it has also got its hands on anti-tank weapons. So expect another Islamist war emanating from the terrorist proto-state of "Hamas-stan," which Bush's policy helped create.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Director, al Qaeda is gaining in strength and prepping new recruits who can blend into American society and attack domestic targets. Jihadists are now fighting to re-conquer Afghanistan, and to "Talibanize" large patches of Pakistan. The Afghan-Pakistan border, reports the National Intelligence Director, "serves as a staging area for al-Qaeda's attacks in support of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as a location for training new terrorist operatives, for attacks in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States."

This is what Bush's war policy has achieved: an enemy that has no fear of us, that spits in our face, and that is gearing up to kill more of us.

This is what a "compassionate" war policy, aimed not at defeating our enemies but at serving the welfare of Iraqis and Afghans, had to achieve. It is a policy that put their lack of freedom and lack of wealth ahead of our moral right to end the threat of Islamist aggression. Bush's policy held that it was our duty to enable these hostile peoples to vote their political conscience--while evading the fact that so many avidly support jihadist goals.

Shame on Republicans for promising to stay the same disastrous course and toss thousands more troops onto the sacrificial pyre of Iraq. Shame on Democrats for squandering the opportunity of a campaign year to offer us a real Plan B--an alternative policy that would actually combat state-sponsors of terrorism.

Each of us deserves--and should demand--more of our leaders. We deserve a foreign policy that truly upholds our right to security.

Elan Journo is a resident fellow at theAyn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Copyright (C) 2008 Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.

For an in-depth analysis of the paralyzing effects of altruism in the ongoing war against Islamic totalitarianism, I strongly recommend "Just War Theory" vs. American Self-Defense by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein.

The Year of the Long Knives: Part IV

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The knives came out and flashed to sink into the very fresh corpse of Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. The occasion was the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis on June 7. According to Jim Kincaid, writing for Accuracy in Media on June 8, the conference was more a "Barack Obama for President rally" than a conference.

"Several speakers, including Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps, used the Obama campaign slogan, 'Yes, we can,' as they urged the thousands of 'progressives' in the audience to bring 'change' to Washington, D.C."

Clinton's offense was having voted for the war in Iraq. Also, she is perceived by the far-lefties attending the conference as a part of the Washington establishment they believe Obama wants to "change." The fact that she conceded defeat and endorsed Obama in the name of party unity counted for nothing with many of the conference speakers.

"Meanwhile, a Canadian, Naomi Klein, who writes for the British Guardian and The Nation magazine, told the conference that Hillary Clinton's endorsement of Obama was 'a partial victory for the forum gathered here tonight.' She said that Clinton was the candidate of the establishment and that her 'coronation' had been derailed....Referring to Clinton's loss, Klein said, 'Somebody paid a price (for Iraq) at last.'"

From all appearances, however, the criticisms of Clinton were mere rationalizations of resentment that she was not left-wing enough. The attendees preferred Obama because he is as far left as anyone could get without being the nominee from Communist Cuba.

Kincaid might have subtitled his report, "They Smell Blood." While Clinton earnestly wishes to enslave the medical profession and shackle all Americans to universal health care (as does Obama, else why would Ted Kennedy endorse him?), the "progressives" at the Media Reform conference wish to sink their shivs into the First Amendment and shackle American minds. Obama as president, they believe, will be completely amenable to such a policy, and there is no reason to doubt their confidence in him. (In a premonitory echo of how the would-be wardens of our minds will seek to scuttle freedom of speech, see The New York Times article of June 12 here.)

Kincaid errs when he claims that "media reform," such as disinterring the so-called Fairness Doctrine, would target conservatives and Republicans exclusively for statutory gagging. The gauleiters of the various tribes and warring factions and the judicial sensitivity police would gag everyone but the politically correct.

"'It's time to put a cop back on the beat,' demanded Democratic FCC commissioner Copps, in framing the 'media reform' debate. With Obama in the White House, Democrats would have a majority on the commission," and the new chairman of the commission would be an Obama appointee. Couple that with the predicted majorities of Democrats in both houses of Congress, and de facto censorship would be guaranteed (besides much other horrific socialist legislation; see FrontPageMagazine's "The Democrats' Platform for Revolution" of May 5).

"As they see it, of course, the 'cop' on the beat is going to be the FCC, regulating and dictating media ownership rules, enforcing broadcaster compliance with the 'public interest,' and control over the flow of news and information over the Internet. The latter is euphemistically and misleadingly called 'net neutrality' or 'Internet freedom.'"

The fine-print catch is that federal regulation of the Internet (or of any venue of speech or expression) would be, in practice, neither "neutral" nor "free." Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and other "public" Internet carriers already cooperate with totalitarian governments in limiting or blocking access to the Internet. How much resistance do you think they would offer a "changed" Washington against performing the same policing service in the U.S.?

"Klein, a critic of what she calls 'disaster capitalism,' said that Obama's support from Wall Street financial interests was a problem and griped that Democrats, rather than Republicans, were now getting more campaign dollars from the 'arms industry.'"

She and her appreciative audience also want Obama to get the U.S. out of Iraq now, and to create a "Green New Deal."

Which brings us to Wall Street and the support its denizens are giving Obama. The AIM article reveals:

"The 'media reform' movement has been funded by Democratic moneybags George Soros, a billionaire and convicted inside trader, and liberal foundations such as the Wallace Global Fund, named for FDR's pro-communist Vice President Henry Wallace."

Unlike Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who have elected to perform penance for their financial success by pouring their fortunes into the bottomless pits of altruist humanitarianism with the conscious, stated goal of dissolving their wealth, Soros is actively funding by the millions of dollars the conversion of this country from a semi-free welfare state into a full-scale, totalitarian one. Given the rabid, virulently anti-freedom, anti-man, anti-capitalist nature of the organizations he subsidizes (and which would not exist but for his money), such as MoveOn and Media Matters, such behavior cannot stem from anything but a burning malice. He is their chief "angel" and Barack Obama's major financial enabler.

Soros calls the U.S. "fascist," and has likened President Bush to Hitler, but it is fascism his so-called philanthropy is fueling in the U.S. If one reads his biography or any of his political books, it would appear that he does not know the difference the Nazism he survived in Hungary and the communism he escaped in 1947. Or rather, he disapproves of tyranny imposed by one country on another, but an indigenous democratic tyranny receives his blessing. If the "people" vote for it, then it must be okay.

The Investor's Business Daily (IBD) on September 20, 2007, ran an excellent exposé on Soros, "George Soros: The Man, the Mind and the Money Behind MoveOn." About the man who boasts of giving away $400 million a year, it stresses that:

"He calls himself a philanthropist and has given away $5 billion of his now $8.5 billion fortune through his principal vehicle, the Open Society Institute. The institute, in turn, has passed cash on to far more radical groups, such as MoveOn.org."

"He has handed $3.1 million to the left-wing Tides Foundation, which funds organizations such as the Sea Shepherds, Earth First! and the Ruckus Society, that have condoned or engaged in eco-terrorism."

"He also gave at least $150,000 to ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the left-wing group best known for pushing minimum wage hikes, for illegal-immigrant amnesty and harassing Wal-Mart."

"Soros additionally finances groups best described as helpful to terrorists. Since 1998, he has given the American Civil Liberties Union $5 million to empower criminals, including lawsuits on behalf of terrorists' 'civil rights.' Soros' Open Society Institute gave $20,000 for the legal defense of radical attorney Lynne Stewart. She was convicted in 2002 of abetting jailed terrorists after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."

In one of its closing remarks, the IBD editorial concludes:

"...[P]ick any cause that seeks to weaken the U.S. and it's not hard to find Soros' name on its list of financial backers. Most of these causes are financed by relatively small amounts, but that's all that's needed to make trouble. And without the cash, countless bad ideas would have no presence in American political debate at all."

Nor would there be any Barack Obamas to tout such bad ideas with a "passion" and "sincerity" that disguises their fundamental evil. Obama would have no presence in that debate if it were not for the gifts that keep on hurting the U.S. from the likes of Soros.

Naomi Klein need not worry that support for Obama by Wall Street financial interests will corrupt her messiah. A man with no first-hand convictions, or who is a patchwork quilt of second-hand beliefs, can be influenced, but not corrupted. How can one corrupt a vacuum? And George Soros is not Obama's only enabler.

A New York Magazine article of April 16, 2007, "Money Chooses Sides," reveals the kinds of men and their money who have funded the Obama and Clinton campaigns. It drools over the pecking order of fund-raisers among the wealthy and the politically connected, in a sliding scale that begins with Soros and descends to the mere millionaires. Most of them are investment bankers, hedge fund managers, or executives of financial institutions. The article focuses on Obama's and Clinton's efforts to raise enough to fund their primary campaigns.

It is a disgusting exposé of the low caliber of men - every one of them a people-oriented, amoral pragmatist - who would loose a dictator on the country without a second thought. Most of the men who are willing to donate to Obama's campaign or work to raise millions for it do it because Obama makes them feel good. He's against the war in Iraq, he's for "change," he's for "elevating" the tone of politics. Not once in the entire article does any one of them express an idea.

The New York Magazine article offers several portraits. Here is one of Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS Americas:

"What Wolf, 45, was looking for was a candidate who could change the tenor of our politics. 'I'd like my children to soon see a president give a State of the Union address and have both parties applaud,' he tells me. But Wolf was looking, too, for a campaign where his presence would be 'impactful,' for a candidate who would take his calls, listen to his ideas. He wanted to feel the love. And while Wolf refuses to speak ill of Clinton, it's clear he doubted that, no matter how much dough he raised, he'd ever be feeling it from her." (Italics mine.)

When Wolf had a private dinner with Obama, Wolf gushed: "I felt so honored to be sitting down with him for two hours on an occasion like that [when Bush announced the troop surge in Iraq.], knowing that he was going off to be interviewed on television later."

Translation: "The rock-star messiah touched me! He deigned to dine with me! He loves me! He won't hurt me when he's in office!"

Wolf might sing a different song if Obama and his "changed" Washington decide that the government should regulate all commercial investments and speculation. Hitler "loved" his industrialist and banking supporters, too, but, as Leonard Peikoff notes in The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, he proceeded to fit them with the fetters of National Socialism when he assumed power. (See p. 247, Stein & Day hardcover.) I say might, because Wolf and his fund-raising colleagues, including George Soros, may on the other hand feel very comfortable with the arrangement.

Comfortable, but keeping a wary eye out for the long knife that is always, and necessarily - given the nature of power politics - somewhere behind someone's back, one reserved especially for friends, supporters, and other useful and thoughtless idiots.

International Olympic Committee Should Ban Saudis

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

The War Non-Debate

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

Editor's Note: The good news is that I have some measure of Internet access. The bad news is that to use it, I had to fire up my wife's Windows machine and use Internet Explorer. I feel like I'm stretching my neck just to log on to my throw-away email account, let alone my blogging account or main email. So it'll just be a brief emailed post today, and if you've left a comment or tried to email me recently, I'll reply as soon as I can.

Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute has just written a piece that in the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court decision concerning the captured foreign combatants being held at Guantanamo should make you really mad. He discusses the lack of debate about the current war during this election cycle, which would be bad enough in any time of war, but which the results of the policies of the past six years makes unforgivable.

Journo aptly summarizes the Bush "war" policy as, "not to target the greatest threat, but instead to minister to those in greatest need. ... to show compassion to oppressed Iraqis and Afghans, to raise them out of poverty, to give them elections," and then he lays out the inevitable results of that policy:

Six-plus years into a "war on terror," Washington has done nothing to counter the spearhead of the global jihadist movement, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States has allowed it to grow stronger. Iran races to acquire nuclear weapons; it taunts and threatens our naval vessels; it arms and trains insurgents in Iraq in attacking Americans; it backs jihadists across the region--all with impunity.

What about Iraq? Four thousand-plus U.S. troops died so that hostile Iraqis could elect a new gang of anti-Americans to sit in Baghdad's parliament. Iraq's government is still dominated by Islamist groups, which still operate death squads, and it is still deep, deep in Iran's pocket.

Across the Middle East, Washington campaigned for elections in the strongholds of various Islamist groups--such as Hamas and Hezbollah--that it should have worked to destroy. Many people, true to their ideological beliefs, voted to give these groups more political power. Naturally, the jihadists feel encouraged. According to a new study, the Iranian-backed Hamas has amassed at least 80 tons of explosives in Gaza since 2007, and it has also got its hands on anti-tank weapons. So expect another Islamist war emanating from the terrorist proto-state of "Hamas-stan," which Bush's policy helped create. [bold added]

As for the Supreme Court decision, I am not familiar enough with it to comment on whether it was correct, considering the rationale used by the Bush administration for holding and trying the war prisoners by military tribunals. But something in one or both of the branches of government involved is clearly horribly wrong.

Our government hasn't the will to fight a real war, it won't let our soldiers kill the enemy, and now, apparently, it won't even take prisoners!

-- CAV

Updates

6-14-08: Corrected formatting of post.

Tim Russert, RIP

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

You can't fake who you are on TV. Especially if you're on week after week for decades, the real you comes out. Tim Russert always seemed like a man without pretensions or agendas who wanted to get the truth from those in power. He would ask tough questions of those on the left and right.

One got the sense that he was a man of deeply held values. He loved Buffalo, where he grew up, he loved his father, he loved the game of politics, he loved sports and he loved America.

Tom Brokaw's voice betrays his emotion a few times as he announces Russert's death, but his professionalism holds the day and he does not break. It must have been a difficult task.

Health Care Horror Story from the UK

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The June 2, 2008 Daily Mail tells the tragic story of another patient who was denied medical care from the British National Health Service (NHS) because she wanted to pay with her own money for chemotherapy drugs that the government wouldn't pay for.

Linda O'Boyle, a 64-year old grandmother as well as an occupational therapist for the NHS developed colon cancer, and had been receiving treatment from the government health service. But when she wanted additional medication to help prolong her life (medication which was recommended by her consulting oncologist), she was told by the ironically named "National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence" that it was too expensive and she couldn't receive it.

She then attempted to pay for the necessary medication out of her own funds. But when she did, the NHS said that they would cut her off from access to government care (care which she had already paid for in the form of taxes all her life).

According to the article:

Mrs O'Boyle... is believed to be the first person to die after being denied free care because of 'co-payment', where a patient tops up treatment by paying privately for extra drugs.

Her husband Brian O'Boyle, who is also a manager for the NHS system noted:

"I offered to pay for it but was told I couldn't continue with the treatment we were receiving at the hospital -- The consultant was flabbergasted -- he was very upset."

He added: "I was always very anti private treatment. But everything she had wasn't working and it was a last resort."

Unfortunately, he had to learn about the evils of the socialized medical system they both worked for the hard way, when his own wife's life was on the line.

According to the article:

Medical experts say the ban on co-payment is one reason why Britain has one of the worst survival rates for cancer in Europe.

But the government is adamant on maintaining this cruel and immoral policy on egalitarian grounds:

Co-payment was blocked last year by Health Secretary Alan Johnson because he claimed it would create a two-tier Health Service.

...A spokesman for the Southend trust said: 'It is explained to the patient that they can either have their treatment under the NHS or privately but not both in parallel.'

This is the real evil of socialized medicine -- it punishes people for acting in their own self-interest and on the advice of their physicians. In the British system, the government would rather that people be equal than that they actually live.

Or as blogger Michael Williams puts it, "But at least rich people and poor people all get to die evenly! Too bad they have to die at the level of poor people, though."

(Cross posted from WeStandFIRM.)

Death by Superstition

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As today is the supposedly unlucky Friday the 13th, it's a fitting day for a reminder of just how deadly magical thinking can be. Via the New York Times comes a chilling example of albinos in Tanzania hunted down and slaughtered for their supposedly magical properties:

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania -- Samuel Mluge steps outside his office and scans the sidewalk. His pale blue eyes dart back and forth, back and forth, trying to focus. The sun used to be his main enemy, but now he has others. Mr. Mluge is an albino, and in Tanzania now there is a price for his pinkish skin. "I feel like I am being hunted," he said.

Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania -- and across Africa, for that matter -- believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.

...

As if being born with a serious genetic disorder wasn't enough of a burden in life, these people face the prospect of a gruesome death thanks to primitive superstition -- in a scientific age when men have walked on the moon. It's almost unfathomable.

I'd rather be in Texas.

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

I woke up this morning contemplating a bumper sticker -- one containing the words in the title of this post. There will be no graphics since I am using a very slow telephone modem and posting via email. But I am sure that if you looked, you could find one out there on the web. I am not the bumper sticker type. I will not risk damaging the paint job of my car if it is new, by placing one anywhere other than on a metal bumper -- Do new cars have those anymore? -- or on a window. I am a little freer with old cars, but that said, I think I have used a total of two bumper stickers in my entire life. In addition, I simply dislike most bumper stickers, and this borders on disliking the idea of bumper stickers in general. Why? For one thing, most of them violate my sense of aesthetics. For another, as an intermittent series of posts here would indicate, years of seeing people attempting to "educate" others about their almost uniformly incorrect and immoral political views have caused me to regard the practice with distaste. (The series is titled "Idiot Bumper Stickers". You can find them on the "Favorite Posts" page. No link today -- I am composing this on my laptop for a cut-and paste later, and there's ZERO wireless access here....) But I have nevertheless tattooed my car twice. The first time, I was a soccer-playing kid in high school, and had a sticker that simply read "Soccer" on the metal bumper. The "o" was a soccer ball. The second time was after the Islam-inspired atrocities of 2001. I placed an American flag decal on my rubberized plastic bumper. Expressing my allegiance to civilized values in some way was simply too important. The bumper sticker originated as tourist advertising, and owners of popular attractions would apply them to the cars of tourists while they they were having fun and the cars sat in their lots, if I recall correctly. (If I remember to do so, I'll link to some reference here. If I don't, you'll get this parenthetical comment. Damned telephone modem. And dammed recollection!) The bumper sticker was and is a form of advertising. This fact is crucial when considering whether a bumper sticker really is appropriate or trying to understand the phenomenon of the political bumper sticker. What is an advertisement? It is an attempt to make others aware of something, motivated by the values of the advertiser. Some guy running a campground obviously wants to attract more paying customers. The American patriot wants to rally his countrymen to its defense. Those are obvious enough. But what about the left-winger who slaps a "Coexist" sticker on his car -- as if people attacked while minding their own business need to hear that? Or the fundamentalist who proclaims that abortion "stops a beating heart" -- as if this standard of the sanctity of life wouldn't make slaughtering cattle just as wrong as murder? They, too, are motivated by their values, or at least what they imagine to be their values. The novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand made an astounding and revolutionary connection as an ethicist: She connected the notion of "value" to the process of a living being remaining alive, and thereby connected morality to life, uniting the moral and the practical for the first time in millennia of philosophical and proto-philosophical (i.e., religious) thought. All philosophies have something to say about how man should act, and those which answer the question of what constitutes the good will hold that man ought to do what is good. Ayn Rand alone was able to connect morality to life by asking why man needs morality at all. Doing so, she realized that it is because man hasn't instincts, but a rational mind that needs to explicitly answer the question, "What must I do to survive?" This is why man needs an ethics and, incidentally, why a proper ethics will be egoistic, but Rand explains this better than I ever will.... A value, for a living thing, is something it needs to survive. Man, having no automatic way to seek values, needs a proper morality to guide his pursuit of values. I will note here that in this context, Rand defined "value" as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep". Guided by a rational morality, one would act to gain or keep only those things that would actually further his life. One's professed "values" would ... really BE values. But let's get back to the popular understanding of the term "values". In the parlance of our times, "values" is a package-deal of valid elements (i.e., things we really do need to live and prosper, such as political freedom) and elements that really ought to be examined further (i.e., morality, which most people unfortunately equate to a specific kind of morality, altruism). Indeed, since "values" is an abstraction and most people are not in the habit of connecting their abstractions to reality or checking them against reality, the valid part of the package deal is used to sucker people in to committing the human (self-)sacrifice that is the essence of altruism. Consider almost any discussion of moral ideals or "values" today and you will see what I mean. The leftist will speak of "tolerance" when he hopes for you to remember the benefits of individual freedom as he slips egalitarianism in under the radar. (The left has ridiculed values as being religiously-based, which they are not, for so long that few who aren't religious will openly speak of having values.) A theocrat will speak of "values" such as faith, sacrifice, and obedience while pretending that America, which often ridiculed the first and rebelled against the second two, was founded on them. Now consider the idea that to survive, man must act rationally to further his own self-interest. In the sense that an altruist will act to gain or keep it, having others subscribe to or at least profess his code of morality is a value to such an individual. In the sense that self-sacrifice diminishes one's ability to live, having anyone at all adhering to altruism to any degree whatsoever is not a value to anyone. So it is in the former sense that the altruists advocating leftist or theocratic political causes are advertising their values, but in the latter sense that they have a tough sell. Reality and rational self-interest are not on their side. Leftists, being animated on the whole by a visceral hatred of America, can't offer actual rewards to people who adopt their causes. You will live more poorly if you go green. You will die or worse if you give Islamic totalitarianism any quarter. They can't sell their ideas based on the results of carrying them out, so they attempt to paint those who disagree with them as horribly, inexcusably, and morally wrong. It is no accident that leftist bumper stickers come across as preachy and snide at once. Hatred isn't just not a family value, it's a tough sell. Shame (and often improper shame at that) and social intimidation are about all they have to work with. And on the right? Religion is a confused lump at once of man's highest aspirations and some of the deadliest teachings he has ever conceived, and it is irrational at base. The fact that you can't come up with a rational argument in the space of a bumper sticker is no problem to someone whose whole philosophical system is built on faith and obedience. The things needn't even make sense. "God is love." "Jesus plus one cross = 4given" (or something like that). Religion so permeates our culture that theocrats need only remind others of religion to have some hope of that person returning to the fold. Religion also poses against the left -- which is collectively the biggest "useful idiot" in history -- as the defender of actual values, and as the path to happiness. Some religious bumper stickers (such as anti-abortion stickers) are, to be sure, as preachy and nasty as anything from the left. (I would suspect that this would tend to happen mostly when the obvious implications of religion are anti-life.) But many enlist the aid of actual values for the cause of spreading religion. It is our current cultural state, I think, that I really hate, and not so much the bumper sticker itself. The bumper sticker, as an advertisement can be harmless fun, and plenty of people use them in this way. And if you are really telling others about something of value to you, isn't part of the whole point that you might occasionally get the chance to explain what you like so much about that value? Might an advertisement of an actual value lead to some interesting conversations or lead to meeting interesting people? I'm really going to miss Texas. Perhaps mentioning this fact will occasionally allow me to explain what about it I will miss, and lead me to meeting the occasional Texan in spirit as I go about my business in Massachusetts. If don't learn that it is less un-Texan than I think it is, I can at least interject an, "It doesn't have to be this way!" into the sound bytes that constitute roadway conversation. And if I do, the Bay Staters, will smile and understand. -- CAV

Singleton on Libertarians

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Alex Singleton of the British Telegraph made the following interesting statement about the British Libertarian party:

What it will do, like the Libertarian Party has done in the United States, is to tarnish the libertarian brand, allowing the crazier aspects of libertarian thinking to come to the fore, and achieving nothing of any merit.

I don't know anything about the UK Libertarian Party so I can't comment on them. But there is the interesting issue (which Singleton did not pursue) of why the American LP has allowed the "crazier aspects" to dominate.

A good place to start is Ayn Rand's own critiques of Libertarians here and here. Peter Schwartz has made similar comments here.

If a political party purports to defend "liberty", but it takes the position that no proper philosophical grounding is necessary to defend that view, and hence it welcomes "supporters" who advocate all manner of good and bad philosophical views as equal allies in the cause of liberty, what will be the natural outcome?

Just as Gresham's Law states that, "Bad money drives out the good", the philosophical equivalent is that bad ideas will drive out the good whenever their respective adherents attempt to cooperate as a political party.

Over time, the inevitable demands to compromise will cause the better people to lose to the worse ones, and the crazier elements of the party will soon dominate. As Ayn Rand astutely noted:

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

The same is true of compromise between those who trade in genuine currency and those who trade in counterfeit money. Or between genuine defenders of freedom and the faux defenders.

For further discussion on this interesting topic, I also recommend her thought-provoking essay, "The Anatomy of Compromise" from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Here's one brief excerpt to whet your appetite:

The three rules listed below are by no means exhaustive; they are merely the first leads to the understanding of a vast subject.

1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.

2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.

3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

The Glamorous Obama

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

(Note: While I wrote the following before Greg's amazing post on What's So Special About Obama, it does offer a serious answer to the questions, "What's the big deal about Obama? Why does he have such an effect on so many people?")

In a recent blog entry, Virginia Postrel plausibly argues that Obama's supporters -- including pundits who ought to know better -- often claim that he must not really believe his own stated policies because of his glamor, not charisma. She draws the distinction as follows:

Charisma is a personal quality that inspires followers to embrace the charismatic leader's agenda (an agenda that, in the original sense of the word charisma, is seen as divinely inspired.) Glamour, by contrast, encourages the audience to project its own yearnings onto the glamorous figure. ...

When voters motivated by charisma disagree with the leader they've backed, they support him anyway and possibly even change their minds about the right policy course. When voters motivated by glamour disagree, they become disillusioned and angry.

That explains much of Obama's current appeal, despite his lack of any substantial record in politics, I think. People are projecting their wishes and hopes on him, rather than endorsing any concrete policies or clear vision. If that sounds interesting to you, you might want to read Postrel's a slightly longer article on the topic for The Atlantic.

The Year of the Long Knives: Part III

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Describing the political climate of Weimar Germany in Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, Ian Kershaw notes that Germany was “a Republic without republicans.” One could just as well say that of the United States today, our republicans being of the intellectual and moral caliber of the Founders but who are entirely absent from the modern American political universe. No politician today advocates life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; the Declaration of Independence and the original Constitution, sans the statist amendments to it, may as well be indecipherable Turkish runes.

A friend noted that while the Democrats wish to destroy the American Revolution, the Republicans seem to have forgotten it ever happened, which explains not only why they have never been able to defend it, but have been complicit in its steady destruction. Republican presidential candidate John McCain is not any kind of reactionary alternative to Barack Obama. If the current political environment can be likened to a coin, then heads it is altruist, tails it is collectivist, and McCain is simply the ridged edge on its side.

Noting the appeal of Hitler early in his career, Kershaw writes:

“The crowds that began to flock in 1919 and 1920 to Hitler’s speeches were not motivated by refined theories. For them, simple slogans, kindling the fires of anger, resentment, and hatred, were what worked. But what they were offered in the Munich beerhalls was nevertheless a vulgarized version of ideas which were in far wider circulation.” (p. 137)

Ideas, however, notes Kershaw, “held no interest for Hitler as abstractions. They were important to him only as tools of mobilization.”

To date, has there been any measurable difference between that and what has passed for “debate” between any of the current presidential candidates? Other than the usual bromides, clichés, and populist tripe widely circulated in our schools, the news media, and in the culture in general (e.g., universal health care, taxing corporate profits, “fighting” global warming), has Clinton, Obama or McCain enunciated a single idea?

I challenge anyone to find any substance in the following excerpts from Obama’s speech to Virginia’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond, on February 9:

“Each of us running for the Democratic nomination agrees on one thing that the other party does not – the next President must end the disastrous policies of George W. Bush. And both Senator Clinton and I have put forth detailed plans and good ideas that would do just that.”

What policies of Bush have been disastrous? What detailed plans and good ideas would end them? Would more controls and regulations of the economy correct Bush’s and Congress’s controls and regulations? Would the Democrats have fought the “war on terror” any differently from the Republicans? Would our foreign policy have meant more or less appeasement of our committed enemies? As Ayn Rand would put it: Blank out.

“But I am running for President because I believe that to actually make change happen – to make this time different than [sic] all the rest – we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, Independents, and Republicans together to get things done. That’s how we’ll win this election, and that’s how we’ll change this country when I am President of the United States.”

What change? Isn’t “divisive” politics a good thing, as opposed to one-party rule with no dissension or opposition permitted? Is everyone supposed to put aside his principles and convictions and mobilize for “national unity”? In all of his rhetoric, Obama employs the same appeal to emotion that Hitler employed all throughout his career. The similarities are spine-tinglingly ominous: Kershaw writes:

“While Hitler basically appealed to negative feelings – anger, resentment, hatred – there was also a ‘positive’ element in the proposed remedy to the proclaimed ills. However platitudinous, the appeal to restoration of liberty through national unity, the need to work together of ‘workers of the brain and hand,’ the social harmony of a ‘national community,’ and the protection of the ‘little man’ through the crushing of his exploiters, were, to go from the applause they invariably produced, undeniably attractive propositions to Hitler’s audiences. And Hitler’s own passion and fervor successfully conveyed the message – to those already predisposed to it – that no other way was possible, that Germany’s revival would and could be brought about; and that it lay in the power of ordinary Germans to make it happen through their own struggle, sacrifice, and will. The effect was more that of a religious revivalist meeting than a normal political gathering.” (p. 150, Italics mine)

There are no substantive differences between Obama’s rhetoric and Hitler’s. Or even between Hillary Clinton’s and Hitler’s. Hillary also views society as an organic whole ripe for “remodeling.” All three regard the individual as a part of that “social organism” who would be permitted his few peccadilloes but otherwise answerable to society or the State. Substitute a few appropriate words, and Kershaw’s description could just as well be of Obama’s rhetorical technique.

Are not many voters drawn to Obama’s “passion and fervor,” are they not “predisposed” to “change,” do they not want to help “make it happen”? Have so many been brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing they are “little” enough to deserve the protection and guidance of the state? Is listening to Obama a form of religious “rapture”? As for the “restoration of liberty,” what the Germans got in exchange for “helping to make it happen” certainly was not liberty. Doubtless the concept of liberty is as empty and meaningless to Obama as it was to Hitler (as it was to countless Germans).

Senator Ted Kennedy wielded his own “long knife” and stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back by endorsing Obama. Unless one thought this was Kennedy’s perverted way of bolstering Clinton’s chances, his knowing that his endorsement was the kiss of death – given Kennedy’s known reputation for collectivist elitism, venality and corruption – the endorsement made sense. If there was one way he could punish America for not going socialist at his beck and call, it was to back the man he believes could deliver on that vengeance. Kennedy’s endorsement was a major signal to other prominent Democrats that they should follow suit. And they did.

Another “kiss of death” endorsement came from ailing Fidel Castro of Communist Cuba. In a newspaper column he stated that he had “no personal rancor” toward Obama, but “if I defended him I would do a huge favor for his adversaries.” Shrewd policy. Keep the cat in the bag.

Yet another “kiss of death” endorsement came from Ahmed Yousef, a political advisor to Hamas, the terrorist organization and now government of the Palestinians, who last month opined:

“We like Mr. Obama and hope that he will win the election. I do believe that Mr. Obama is like John Kennedy, a great man with great principles. He has a vision to change America, to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with domination and arrogance.”

None of these dubious endorsements has troubled Obama, the news media, or the Ivy League. One large segment of the American population that finds Obama just as compelling and attractive is academia. There are few “republicans” in this venue, but plenty of Marxists, existentialists, left-liberals, deconstructionists, and multiculturalists who also condemn the U.S.’s “domination and arrogance,” and the U.S. as a free country as a matter of habit.

“Barack Obama appears to be winning the faculty lounge straw poll – his presidential campaign is cultivating academics and pacing the field in collecting cash from them,” reported the Politico site last August in a report, "Professors have a crush on Obama.”

“Obama, whose website features an ‘Academics for Obama’ page, raised nearly $1.5 million in the first half of the year [2007] from people who work for colleges and universities, according to an analysis of campaign finance data by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.”

In the Politico report, Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor, said that Obama seems to have “a special appeal among academics, particularly those at four-year institutions. Even at places like UVA, which are more conservative than most, it’s overwhelmingly Obama.”

Sabato went on to explain that the Democrats can always count on academics to contribute money and to vote the straight Party ticket, and so are not courted as vigorously as are wealthy donors.

On April 2, Michael Barone, a political commentator, in an exhaustive analysis of the Democratic primaries, “In Terms of Geography, Obama Appeals to Academics and Clinton Appeals to Jacksonians,” provided a clue to why academics are so reliable:

“Academics and public employees (and of course many, perhaps most, academics in the United States are public employees) love the arts of peace and hate the demands of war. Economically, defense spending competes for the public-sector dollars that academics and public employees think are rightfully their own. More important, I think, warriors are competitors for the honor that academics and public employees think rightfully belongs to them.”

There is no need to burden most American academics with “refined theories,” either. They will settle for a vulgar slogan over a syllogism any day. They are already committed to “remodeling” and “changing” America, and have been imparting those imperatives to students for decades. Barack Obama was one of those students.

The fourth and final part of this commentary will focus on the capitalist “big money” behind Obama.

Around the World Wide Web 66

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

1. A woman attempts actually to teach in public schools. She fails.

2. He's apologized, but Rupert Everett's statement about today's soldiers being wimps reveals him to be a very stupid man. It's funny coming from this pansy.

Famous liberal actors suffer from living in a double cocoon -- the liberal cocoon and their circle of yes-men and ass-kissers. Within that double shell their idiotic statements go unchallenged.

3. The Clinton Age is not over. The vampire is not dead until you drive a stake through his heart and the morning sun incinerates his body to ashes. Hillary Clinton will be back.

4. Life expectancy in the US continues to rise.

Here are the 2006 life expectancy figures for each of those groups:

• White women: 81 years
• African-American women: 76.9 years
• White men: 76 years
• African-American men: 70 years

Can we conclude from this that social security, in part, is a system in which African-American men subsidize white women?

5. This is dumbfounding:

"Should Congress quit funding for Public Television and NPR, Public Radio?"

A man named Richard Guess from someplace called Charlestown says, "Congress should continue paying for it because if they don't, the taxpayers will end up paying for it."

O.M.G.

6. Edward Cline examines Barack Obama in depth.

Bush's War Policy: The Top Campaign Non-Issue?

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Bush's War Policy: The Top Campaign Non-Issue?

By Elan Journo

It's staggering to think that as we march toward a seventh year at war, Iraq (let alone Afghanistan) is hardly an issue on the campaign trail. Of course, nobody has forgotten about the war. But there's been no substantive debate on it, either.

John McCain, echoing many conservatives, regularly touts the supposed gains of the "surge." Upon his return from visiting Iraq, he declared, "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground." Barack Obama even grudgingly conceded, at one point, that the "surge" was working. And when liberals do challenge President Bush's war policy, they complain not about its goals, but about the crushing financial cost.

The war's a backburner issue in the campaign because--strange as it may sound--critics and cheerleaders of the President's policy judge it by the same spurious benchmark. They focus myopically on whether insurgents have been kicked out, for the time being, from one street, in some neighborhood of Baghdad. If that's success, then the issue can be pushed out of mind.

But nobody would have bought that as a vision of success, in the devastating aftermath of 9/11. And nobody should buy it now. The only rational benchmark for success is whether Washington's policies have made the lives of Americans safer from the threat of Islamists. Judged by that standard, Bush's war policy is an abject failure.

Bush vowed to "pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism," and warned that either "you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Bush's war policy, however, was not to target the greatest threat, but instead to minister to those in greatest need. It was to show compassion to oppressed Iraqis and Afghans, to raise them out of poverty, to give them elections.

Six-plus years into a "war on terror," Washington has done nothing to counter the spearhead of the global jihadist movement, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States has allowed it to grow stronger. Iran races to acquire nuclear weapons; it taunts and threatens our naval vessels; it arms and trains insurgents in Iraq in attacking Americans; it backs jihadists across the region--all with impunity.

What about Iraq? Four thousand-plus U.S. troops died so that hostile Iraqis could elect a new gang of anti-Americans to sit in Baghdad's parliament. Iraq's government is still dominated by Islamist groups, which still operate death squads, and it is still deep, deep in Iran's pocket.

Across the Middle East, Washington campaigned for elections in the strongholds of various Islamist groups--such as Hamas and Hezbollah--that it should have worked to destroy. Many people, true to their ideological beliefs, voted to give these groups more political power. Naturally, the jihadists feel encouraged. According to a new study, the Iranian-backed Hamas has amassed at least 80 tons of explosives in Gaza since 2007, and it has also got its hands on anti-tank weapons. So expect another Islamist war emanating from the terrorist proto-state of "Hamas-stan," which Bush's policy helped create.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Director, al Qaeda is gaining in strength and prepping new recruits who can blend into American society and attack domestic targets. Jihadists are now fighting to re-conquer Afghanistan, and to "Talibanize" large patches of Pakistan. The Afghan-Pakistan border, reports the National Intelligence Director, "serves as a staging area for al-Qaeda's attacks in support of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as a location for training new terrorist operatives, for attacks in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States."

This is what Bush's war policy has achieved: an enemy that has no fear of us, that spits in our face, and that is gearing up to kill more of us.

This is what a "compassionate" war policy, aimed not at defeating our enemies but at serving the welfare of Iraqis and Afghans, had to achieve. It is a policy that put their lack of freedom and lack of wealth ahead of our moral right to end the threat of Islamist aggression. Bush's policy held that it was our duty to enable these hostile peoples to vote their political conscience--while evading the fact that so many avidly support jihadist goals.  

Shame on Republicans for promising to stay the same disastrous course and toss thousands more troops onto the sacrificial pyre of Iraq. Shame on Democrats for squandering the opportunity of a campaign year to offer us a real Plan B--an alternative policy that would actually combat state-sponsors of terrorism.

Each of us deserves--and should demand--more of our leaders. We deserve a foreign policy that truly upholds our right to security.

                                                                                                      

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The Year of the Long Knives: Part II

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Discussing Adolf Hitler's rise from a "provincial hot-head and rabble-rouser" in the 1920's to his electrifying effect on "disaffected" Germans in Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, Ian Kershaw poses the paradox of how, among countless other "hot-heads" and "rabble-rousers" of the time, Hitler was so successful in establishing a rapport of anger and hatred, and then solves it at the same time:

"This in itself suggests that what had changed above all was the milieu and context in which Hitler operated; that we should look in the first instance less to his own personality than to the motives and actions of those who came to be Hitler's supporters, admirers, and devotees - and not least his powerful backers - to explain his first breakthrough on the political scene. For what becomes clear - without falling into the mistake of presuming that he was no more than the puppet of the 'ruling classes' - is that Hitler would have remained a political nonentity without the patronage and support he obtained from influential circles in Bavaria. During this period, Hitler was seldom, if ever, master of his own destiny. The key decisions - to take over the party leadership in 1921, to engage the putsch adventure in 1923 - were not carefully conceived actions, but desperate forward moves to save face - behavior characteristic of Hitler to the end." (pp. 132-133)

Senator Barack Obama, former Illinois state senator, former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and junior doyen of the Chicago welfare and community services machine, is also such a political nonentity - one of among dozens in the political spectrum who hanker for the limelight and the power - who could not have risen to the top of the Democratic Party establishment without the patronage, endorsement and support of influential circles within and outside the Party. It is because he is such a zero - a zero willing to be anything to all - that he was picked, groomed and promoted to run for the office of President of the United States. Regardless of the image Obama projects, that of an independent force master of his own destiny - and it is a manufactured image, to be sure - it is the nature of modern American politics that he could not have moved a single square on that chessboard without being covered by more powerful pieces.

Why would he among all those others be chosen to become the point man for the collectivist movements that wish to take full control of the country? Because he is malleable, chimerical, and can be virtually anything to anyone who claims to be a victim of something. Also, he has demonstrated his ability to overcome his many liabilities with the cooperation of a fawning news media.

For one thing, he is deceitful. He has denied being a Muslim and has emphasized his Christian background, or has alternately downplayed his youthful Muslim studies. Well, according to Islam, once a Muslim, always a Muslim, even in a state of apostasy, even if one converts to another faith but retains the full name of Barack Hussein Mohammed Obama. But, this is not important. What is important is that he thinks it is enough of a liability that he is willing to fudge on the truth. Daniel Pipes discusses in detail Obama's religious background in a FrontPage article of April 29, "Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood."

Another liability is his family history. He is obviously of mixed racial parentage, but that is neither here nor there. Also irrelevant is whether or not his mother, "Stanley" Ann Dunham, and his father, Barack Obama Sr., were ever married in Hawaii or elsewhere. There is a record of their divorce (Obama Sr. left Ann and Barack to pursue a degree at Harvard, and then returned to Kenya) but no record of their marriage. Barack Junior's mother later married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager and practicing Muslim, which accounts for Obama's time in Jakarta. They were divorced in the late 1970s. Obama has a half-sister, Maya, of whom nothing has ever been said by him, but he has "advertised" his relatives in Kenya.

Obama has claimed that his mother was the daughter of a conservative Methodist or Baptist family from Kansas. However, her parents were left-wingers whose Unitarian church near Seattle was so sympathetic to communism that it was nicknamed "the little red church."

Obama's mother also attended a high school near Seattle that was notorious enough to be investigated by the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee for its connections to the American Communist Party. Here Ann Dunham absorbed literature-destroying "critical theory" and Karl Marx, and was so influenced by the leftist curriculum that she became and remained a radical leftist. Doubtless young Barack was exposed at home to nothing but his mother's political opinions, in addition to "black" history and "black" literature. It would account for his knee-jerk collectivist rhetoric. And, it would not be much of a stretch of the imagination to suppose that, had Ann Dunham ever attended stateside universities, she might have become a member of the Students for a Democratic Society or the Weather Underground. But, see her "public service" career here.

She would have been old enough and "revolutionary" enough to join the likes of Mark Rudd, the SDS or Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground. Doubtless she cheered them on from afar as they protested the Vietnam War, brought anarchy to America's streets with demonstrations, and eventually turned to terrorist bombings of the Capitol building, the Pentagon, and the State Department. She did not get to meet Ayers and Dohrn, two of the Weathermen terrorists yet to be charged with the bombing murder of a San Francisco policeman, but her son "Barry" did. They are friends of his and pillars of Chicago's left-liberal establishment, Ayers a "distinguished professor" of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and sometime education advisor to Mayor Richard Daley, Dohrn associate professor of law at Northwestern University School of Law and director of Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center.

Ayers still serves on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that develops community groups to help the poor (echoes of Saul Alinsky again), as had Obama for nine years until 2002. Ayers, however, claims Obama, is just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." Ayers promoted Obama in a 1995 fundraiser when he ran for the state senate. Nice neighbors if you can get them.

Obama complained when someone brought up his close association with Ayers that "the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense." Well, yes, it does make sense. Ayers and Dohrn should have served hard time for their actions, just as Ted Kennedy, now the patriarch of the American Borgias, should have served hard time for manslaughter. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have a penchant for having close "associations" with lawbreakers who later teach law and justice or become lawmakers.

Obama was a close friend and political crony of Alice Palmer, a black Illinois state senator from 1990 to 1995, and an open admirer of the Soviet Union who served on the board of the World Peace Council, a Soviet front. Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn often attended political meetings at Palmer's Chicago home. Just neighbors.

(Hillary Clinton also has radical terrorist skeletons rattling in one of her many scandal-stuffed closets, the ones whose criminal sentences her husband commuted in his last days of office, before they both made off with the White House silverware and other public valuables - but that's another story. Click here for that episode.)

After he had unofficially won the Democratic race for the nomination, on June 4 Obama broadcast a message of triumph to his supporters, which said, among other things:

"It's going to take hard work, but thanks to you and millions of other donors and volunteers, no one has ever been more prepared for such a challenge."

Prepared, that is, "to turn the page on the policies of the past and bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face...This is our moment. This is our time." Obama's chief deceit is that he is just a clean-cut knock-off of John F. Kennedy of yore, loaded with good intentions and plausible-sounding solutions to everything.

Prepared? Michelle Malkin cites some instances of just how ill-prepared Obama is. Click here for a measure of his wisdom and respect for the truth. Did you know there were fifty-seven states in the union?

One of British playwright Terence Rattigan's early plays was a satire on Hitler, Follow My Leader. Unfortunately, what is happening in America today is not satire. Barack Obama wishes the country to follow his lead. Regrettably, there are too many Americans ready and willing to.


Part Three of this commentary will delve into Obama's political "angels."

What’s So Special About Obama

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

What's the big deal about Obama? Why does he have such an effect on so many people?

Finally, someone has shown the courage to lay it all out for us! Writing in his column for the San Fransisco Chronicle, Mark Morfurd reveals that "Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway."

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history. ...

Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try.

Good grief.

My First Bush Bulb

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

On my last trip to Wal-Mart, I inadvertently did something I swore I'd avoid until it was absolutely impossible: Purchase a "Bush Bulb".

How? These sickly, twisted mercury-infused votive candles of the Church of Global Warming are impossible to confuse with incandescent Edison Bulbs, right?

Right, unless they come disguised as real light bulbs and you're in a hurry.

We have an odd back room off the kitchen where I keep my home brewing supplies, my roll-top desk, and, within some unobtrusive white cabinets, my tools. It's as close to a "man cave" as I've ever had. I have even hosted the occasional poker game there, hence we call it "the poker room".

Its main source of illumination is a flood light located in a recessed housing on the ceiling. With months to go before I head up to Boston to join my wife, the bulb went out and I added "Flood Light" to my Wal-Mart list.

As has been usual lately, I was in a hurry when I went there. The selection of flood lights was limited to a bunch of very expensive bulbs that touted how long they'd last.

I'm leaving soon. Why should I spend extra money on a bulb that will last for years?

But that's all they had and I needed light back there. I didn't want to waste time going on another trip for the sake of one bulb. Into the cart it went.

On returning home, the first thing I saw when I picked up the package of the bulb to replace the flood light was a Bush Bulb peering out at me from behind the lens of its Edison Bulb-like housing.

Damn. Had I purchased a Bush Bulb? The packaging confirmed that I was about to desecrate my man cave. The 15 watt bulb was touted as "equivalent" to the 65 watt bulb I was going to replace it with. It wasn't going to be my place for long and I'd get to see for myself what the light bulbs our government is about to force us to use really can do.

At least for this application, the bulb is not " equivalent". There is a seconds-long delay between when you turn on the switch and when you get light. When you do, the light is dim for a period of something like a minute or two. Apparently, this bulb has to warm up a little. This means I can't depend on it to give me light instantly if I need it. After it warms up, the light is similar-enough to what I had before that it will do, but the unnecessary delay would ordinarily make this bulb unacceptable to me. Were I not leaving soon, I'd replace it.

And were President Bush and Congress not intent on handing out marching orders in the name of "saving" "the planet", I would be free, from now on, to benefit from the knowledge that, as flood lights, CFL bulbs are inferior to incandescent bulbs.

But President Bush and Congress are not about doing their job, which is to protect the individual rights of the American Citizen. This is too bad, for if they won't permit us to make a simple decision like buying a light bulb, how else will they harm us down the road?

I can't trust them on small matters. And yet, they can compel me through force to do their bidding on large matters. This is the essence of what is wrong with American government today. This has got to change, but it will not do so until the people re-learn the importance of individual rights and the proper purpose of government. Only then will Americans demand a government that isn't so intrusive that it will screw them out of making the right decision even on something so simple as which light bulb to buy.

-- CAV

The Limitations of Correlation-coefficients

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Warning: All the IQ data-values below are fictional. They're contrived to demonstrate the underlying point about statistics and about inheriting IQ.

Hypothetical Study: Suppose we get a list of all the adopted kids in a small geographical area: say one suburban city. We choose a single age -- say 10 years old. From this list, we randomly select a sample. Assume we remove from our sample only those kids who are now orphaned, but every other kid in our sample agrees to participate in our study. We administer a standard IQ test to every child in the study, and to the adoptive parents of the child and to the biological parents.

Hypothetical Findings: Next, suppose we measure the correlations and find the following:

... that, the IQs correlate perfectly between kids and their biological parents (Coefficient=1.0), but only a little (low positive, 0.3) between kids and their adoptive parents. Here's the graph of the data, for 5 kids:

The data points for 5 kids are shown. For example, Kid-1 has an IQ of 105 (X-axis), his biological parents have an average IQ of 92 (Y-axis), and his adoptive parents have an IQ of about 113. Kid-2 has an IQ of 110, and so on.



The straight lines show "best fit". One can see the perfect correlation (going through all the blue data points) between IQ of kids and their biological parents. On the other hand, the red data points are all over the page, with a noticeable positive correlation, but a lot of dispersion from the "best fit".




What conclusions could an we draw from such a (hypothetical) result?

• Could we sat that inherited ability (e.g, genes) is a strong causal factor in IQ (as measured by standard tests)? Wouldn't the correlation of 1.0 indicate this?


• Secondly, can we conclude that "environment factors" do not have a large impact on a child's IQ? Wouldn't the low positive correlation indicate this?

Neither of these conclusions is warranted by the data.

Scale is abstracted away: A correlation-coefficient does not reflect the absolute numbers of the two series. It abstracts away the particular unit of measure. For instance, suppose I have two series: people's weight and height. The correlation between these two will be the same, no matter what units I use for weight (pounds, kilograms or ounces).

Similarly, when we are calculating the correlations between the IQs, though we use the same scale, we are ignoring the absolute values of each series. Imagine a hypothetical, where something about the process of adoption gives kids a higher IQ. Imagine that adopted kids end up with 25% higher IQs than we have assumed above. Still, the correlations would remain the same: the kids would still have perfect correlation with their biological parents and a low positive with their adoptive parents.

Meaning: If we did get a perfect correlation in an IQ experiment like the one above, it would hint strongly to inheritance being a factor. However, it says nothing about how important a factor. What if further research found that the reasons behind that perfect correlation did indeed represent causation? Even so, it would not speak to the importance of inheritance in the final IQ.

Another example: Here's another example to illustrate this point. Suppose we look at the wealth of five men at the start and end of various years. Suppose we find that they grow their wealth at about 5% each year. Suppose we also find a strong positive correlation between the starting and ending wealth in any year.

Now, instead, suppose that during the last year each man placed a large bet on a game; but, each bet was "large" only in relation that man's wealth. Suppose, each man won, and ended the year with nearly twice the wealth he began with. Now, at the end of the year, their wealth is still positively correlated to their wealth at the beginning. Based on their "inheritance" of that last year, we would have expected their wealth to grow 5% each, but instead it grew by 100%. The betting was responsible for that, not the inheritance. Yet, the inheritance still demonstrates the same high positive correlation. Only by looking at the actual scale do we find the relative importance.

Summary: The take-away is this: be careful gleaning more information from a correlation coefficient than it is designed to tell. Many experiments are designed to ask something like this: "if we assume that all other things are equal, does varying this single factor have an impact?" Well and good. However, the other factors -- that have been abstracted away -- may be the crucial ones that vary in the relevant real-world situation.

No Wonder the Arabs Are So Angry!

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

Police Corruption in Chicago

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Chicago police officer Keith Herrera (and FBI informant) has reportedly described some extremely shocking and disturbing behavior amongst members of the elite Special Operations Section of the Chicago Police Department.

For instance, these officers lied in official police reports to frame suspects for wrongs they did not actually commit:

As an example, Herrera said, a drug suspect might be listed in a report as refusing to surrender his gun even if he had dropped the weapon.

..."Creative writing was a certain term that bosses used to make sure that the job got done," Herrera, referring to fabrications on police reports...

Nor was this just the action of a few rogue officers. Officer Herrera reports that this was a policy explicitly sanctioned and encouraged by his superiors on the squad:

"I didn't just pick up a pen and just learn how to (lie). Bosses, guys that I work with who were older than I was... It's taught to you."

Even worse, some officers on that squad committed crimes themselves, including stealing and plotting murder against fellow police officers:

Herrera said he began stealing from people he arrested but decided to go to the FBI after the group's leader proposed killing two colleagues who were threatening to testify against him.

He said the ring leader, who has been charged with plotting a murder for hire, told him in a conversation he recorded for the FBI that there would be a "paint job" and if it was done right "we'd never have to paint again."

Herrerra blames this atrocious behaviour on the so-called "war on drugs":

Keith Herrera told CBS' "60 Minutes" that pressure to get drug dealers and their guns off the streets led first to cutting corners and then to crime.

If Herrera's accusations are correct, there are a couple of deeply disturbing implications.

1) When the government stops protecting individual rights and instead prohibits activities that should be legal (such as selling drugs), it creates an atmosphere ripe for police corruption. We saw that in the early 20th century during the era of alcohol Prohibition, and we are seeing it in the current "war on drugs".

(Just to be clear, I believe that selling, purchasing, and consuming drugs like heroin and crack cocaine is both irrational and immoral, but should not be illegal.)

2) Without a clear set of objective principles to guide the actions of law enforcement agents, they can quickly become agents to the whims of their political superiors, first "cutting corners" and later committing actual crimes.

If a culture of unprincipled pragmatism and unthinking obedience to superiors becomes widespread in the law enforcement community, then this becomes extremely dangerous. In particular, it creates a ready training ground for thugs willing to enforce the wishes of any future dictatorship. This is the end result when law enforcement agencies are not guided by the proper principles, such as respect for individual rights and the rule of objective law.

Under a proper system of government, law enforcement agencies will be guided by the following principle as articulated by Ayn Rand:

...[A] government holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. It has to hold such a monopoly, since it is the agent of restraining and combating the use of force; and for that very same reason, its actions have to be rigidly defined, delimited and circumscribed; no touch of whim or caprice should be permitted in its performance; it should be an impersonal robot, with the laws as its only motive power. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled. ("The Nature of Government", The Virtue of Selfishness)

Hence, if these officers are indeed guilty of the alleged crimes, I hope they meet the same impartial, objective justice that all criminals deserve.

A Misunderstood President

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

George W. Bush misunderstands himself:

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq....

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”. He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”. He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

Bush has it completely wrong. His warlike statements showed the world America's moral purpose. Along with his tax cuts they are the best thing he did in his eight years in office. Those who mistook Bush as a "guy really anxious for war" would have thought ill of him no matter what he said. Those people oppose any assertion of America's national self-interest.

This is another example of the worst side of George Bush: his lack of intelligence. He picked up on the American sense of life in response to 9/11 and made some good statements at that time -- but he never intellectually understood what he was doing. Now he misunderstands -- and misunderestimates -- himself.

Worse, he is going out as an appeaser and will do damage to American foreign policy through his ignorance.

...He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

...

The unilateralism that marked his first White House term has been replaced by an enthusiasm for tough multilateralism. He said that his focus for his final six months in office was to secure agreement on issues such as establishing a Palestinian state and to “leave behind a series of structures that makes it easier for the next president”.

Sounds to me like a total collapse to whatever the liberal State Department wants.

Thus does eight years of the bumbling Bush administration end. It was a time of holding action, a prelude to something far worse to come.

Anyone Got an Aspirin?

By Gina Liggett from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

We now have our two major-party presidential candidates. I think I'm going to be sick.

I've been reading about John McCain's philosophy: "To sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and to sacrifice your life to the eminence of that cause, is the noblest activity of all." Here's Barack Obama's ethic: "...we have an individual responsibility to be our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper. Each of us will have to accept responsibility...(for) sharing some measure of sacrifice."

Excuse me while I get an antacid.

Obama plans a "new course for America," where "fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity go hand in hand;" and the "chance to get a college education should... be the birthright of every American." McCain wants to "help Americans hurting from high gasoline and food costs" and "provide help to those hurt by the housing crisis." And they both want to set limits on so-called greenhouse gas emissions.

Oh, my pounding headache!

There are more--many more--platitudes on each candidate's list for saving America from itself. How is it that we have two opposing presidential candidates who are fundamentally indistinguishable?

Both McCain and Obama came of political age in a legislature where
business-as-usual is exemplified by the porkfat feeding frenzy upon American wealth and individual rights.

These politicians arrogantly believe that good government has the compassion and wisdom of a good parent. Both believe good citizens faithfully accept whatever sacrifices are extorted from them. Both believe that government has the right to meddle in every conceivable aspect of our lives.

McCain and Obama believe in the process they practice.

Neither candidate advocates anything close to the principle Ayn Rand identified as the correct role of government in a free society:

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence..The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."

As America moves closer to more statism, at least we can get some symptom relief by promoting rational ideas.... and by taking a whole lot of antacid.

New Law Trashes Genetic Science

By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

New Law Trashes Genetic Science
June 11, 2008

Irvine, CA--It will soon be illegal for health insurers to charge higher premiums for individuals whose genes reveal a predisposition to a future disease or disorder. President Bush recently signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, which takes effect next year.

"This law tosses useful genetic science into the trash can," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "It requires insurers to ignore scientific evidence that would otherwise influence who gets insurance and what premium is charged. To the extent that such forced blindness to important facts results in greater payouts, everyone's premiums will rise to make up the difference.

"This is just the latest in a series of laws requiring insurance companies to ignore pre-existing conditions when making coverage and premium decisions. Such laws contradict the essential nature of insurance and violate the contractual rights of everyone involved. The product called health insurance would not exist but for the fact that serious illnesses are both unpredictable and expensive. The peace of mind that flows from adequate insurance is made possible by insurers who profit by collecting premiums from large numbers of people who will never become very ill.

"On a free market, an insurer offering to cover people who are already sick, or genetically predisposed toward a certain disease, would charge higher premiums to reflect the greater anticipated costs of treatment. But laws like this mandate a lower-than-market premium, with the difference made up by people without pre-existing conditions or significant risk factors. That difference is nothing but a forced welfare transfer from the more healthy to the less healthy.

"Under this scheme, insurance companies are transformed into ersatz government bureaus dispensing welfare benefits to the needy. Such legislation illustrates the insidious, essentially fascist process by which creeping government regulation molds insurance companies and their customers into civil servants who slavishly implement political decisions handed down from Washington, D.C. or from state capitals.

"Health care is not a right. It is a value offered for profit by physicians, hospitals, and drug companies. Likewise, health insurance is not a right but a value offered by insurers for profit. Insurers and the employers or individuals who patronize them have a right to set their own terms of trade. This includes an insurer's right to refuse coverage or charge elevated premiums for individuals with pre-existing conditions or genetic indications of future disorders."

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The Year of the Long Knives: Part I

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934): Purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler. Fearing that the paramilitary SA ["Assault Division"] had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS [the paramilitary "Protective Echelon"] guards to murder the organization's leaders, including Ernst Rohm [head of the SA]. Also killed that night were hundreds of other perceived opponents of Hitler, including Kurt von Schleicher and Gregor Strasser. (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia)

Now that Barack Obama has unofficially won the Democratic presidential nomination, it is time to place this ambitious man under a microscope for closer examination. In a morbid sense, it has been instructive watching the two contending power lusters, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Obama, slash and gouge each other over what has seemed endless months of vying for the nomination, the one touting her alleged "experience" and the other touting his alleged political "innocence" and desire for "change."

So strong is their appetite for supreme political power that each has been willing to say anything, do anything, deny anything. Each has purged his campaign of supporters and workers and past associates, all of whom at various points in the primaries embarrassed the candidates or jeopardized their chances with the electorate and the party delegates.

And each has committed numerous memorable gaffs in speeches and off-the-record comments, gaffs that revealed either their ignorance of facts and of history and even of geography, or a willingness to lie in the rush to preserve a patina of veracity, experience, and trustworthiness.

Unlike the nocturnal bloodletting of the Nazis, the candidates' purgings have been public and bloodless and will continue to be that right up to the November national election. But, it will be purging nonetheless, all for the sake of maintaining images and stances of originality, wisdom and farsightedness. Obama has the most to purge. And unlike Rohm and Strasser, who charged Hitler with abandoning socialism in favor of a "personality cult," Obama will continue to purge anyone who provides substantive evidence that, beneath his glib but vapid rhetoric and blasé promises, he is promoting full-scale socialism, and that promoting it has always defined his political activism and ambition.

The "untouchables" are not completely cast out as liabilities, however, and will not mind the ostracism. They will simply stay out of sight until Obama thinks it opportune to invite them back into the open (if and when he wins the White House). It is important to remember that while Obama has "repudiated" them in nationally broadcast public ablutions, they have not repudiated him. Neither Rev. Jeremiah Wright nor Father Michael Pfleger has publicly cursed Obama for calling their ranting sermons "disgusting," nor has any black or white liberal supporter of Obama upbraided him for discarding the racist, rabble-rousing clerics. This fact seems to have eluded his supporters and the news media, who are giddily eager to absolve him of any wrong-doing, misconduct, or having had a less than sterling past and political career. It is another form of Kennedy or Clinton idolization, one that sweeps all evidence of scandal, criminal behavior, and malfeasance beneath an impenetrable rug of irrelevancy. He makes us feel good, so never mind his "missteps."

Why link an infamous chapter of Nazi history to any discussion of Barack Obama's character and political aspirations? Because the parallels of his rise in politics and that of Hitler's in Germany are too eerie in their particulars to ignore. To be sure, Obama's rise has been, in terms of violence, betrayal, and criminal skullduggery, entirely blameless. Never mind his early career as a "community" advocate, activist, and ward-heeler in Chicago and his somewhat lackluster but leftist record in the Illinois legislature and the U.S Senate. Obama himself is a man of no convictions, and a man of no convictions, as a consummate second-hander, will adopt the "greatest good for the greatest number" as his moral compass, whether or not he is running for office.

A man with no sense of self-identity will become what others wish him to be, or what he believes others wish him to be. The empty vessel will naturally gravitate to crowds to be filled to the brim with their hopes, dreams, wishes, sores and frustrations. Only then will he feel complete. He will become their servant, their icon, to be placed on an altar to be worshipped and prayed to in self-effacing idolatry.

So it is with Obama. It helps to explain why so many Americans are excited by him, and why he exudes a confidence not evident in any of the other candidates. His admirers cannot be excited by him because of his ideas; he has not expressed anything as solid as an idea (and clichés, bromides and populist tripe are not ideas), and his confidence grows as the number of his admirers and supporters grows.

Obama has not deliberately posed as a miracle-working Messiah who promises to cure all ills for all complainants; that is how his supporters and most of the news media view him, but he is willing to meet them halfway. And his race, fundamentally, is immaterial, regardless of what importance others attach to it. Virtually every other candidate has mouthed the same bromides, clichés, and populist tripe as Obama. Why they have worked for Obama and not much for anyone else (especially not for Hillary Clinton, whose sincerity is transparently phony and calculating) can be ascribed to his "charisma," his public speaking skills, and the apparent sincerity of the "feelings" behind his words.

Feelings. This is the key to understanding Obama's appeal. Ian Kershaw, noted biographer and professor at the University of Sheffield, wrote a two-volume biography of Hitler that is distinguished from other such biographies in that it not only dissects Hitler, but the German culture that made him possible, and indicts both. It is the only non-Objectivist biography of Hitler that comes near to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (1982) by offering a philosophical explanation for the Nazi phenomenon (it stops just short of reaching the same conclusions). Kershaw, in Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (1998), makes a number of important observations about how and why Hitler was able to succeed, first in rising through the tumultuous politics of the 1920's, then in seizing power with the approval of the political establishment and the electorate.

"It was as a propagandist, not as an ideologue with a unique or special set of political ideas, that Hitler made his mark in these early years. There was nothing new, different, original, or distinctive about the ideas he was peddling in the Munich beerhalls. They were common currency among the various völkisch groups and sects and had already been advanced in all their essentials by the pre-war Pan-Germans. What Hitler did was to advertise unoriginal ideas in an original way. Others could say the same thing but make no impact at all. It was less what he said, than how he said it that counted." ("The Beerhall Agitator," p. 133.)

Hillary Clinton can advocate "national unity," "change that matters," "working together," "social justice" and all the other unoriginal floating abstractions as often as can Obama, but make no lasting impression, because she has never been able to communicate sincerity. Obama can make that impression, especially when he couches those vague "yearnings" in what Saul Alinsky, the Chicago sometime communist community activist whom both Clinton and Obama have emulated in terms of applying his political tactics, called "middle class language." (Alinsky's influence on Clinton and Obama is discussed in "Hillary Clinton's Uncle Ellsworth" and its "Postscript," August 8 and 10 respectively.)

In the contest for the Democratic nomination, Obama more successfully applied Alinsky's "principles" of political activism than did Clinton. Clinton has always talked down to her supporters and would-be voters; Obama talks to his supporters and would-be voters as an equal with many things in common with them. That is his subtle but no less calculating posture of camaraderie with the "oppressed" and "disenfranchised."

Kershaw shortly afterwards explains the confidence Hitler exuded.

"...[T]he response of the beerhall crowds - later the mass rallies - gave him the certainty, the self-assurance, the sense of security, which at this time he otherwise lacked."

Similarly, Obama almost glows when facing a wildly enthusiastic crowd. In one-on-one interviews with television reporters, however, he is soberingly banal and nondescript, almost as much as is Republican candidate John McCain.

Part Two of this commentary will examine the phenomenon of Obama's abrupt appearance on the national stage. The parallels there are also frighteningly eerie.

Why the New Atheists Can’t Even Beat D’Souza: Morality and Life

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

(Previous in the series: The Best and Worst in Human History, Science vs. Miracles, and The Gap in Religious Thought.)

In one of his debates with the "New Atheists," Dinesh D'Souza talked about how religion demands that we move outside of ourselves and sacrifice, and alleged that atheists chafe under the moral rules of Christianity that hold them accountable. He went on to say atheism is a rebellion against that—that atheism is not really an intellectual revolt against unsubstantiated ideas, but a moral revolt against rules they simply don't like being held to. While the New Atheists have a few sharp things to say to religionists on the moral front, their response has lacked the clarity and broad force of the fundamental response that needs to be delivered.

Values vs. Subjectivism

To begin with, D'Souza's charges do have some merit because his opponents stumble badly with respect to the issue of values. Most secular thinkers subscribe to the idea that values are somehow arbitrary, relative, based in emotions like empathy or in "intuitions," subject to a collective agreement of society or to the wishes or whims of the individual. In all its varieties, such subjectivism is open to criticism because there is, in fact, an objective basis for values: What makes something good or bad is that it furthers or frustrates the goals of some agent, and the most fundamental alternative any organism can face is life or death, existence or nonexistence as a living being. This is to say, life is the ultimate yardstick by which all subsidiary goals and alternatives are measured for their value-significance.[1] Sunlight and water are valuable to the plant, which turns its leaves and grows its roots to gain those things and maintain its existence. Nuts and shelter are valuable to the squirrel, as is avoiding hungry predators. And the same is true of people: the good is that which ultimately furthers our lives.

This perspective makes it clear that values are a factual concern, not a matter of arbitrary opinion or feelings or loose "intuitions." Merely hoping, feeling, or asserting something is good can't make it stand in a positive relationship to a life, any more than declaring 2+2=5 would make that so. The true and the good are determined by the facts of reality, and we avoid grasping the facts and acting accordingly at our peril. This is why any inwardly-focused, subjectivistic conception of values is necessarily bankrupt, a threat to human life.

But for those accused of rebelling against the moral absolutes of God, there is a silver lining to be enjoyed in this lesson: the religionists are themselves guilty of the sin of moral subjectivism. The essence of subjectivism is acting on whim—wishing, assuming, feeling, or declaring that facts will align themselves with thoughts and lives. Of course, this gets it exactly backwards: thoughts and lives must align themselves with the facts because facts are absolutes to be discovered, not declared. Merely hoping or asserting something is good doesn't make it so, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about the whim of a lone subjectivist deciding what is good or bad, the whim of an entire civilization voting on it, or the whim of a "supernatural" mind decreeing it. So the religious who claim to have an absolute morality are really only subjectivists of a supernatural stripe. The trouble for them is that their sort of subjectivism is just as false as any other: God telling Abraham that it is good to slay his innocent son Isaac doesn't make it good. His ordering the enslavement of entire peoples in the Old Testament doesn't make that good. On and on—the bottom line is that calling poison "food" doesn't make it nutritious, and pretending otherwise is to court destruction.

Determinism vs. Morality

Next, consider that we humans don't automatically act in support of our lives like squirrels and plants do. We have the power to freely choose to harm ourselves, to do the wrong thing, to not pursue the values we know are required for our existence as living organisms. We don't have instincts to tell us how to build shelter or to guide us in choosing food over poison—we have to learn those things, whether it means building a lean-to or erecting a skyscraper, and whether it means avoiding the wrong mushrooms or properly cooking a gourmet chicken dish to ensure it is not just tasty but safe. In fact, being the rational animal born without conceptual knowledge to act by, we have to learn everything we need to know about what furthers or harms our lives—and we have to choose to abide by that knowledge or perish.

This is especially important in the case of the most abstract, most fundamental knowledge that guides our choices and actions—the overarching principles which can help us to consistently pursue the values needed to maintain our existence and flourish over the span of an entire lifetime. These are moral principles like honesty, productiveness, justice, and integrity. Essentially, a proper morality consists of grasping these kinds of principles for the support of human life: i.e., recognize these basic facts and flourish, or evade them and suffer. Indeed, we need morality because we are conceptual animals. This is why moral codes have appeared wherever and whenever humans have appeared; the impact of moral values (both proper and improper) is tremendous precisely because of how fundamental they are to our existence, guiding us in myriad concrete circumstances great and small.

Just like any other matter of fact, we can approach morality rationally and scientifically, working to discover, validate, and teach each other about the relevant fundamental principles. Such a project is just as feasible—and just as challenging—as discovering and sharing the fundamental principles of engineering or economics. But of course this kind of development is only possible if we recognize the nature of the field in the first place, and this is another terrible weakness in the New Atheists and their scientific friends that prevents their giving a robust answer to the likes of D'Souza. The fashionable but unnecessary materialism and mechanistic determinism that is prevalent among them leads to the denial of the very fact that gives rise to morality in the first place: that we have volitional minds and our choices have life-and-death consequences. This denial has hobbled the scientific study of morality, leaving them looking in the wrong place and for the wrong thing. Notice the categorical error in such prominent programs as "evolutionary morality," where researchers look for moral behavior in the actions of nonvolitional, nonconceptual animals like mice and birds. And in how they search for the roots of morality in evolved behavior "modules" in brains, neglecting the basic fact that the moral is the learned and chosen—not the inbuilt and determined.[2] A sound philosophical foundation would help them be more productive and less prone to these sorts of distractions and blind alleys.

Sacrifice vs. Life

Finally, there is the most disastrous error confusing the scientific study of morality and stopping the New Atheists from knocking D'Souza out of the intellectual ring: they may challenge the existence of God, but they uncritically accept the moral standard that Christianity has injected into Western culture. That is, they accept the moral standard of altruism, literally "other-ism," a moral standard of sacrifice. This can be seen in various facets of their struggles to explain secular morality: they restrict the domain of morality to the social, they uphold sacrificial sentiments and principles of conduct, and they cite scientists who work to understand the biological basis for morality by searching for altruistic behavior in animals. (Though the scientists muddy the sacrificial core of the concept by also reflexively labeling life-serving, nonsacrificial social behaviors better characterized as cooperation, investment, and trade as "altruism." Sacrifice means surrendering a higher value for a lower one or no value at all—not giving up a lesser value to gain a greater one. ) Having assumed an altruistic standard of morality, the New Atheists and most secular thinkers are likewise led to the conclusion that determining the good merely comes down to determining who or what one has a duty to sacrifice to: neighbor, family, tribe, race, society, nation, leader, species, environment, god.

But sacrifice can't be the proper standard of morality. In fact, it represents the inversion of a proper moral code because giving up values is inimical to life. Fully and consistently adhering to such a standard means a swift death, so anybody accepting the moral standard of sacrifice lives only through the inconsistency of compromising and diluting it, mixing in elements of its antithesis. But managing to survive poison by mixing it with food doesn't render it part of a healthy diet, much less a central staple. Sacrifice per se is the opposite of the good, and seeking it is irrational, so the New Atheists will forever flail in trying to scientifically support or rationally justify such an approach to morality.

Genuine virtue consists in creating values, not in surrendering them—in focusing on reality and discovering a vaccine, in searching our spiritual nature and producing a play, in building a stadium, in raising a loving family, in digging a canal, writing a textbook, cooking a meal. This understanding drives the proper response to D'Souza's charge of rebelliousness: Any healthy person armed with the correct perspective would reject the subjectivist moral code of Christianity and its enshrinement of sacrifice because it is fundamentally set against human life and happiness. Instead, we should seek a morality that is truly absolute, reality-based, scientific, and which rejects human sacrifice in its every form and degree as irrational.[3] We should seek a genuine morality of life.


Notes:

1. Ayn Rand demonstrated this in her essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," which is explored in depth in the book, Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality by Dr. Tara Smith.
   
2. This is certainly not to say that evolutionary biology should stand mute on morality—values are rooted in the phenomenon of life, after all. I am arguing that scientists must take care to recognize the difference between the slate and what is written on it. For example, they might profitably investigate the evolutionary basis of what gives rise to and enables morality: the phenomenon of volitional, conceptual minds.
   
3. For further investigation of such a morality, I recommend the bite-sized introductory book, Loving Life by Craig Biddle and its scholarly yet accessible big brother from Cambridge University Press, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Dr. Tara Smith.

Letter to the Editor on Colorado’s Personhood Amendment

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Denver Post printed my letter to the editor on Colorado's proposed "personhood amendment" today.

As printed, it reads:

I'm disheartened that the "personhood" amendment has gathered the signatures required to appear on the ballot. A woman's fundamental right to control her own body, including her right to terminate or sustain a pregnancy, should not depend on majority vote. This would violate that right in spades, based on the fantasy that an embryo is equal to an infant. It would force a woman to provide life support to any fertilized egg -- even at the risk of her life and health and even if ruinous to her goals and dreams. It would make actual persons -- any woman capable of bearing children, plus her husband or boyfriend -- slaves to merely potential persons. That kind of moral evil has no place in a modern society; it deserves to be soundly defeated at the polls in November.

Diana Hsieh, Sedalia

I'm determined to work to defeat this insane amendment. Despite many more signatures than required to place it on the ballot, it seems unlikely to pass. Many religious leaders oppose it, and even even the three Catholic bishops in Colorado don't support it. Nonetheless, the risk is real, particularly given the religious fervor of the anti-abortionists. Moreover, it's an excellent opportunity to defend individual rights, particularly abortion rights, against demands for the imposition of Biblical law.

What's in a barrel of oil?

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

Many things, and when all is said and done, the total volume is more than the original 42 gallons of crude:

Figures are based on 1995 average yields for U.S. refineries. One barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil. The total volume of products made is 2.2 gallons greater than the original 42 gallons of crude oil. This represents "processing gain."

Another site explains "processing gain" as due to the addition of other chemicals during the refining process.

It's interesting to see what 4.2 grams of gold will get for you in an industrialized society! (HT: The younger of my brothers.)

-- CAV

Rush Limbaugh's Lost Purpose

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I first heard the name Rush Limbaugh when a friend of mine told me I should listen to him because, "he sounds like you." That piqued my interest. I found Rush on the AM dial. This was during the George Herbert Walker Bush presidency. This was before my nephew, who graduates high school this month, was born.

What a breath of fresh air Rush was! I had never heard anyone on the radio praise free markets and liberty. I had never heard a broadcaster expose liberals as the socialists they are. After getting the liberal point of view from the mainstream media all my life, Rush felt like a long overdue voice of justice. Finally, someone rose up to point out the emperor wore no clothes. It is only a slight exaggeration to mark my reaction as, "You can say this stuff on the radio?"

And this was not "Crossfire" or some other cable TV argument show in which pundits have 10 seconds to condense an argument into a sound bite. As Bill Clinton would later complain, Rush had three hours unopposed every weekday.

Rush has never been perfect. He is just a conservative. He believes in God. Once he attempted to prove the existence of God by asking, "Where is the universe?" Stick to liberals, Rush. Don't do metaphysics.

Rush's conservatism has always undermined his message of freedom and individualism. He is incapable of defending his politics with a moral argument, as the altruist morality of his religion contradicts the individualism of his politics. In the end, conservatism keeps him rather shallow. You will never hear philosophical depth from Rush Limbaugh (except the occasional embarrassing foray into religious metaphysics as noted above).

I remember when Clinton was elected a liberal caller taunted Rush, saying that Rush's show was finished now and Rush would have nothing to talk about. Quite the contrary, Bill Clinton was the greatest gift right-wing talk radio ever got. Bill Clinton was a President who thrilled in trying to get away with minor corruptions. Right-wing radio was a medium dedicated to not letting Clinton get away with anything. The conflict was some of the best radio in history. The circus of politics was the best show in America.

Rush Limbaugh was hurt, not by the election of Clinton, but by the election of George W. Bush. As Bush led the Republicans in the embrace of big government and liberalism, Rush lost his edge. As he admitted after the 2006 election, he was carrying the water of Republicans who didn't deserve it. Just today on his show he brought up that statement about carrying water as he talked about his not supporting John McCain.

If his support for Republicans is now guarded, his attacks on Democrats continues unfazed. But isn't this a contradiction? What is the point of attacking one faction when those attacks help another faction that you no longer support?

What was the point of Operation Chaos? Rush urged voters to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to draw out the Democrats' agony of not having a presidential nominee. The Democrats were hurt by Operation Chaos, but who was helped? John McCain, the Republican that Rush refuses to endorse. Rush was helping a big government Republican with whom he disagrees.

We're not talking about a purely ideological attack on liberals in the name of conservatism. There was nothing ideological about it. Operation Chaos was all about partisan politics. It was about Democrats vs. Republicans. Despite his protests to the contrary, Rush carried John McCain's water.

This is not the first time Rush has been caught in a contradiction. Usually, he wiggles out by playing the satirist card -- the "I was just joking" move beloved by weasels everywhere. Whether or not Operation Chaos was a big joke that no one got, it hurt the Democrats and helped the Republicans.

Conservatives like Rush don't seem to understand the way welfare state politics play out. The welfare state turns the two parties into coalitions of pressure groups. Neither party fights for liberty; both parties fight over the loot stolen from the producers of wealth.

Rush's commentary has ossified into shtick; he still attacks the Democrats as if they were the greater threat to freedom. Meanwhile, Bush has bloated the government to a $3 trillion budget and expanded regulations in countless ways. He increased steel tariffs, bloated the Department of Education (that conservatives once advocated eliminating), passed the Prescription Drug bill that is the biggest advance in the welfare state since LBJ and outlawed the incandescent light bulb. The inflation we will suffer for years to come is all Bush's fault.

One might object that a show about expanding government and diminishing freedom would lead a host into wonk territory. It would be boring radio. I think it can be made interesting, but it would take someone who can first show listeners why individual rights are important and why government intervention in the economy violates those rights.

It would take a lot more work than skimming the internet to amass a stack of stuff about the Democrats' latest absurdities. It would take an understanding of philosophy and economics that Rush Limbaugh, who learned what he knows from National Review, never had. It would take a host who can show what lovers of liberty are fighting for, not just the idiocy they are against.

Philosophic and economic education are desperately needed in an America whose government schools indoctrinate children in New Leftist morality and acceptance of the welfare state. Specifically, America needs the spread of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It would be nice if the powerful medium of syndicated radio were tapped for that purpose. We're waiting for the genius to come along who can put it all together.

(More on talk radio here and here.)

CAVE MENTALITY IN AFGHANISTAN

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

With Afghanistan's history of being a "highway of conquest" from 600 BC to the occupation by the Soviet Union between 1979 - 1989, it has been dominated by a foreign power in one way or another. The irony of history is that Afghanistan got some kind of independence during the World War I & II.

I learned from the fifth lecture that researchers haven't found the source and origin of the Afghan people. Compared with the Ottoman Empire and its reorganization in 1839, Afghanistan was far behind in development. Great Britain instituted the Simla Manifesto in 1838 as an excuse for invading Afghanistan. The British argued that it had to invade Afghanistan in order to protect India as a safety measure.

Here is an excerpt from Scott Powell's post, Afghanistan: Higway of Conquest:

What is the relevance of this background to the present? Afghanistan has never become a true state, and it has constantly lived in subordinacy to outside powers. As a result of its history as a “highway of conquest,” as one historian put it, and its recent subordination to Britain and the Soviet Union, Afghanistan really only exhibits one cultural constant: a desire for independence. You often hear people say that the Afghans are “freedom lovers.” This is a misrepresentation. The people who live in Afghanistan are “self-determination lovers”–and with good reason! But these are not the same thing. (Powell History Recommends, 05/07/08.)

The geopolitical situation is bad and the culture of tribalism has been established since the split of the Pushtun tribe due to the imposed Durand Line in 1893. The border near Pakistan is still a messy area and the question is if Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave in this neighborhood. President Hamid Karzai is belonging to the Durrani tribe of ethnic Pashtuns.


Hamid Karzai

FROM ZORO TO SHIITE IN IRAN

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

If you haven't looked into the possibility to listen to individual lectures yet, you should do it soon before the course is finished. I will catch up, writing two new posts during next week. Lecture 7 is on Iraq and 8 is on Saudi Arabia.

As you know, I have written several posts on Iran during the years. I see the mullahs as the most dangerous religious leaders in the world at the moment.


State of War

After listening to lecture 6, The Roots of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I must admit that I see the progression from ancient Persia to today's Iran in a different light. I have been pretty optimistic that the old Shah supporters and believers of Zoroastrianism had some chance to get back in power, but after listening to the lecture, I have to conclude it is an internal mystical element that will hinder a positive outcome. You probably guessed it, the ancient history of Persia and the Shia religion. The Iranians are continuously looking for a figurehead to take the role of leader of the "nationhood". But to say it bluntly: The ancient Zor(r)o type will automatically lead to Shi(i)te... [Editor's comment: Not the best way of playing with words, but I had to... ;)]


Mohammad Khatami

One important incidence that I think has a crucial importance for today's messed up situation regarding the oil supply is the nationalization of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company by the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1951.

Krauthammer Gets His Wish

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

Over the years, I have noticed Charles Krauthammer occasionally talking about what a great idea he thinks raising gasoline taxes through the roof would be. (In fact he has been advocating this for a quarter century now.)

So today, at RealClear Politics, I was only mildly piqued by the title of his latest column: "At $4, Everybody Gets Rational". I took a look at it, not really expecting to end up blogging it, and yet....

You first get a whirlwind tour of the efficiency of the free market as it responds to a crisis from someone who appreciates the effectiveness of capitalism, at least on some level. Not only are Americans driving less, they're looking for fuel efficiency in the cars they buy.

At $4 a gallon, the fleet composition is changing spontaneously and overnight, not over the 13 years mandated by Congress. (Even Stalin had the modesty to restrict himself to five-year plans.) Just Tuesday, GM announced that it would shutter four SUV and truck plants, add a third shift to its compact and midsize sedan plants in Ohio and Michigan, and green light for 2010 the Chevy Volt, an electric hybrid.

So much for arbitrary federal fuel efficiency standards and deadlines pulled out of thin air. Although this fuel shortage is at least partially artificial, we can see that the market is perfectly capable of responding to it effectively without Uncle Sam pointing a gun to our heads.

And then, just as you are beginning to wonder how Kratuhammer is going to defend his high tax mantra in the face of this, you get....

An admission of being in the wrong and an apology?

No!

You get a big gust of carbon dioxide-laden hot air from the same mouth.

You also get, incidentally, a whirlwind tour of another kind: How little an appreciation for how the market works really means to someone who shares the same fundamental morality and politics -- altruism-collectivism -- as the environmentalists. You also see, in the process, how blind or evasive such a person can be to the exact same flaws he just demonstrated in someone else's big government schemes when they certainly would exist in his own.

But instead of doing the obvious -- tax the damn thing -- we go through spasms of destructive alternatives, such as efficiency standards, ethanol mandates, and now a crazy carbon cap-and-trade system the Senate is debating this week. These are infinitely complex mandates for inefficiency and invitations to corruption. But they have a singular virtue: They hide the cost to the American consumer.

This is insanity. For 25 years and with utter futility ..., I have been advocating the cure: a U.S. energy tax as a way to curtail consumption and keep the money at home. In this space in May 2004 (and again in November 2005), I called for "the government -- through a tax -- to establish a new floor for gasoline," by fully taxing any drop in price below a certain benchmark. [He uses $4.00 now. --ed] The point was to suppress demand and to keep the savings (from any subsequent world price drop) at home in the U.S. Treasury rather than going abroad. At the time, oil was $41 a barrel. [This would be $87.00 in 2007 dollars. --ed] It is now $123.

...

Announce a schedule of gas tax hikes of 50 cents every six months for the next two years. And put a tax floor under $4 gasoline... [bold added]

Apparently, the market is spectacular and rational to someone like Krauthammer only when it achieves a goal -- lower demand for gasoline -- that he happens to like. If the market isn't working towards that goal, then it's time to whip out the jawbones and knock some sense into those car-driving dolts.

Individual rights is the first casualty -- why not defend American property rights from nationalization abroad with military force and at home by not confiscating our money in the first place -- and the resourcefulness of the petroleum industry is the second.

What would happen if there were a floor to the price of gas? Oil companies could not compete for customers on price beyond a certain point. In fact, to maximize profits on gasoline, they'd have the perverse "incentive" to make what they charge as close to $4.00 a gallon as possible.

One way I can easily think of to make such prices "necessary" is by not developing any new drilling or refining capacity that might make it cheap to supply gasoline. Hmmm. That sounds oddly familiar. I guess that to the extent that you don't need arcane government regulations and a bloated bureaucracy to strangle the petroleum industry, Krauthammer is right about the "open and honest" efficiency of taxation....

But we'd get those arcane regulations and a bloated bureaucracy anyway.

Either the government would have to hike other taxes to replace this cornucopia of revenue that Krauthammer seems convinced the government would see or it would have to start heavily regulating the private take on a gallon of gas. It would do both, of course.

And as for making sure those greedy oil barons at every damned corner gas station didn't take too much of "our" -- I mean, the government's -- money, its incentive, of, course, would be to squeeze every last cent out of that artificial $4.00 price. And I am sure some officials might want to skim off some of that for themselves -- and there'd be kickbacks to any cooperative station operators, of course.

This would go on and on until someone exposed the corruption "inherent in 'capitalism'" and then we'd probably have Krauthammer telling us that the only way we could "wean ourselves off of oil" would be for the government to get rid of all those regulations and bureaucrats by simply nationalizing the oil industry.

Just because someone calls himself a conservative and claims to dislike government regulations and corruption does not make him a friend of capitalism or individual rights.

Charles Krauthmmer's objective of "weaning" America off of oil is fundamentally the same as that of the Greens. Since oil is something we need -- because it provides us the energy we need to live our lives at the lowest cost -- such a goal is at odds with our well-being and is, as such, immoral and (as I hope I have indicated), impractical to anyone interested in remaining alive and pursuing his happiness.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added missing link to column.

CO2 rise making the earth greener, more diverse

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

According to NASA satellite data:

Over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth’s vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometres — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.

[A] 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature’s fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up — carbon is the building block of life — and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: “Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century.”

Despite the evidence that cutting CO2 would cause environmental destruction and a net loss of bio-diversity,

Amazingly, although the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction, Canada and other countries are rushing into Earth-altering carbon schemes with nary a doubt.

More.

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The United States and the New Feudalism (Part 1)

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

Religion, Corporate Activism, and Universal Health Care

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Activists are now using corporate shareholder votes to push an agenda favoring "universal" health care. According to the May 27, 2008 New York Times, these activists are attempting get corporate boards to make explicit statements of principle supporting "universal health care" as a goal for all society (as opposed to simply asking that it be an employee benefit for that specific company). These activists include a mixture of religious and labor groups:

Employers frequently complain about the cost of health benefits for employees and retirees. The shareholder proposal would not require companies to provide health benefits for employees, but asks top corporate executives to view the issue in a broader context, as a question of social policy.

"We are doing what we can as shareholders," said the Rev. Michael H. Crosby, a 68-year-old Capuchin priest who has had discussions with nine companies on behalf of 20 Roman Catholic orders this year. "We come out of a religious tradition, but we are not engaged in a messianic enterprise. We are one voice among many seeking equitable access to health care for all."

Despite the fact that many have argued that these sorts of statements have no place in shareholder debates, the Securities and Exchange Commission has ruled that these resolutions must be included on the ballot.

I thought there were two noteworthy points:

First, the convergence of interests between religious activists and causes favored by the secular left previously described in this earlier New York Times article from October 28, 2007 is accelerating.

Second, the trend towards inappropriate shareholder activism is also accelerating. Yaron Brook discussed this issue in more detail in his excellent course, "The Corporation" given at the 2007 OCON Conference.

As Dr. Brook notes in a related article:

...What motivates these activists is not the wellbeing--i.e., the wealth--of fellow shareholders, but an anti-profit, anti-capitalist social agenda. It is they who call for corporate "social responsibility"--the idea that executives and shareholders should sacrifice money-making for the sake of sundry "stakeholders." This is incompatible with the purpose of business and with the responsibility of corporate leaders to maximize shareholder wealth.

...But far from fighting government controls, shareholder "activists" fight to hand control over American corporations to government--or to organizations controlled indirectly by politicians, such as public pension plans. Indeed, this is already beginning, prompting many businesses to flee to the relative safety of private ownership--i.e., being owned and run by professionals--so that they can continue to maximize their wealth.

These activists are using the leverage and power of productive men and women running corporations to force them to advocate for government policies that will strangle the ability of such individuals to keep producing. I don't think we'll be seeing the last of this particular tactic.

It also means that whenever issues like this arise, pro-capitalism stockholders of corporations should make sure that their voices are also heard when it comes time for a shareholder vote.

The Disease: Democracy. The Cure: A Constitutional Republic

By Gina Liggett from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

CNN Headline News commentator, Mike Galanos, was outraged that the majority will of Californians had been trounced by that state's recent state Supreme Court ruling reversing an unconstitutional law against gay marriage.

"Personhood" proponents in several states want voters to decide whether one's reproductive rights and right-to-life can be squashed by a biblically-inspired law redefining the human being.

The cornerstone of President Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East is to "spread democracy." Never mind that democratically-elected Islamist governments in Gaza and Iraq have no intention of embracing Western ideals of liberty.

Democracy at its best? As a matter of fact, yes!

See any problem with that? I sure hope so! Because if you don't, then you will fall into the trap of equating "democracy" with "freedom."

The philosopher and novelist, Ayn Rand, couldn't have clarified it better:"'Democracy' in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule...a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose."

Here is majority rule: it is illegal for gay adults to marry their life partner because most voters think it's an abomination to God. Majority rule: lawyers on behalf of fertilized eggs can sue you in court when a doctor prescribes birth control that prevents implantation. Majority rule: women in Islamic democracies are treated like cattle because most blindly condone oppressive Islamic traditions from the Dark Ages.

By definition and by design, democracy must lead to tyranny.

The only model that promotes freedom, respects individual citizens, and leads to a thriving civilization is the original United States of America: a constitutional republic that is "restricted to the protection of individual rights."

In a constitutional republic: gay adults can marry the partner they love because this does not violate anyone else's marriage rights and does not lead to the breakdown of society (a ridiculous allegation by Christian fundamentalists). A fertilized egg is a fertilized egg and has no rights, and therefore cannot make any claims on a woman's life. Men and women have equal opportunity to pursue their own rational self-interest without stopping anyone else from doing the same, because the society's laws are not defined by the arbitrary and ever-changing whims of some majority.

In a free society--that is, a constitutional republic, not a democracy--people are free to thrive....by definition and by design.

The Universal Spider

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm reading Louis XI: The Universal Spider by Paul Murray Kendall, which seems to be the only book in English on this king. The 15th century struck me as a fertile background for romantic drama. It has colorful figures such as Joan of Arc and Francois Villon. The period is late middle ages, with lots of intrigue among many factions.

At this time local dukes and barons and so on had a lot of power. The Duke of Burgundy was actually more powerful than the King of France. Louis XI in effect ended the middle ages by consolidating royal power and creating the modern nation-state with centralized power. Doubtless this is enough to make him a great villain to anarchists and libertarians. But what better provides justice, peace and liberty, feudalism or the nation-state? Doesn't the market work more efficiently among nation-states than among a crazy quilt of duchies and fiefdoms?

Louis kept his tenuous hold on power through a network of spies, thus his nickname "The Universal Spider." This spider sat at the center of his web and knew everything that was happening not only in France but in England, Italy and elsewhere. This raises the question: can good come through evil means? Or does a good end make all means good? If the USA tortures to defend its freedom, does that make torture good? There is a difference between murder and killing in self-defense, right? Purpose determines whether an action is good or bad.

I have long maintained that all historical dramas set in pre-capitalist times are fantasies. They might not have overt fantasy elements, but these stories have little to do with the reality of pre-capitalist life. The brutality and deprivation of life back then is so disturbing and alienating that a realistic portayal would detract from anything I, for one, would want to write. Historical dramas are greatly romanticized.

Just to give a few examples of the brutality, Louis was once so outraged by the report of a messenger that he wanted the poor fellow tied in a sack and thrown in a river. He was talked out of it and the messenger merely spent months in a dungeon.

When young Louis led a band of freebooters looting Alsace -- an act that rocked all of Europe and made everyone take note of this new force on the scene -- the freebooters liked to stuff a peasant in a chicken coop then rape his wife on top of the coop. Ghastly stuff. That the freebooters would get their kicks from this is evidence of how living in a "might makes right" culture perverts a man's psychology.

Louis was not all bad. He was on the side of the towns people and the merchants, who looked to him for national security against the rapacious nobility. These merchants and towns people would become the great middle class of capitalism.

Louis was phenomenally organized and energetic. His top value was competence; his messages are filled with commands like, "See that there are no slip-ups!" When he found a competent man he would be loyal to him even when such loyalty was not necessarily in his interest.

Louis cared nothing for luxury or the rituals of state. He wore modest clothes and did almost nothing but work and hunt during his waking hours.

History is for the most part the story of thievery. The Romans were glorified gangsters when it comes down to it. The Vikings were glorified pirates. Diplomacy is the polite phase of extortion and blackmail before the phase of war.

It makes one appreciate all the more the thinkers and producers who somehow brought man out of this world lit only by fire.

Minimum Wage Violates Rights (Dallas Morning News, Irish Independent, Republican-American)

By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Minimum Wage Violates Rights
By David Holcberg (Dallas Morning News, November 15, 2007; Irish Independent, December 24, 2007; Republican-American, May 28, 2008)

The minimum wage constitutes government coercion against both employers and employees. By mandating a certain level of wages, the government violates the rights of both employers and employees to reach a voluntary agreement based on their own independent judgment of what is in their best interest.

Those who provide jobs have a right to set the wages they are willing to pay. And those who are willing and eager to work for relatively low wages--either because they are unskilled, inexperienced or would rather have a low-paying job than no job--have a right to do so.

In a capitalist system, the price of labor (i.e., wages) is determined in the same way as all other prices and as it should be: by the individual judgments and voluntary decisions of buyers and sellers.

What We Owe Our Soldiers (Providence Journal, Anchorage Daily News, The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal)

By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

What We Owe Our Soldiers
By Alex Epstein (The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal, May 28, 2006; Lexington Herald-Leader, May 28, 2007; Providence Journal and Anchorage Daily News, May 26, 2008)

Every Veterans Day we pay tribute to our fellow Americans who have served in the military. With speeches and ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But justice demands that we also recognize that we should have far more living veterans than we do. All too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily--because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America's freedom.

The proper purpose of a government is to protect its citizens' lives and freedom against the initiation of force by criminals at home and aggressors abroad. The American government has a sacred responsibility to recognize the individual value of every one of its citizens' lives, and thus to do everything possible to protect the rights of each to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This absolutely includes our soldiers.

Soldiers are not sacrificial objects; they are full-fledged Americans with the same moral right as the rest of us to the pursuit of their own goals, their own dreams, their own happiness. Rational soldiers enjoy much of the work of military service, take pride in their ability to do it superlatively, and gain profound satisfaction in protecting the freedom of every American, including their own freedom.

Soldiers know that in entering the military, they are risking their lives in the event of war. But this risk is not, as it is often described, a "sacrifice" for a "higher cause." When there is a true threat to America, it is a threat to all of our lives and loved ones, soldiers included. Many become soldiers for precisely this reason; it was, for instance, the realization of the threat of Islamic terrorism after September 11--when 3,000 innocent Americans were slaughtered in cold blood on a random Tuesday morning--that prompted so many to join the military.

For an American soldier, to fight for freedom is not to fight for a "higher cause," separate from or superior to his own life--it is to fight for his own life and happiness. He is willing to risk his life in time of war because he is unwilling to live as anything other than a free man. He does not want or expect to die, but he would rather die than live in slavery or perpetual fear. His attitude is epitomized by the words of John Stark, New Hampshire's most famous soldier in the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die."

What we owe these men who fight so bravely for their and our freedom is to send them to war only when that freedom is truly threatened, and to make every effort to protect their lives during war--by providing them with the most advantageous weapons, training, strategy, and tactics possible.

Shamefully, America has repeatedly failed to meet this obligation. It has repeatedly placed soldiers in harm's way when no threat to America existed--e.g., to quell tribal conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. America entered World War I, in which 115,000 soldiers died, with no clear self-defense purpose but rather on the vague, self-sacrificial grounds that "The world must be made safe for democracy." America's involvement in Vietnam, in which 56,000 Americans died in a fiasco that American officials openly declared a "no-win" war, was justified primarily in the name of service to the South Vietnamese. And the current war in Iraq--which could have had a valid purpose as a first step in ousting the terrorist-sponsoring, anti-American regimes of the Middle East--is responsible for thousands of unnecessary American deaths in pursuit of the sacrificial goal of "civilizing" Iraq by enabling Iraqis to select any government they wish, no matter how anti-American.

In addition to being sent on ill-conceived, "humanitarian" missions, our soldiers have been compromised with crippling rules of engagement that place the lives of civilians in enemy territory above their own. In Afghanistan we refused to bomb many top leaders out of their hideouts for fear of civilian casualties; these men continue to kill American soldiers. In Iraq, our hamstrung soldiers for years were prevented from smashing a militarily puny insurgency--and to this day are being murdered unnecessarily at the hands of an undefeated enemy, with no end in sight.

To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.

This Veterans Day, we must call for a stop to the sacrifice of our soldiers and condemn all those who demand it. It is only by doing so that we can truly honor not only our dead, but also our living: American soldiers who have the courage to defend their freedom and ours.

 

Property Rights in Outer Space

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

There have been a couple of recent articles on extending the concept of private property into outer space. One is from the May 18, 2008 Boston Globe entitled "My Space", and one is from the June 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics entitled "Who Owns the Moon? The Case for Lunar Property Rights". (Both links via Instapundit.)

Here are a couple of noteworthy quotes from the Boston Globe article:

There's a variety of opinion as to how extensive extraterrestrial property rights should be - whether to allow, for example, the outright buying and selling of land, or whether to forbid ownership and instead rely on leases, trusts, and easements - but there's nonetheless a growing consensus that some form of space property is inevitable and necessary.

..."Property rights will provide the only economic incentive that will possibly justify entrepreneurial space exploration," says Alan Wasser, chairman of the Space Settlement Institute and the former CEO of the National Space Society.

One can legitimately debate the merits of the various proposals to apply the concept of "property rights" to this new realm. But I'm glad that the discussion is at last beginning.

As Ayn Rand noted in her essay, "The Property Status of Airwaves", in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property—by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.

The precise and proper application of the concept of property rights to new areas may require some hard intellectual work. For instance, the guidelines for the airwaves are different than for real estate. Similarly, the rules for intellectual property in the era of easy internet dissemination of MP3's may be different than the rules for tangible objects. But as long as men need to think and use their minds in order to create the values necessary for life, the broad principles and justifications for property rights will always apply.

Quick Roundup 334

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

Brian Simpson on Gas Prices

The silver lining to the latest round of fuel price increases seems to be that we're getting lots of good commentary on all aspects of the subject. You can see Brian Simpson's indictment of the environmentalist movement for its large share of the blame over at Capitalism Magazine:

Environmentalists have also prevented new refineries from being built in the U.S. through lawsuits and regulations, to the point where no new refineries have been built in over thirty years. As a result, refining capacity has actually declined in the last few decades while demand has increased. This has contributed significantly to the high gasoline prices we now experience.

In short, environmentalists have done everything they can to make oil and gasoline more expensive and our standard of living lower. [bold added]

Simpson also discusses the role of speculation on gas prices -- as does Walter Williams in another recent editorial -- and ends with a few revealing quotes I hadn't yet heard about from environmentalists. One of them explicitly subordinates the value of human life to each and every other species and even to inanimate "natural" objects, as if man exists outside of nature.

On the subject of refineries, I noticed yesterday that a county in South Dakota approved via referendum the construction of what would be our nation's first new refinery since 1976. Its close is predictable to anyone who has read Simpson's column or who is otherwise familiar with the role of the Greens in sabotaging our civilization:

Despite a favorable referendum outcome for Hyperion, opponents say the refinery has many hurdles to clear before construction begins.

"There's [sic] probably a hundred pressure points that they have to pass through," said Ed Cable of Citizens Opposed to Oil Pollution, which currently has a lawsuit pending against the rezoning decision, Cable said. [bold added]

I bet many of the voters celebrating the boon to their county don't know the half of it.

Good Summary by the Beeb

Andrew Dalton points to some commentary from the BBC about our impending presidential election and asks, "How about using our heads?" Quoting as he does from the BBC:

At this stage in the race I would venture the following simplification - if America votes with its heart, it will elect Obama.

If it votes with its gut, it will go for McCain. [bold added]

I did a double take at first. Usually, when people speak of acting based on "the heart", they're presenting their version of the false mind-body dichotomy as they assert the superiority of emotions over "cold" (and supposedly incompatible) reason.

"What? No thinking man who fully understands McCain could vote for him!" I thought.

But it's "heart" versus "guts" -- or emotionalism vs. sense-of-life unaided by reason.

That's actually a very succinct and perceptive way of characterizing the tragedy of this election. Too bad for us that both "choices" are very nearly the same beneath the skin, which is to say, abysmal.

Dalton is right. What's been missing for too long in American politics -- and on too many levels -- has been rationality.

Iran Opens a New Lawfare Front

Iran, whose president so routinely delivers near-schizophrenic rants against Israel and predicts its doom that I barely notice it anymore, is now threatening to sue other nations for damaging its reputation.

Iran is threatening to sue countries that it says have damaged its reputation and pushed to have U.N. Security Council involvement in its nuclear program.

Iran is an Islamic theocracy. Islam threatens anyone who doesn't accept its "invitation" to convert with subjugation or death. Iran -- by pursuing nuclear weaponry -- would be acting exactly in accordance with this ethos as a nation, and in all other respects, it does this to the degree it can get away with. Its only possible reason for suing is because some Western nations have a different idea of what constitutes peaceful, civilized behavior than it does, and have the temerity to say so.

This is clearly yet another attempt to export censorship, and as such, it constitutes yet another unwitting confession by Islamic totalitarians that their real enemy is evidence and logic.

No: The GOP is no longer (seen as) a "reliable ally" against statism.

I've seen lots of play given to this bit about Matt Drudge no longer being a "reliable ally" for the GOP.

Much of the power of the GOP comes from people who fell for its reputation -- which it is rightfully losing -- as the party of limited government. (A proper government would act solely to protect individual rights. Many people today vaguely mean "proper" when they say "limited" or "small".)

That being the case, why is everyone acting so surprised that Matt Drudge doesn't slavishly carry water for the likes of John McCain? The man is worse than a Democrat because his conservative "credentials" will blind many voters to the fact that he -- like Obama -- has a best-of-breed, anti-freedom agenda from hell that combines elements from the left and the religious right.

The real question isn't where Matt Drudge's loyalty lies. It's where the loyalty of most conservative activists lies.

Objectivist Roundup

Nick Provenzo has posted the latest Objectivist Roundup over at Rule of Reason.

-- CAV

Brigitte Bardot Punished for Political Opinions

By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

Brigitte Bardot Punished for Political Opinions
June 4, 2008

Irvine, CA--"The conviction of Brigitte Bardot by a French court for 'inciting hatred against Muslims' is a gross violation of her right to free speech and should be denounced by every civilized nation," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Bardot was fined $23,325 on Tuesday--barely escaping a jail sentence--for a statement made in a letter to France's interior minister, protesting Muslims' refusal to stun animals before slaughtering them during religious holidays. The fine was levied for the following statement: "I've had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, (and) destroying our country by imposing their ways."

"Bardot's statement was an expression of political opinion and obviously did not constitute coercion, or threat of coercion, against anyone," said Bowden. "As such, the French government has no right to fine or penalize her in any way for the exercise of her individual right of free speech.

"Moreover, there is no rational basis for a crime of 'inciting hatred.' Hatred is the emotion one feels in response to evil. Thus, to criminalize the incitement of hatred is to criminalize the expression of moral judgment, inasmuch as any moral denunciation may cause others to hate the alleged evildoer.

"The law may punish only those individuals who presume to take the law into their own hands by inciting unlawful violence against others. In the absence of physical force, individuals--such as Muslims in this case--who find other people's views or emotions objectionable are free to ignore them or argue against them.

"A society that outlaws the expression of opinions, either moral or political, is doomed to destruction. Such judgments are essential to rational individuals' pursuit of values, including orderly, peaceful change within a legal system. Once free speech is outlawed, the way is paved for dictatorship. The conviction of Brigitte Bardot for expression of her political opinion demonstrates that free speech is in great jeopardy in France.

"Other nations should take note of what's happening in France, and realize that they will tread the same path if they fail to uphold the principle of free speech."

#   #   #

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."

Iron Man

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Paul and I saw Iron Man on Sunday. Despite 93% on the TomatoMeter and rave review from Flibby, we found it pretty mediocre.


* * * SPOILER ALERT * * *


* * * SPOILER ALERT * * *


* * * SPOILER ALERT * * *


In particular, we disliked:

Tony Stark was very clearly and deliberately portrayed as a gambling, boozing, womanizing playboy, but such a man could not have successfully managed a gargantuan weapons corporation. Even later, after his supposed moral transformation, his impulsive testing of the suit at high altitude was inconsistent with the kind of mind required to develop dangerous weapons, including the suit itself. While I enjoyed some of the humor of Stark's character, but I'd say that it undercut the seriousness of his undertaking.

The plot was way too predictable. It was pretty easy to guess from the first few minutes of the movie that Obadiah Stane -- the regent of the company -- would turn out insanely evil.

The moral lesson learned by Tony Stark in his captivity was very confused. At first, it seemed like something like pacifism -- or at least a determination to not allow weapons to fall into enemy hands. That was all very mushy and unclear. Certainly, Stark's discovery of weapons in the hands of the enemies should not have been shocking in the slightest -- as weapons fall into the hands of the enemy all the time in warfare. So that was not grounds for any kind of revolution about his responsibility, nor for deciding to stop selling weapons to anyone. Of course, the real problem was that his own company was covertly selling weapons to the terrorists. In retrospect, that makes more sense of his decisions, but not entirely.

In short, we thought the characters, the plot, and the theme deficient -- although not horrible. It had unrealized potential as a movie. That being said, Gwyneth Paltrow was very easy on the eyes.

Life Imitates Ridiculous Hypothetical Example

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Whenever the topic of health insurance benefit mandates come up, I often use an analogy to illustrate how they are really a form of forced subsidy for special interests groups. For instance, in an article I've submitted to The Objective Standard on Massachusetts health care policy, I wrote:

...Mandated benefits such as in vitro fertilization or chiropractor services constitute a similar rights-violation. Individuals must spend their own money on benefits required by the state, regardless of whether they actually want those benefits. These mandates are akin to homeowners in Florida having Congress pass a law requiring Arizona residents to purchase mandatory hurricane insurance. In reality, this merely forces Arizonans to subsidize the hurricane expenses incurred by Floridians--a form of forced wealth redistribution. Similarly, Massachusetts residents are forced to purchase benefits such as in vitro fertilization in order to subsidize patients and providers with political clout.

I intended to pick an extreme hypothetical example to show how ridiculous this idea would be.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised when last week's ridiculous hypothetical example turns into today's real-life serious proposal:

Wall Street Journal
Taxpayers May Face Hurricane Tab
By Elizabeth Williamson, May 31, 2008

...The proposal -- backed by giant insurers Allstate Corp. and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., as well as Florida lawmakers -- focuses on "reinsurance," the policies bought by insurers themselves to protect against catastrophic losses. The proposal envisions a taxpayer-financed reinsurance program covering all 50 states, which would essentially backstop the giant insurers in case of disaster.

...The program could also shift costs to taxpayers in states with fewer natural-disaster risks.

...Big winners would be coastal states, particularly Florida, where more than half of the nation's hurricane risk is centered.

The WSJ article also notes that the program is also supported by politicians from both major parties, including Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Florida's Republican Governor Charlie Crist.

What Will Fill The Vacuum?

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Berkeley, California has long been the symbol of the crazy leftist wing of American culture. Yet even in that city, there are signs that the culture is beginning to shift, as illustrated by this recent story from the May 22, 2008 issue of The Economist.

The article first explains that the football stadium at the University of California Berkeley badly needs some critical earthquake safety renovations, and this will require cutting down a nearby grove of oak trees on university property. In response, a group of local eco-activists have staged a sit-in to prevent the school from cutting down the trees. According to the article:

...[F]or 16 months tree-sitters have been living in the branches. Varying between a dozen and a handful, the group includes anarchists, activists and travellers. None is a student.

...Intricate pulley-systems and rope-bridges connect the trees into an arboreal village. A group called "the grandmothers" comes every Sunday with buckets of cooked food that are hoisted up. Other buckets, of excrement, are lowered at intervals.

The university is seeking a court ruling to allow them to forcibly evict these trespassers from the trees. But the more interesting point has been the reaction of the UC Berkeley students:

A generation ago, they would have been turning the town upside down. Today, they study. Berkeley's largest ethnic group is Asian-American. The ageing hippies in the city council find them shockingly conservative. When the campus police chief wrote an open letter explaining policies to deal with tree-sitters, 400 students wrote back, 90% in favour of removing them faster.

This is a good example of the "cultural vacuum" that Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institue, has described in this interview from the September 28, 2007 issue of Forbes:

Today's left doesn't have anything positive to offer to young people. When they were socialists, there was at least something they were fighting for, and they believed in a right and a wrong. Today's leftist agenda is negative and nihilistic--focused on stopping industrialization, capitalism and even Western civilization. But young people want positive values. That's why religion is so strong today, because many view it as the only thing that promises a brighter future.

I believe that Dr. Brook is absolutely correct. Although the leftists' ideas are still dangerous, more and more young people are turned off by their views and looking for something different. The real question is what will fill that ideological vacuum? Will it be a system based on faith and unreason, such as religion? Or will it be a secular alternative based on reason? Dr. Brook notes that:

Ayn Rand is the only voice that offers a secular absolutist morality with a positive vision and agenda, for individuals and for society as a whole.

This may explain the rising interest in Objectivism by active-minded individuals who want a rational alternative to both the loonie left and the religious right. More importantly, if a rational secular philosophy like Objectivism doesn't fill that vacuum, something bad will...

Get Fired Up for the Objectivist Round Up!

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Welcome to the June 5th, 2008 edition of the Objectivist Round Up--it's again our pleasure to be hosting this week's edition. This week's round-up presents some of the best insight and analyses written by authors who are animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:

Peter Cresswell presents Americans for paedophilia posted at Not PC. Peter Writes: My NOT PC blog is primarily aimed at mainstream, politically aware New Zealand readers -- which is why I've not previously promoted posts to the Carnival -- but my recent post on the 'death' of the American Libertarian Party should interest all OBloggers. Enjoy. :-)

Kim presents My Take on Heirarchy--A Layman's View of Pedagogy posted at Kim's Play Place. Kim writes: I have not read ITOE or finished OPAR. Any ideas I have of epistemology are from good friends, and hubby, who didn't mind being tutors and also from Philosophy of Education by Leonard Peikoff and Lisa VanDamme's articles. So if you feel so inclined, take a look and let me know how much I got wrong! I'm sure there's plenty. Perhaps I got something right as well.

Ari Armstrong presents Barr Beats Anarchist posted at FreeColorado.com. Ari writes: To win the Libertarian nomination for president, Bob Barr barely beat an anarchist who defended child pornography.

Dan Edge presents In Rememberance of The Unknown Hero posted at The Edge of Reason. Dan writes: This week 19 years ago, a lone man stared down a line of tanks heading towards Tiananmen Square. His heroism should be remembered and celebrated forever.

Paul Hsieh presents Harvard Law Review Article on Charity posted at NoodleFood. Paul writes: What is the proper role of charity in man's life? Is the primary moral purpose of life to sacrifice for others? Or there a higher purpose? Read two contrasting approaches -- one from the Harvard Law Review and one from Ayn Rand.

Diana Hsieh presents Right to Primitivism posted at NoodleFood. Diana writes: Do "uncontacted tribes" in the Amazon have a right to remain that way?

Greg Perkins presents NoodleFood: Why the New Atheists Can't Even Beat D'Souza: The Gap in Religious Thought posted at NoodleFood. Greg writes: How do you explain the existence and order of the universe, the staggering complexity of life, the existence of morality, and so on -- without God? The "God Hypothesis" looks stronger today than ever in light of the growth in scientific knowledge, doesn't it? The 'New Atheists' stumble in debate against Christian apologist Dinesh D'Souza when addressing issues such as these. This is the third in a series of pieces exploring key weaknesses in their philosophical foundation -- and illustrating how D'Souza wouldn't stand a snowball's chance against an Objectivist.

Rational Jenn presents Here We Go Again posted at Rational Jenn. Rational Jenn writes: Here in Atlanta, the amount of water available for human use is once again determined by the needs of fish and mussels. Outrageous!

Darren Cauthon presents Iron Man and Making Money posted at Darren Cauthon.

C. August presents The Anti-Concept of Human Rights posted at Titanic Deck Chairs. C. August writes: As Inigo Montoya said: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Does the term "human rights" mean what we think it means anymore?

Flibbert presents When Should You Die to Save the Planet? posted at Flibbertigibbet. Flibbert writes: really think the absolute most enjoyable post I wrote this week was actually a pair of posts in which I talk about men's fashion. It all started with me talking about Murses and how I'm against them and it went from there to places like capris pants, mandals and other topics that I think the world should be better informed about. BUT! While mandals are an abomination, they aren't quite the threat to freedom and individualism and happy childhoods that environmentalism is, so for this week's carnival, I'm submitting my post about this site created by Australian Broadcast Corporation to educate children about keeping the earth clean. The most horrifying part of the site is a calculator that tells children when they should die. No, really. Anyway, I blogged about it. Go read it and leave me some comments.

(I'll add that I visited the website Flibbert examines, and yes, it's just that horrifying).

And last, but hardly least, Gus Van Horn presents Prohibition Ends in Chicago posted at Gus Van Horn. Gus writes: Until recently, you had to go to a "duckeasy" to enjoy foie gras at a restaurant in the "City of the Big Brothers".

So there you have it: the Objectivist voice of reason on the Internet. Next week, Rational Jenn will host the Round-Up, so until then, I bid you my adieu.

Mixed Economy, Mixed Recovery

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

Nicole Gelinas of City Journal, who has been tracking the recovery of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, has written another fascinating piece on how the recovery has been influenced by the local government.

For a change, the corruption and incompetence that go hand-in-hand with government involvement in the economy have actually helped aspects of the recovery! This is, of course, by the accident that a lack of government control can sometimes mimic freedom -- when the government would otherwise act like a criminal gang and the citizens would otherwise be productive.

New Orleanians have achieved much of this success by doing what New Yorkers couldn't do after 9/11: ignoring the potentates and eggheads hankering to turn devastation into conceptual art. They've been building and rebuilding on their own or with small-scale help, rather than under top-down decree -- and, in the process, showing that thousands of individual planners are better than one master.

This nose-thumbing has been possible in large part due to the fact that much-publicized government initiatives to return New Orleans' low-lying areas to swampland were mired in the ineffectiveness of local officialdom.

For example, "green dots" on city planing maps marked low-lying areas slated for a return to nature -- and also often happened to mark the locations of houses whose owners were rebuilding.

... Mayor Ray Nagin -- looking toward reelection, cowed by public outrage, and stifled by his own administration's lack of follow-through -- abandoned any huge effort to plan neighborhoods. "Rebuild at your own risk," he told citizens. As late as April 2007, Times-Picayune columnist Stephanie Grace was still lamenting the "curse of the green dot" as the cause of politicians' paralysis and pinning her hopes on a more modest second round of planning. But by then, it was too late: self-reliant New Orleanians had already taken Nagin at his word.

...

In New Orleans ... though the city and feds can still screw up the sites that they control, including now-vacant housing projects, they can't define the whole reconstruction process. Enterprising homeowners can experiment with what works, rather than being stuck with some starchitect's vision for the next century. And it will be fascinating, in a decade or so, to see if one or another approach has fared better than the others: Mouton's enticing new homeowners to bad neighborhoods on higher ground and hoping that others follow; Habitat's adding entire blocks to a working-class neighborhood; or Pitt's luring evacuated low-income homeowners back to one of the hardest-hit and least-rebuilt parts of the Lower Ninth Ward.

I have stated before that I disagree with Gelinas about the proper role of government. (See the first link above for an elaboration.) And here, she seems to view different levels of government interference as a kind of static continuum between the laissez-faire capitalism I advocate and statism, rather than as an ever-hastening trend towards the latter as I do. (Furthermore, what she calls "free market" isn't always consistent with capitalism.) Having said that, Gelinas is on the money when she notes that the recovery remains hampered when the local government continues to fail to bring down crime.

Read the whole thing. One of the free-market solutions for damaged housing stock ripped a page straight from the Sears catalogues of old -- Lowe's offers five models of pre-fab houses with "shotgun" floor plans that work well with the Crescent City's long, narrow lots.

-- CAV

Clarifying Terms

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

Not too long ago, I recalled that I'd come up with a better way to speak of "cap and trade" schemes and why I liked the idea:

I have occasionally referred here to the "carbon credits" pushed by global warming alarmists as "fuel rations", thinking that if that proper name ever caught on, many would have a better chance of seeing the true nature of such silliness as "cap and trade" schemes, and reject them.

Clever, if I say so myself.

But what makes this clever, and what could make it backfire? What makes it clever is the very thing that jogged my memory about the term in the first place: The fact that politicians are now openly speaking of fuel rationing in Britain.

Americans may be blindly swaying to the music of the Global Warming Chorus, but they're not so far-gone overall that they'd stand for the government openly rationing commonly-available life necessities. The term "rationing" would help many implicitly-individualistic Americans notice that the global warming alarmists are trying to enact a collectivist measure. Some might even become suspicious of that whole agenda as collectivist.

This would be a good way to move the debate from where it is ("How does the government make us cut back on carbon emissions?") to where it ought to be ("Should the government be dictating what fuels we use at all?"). It is, however, no substitute for continuing to work for a more widespread understanding of what freedom is and what its (closely related) importance and intellectual underpinnings are.

As a case in point, which also illustrates the hazards of ineffectively clarifying such terms as "cap and trade", let's look at an article featured today at RealClear Politics. It seems to be after the same angle as I, but it fails both to re-frame the argument properly and to put forth principled arguments as to why fuel rationing is wrong. Its title is arresting enough: "Just Call It 'Cap and Tax'".

And beyond that, the article does at least challenge the idea of selling fuel rations as "free market" and it does a good job of outlining some of the consequences of imposing it. To wit:

... If we suppress emissions, we also suppress today's energy sources, and because the economy needs energy, we suppress the economy. The models magically assume smooth transitions. If coal is reduced, then conservation or non-fossil-fuel sources will take its place. But in the real world, if coal-fired power plants are canceled (as many were last year), wind or nuclear won't automatically substitute. If the supply of electricity doesn't keep pace with demand, brownouts or blackouts will result. The models don't predict real-world consequences. Of course, they didn't forecast $135-a-barrel oil.

As emission cuts deepened, the danger of disruptions would mount. Population increases alone raise energy demand. From 2006 to 2030, ... [t]he Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a 15 percent cut of emissions would raise average household energy costs by almost $1,300.

That's how cap-and-trade would tax most Americans. As "allowances" became scarcer, their price would rise, and the extra cost would be passed along to customers. Meanwhile, government would expand enormously. It could sell the allowances and spend the proceeds; or it could give them away, providing a windfall to recipients. The Senate proposal does both to the tune of about $1 trillion from 2012 to 2018. Beneficiaries would include farmers, Indian tribes, new technology companies, utilities and states. Call this "environmental pork," and it would just be a start. The program's potential to confer subsidies and preferential treatment would stimulate a lobbying frenzy. Think today's farm programs -- and multiply by 10. [bold added]

This is well and good. We should be afraid of fuel rationing! Indeed, calling it "cap and tax" isn't strong enough:

[I]f we're going to try to stimulate new technologies through price, let's do it honestly. A straightforward tax on carbon would favor alternative fuels and conservation just as much as cap-and-trade, but without the rigid emission limits. A tax is more visible and understandable. If environmentalists still prefer an allowance system, let's call it by its proper name: cap-and-tax.

This last paragraph concedes the moral premise of the environmentalists by failing to challenge the propriety of government taxation or market interference, while objecting only to how this scheme is being sold. This implicit acceptance of government taxation and economic meddling as a good and normal part of life incidentally also takes all the punch out of the phrase "cap-and-tax". But the phrase lacked some punch to begin with because too many people are too comfortable with the government taxing them to death already.

In other words, this column ends up being basically a "noble goal but ignoble means" type of non-argument that will ultimately lose the day.

One does not fight for freedom by allowing one fraction of an inch of the moral high ground to its enemies. The government taking our money and the government issuing orders to anyone other than a criminal or a foreign enemy are morally wrong and violate individual rights.

"Cap-and-tax" is just as wrong as "fuel rations". But Americans will become morally indignant only about the latter, and this is why the latter is a better place from which to start fighting back.

-- CAV

President Keating?

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Barack Obama revealed himself to be a second hander in an infamous statement he made on foreign policy:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added." -- Barack Obama

His focus is on what other countries think of us, not on the facts of reality and how they determine what we should do.

He has made another revealing statement:

“I am like a Rorschach test,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “Even if people find me disappointing ultimately, they might gain something.”

Who would say, "I am like a Rorschach test" but someone who tries to be all things to all people? Reminds me of Bill Clinton, who had a talent for saying what the hearer wanted to hear.

I wonder if this spineless desire to please all is produced by progressive education's mission of "socializing" students or if it is just an occupational hazard of politics.

Bo Diddley (1928-2008)

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The opening chords surprise you: they sound contemporary. Bill Haley, bless him, sounds like something out of the 1940's. Even Chuck Berry, the godfather of rock guitarists, has an early sound. Bo Diddley, though -- there's no mistaking -- that's rock. He must have been the first to distort his guitar.

His most famous song, "Bo Diddley," is an improbable hit; it has no bridge, no chord changes. The infectious beat drives the song from start to finish. Bo Diddley is the only rock artist I can think of who has a beat named after him.

That his big hit was named after himself and he had two albums named Bo Diddley -- not to mention Bo Diddley Is a Lover, Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger, Bo Diddley's a Twister, Bo Diddley's Beach Party, Go Bo Diddley and many more -- prove him to be a master of self-promotion. Leftists might write something cynical here or excuse his blatant self-interest as what a black man had to do to succeed in a white man's world. Altruists always assume there must be something wrong with self-interest and the pursuit of profit; this keeps them at odds with capitalism -- and human nature. I prefer to think he was just cheerfully proud of who he was and he marketed the hell out of it. Bo Diddley became a brand name. That's show biz.

He was an American original.

(Billy Beck met him once.)

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Why the New Atheists Can't Even Beat D'Souza: The Gap in Religious Thought

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

(Previous in the series: The Best and Worst in Human History and Science vs. Miracles.)

In his op-ed, "Taking aim at God, and missing," Dinesh D'souza continues his counters to "New Atheists" such as Christopher Hitchens. This time we find him saying that "Thanks to the astounding discoveries of modern science, I think the God hypothesis has a lot more going for it today than it did in the eighteenth century." What he considers convincing on this front is telling, so I'll quote him at length:

Modern science has discovered that the universe, far from existing eternally, had a beginning. Not only matter but space and time itself came into existence around 15 billion years ago in the fiery burst that scientists term the Big Bang. The laws of physics themselves originated at that point, and those laws were inoperative "before" the founding moment. So what is the secular explanation for how the universe and its laws came into existence? Is there a natural explanation for nature's own origin? If so, what is the evidence for it? Hitchens supplies no such theory and no supporting evidence. His rejection of the God hypothesis seems nothing more than an assertion of atheist dogma.

In recent decades, scientists have found innumerable ways in which our universe—not just our planet but the entire universe—is narrowly tailored to permit life. Change the variables of nature by an infinitesimal amount and this would be a very different universe without observers to perceive and study it. As physicist Freeman Dyson puts it, with an intended mystical touch, the universe behaves as though it knew we were coming! So why are the laws constructed in such a way that we are here to discover them? It's possible that there is a convincing natural explanation, but Hitchens certainly does not produce one. Once again the God hypothesis seems unavoidable.

Now consider man, undoubtedly a product of natural selection, but also possessing qualities such as the ability to tell right from wrong that are unexplained by Darwin and his followers. ... There is within us all a moral law that speaks to us gently but firmly, urging though not compelling us to do what is right... If natural selection cannot account for this moral law, where does it come from? I am not saying that science will never explain this, I am saying that science cannot explain it now. It seems much more reasonable, based on existing evidence, to believe that moral laws derive from a divine legislator than to embrace Hitchens' promissory atheism: one day we'll figure out a natural way to account for all this.

If only his opponents had the philosophical foundation to resist all those temptations for distraction in debate. In response to this sort of thing, they should be asking a simple question to expose a pervasive methodological problem in religious thought: Since when did not knowing the answer to a puzzle entitle us to go and make one up?

In fact, these sorts of arbitrarily asserted "explanations" pulled out of thin air should be simply dismissed out of hand—a principle long recognized in logic and law. When someone brings a baseless charge before a court, it is to be dismissed as beneath consideration (and could even earn penalties for wasting the court's time). Likewise, when someone brings a baseless idea before a rational mind, it should be simply dismissed as beneath consideration. And D'Souza consistently relies on the logical fallacy of the "argument from ignorance," taking peoples' lack of knowledge around this and that as evidence in support of "the God hypothesis." That is exactly the error that dishonest magicians rely on to convince gullible people that they are psychics and mediums and instruments of God. Not knowing how the guy did it is not itself evidence that he is actually a psychic or some sort of divine instrument—just as our ignorance of why the laws of nature seem so exquisitely fine-tuned is not evidence that "God did it." In all such cases, our ignorance only constitutes evidence that we don't yet understand something.

Sadly, D'Souza has a lot of company in these errors: history is littered with examples of something "supernatural" being arbitrarily asserted as the explanation, only to be retracted later as our knowledge expanded. Every gust of wind and bolt of lightning was a direct act of God. But then came Ben Franklin, and we no longer think about meteorology that way. The same thing happened with tornadoes and earthquakes: the Acts of God that insurance policies exclude used to be divine punishment, but with our current understanding the term is really a euphemism for natural disasters. And today, most people don't consider themselves impious or afflicted with demons just because they catch the flu or get a nasty infection—they know it's because of germs. The history of mankind has been one long account of religious explanation being crowded out by scientific discoveries and rational understanding. This pattern of poor thinking is so common that it even has its own name: the "God of the Gaps," where a supernatural agent is cited as the reason behind something we do not understand. Here's the clincher: just notice how it always goes one way—natural, rational explanations are never displaced by supernatural "explanations."

What's a bit humorous about D'Souza's point is that we can even predict that advances in science will make this sort of sophistry all the more enticing and common. After all, you can't wonder about the design of the inner workings of the cell until you find out there are cells and that they contain marvelous machinery, and you can't explore the delicate interplay of cosmological constants until you have discovered those constants in the first place. So sure, if you let your thinking be corrupted by arbitrary God of the Gaps arguments from ignorance, then you'll believe "the God hypothesis has more going for it today" in our impressive explosion of scientific progress.

D'Souza is a bright and scholarly fellow who certainly understands the basic principles of logic. And he is obviously well-read in the history of Western thought, which has seen the fundamental errors in these religious arguments exposed countless times through the ages. Yet he presents them again with a straight face. His opponents and fans alike should be asking another question as well: Why would the truth need the support of false arguments?

(Upcoming in the series: Morality and Life.)

Right to Primitivism

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

My first thought on seeing the headline "'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon" was "Wow, what a fantastic opportunity for anthropologists!" However, on reading the actual story, I saw another agenda was at work. The article says:

Researchers have produced aerial photos of jungle dwellers who they say are among the few remaining peoples on Earth who have had no contact with the outside world. ...

More than 100 uncontacted tribes remain worldwide, and about half live in the remote reaches of the Amazonian rainforest in Peru or Brazil, near the recently photographed tribe, according to Survival International, a nonprofit group that advocates for the rights of indigenous people. "All are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed or decimated by new diseases," the organization said Thursday.

Illegal logging in Peru is threatening several uncontacted groups, pushing them over the border with Brazil and toward potential conflicts with about 500 uncontacted Indians living on the Brazilian side, Survival International said. Its director, Stephen Cory, said the new photographs highlight the need to protect uncontacted people from intrusion by the outside world.

"These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist," Cory said in a statement. "The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct."

I can understand a government wishing to protect the rights of primitive peoples living within its territory, as well as protecting them from exposure to potentially life-threatening diseases. Even presupposing an ideal right-respecting government, I see thorny questions about interaction and assimilation with such peoples. (Monica has blogged some good thoughts on this topic.)

Those are not the central concerns expressed in the article, however. Instead, the basic idea is that these primitive tribes must be protected from any contact with the modern world, as a matter of moral obligation and legal right. At first glance, that's completely baffling. Since the tribe hasn't been contacted, how can we know that isolation is what its members prefer? Moreover, since the tribe members don't know about the rest of the world, how could they possibly make an informed decision about whether to remain isolated or integrate with it?

It makes no sense -- until one realizes that the philosophic principle at work is that a primitive tribe unsullied by contact with the outside world is an intrinsic value, regardless of and perhaps contrary to the wishes (or would-be wishes) of its members. That's the inane idea that makes possible all this nonsense of preserving uncontacted tribes.

Rights and Abortion

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

After a recent discussion of abortion on my OActivists mailing list, a subscriber e-mailed me to suggest that perhaps right apply to the fetus at the point of natural viability, rather than to the baby at birth. (By natural viability, I mean when the fetus can survive outside the womb without any special medical technology such as a respirator or feeding tube.) Some years ago, I found that "natural viability" position quite appealing, but Paul eventually argued me out of it. So in my reply to my correspondent, I offered my own version of Paul's argument. Here's what I wrote:

If a woman aborted a late-stage pregnancy just because she felt like it -- when she could have just as easily given birth at full term and adopted the baby -- I would regard that as morally wrong. That's not the kind of person that I'd ever wish to have any dealings with, as the action would indicate a serious lack of respect for human life. However, that doesn't settle the legal question of rights.

The problem with natural viability as a standard for rights comes when a late-stage pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. Let's imagine that the pregnant woman must end the pregnancy somehow or she will die. If she aborts, she has a 5% risk of serious complication. That's because the doctor can kill and dismember the fetus in the womb, then extract it. (Sorry, that's icky.) However, if she attempts to give birth to the fetus, she has a 15% risk of serious complication, with a 5% risk of death. (Such cases do happen. In general, a live birth will always involve greater risk of complications than a late-term abortion.)

If a fetus has rights at the point of natural viability, then either (1) the woman must be obliged to suffer any risk of death -- perhaps 99% -- in order to respect the rights of the fetus within her or (2) the state must arbitrarily draw a line somewhere specifying the acceptable risk to her life for the sake of a live birth. The first option is morally monstrous: you're sacrificing a person with an actual life to a fetus with merely a potential life to lead. The second isn't any more appealing because some arbitrary amount of risk is deemed obligatory for the woman to assume. In either case, women will be forced to die for the sake of the fetus. The only question is whether it's more women dying or less women dying.

After some unhappy thought about such cases, I decided that the only clear and bright line -- the only way that the state would not be forcing pregnant women to sacrifice their own lives and health for the sake of a fetus -- was to accept that rights begin after the fetus has left the womb. So my general view is that rights adhere to any and all creatures with the potential for rationality living an biologically independent existence. By "living a biologically independent existence," I just mean that the creature is not not biologically connected to another person -- as is a fetus or the violinist in Judith Thomson's famous essay on abortion -- even if it is dependent on others for sustenance and aid, as are babies and people incapacitated by illness.

Thoughts?

An Open Letter to Borrowers and Lenders: Take Responsibility for Your Decisions

By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

An Open Letter to Borrowers and Lenders: Take Responsibility for Your Decisions

by Alex Epstein

Throughout the housing crisis, we have heard demands from spokesmen for desperate homeowners, banks, and investors for every variety of government bailout. But there is one group from whom the nation has not heard: the millions of Americans who, like me, had nothing to do with the crisis, who entered into mortgage contracts they could meet or who refused to buy at exorbitant prices, but who will be forced to pay the bills for these bailouts. If we had a spokesman, this is what I wish he would say.
 
"Dear Struggling Borrowers and Lenders,

"Every day, the government is offering a new intervention for your sake: to protect the borrowers among you from foreclosure, to protect banks and investors from ruinous losses, and to protect all of you who bought houses during the boom from declining home values.

"The government is allowing taxpayer-backed, trouble-ridden Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to add even more risky subprime loans to their trillion-dollar portfolios while holding even less cash in reserve. It is 'guaranteeing' more and more risky mortgages with taxpayer money through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Through the Federal Reserve, it is continuing to inflate the currency to give cheap money to struggling banks. And it is floating several proposals to allow courts to slash valid mortgage contracts, assaulting the sanctity of contract.

"All of this is profoundly unfair to those of us who will pay the price for your bailout.

"It is universally recognized that when you invest in stocks, you are taking a risk--and just as you deserve the profits if the investment goes well, so you must accept the losses if it doesn't.

"The same holds true for real estate. Whether you are an investment bank holding mortgage-backed securities, a borrower with an adjustable-rate mortgage facing foreclosure, or an 'underwater homeowner' who owes more than your home is worth, the essence of your situation is the same: you chose to enter into a real estate transaction that has gone bad. And just as you had every right to any gains that might have ensued--so you must bear full responsibility for your losses.

"Taking responsibility does not necessarily mean resigning yourself to foreclosure or to huge, irreversible write-downs. You should do everything possible to make the best of the situation by making voluntary offers to other market participants. A borrower can seek refinancing, a bank with a large mortgage portfolio can try to find a buyer, lenders and borrowers can renegotiate loan terms that are cheaper than foreclosure. But what is intolerable is to force us to bail you out--which is exactly what the government is doing more by the day.

"Your representatives blithely ignore the injustice of their bailout schemes, claiming that the health of the entire financial system is at stake--just as they did with Long-Term Capital Management in the '90s and Savings and Loans in the '80s. But if the financial system ever does need these bouts on government life support, it is only because of decades' worth of government interventions that have radically distorted private investments and camouflaged and shifted risks. To unwind these uneconomic policies and practices will be disruptive. But it is the only way to restore genuine financial health.

"The question we face today is: Do we let the market function, penalizing primarily those who made bad investments--or do we unfairly foist damage on those who did nothing to cause it, while gifting boom-era borrowers and lenders with propped-up housing prices, lower mortgages, and easy credit?

"There is no conflict between individual responsibility and a functioning housing market; to the contrary, the second requires the first. If we let the market function, home values would fall to some market bottom, new buyers would eagerly seize on lower home prices, borrowing from lenders who would have learned to lend rationally--and mortgage-backed securities would be valued accordingly.

"The bailout policy, on the other hand, is creating indefinite uncertainty about home values and mortgage-backed securities, exposing taxpayers to trillions of dollars in future risks, further devaluing our savings through inflation, encouraging more irresponsible behavior in the future, and creating destructive new government interventions that destroy the vital protection of contracts.

"Clearly, the just and the American solution is for all of us to tell the government that we will take responsibility for our decisions, and that no one has the right to make anyone else pay for his mistakes."

 

In Rememberance of The Unknown Hero

By noreply@blogger.com (Dan Edge) from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog


(Jeff Widener, Associated Press, June 5, 1989)

No one knows who this man is or what happened to him after this photo was taken. But nearly 19 years ago, he heroically stared down a line of Chinese tanks in defiance against tyranny. He was later branded 'The Unknown Rebel' by the media. I call him 'The Unknown Hero.' Hundreds of civilians, many of them students, died that day as Chinese soldiers opened fire on a group of protesters in Tiananmen Square. The students were protesting for free media reform (freedom of speech), one of the key components of a free society.

This image has always been evocative for me because it demonstrates the courage that free men must have to overcome violent irrationalism. I look at this picture often, for the same reason I look at news footage of the WTC attacks every year on September 11. I want to remind myself of the importance to fight against evil, in any form, wherever it rears its ugly head. The cost of inaction is dire.

And more, images like this one inspire me to live my life to the fullest. Heroism is not restricted to characters in stories. Anyone can be a hero in his own life. If this lone man has the courage to walk in front of a line of tanks, then I can certainly do my best every day to become a better man.

--Dan Edge

Supreme Court's "Retaliation" Decisions Raise New Obstacles for Employers

By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

Supreme Court's "Retaliation" Decisions Raise New Obstacles for Employers
June 2, 2008

Irvine, CA--In two recent decisions, the Supreme Court has determined that blacks and over-40 workers may sue for “retaliation” under federal employment discrimination laws.

In the case of CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, a Cracker Barrel restaurant manager was fired for leaving the store safe open overnight. He sued for retaliation, alleging he was really being punished for having previously complained about racial discrimination against a fellow employee. The Supreme Court decided that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 allows such a retaliation claim. In the other case, Gomez-Perez v. Potter, the Court held that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act grants older workers a similar right to sue.

"These decisions erect new obstacles to rational employers whose goal is to market good products and services," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Most Americans think discrimination laws simply stop irrational employers from making decisions based on race, age, or sex when those factors are irrelevant to performance. In fact, however, such laws burden all employers by jacking up the costs and risks of hiring the so-called protected classes, such as minorities, women, and disabled or older workers.

"Any employer who disciplines, demotes, or fires a protected worker must be prepared to prove, to the government's satisfaction in a court of law, that the decision stemmed entirely from legitimate business reasons. Given the huge number of employment decisions made every day, the costs associated with maintaining evidence of those decisions' validity are staggering.

"A protected employee can file a charge of discrimination with little or no evidence. Then the burden of proof--along with attorneys' fees, lost employee work time, and the risk of large monetary awards, including punitive damagesfalls on the employer. Predictably, therefore, employers end up giving preferential treatment to members of the protected classes.

"Outlawing retaliation clothes the protected classes in yet another layer of legal insulation. An employee whose bad performance puts him in danger of discipline or discharge need only make a complaint of discrimination as a 'pre-emptive strike.' Now if his employer fires him, he can cry 'retaliation' and drag his boss into court, without further evidence of wrongdoing.

"The ever-present threat of discrimination and retaliation suits prevents rational employers from acting on their own best thinking about who is most fit for a job. Congress should address the continuing injustice of laws that encourage irrational discrimination in the name of preventing irrational discrimination.

"The best weapon against irrational discrimination is a free market, in which those who act on their stupid prejudices are shunned and lose out on talented minority, female, or older employees. The solution is not to make hiring such employees a nightmare."

#   #   #

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."
       

 

New Secular History Yahoo Group

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

Joseph Roth

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Three Novellas by Joseph Roth is fiction from a point of view I had never read before. These stories reflect the sad longing of a man in the 1930's who wished the Austro-Hungarian Empire would reform and live again.

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) loved the Hapsburg Empire in which he was born and raised. In 1916 he volunteered to fight in what would later be called World War I. The war and the collapse of the Empire in 1918 had a profound effect on Roth; for the rest of his life he would think of himself as homeless.

In the 1920's he made a successful career in Berlin as journalist and novelist. The rise of the Nazis forced the Jewish Roth to move to Paris in 1933. There he lost interest in living and committed slow suicide by alcohol. Perhaps dying in 1939 was not a bad time for him to go; this nineteenth century man was spared the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.

In "The Bust of the Emperor," the protagonist, Count Morstin, who surely speaks for the author, rails against nationalism and nation-states.

And all these people who had never been anything but Austrians, in Tarnopol, Sarajevo, Bruenn, Prague, Czernowitz, Oderburg or Troppau; all these who had never been anything but Austrian, began in accordance with the "Spirit of the Age" to look upon themselves as members of the Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, Roumanian, Slovenian and Croatian "nations," and so on and so forth.

It must seem reactionary from our contemporary point of view to pine for an Empire filled with officials in silly uniforms, an Empire that was a backward, atavistic remnant of the Middle Ages. And yet, I must think that something of value was also lost in the cataclysm of WWI. Both Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises wrote that it is impossible to express to people born later the benevolence and happiness of the world before WWI; I think that benevolence is really what Roth missed to the point that he no longer wished to live without it.

Count Morstin notes that there were no passports before WWI. Think of that -- a world without passports! No two-bit martinets demanding, "Papiere, bitte." It was also a world without major wars and without inflation. How is that worse than the totalitarianism that followed? How is that worse than Europe today with its vast welfare states and advancing dhimmitude?

Many readers will not like these three naturalistic stories -- "Fallmerayer the Stationmaster," "The Bust of the Emperor," and "The Legend of the Holy Drinker" -- about Austrians who, like their author, are out of step with the world and not entirely in touch with reality. The mysticism in these stories is not surprising, given that the author was an alcoholic who had given up on living in this world.

The heroes are not terribly heroic -- they are quixotic, almost comic men who cannot succeed in reality -- but they are all unwaveringly loyal to their ideals. I found their loyalty to their values quite moving, if sad and pathetic.

UPDATE: Corrected the German phrase, as per Wolfgang's comment.

Prohibition Ends in Chicago

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

Via WOPSR comes news of a battle won against the left. Fois gras is now legal again in Chicago! The era of the "duckeasy" is over, at least for now. The ban that inspired this updated version of Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" from yours truly has been lifted:

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the repeal had been made in "a secretive, rushed bow to special interests that benefit from the cruel treatment of animals".

But Didier Durand, one of the Chicago chefs who formed a movement to end the ban, called the decision "fabulous".

"All of us are so excited," he told reporters outside his restaurant while holding his duck Nicolai - named after French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Durand acknowledged that his restaurant had been a "duckeasy", getting round the ban by serving foie gras for free.

"Duckeasy" is a play on Chicago's "speakeasies", illegal bars that operated when the sale of alcohol was banned during the American prohibition. [bold added]

Qwertz notes that he only learned of this through foreign media. At least part of the reason can be found in the very last sentence of the BBC report, when a restaurateur who was fined under the ban told a reporter that, "There are real important issues in this city. This is certainly not one of them."

Consider this statement for a moment. Here is a man whose very livelihood was under attack from people who would use the government to give orders to you and me rather than protect our freedom -- and indeed, his ability to earn a living had been partially compromised by such an attack. And yet, he dismisses this "issue" as unimportant!

On the face of it, he is chiding the animal "rights" activists for being silly busybodies, for sacrificing time from their irreplaceable lives for a foolish cause. In so far as the lives of ducks and geese are not of equal or superior value to human life Doug Sohn is absolutely right, but on a more abstract -- and dangerously practical -- level, he is dead wrong.

There is a very faint whiff, too, in Mr. Sohn's words of an old saying that could stand a revival: "Mind your own business." This is also on the right track, but misses something about the nature of his opponents.

Animal "rights" activists are meddlesome, and they look like clowns because most people implicitly realize that animals are not human beings, and do not have rights. But that understanding is only implicit, and -- after decades of manufactured "rights" (e.g., to medical care, or a "livable wage") that really violate man's actual rights -- most people do not really understand the nature of the rights possessed by individual human beings -- by rational animals.

This is a shame, because as the rational animal, man must exercise his mind to survive. Barring accidents of nature, the only thing preventing him from doing so is other men, specifically men who would initiate physical force -- be it by threat, constraint, fraud, theft, or murder -- in order to prevent him from enjoying the fruits of his hard-won knowledge and careful thinking.

Whether a man wants to build a clubhouse for his children or a bridge -- travel for a vacation or build a railroad from coast to coast -- pour a bowl of cereal for himself in the morning or prepare fois gras for paying customers -- that man must be free from the forcible interference of others to do so.

Man's most fundamental right is to his own life, but since his life depends on the use of reason, the various manifestations of his ability to act upon his best judgement to further his own life (so long as they do not harm the lives of others) are derivative rights. It follows that a man must have the liberty to go about as he pleases and make his own calls about what to do. What man produces to further his own life is likewise his property -- by right. And in all cases, a man must be free to communicate with others to increase his knowledge or correct errors. Freedom of speech is also a right.

(By contrast, there is no "right" to free medical care since providing it against a physician's wishes would involve violating the physician's rights. And the concept of "rights" is inapplicable to animals, which do not reason and will not respect the rights of men.)

While we all have the right of self-defense, the benefits of trade we can realize in a society would be impossible were we not to delegate this right (except in dire emergencies) to the government, whose sole proper purpose is the protection of individual rights, and whose distinction as a social entity is its ability to wield retaliatory force.

This is because honest disputes, even between citizens who would respect one another's rights, can and do arise, and because the less time we spend looking over our shoulders in fear (or having to fight off enemies), we have that much more time to go about our own business, our pursuit of happiness. A proper government subordinates our right to the retaliatory use of force to objective standards.

And this -- the nature of individual rights and the proper role of government -- is what is actually at stake here. Thanks in part to generations of abysmal failure by a socialist education system to transmit our nation's cultural heritage, and thanks in part to that heritage being under active attack by generations of intellectuals since Immanuel Kant, the American man on the street -- like Mr. Sohn -- can see the utter absurdity of animals having "rights", but is intellectually blinded to the real agenda and effectively disarmed against it.

Many people like Mr. Sohn will not see this won battle for fois gras as a part of a larger battle -- being lost so far -- for individual rights. Many will be blindsided by the next advance gained by the anti-individual rights activists, be it a new fois gras ban or some new intrusion on the rights of a group of people as yet complaisant or unaware. Many will fail, like Mr. Sohn, to see that all these battles are part of the same war.

This will go on and on until more people become able again to understand how to think in terms of principles, to see the essential similarities between apparently disparate events. A ban on foie gras in the name of animal "rights" and a ban on fast-food chicken restaurants in the name of good health are both by nature attacks on the individual rights of human beings -- as are many other things the government is now doing and has been doing for a long time.

No, Mr. Sohn. This -- your freedom to live your own life as you see fit -- is a big issue. It is the biggest issue you and I face today. It is way bigger than a bunch of clownish activists in Chicago, and it is way bigger than Chicago.

When you get an off-taste during a meal, you don't spit it out and then eat the rest. You stop to figure out whether you're about to poison or sicken yourself. This fois gras ban has left a bad taste in your mouth for a reason. You might want to send the whole plate of government meddling back. You need and deserve better than that.

-- CAV

Blame Big Congress, Not Big Oil, For High Prices

By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release
 
Blame Big Congress, Not Big Oil, For High Prices
May 30, 2008

Irvine, CA--Congress has spent weeks accusing oil companies of driving up gasoline prices through "price gouging," and "market manipulation." "These accusations are worse than baseless," said Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute, "because they divert attention from the real, urgent problem in the oil market: Congress itself."

"Oil and gasoline prices are determined by supply and demand--and Congress severely restricted the supply of oil. In the name of safeguarding a tiny portion of caribou habitat in the Alaskan wilderness, it prohibits drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge--a potential source of 1 million barrels a day, 5 percent of America's daily oil consumption. Also off-limits is 85 percent of America's coastline, which Shell estimates contains some 100 billion recoverable barrels--13 times America's annual oil consumption--and the vast majority of oil shale in Colorado, estimated at 1.5 trillion barrels.

"And how about the effects of Congress's open hostility toward the future of oil? Our politicians damn oil as an 'addiction' to be eliminated, and seek to cut--by up to 90 percent--the use of oil and other vital fossil fuels that make our standard of living possible. Barack Obama recently equated 'the tyranny of oil' to 'the tyranny of fascism and communism'--and no one objected. Is this a climate in which oil company CEOs will feel safe making the billion dollar investments and decades-long plans that oil production requires?

"The congressional crippling of oil production must stop. Next time your congressman rails about gasoline prices, tell him to look in the mirror."

###  ### ###

Mr. Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on business issues. His Op-Ed "Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil" is available at ARI's Web site.

Mr. Epstein's Op-Eds have appeared in such publications as the San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Canada's National Post, and the Washington Times. He is also a contributing writer for The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics. Mr. Epstein has been a guest on numerous nationally syndicated radio programs.

Alex Epstein 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 at www.AynRand.org. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

"Personhood" Advocates are Going for the Gold

By Gina Liggett from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

NoodleFood SuperFriends!

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I would like to create a mailing list -- likely through Google Groups -- for "friends of NoodleFood." Anyone interested in and friendly to NoodleFood would be welcome to subscribe, even if not always in agreement with our views, Objectivist and otherwise. (In other words, unlike my OList.com mailing lists, I'd definitely not restrict membership to Objectivists. However, as usual, I would remove annoying people from the list.)

The list would be open to discussions of almost any kind. For example, I might post links to interesting articles that I may or may not have time to blog for NoodleFood. I might post alerts to good responses to NoodleFood posts found around the blogosphere. I might post snarky comments about insane responses to NoodleFood posts (e.g. here and here). I might ask for advice on changes to NoodleFood. Subscribers would be welcome to post links to interesting articles, ask questions, raise objections, and the like. I hope that some of that material will become fodder for a NoodleFood posts, whether written by me or another NoodleFoodler.

However, I have a problem: I need a properly whimsical name. NoodleFood specializes in such names. Even apart from the title of the blog, the bloggers are "NoodleFoodlers" and the commenters are "NoodleFoodleDoodlers." So what would be a fitting name for a mailing list for people friendly to NoodleFood be called?

Harvard Law Review Article on Charity

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Volokh.com legal blog had an interesting post critical of an appalling article that was just published in the Harvard Law Review entitled, "NEVER AGAIN SHOULD A PEOPLE STARVE IN A WORLD OF PLENTY".

They also quoted one typical paragraph:

You have now read this Note and you are equipped with the knowledge that $200 can save a child’s life. No claim of ignorance can be supported at this point. In fact, if you would like to make a donation, the toll-free number for UNICEF is 1-800-486-4233. They take credit card donations over the phone, or you can go online at www.unicef.org. Here is some time to call right now. ****

The author of the article, Harvard Law student Phil Telfeyan, has also created a blog with the sanctimonious title of "Do the Right Thing at Every Moment" to promote and defend his notions of morality.

Apart from the issue of whether such an article has any place in a law review, there is the more interesting broader question of the proper role of charity in man's life.

I left the following comment on Telfeyan's blog and the Volokh.com blog post:

I think a far better approach towards the broader issue of charity is from Ayn Rand (which incidentally is not the same as the popular misconception of her views of "never help anyone"):

"My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue."

http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/charity.html

I completely agree. I've gladly helped others in need on multiple occasions (1) when I could afford it, and (2) when the recipient was worthy.

But life isn't about putting bandages on other people's sores; it's about creating value, achieving goals, and pursuing a happy full existence in accordance with our nature as rational beings. Charity towards others is a secondary aspect of life, not the primary purpose.

I also left the following second comment on Telfeyan's blog:

...I'd like to also explicitly challenge the primary thesis that there is any kind of a moral *obligation* to help those less fortunate.

My contention is that even if an innocent child in Africa could be saved by my giving him $200 of my salary, his need (genuine as it may be) does not create any sort of mystical *obligation* for me to part with that money for his behalf. In other words, I don't see any basis for the sort of moral calculus being proposed. In fact, to adopt it means that one's own life energy ends up being drained perpetually in a race to the bottom. One can never claim the fruits of one's labor as rightfully one's own - not when there is someone in greater need (and there will always be someone in greater need).

This nightmarish moral outlook is not conducive to life at all, and only leads to an unnecessary, undeserved moral guilt. For similar reasons, I reject Peter Singer's moral philosophy.

In contrast, when charitable giving accords with my own values and priorities, then I am happy to donate, because it furthers *my* values. And I do give freely to numerous charitable organizations (predominantly educational groups as well as various organizations like FIRE which defend freedom of speech and other individual rights) for precisely those reasons.

In one respect, Phil is quite right -- one should do the right thing at every moment. But the key issue is *what* exactly is that "right thing"?

I contend that it's furthering one's life and values as a rational productive being. (Note this does not imply screwing over others -- I don't believe there are any inherent conflicts of rational interest between humans in normal contexts).

For further information of this view, I'd like to point towards the excellent book by University of Texas professor of philosophy Tara Smith entitled, "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist".

Professor Smith discusses how a policy of rational ethical egoism is compatible with (and in fact the only consistent basis for) classical virtues such as honesty, integrity, justice, rationality, etc.

It dispels the notion that egoism must imply screwing other people. In fact, it shows that the exact opposite is true.