Just Say No Fast Tracking

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In response to this article on how the Democrats in Congress are seeking to "fast-track" some kind of health care "reform" -- likely universal, mandatory insurance -- Hannah Krening wrote the following letter to Colorado's two senators:

Dear Senators Bennet and Udall,

I have read the recent Reuters article and want to register my vehement objection to this underhanded approach to the debate on health care. I do not want government involvement in my health care decisions. I want a free-market approach to medicine.

Creating new government tentacles to surround my physical well-being and doing so in a way that "rams" it through (Reuters words, not mine) betrays the unprecedented power-lust present in Washington these days. Your participation in this "deal" would be a gross betrayal of your constituents and the Constitution. I hope you will find the conscience and backbone to resist participation.

Sincerely,

Hannah Krening
Larkspur, Colorado

Inspired by her good example, I wrote the following:

Dear Senators,

I am writing to express my dismay over the prospect that some kind of socialized medicine (like mandatory, universal coverage insurance) will be imposed on America by "fast-tracking" health care reform. It is grossly irresponsible for the legislature to take such drastic action without proper debate and discussion. We've already seen too many frantic attempts to do something quick -- anything, no matter how irresponsible -- over the past few months. It's time for the legislature to slow down -- preferably before you grind the economy to a halt.

You might have won an election, but you have no right to dispose of anyone else's life, health, and wealth. For you to attempt to ram socialized medicine down our throats -- without so much as offering Americans the chance to form and express their opinions on the matter -- is morally wrong. It's also a sign that your position is weak -- that you cannot persuade Americans of the merits of your views by any rational appeal to facts. Indeed, you have reason to worry: socialized medicine in any form is always disaster.

I do not want any government involvement in my health care. I do not wish my life and health to be subject to the whims of government bureaucrats. I support the elimination of the whole horrid web of entitlements and controls that are strangling medicine while driving up costs. The free market has not failed: your government controls have failed. Repeal them -- and restore the doctor-patient relationship to its properly private sphere.

Diana Hsieh
Sedalia, CO

I encourage you to write your senators about this issue. Even just a sentence or two is adequate, so long as you express yourself clearly. If you live outside of Colorado, you're certainly welcome to adapt the text of my letter for your own purposes.

Quick Roundup 427

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

Amit Ghate on Civic Responsibility

His focus on debate is an excellent concretization not only of what is wrong with the libertarian approach to political change, but of what is right with the approach of the Objectivist movement:

Citizens today, particularly the young, are told that their greatest civic responsibility is to vote. I think this is ridiculous -- the most important responsibility is to educate oneself and then add one's voice to the debate. One way to do this is to pick a topic of particular personal interest, learn about it, and then participate in the early legislative policy debates (which are normally open to public commentary). In this way, instead of simply casting a vote for the limited choices others have saddled you with, you get to shape the choices that millions or even hundreds of millions will vote on.

And how does one form a basis for these policy positions? By first educating oneself about a proper political philosophy, which will also enable one, in turn, to participate in the broader political and cultural debate.

And one more thing. Always fight, but do stop to admire the flowers from time to time. If you are not fighting for something, you are doing something terribly wrong.

And speaking of enjoying your values, ...

Here's a Book to Get

I enjoyed reading this post over at Live Oaks about 101 Nights of Grrreat Romance.

Live Oaks, by the way, is now one year old.

"Details Kill" Update

Not too long ago, I noted that Tom Daschle, architect of Barack Obama's attack on freedom in the medical sector, is an enemy of open debate about "health care 'reform'" and wants to slow down the development of new medical technology.

Daschle's attitude on debate seems to be the rule rather than the exception in his party these days. Diana Hsieh notes that Congress wants to pass socialized medicine without debate -- and Glenn Reynolds notes that Barack Obama has all but completely reneged on a campaign promise to, "put [new bills] online for five days, review, and make them open to the public" before signing them into law.

If the Democrats are as "reality-based" as they are so wont to claim, why not allow plenty of debate, along with the inevitable tidal wave of public support the merit of their plans would bring?

Oh. Daschle already answered that one, I guess.

The Democrats' only concession to reality is to admit in this way that their proposals are wholly without objective merit, and, incidentally, that they are more worried about details killing their power grabs than the saving the lives of their constituents.

Jeff Britting Schools Tobias Wolff

Darren Cauthon recounts a panel discussion I think I would have enjoyed:

When it was his turn to speak about Ayn Rand's character in "Old School" by Tobias Wolff, he nailed it. Britting started by stating that Wolff's presentation of Ayn Rand was a "total distortion," among other words, and then went on in detail to explain who she was, the themes of her four fiction books, and a little bit of her philosophy. Near the end of his presentation he compared Wolff's "character that shares Ayn Rand's name" with the actual Ayn Rand and showed a few specific cases where the two are polar opposites. He also asked the audience to not take his presentation or Wolff's presentation of Ayn Rand on faith by reading Rand's books for themselves.

Ayn Rand's opponents are, increasingly, in a lose-lose situation: Distort Rand and invite comparisons with what she actually said. Ignore Rand and look like you live under a rock.

An Edison Day Quote

From The Kindredist:

Nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. -- Thomas Edison

More at the above link.

Better late than never!

A Pesky "Collection" Problem: Solved!

I haven't blogged on personal productivity in a long time, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it.

One problem I never completely solved to my satisfaction was how I could make note collection at all times as easy as possible. For various reasons, I did not want a PDA, but that meant I ended up using either my calendar or scraps of paper in my shirt pocket for on-the-fly note-taking. This has been one area I was never quite satisfied with regarding my implementation of David Allen's techniques.

Until Sunday morning, that is. Stopping by Life Hack, I found a thread about Moleskine hacks that intrigued me and, specifically, the following snarky comment by Catherine Cantieri, a productivity blogger I had not encountered before. (She might enjoy this humorous take on Moleskines.)

I hope this doesn't get me kicked out of the creative-kids klatch, but I just don't get Moleskines. I carry around a Levenger Pocket Briefcase and that seems to meet all my needs. Am I missing something? Could Moleskines change my life? [link added]

I took a look at the Levinger's web site (linked above) and, knowing they have a store in the mall nearby, decided to take a look. There turned out to be a small version with business-sized note cards that fits into my shirt pocket without leaving a huge bulge. It's a nice-looking, three-compartment business card holder that also holds a card on its outside for note-taking and comes with a small pen held along its bottom side. Levinger's sells ink refills for these tiny pens. (Who needs an expensive PDA just to jot down a quick note?)

My wife offered to buy me one, but I was not quite sure -- until remembered that I still didn't have a nice business card holder. That sealed the deal for me, because I had a job hunting/networking event to attend Monday night.

At that event, I got to give the Pocket Briefcase a test run, taking notes a couple of times and using it to keep track of business cards. I am quite happy with it, and now no longer feel "naked" on those occasions when I can't take my calendar along with me.

With that, it's off to the skies again, this time for one of my last Boston to Houston commutes. We will move the bulk of our belongings up here in a few weeks and, possibly, myself, although I may have to stay in Houston for another month or two for writing and experiments.

-- CAV

Altruism vs. Reality

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

As E.J. Dionne points out, the "first 100 of the 1,461 days" of the Obama term are over, meaning that if it were two weeks long, we're just about through its first Monday. So how are all his magical-thinking supporters doing? Not so hot, if this article is any indication:

[A]s Obama nears the 100-day milestone of his presidency, [Greenwood City Councilwoman Edith] Childs suffers from constant exhaustion. In a conservative Southern state that bolstered Obama's candidacy by supporting him early in the Democratic primaries, she awakens at 2:30 a.m. with stress headaches and remains awake mulling all that's befallen Greenwood since Obama's swearing-in.

On Day 4 of his presidency, the Solutia textile plant laid off 101 workers. On Day 23, the food bank set a record for meals served. On Day 50, the hospital fired 200 employees and warned of further job cuts. On Day 71, the school superintendent called a staff meeting and told his principals: "We're losing 10 percent of our budget. That means some of us won't have jobs next year, and the rest should expect job changes and pay cuts." On Day 78, the town's newly elected Democratic mayor, whose campaign was inspired partly by his admiration for Obama, summarized Greenwood's accelerating fragility. "This is crippling us, and there's no sign of it turning around," Welborn Adams said.

On Day 88, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that South Carolina had set a record for its highest unemployment rate in state history, at 11.4 percent. Greenwood's unemployment is 13 percent -- more than twice what it was when Childs first started chanting.

"We have a lot of people who live in cold houses, with no jobs and no food," Childs says.

Over the weekend, I said half-jokingly that Obama had to somehow, "make sure his constituency keeps believing [he can create an Office of Fabulous Salaries] while also not noticing that he hasn't yet gotten around to magically making all of us fabulously wealthy."

This article shows that he needn't even do this much. Childs, who pays constituents' bills with her city council checks -- Is this even legal? -- is feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, but is nowhere near withdrawing her mistaken support of Barack Obama or questioning the creed of self-sacrifice that is causing her to wallow in the problems of so many other people. On happening by a Tea Party protest, her reaction was dismissive: "Let them have their tea party. They're just looking for somebody to blame. My ears are full."

It is, of course, a waste of time for opponents of Barack Obama to attempt to address those who, like Childs, will steadfastly refuse to hear us. But it is worth remembering that if we are to defeat Obama and his fellow statists any time soon, it will take our sustained effort versus the widespread ignorance and entrenched mental indolence of a significant portion of the populace.

No matter how arbitrary the edicts of King Barack the Mild, or how obviously detrimental they are to the hard-working and the self-reliant, do not think that the suffering they will cause will carry the day. We can reach many of the merely ignorant through rational persuasion, but the committed altruists will not stop working against us, and the saturation of the culture with their morality will offset their flagging enthusiasm, even if it can't get whipped up long enough for another election.

-- CAV

Alarming Flu Reports From Mexico

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

BBC News has posted a number of "in the trenches" readers' reports on the swine flu epidemic in Mexico. Here are two disturbing excerpts from Mexican physicians:

I'm a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.

There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.

Antonio Chavez, Mexico City

...I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.

Yeny Gregorio Dávila, Mexico City

A few natural questions:

1) How will this affect border control policy?

Mexico has arguably been teetering on the edge of being a "failed state" for a few years now. If a flu pandemic causes the central government to lose effective control over the country, will we see a flood of desperate illegal immigrants seeking to cross into the US to escape the problems in Mexico? And given that some of those people may be infected, how will the US respond?

Although I support open immigration in the sense that Craig Biddle discusses in his article "Immigration and Individual Rights" from the Spring 2008 issue of The Objective Standard, I also completely agree with him that it is a legitimate function of government to prevent people with deadly communicable diseases from entering this country. In an emergency, this may require fairly drastic steps (such as deploying the US military along the border).

Hence, border security may become a big issue in the near future.

2) If the pandemic strikes the US, will this lead to a permanent increase in government control over our lives?

Again, in a mass casualty medical emergency, I think the government can legitimately impose controls that would not normally be justified. For instance, it might restrict normal commerce, assume temporary control of hospitals and health care facilities, impose quarantines/curfews on neighborhoods and cities, etc. One can argue over whether any specific proposed measures are justified for a given emergency, but the basic principle is valid.

But we also know that once government assumes "emergency" control over a sector of the economy, it rarely gives up that control after the emergency has passed.

Hence, a flu pandemic could lead to permanent new government controls over health care and/or other major sectors of the rest of the American economy, even after the immediate crisis has passed.

3) What would be the long-term economic effects of a flu pandemic on the US?

If there is significant loss of life, the individual tragedies will be bad enough.

But I expect this would be compounded by significant disruption of normal economic activity. In the present political climate, this could deepen our current recession, thus creating more pseudo-justification for further government controls over the economy, which would further worsen the recession, etc. How far could this downward economic spiral go?

We'll soon know the answers to these questions.

I also wish to emphasize that I am not taking an alarmist position. For instance, I think it's a huge positive that medical technology has advanced immensely since the flu pandemic of 1918.

If you want to read some good practical advice, take a look at this page from epidemiologist Dr. Tara Smith (not the Objectivist philosophy professor) written during the bird flu scare of two years ago. In short, she recommends:

Don't panic
Wash your hands
If you're sick, stay home
Don't touch your eyes/nose/mouth
Stock up on food, water, and other household necessities (i.e., standard prep for blizzard, earthquakes, or other natural disasters)

There is also recent research suggesting that Vitamin D may help strengthen your ability to fight off the flu. (The article doesn't specifically address swine flu, but my guess is that correcting any Vitamin D deficiency wouldn't hurt and would likely help against this new virus.)

[Note from DMH: As I've mentioned before -- here and here and here -- most Americans are deficient in vitamin D. For example, a recent study showed that 72% of men over 65 are deficient using 30 ng/ml as the cutoff. From what I've read, levels should be over 60 ng/ml. For some people, that can require thousands of IU supplementation per day.]

So don't panic, keep informed, and stay tuned for updates!

(BBC link via Instapundit.)

A Libertarian Foreign Policy

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The UK Libertarian Party has a quiz on its website: "Are you a liberal?"

After answering 10 questions, the website offers criticism of your answers and presents you with an image to show off your score.

The last two questions are of particular concern. One asks:

It is wrong for democratic nations to overthrow foreign dictators?

This is an unusual question. By democratic - I assume they mean free. Democratic dictatorships are more than possible. Would regular elections have made the USSR a free country? Certainly not. Hitler himself was elected by a democratic process.

If we assume that the website means "It is [Shouldn't that be "Is it"?] wrong for free nations to overthrow foreign dictators?" - then the answer is no. Dictatorships are outlaws, they do not rule by right (which means, fulfil the proper role of a state: the defence of individual rights) as a corollary, they do not possess any rights. The right of a state to exist (or its legitimacy, if you prefer that phrase) is an extension of the individual rights of its citizens. If a state does not simply exercise the rightful powers it has by this mechanism, and instead actually becomes a violator of individual rights (A dictatorship) - it loses all legitimacy.

Dictatorships have no right to exist, and as soon as it becomes in the self interest of a free state to topple one - it should do so. For example, if (as in the case of the middle east) a dictatorship nationalised oil that the businesses of a free country were drilling - then it is right for the free country to topple that state to defend the right of its corporations to dig for the oil that they explored. If a dictatorship started to stockpile weapons, or even if it was being secretive about its weapons, or if it made a threat - if it gave any cause for alarm - then it would be morally proper, and consistent with the principle of justice, for the free country to crush the dictatorship.

Contrast this with the ludicrous rebuttal that the website gave:

It is illiberal, and a sign of gross arrogance, for one state to impose their will on another in this way. These issues are for the people of said state to resolve themselves with their leader(s).

This is simply not so. It is not 'their will' being imposed by the free state: it is reality. In reality, there is only one moral way to live - and that is in a societal system of free traders, a system of laissez-faire capitalism. Free states have the absolute right to topple dictatorships.

This would involve an act of war. Wars are won only by total victory. The enemy's incorrect ideology must be ultimately destroyed, and a new system of individual rights must be forced on the former dictatorship. This happened to Japan and Germany after World War 2, and now they are both productive allies and mostly-free nations.

Which brings us to the next question:

Free market capitalism should be forced on other nations to help create a better world?
It is illiberal for one state to impose their way of life on another. A liberal foreign policy involves free trade with all willing participants. It does not involve forcing states to behave in a certain way if they do not wish to.

The object of forcing capitalism on dictatorships is not to "help create a better world", in the philanthropic sense of the term. Rather it is to stop the dictatorships infringing upon the rights of citizens of the free world - justice. For example, all citizens of the free world have the right to trade. This means they can trade any thing (assuming there are no questions of legality) with anyone, in any place. For example - an American citizen has the absolute right to explore for oil in Saudi Arabia, or Iran - if the dictatorship government then decides to nationalise the oil installation that it could not build and cannot run, then it is proper for the free country to destroy the nationalising government, as it has committed an act of aggression.

Furthermore - law abiding citizens have the right to travel. They have the right to buy or rent property anywhere in the world, to use as they see fit. A citizen of, for example, the UK cannot do this. I cannot now buy a house in North Korea, because the North Korean government would undoubtedly obstruct me - a violation of my rights.

In this way, dictatorships act as aggressors against citizens of the free world by default. That is, their mere existence provides a constant potential, and occasional actual, violation of our rights. It is morally proper for the government of a free country to correct this situation.

More proof, if anyone needed it, that Libertarians are not fit for office.

Regulate Life

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Apuzzo on Fingerprinting

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

Yesterday's Houston Chronicle seemed chock full of thought-provoking items as I read it on the first leg of my flight. One of them was this AP piece by Matt Apuzzo, which purports to be about the effectiveness of torture, but clearly is intended to leave the reader with the impression that it is ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique, and should be scrapped.

In short: Slam someone up against the wall, keep him awake for days, lock him naked in a cell and slap his face enough, and he will probably say something. That doesn't necessarily make it true.

The confessions of torture victims aren't always true?!? Who says there aren't bloodhounds in the media anymore?

Later on, Matthew "Sherlock" Apuzzo notes that:

The British claimed that tough interrogation of Irish Republican Army suspects thwarted dozens of terrorist attacks, Rejali said, but evidence later proved the intelligence was often useless.

This follows shortly after an instance -- treated as if it were some freak exception -- of useful intelligence gathered by CIA waterboarding and leads to the article's conclusion (at least in yesterday's print edition of the Chronicle) that:

"The correct answer for a bureaucrat is always to torture, even if you know it doesn't work," Rejali said. "Nobody wants to be the guy who could have done something and then didn't do it."

Apuzzo follows Darius Rejali's lead -- Rejali is a "Reed College political scientist who studies torture" -- from this to the conclusion that torture "doesn't work" in a few short paragraphs, so that to read this article, one would think that intelligence gatherers are all sadistic idiots who take torture victims at their word, and that sometimes they'll hit he jackpot, but "often," not. But this is not the case. Anything gathered from a tortured prisoner must be weighed against other evidence.

Furthermore, slamming torturers as mindless bureaucrats is disingenuous. Just remember that detectives aren't always successful at lifting fingerprints at the scene of a crime (and that often, these won't be prints from the criminal), then replace "torture" with "fingerprint" in the above excerpt, and you'll see what I mean.

Hell, one could re-write this entire piece easily enough around the term "fingerprinting" to make that technique sound like it ought to be relegated to the same dustbin that palmistry has been and human sacrifice ought to be. Criminalists don't just lift the first fingerprint they can get and run with the assumption that they'll catch a crook. They integrate what it and other prints from the crime scene say with all the other evidence, even if that means simply recording them for future reference days, weeks, years, or even decades later. The same holds true for intelligence gatherers. Torture "works" in the same way that fingerprinting does, but usually with one difference.

That difference, of course, is that torture involves the forcible restraint and threat of another human being with harm, while fingerprinting may sometimes involve forcibly extracting the compliance of a criminal suspect with a request for his prints. In each case, our government, whose sole proper purpose -- is Barack Obama paying attention? -- is the protection of individual rights, must go out of its way to ensure that its use of force serves only that end. That is why a court order is required before the police can get someone's fingerprints, and that is why we are debating whether the government ought to torture prisoners of war at all.

And speaking of war, the Bush Administration muddied this debate in two ways: (1) by failing to declare war, and, more importantly, (2) by failing to note that its proper purpose is the protection of the rights of its citizens, which, in foreign policy terms means, protecting America's interests. We are at war -- remember? -- with an enemy that has no compunction about slaughtering us at least until we kowtow to Allah. We aren't torturing gratuitously and when (and whom) our government could employ torture would be well-defined were we officially at war.

But these are the kinds of concerns someone genuinely concerned with individual rights and proper government would voice, not someone for whom a major priority is to ban torture, and that's what makes this whole piece interesting. Apuzzo never goes right out and says, "Torture is always wrong, and the government of a civilized country should never employ it," or even, "We must be exceedingly careful about how our government uses torture during wartime." (And, incidentally, a piece about whether it is effective would have at least touched on how torture confessions are used as evidence.)

No. Like today's craven conservatives, who tout their conception of capitalism as practical (but think it evil), he avoids making a moral argument altogether and appeals to "practicality." Apuzzo thinks torture is wrong, but fears that it might be effective. He hopes to cash in on America's collective lobotomization by pragmatism and appeal to readers too concrete-bound to consider just what it would mean (or take) for torture to "work" (or for what purpose), and too long-convinced that morality has nothing to do with life to care about why he might be so opposed to our nation acting to protect itself.

On the flip side, he probably also senses that few will attempt to make a moral defense of torture anyway. For those of us who are paying attention and care, this is a big problem. If torture is assumed to be amoral at best, what of taking lives? A nation at war must sometimes do that, too.

Will the ineffectiveness of Bush's "'War' on Terror" next be taken as an argument against us even raising a hand the next time we are attacked? It is bad enough when no one will morally defend what is right and practical, but when the whole standard of practicality is set to some magical, Platonic ideal of "works at once, completely and independently of all other means, and every single time," our goose is cooked.

Definitions of terms like "war"; moral problems, like whether a nation ought to torture prisoners of war; and even keeping a full context regarding questions one is not intimately familiar with, are not just academic classroom exercises. They clearly have life-and-death implications, and are practical matters of the highest order, self-congratulatory pragmatists to the contrary be damned.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 426

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

Feds to Take over Banks?

Dick Morris says that a stock conversion move by the Obama Administration will result in the government nationalizing all the major banks in America. (Obama wants to the government's majority shares to have voting rights.) Morris elaborates a little later, saying, "That's called socialism." He's not completely right, and it is a little late to become alarmed since the government needn't legally own everything to be calling the shots -- i.e., acting as central "planner." (Just read later on in the same piece.) What we have now is closer to fascism -- government control of the economy with only a pretense of private ownership of property.

Nonetheless, two things interest me about this move. First, as Morris points out, this would cement Obama's control over the financial sector from a political and legal perspective. What I think he misses is an additional ideological motive. This is also a chance to chip away at a fundamental aspect of American culture: Private ownership of property.

Second, the role of our "alternative" in the last election is not to be ignored. At best, any federal intervention in this crisis would have been extremely dangerous, and some Republicans did at least seem to realize this on some level. John McCain, however, was not one of them.

When the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) intervention was first outlined by the Bush administration, it did not call for any transfer of stock, of any sort, to the government. The Democrats demanded, as a price for their support, that the taxpayers "get something back" for the money they were lending to the banks. House Republicans, wise to what was going on, rejected the administration’s proposal and sought, instead, to provide insurance to banks, rather than outright cash. Their plan would, of course, not involve any transfer of stock. But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) undercut his own party's conservatives and went along with the Democratic plan, ensuring its passage. [bold added]

During his campaign, McCain repeatedly admitted being clueless about economics and suspicious of "greed". The idea that he would not be nationalizing the banks on McCain's watch strikes me as preposterous.

Perez Hilton's Impropriety

Yesterday, I started my post by noting that several things in Wednesday's paper struck me as worthy of comment. One of these things was a very short AP piece on a dust-up between Perez Hilton, an openly gay entertainment commentator, and a contestant in the Miss USA beauty pageant, that may have cost her the crown. (The Houston Chronicle has the very annoying habit of not posting the entire contents of its print edition on line, and I cannot find this anywhere else. It was titled, "Beauty queen, Hilton spar," and it concerned an appearance of the contestant on the Today show.)

While I disagree with Carrie Prejean's opposition to gay marriage, I must note that she has been treated very unfairly by Hilton and the news media. Hilton, who apparently solicited her opinion on gay marriage during the contest, slammed her for not, "[leaving] her politics and her religion out because Miss USA represents all Americans."

So what was she supposed to do, lie? Whatever one thinks of Miss Prejean's views, to demand that she leave her personal opinions out when formulating an answer to a question that is philosophical in nature is to take a stand against freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. This is reprehensible.

Furthermore, it is also foolish. If Perez Hilton were genuinely concerned with government protection of individual rights, including those of homosexuals, he would be loathe to make such a stand. How, after all, did homosexuality go from unmentionable to much more socially acceptable, except because people were free to discuss it, as unpopular as it was?

Oh, and then we have this...

Speaking of illiberal modern leftists, we have Janeane Garofalo spouting nonsense about the recent Tea Party protests being "racism". Both Bill Brown and Harry Binswanger have already pointed to the video.

Staring about 3:10 into the clip at New Clarion, Garofalo starts spouting a bunch of pseudoscientic claptrap about defective limbic systems in the brains of conservatives -- and "Stockholm syndrome" among the non-white-males at the protests, just to account for the fact that the crowds were not, in fact all-white. Or all-male. Or all- racist. Or mainly racist. Or significantly racist. Or angry.


One further comment is in order here. For all her posturing as an enlightened foe of judging others on the basis of skin color, it might be helpful to recall what racism actually is when considering Garofalo's remarks:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Is Garofalo claiming that the mental disorder she alleges is inherited? If so, she is guilty of the same sin as the most virulent racists. If not, she is still guilty of determinism, and thus still has no room to make moral stands on anything. In any case, she is making things up as she goes along, demonstrating that she is hardly qualified to speak on behalf of ... of anything.

This video is useless in political discourse, but valuable as a cultural diagnostic. It is an indication of the political bankruptcy of the left, as well as its insularity. The most striking thing about the entire segment was the fact that it was an almost textbook example of psychological projection -- from Garofalo attributing racist/deterministic attitudes to her intellectual opponents to her notion that Fox News is only an echo chamber (!), and failing to engage all demographics.

Sickening and fascinating all at once.

A Brown Student's "Discovery"

A doctrinaire leftist from Brown University decided to brave the wilds of a fundamentalist college campus for a semester to write a book about it, and was surprised to discover that many of the students there live close to normal lives. At least, his encounter with the phenomenon of compartmentalization -- common among people (including leftists) whose professed beliefs would make life impossible if fully practiced -- is what I take Glenn Reynolds' use of the term "discovery" to refer to.

(I note in passing that I experienced the same feeling in reverse upon finding decent barbecue sauce at a grocer in Boston yesterday. If you could approximate the flitting emotion with words, it would be something like, "I didn't know people still ate meat or burned charcoal up here!" Yeah. And I bet they babble about global warming and serve tofu burgers at their cookouts up here, too.)

Also noteworthy about the piece is that his experience made him more religious. I attribute this in part to the hypocrisy of Liberty University's students making religion seem less noxious than it really is, and in part to the fact that leftism offers nothing of positive value, philosophically, to people of about Kevin Roose's age, many of whom are looking precisely for philosophical guidance on how to lead their lives.

And speaking of tofu, ...

... leftists, stereotypes, and low humor: Given how free-spirited hippie chicks are reputed to be, I would replace "other than" with "in addition to" in this hilarious news clip.

-- CAV

Yaron Brook on Pajamas TV

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yaron Brook has appeared several times on the Pajamas TV internet news and commentary website. I've enjoyed all of his videos, and I'm glad to see him getting such a wide exposure in the "New Media" world.

Here are the links to his appearances:

3/18/2009: "Is Atlas Shrugging?"
3/30/2009: "Is the Government in the Car Business?"
4/10/2009: "A Rally to Come on Wall Street?"
4/15/2009: "Yaron Brook & Terry Jones on the Tea Parties"
4/17/2009: "Tea Party Aftermath; Recovery Coming?"

The interviewer Allan Barton asks good questions, and he has given Yaron Brook excellent opportunities to discuss fundamental ideas. So if you haven't watched these videos yet, go check them out!

The ARC is also maintaining a dedicated webpage for these and future appearances on PJTV: "The Ayn Rand Center on Pajamas TV".

Overall, PajamasMedia has been a good outlet for Objectivists. In the past three months, they've also published the following OpEds by Amit Ghate and myself:

2/10/2009: "Obama's Regulatory Chief Believes in Paternalistic Government" by Paul Hsieh
3/02/2009: "Ayn Rand and the Tea Party Protests" by Paul Hsieh
3/22/2009: "Health Insurance Industry Sells Its Soul to the Devil" by Paul Hsieh
4/13/2009: "Ayn Rand as Prophet?" by Amit Ghate

(Disclaimer: Neither Amit nor I work for the ARI/ARC. We speak only for ourselves in our respective writings.)

Tea Party: John Lewis

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I've already posted the video of John Lewis' excellent speech at the Charlotte, North Carolina Tea Party. However, you might be interested in the transcript of that speech, particularly given that "Permission is given to read [it] in full, wherever defenders of liberty may gather." Here's my favorite bit:

At its heart, the economic and political crisis is a deeper problem--a moral problem. The cause of the crisis today is the worship of need, and the view of man as too stupid to act for his own sake, and worthy of being milked of all his values, to provide for others. This is what we must reject.

Do you think that this is a conspiracy to seize your wealth? It is far worse than that. As Ayn Rand wrote, "It is not your wealth that they're after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man."

This is an attempt to seize your life, to destroy your sense of self as an independent human being, and to replace it with a being with no self-esteem and no capacity for individual action--a being doomed to beg for sustenance from an all-powerful ruling elite.

Much to my delight, John Lewis will be speaking at a FROST brunch on May 9th. If you're in the area, please join us. Here's the announcement:

Brunch Talk with Dr. John Lewis on "The Greek Lessons for Today's Crisis of Government"

• Date: Saturday, May 9, 2009
  
• Time: 9:00 am social time; 9:30 am breakfast buffet; 10:30 am to 12:30 pm talk
  
• Location: West Woods Golf Club, Arvada, Colorado

About "The Greek Lessons for Today's Crisis of Government"

The crisis of government we face today--out of control spending, non-objective law, and a ruinous foreign policy--is caused by a corruption of the ideas needed to protect individual rights under law. In the fifth century BC the people of Athens faced a similar crisis: a devastating military defeat, financial ruin, and tyranny. The nature of this crisis and how they rose to overcome it is the subject of this talk. The solution involved a renewed commitment to follow their laws and the conceptual and institutional reforms needed to constrain their democracy from acting on whim. This talk will be taken from a forthcoming article, "Constitution and Fundamental Law: The Lesson of Classical Athens," to appear next fall in the journal Social Philosophy and Policy.

About Dr. John Lewis

John David Lewis received his PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is visiting associate professor of political science at Duke University. He has been a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship. A writer for The Objective Standard, his books are Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens, and Early Greek Lawgivers.

For the full details, including the cost and RSVP information, please see the announcement.

Poisoning Money

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A Guns of Nihilism Postscript

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

When I began composing brief answers to some reader comments on my “The Guns of Nihilism” post, I decided to elaborate just to cover some ground I could not cover in the original post, and also to clear up some issues in my own mind.

One commentator asked:

“What I don’t understand about these nihilist pacifist leftists is: Don’t they understand that by undermining America they are putting their own lives in danger? Also, if they weaken America’s military strength they open up the possibility that America will fall. But this would destroy their power and all leftists lust for power. What it is so hard for me to understand is the phenomenon of power lusting leftist/fascists who are nevertheless suicidal….”

What is hard for any rational, life-loving person to understand is the death premise of such nihilists. But, it’s that very premise which you must grasp and take seriously. Then you won’t be so puzzled by their words and actions. If America fell, nothing would please them more, even if that fall entailed their own deaths. That is why they are nihilists, worshippers of nothing, champions of nothing, advocates of non-existence. Rand dramatized it perfectly in the character of James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged, and Galt explicated the phenomenon in his speech.

It’s obvious in Obama’s words and actions, and also in the rhetoric and actions of environmentalists. Environmentalism has moved from being a pseudo-science to being a virulent anti-science religion, attracting all sorts of people searching for a mystical sanction that will allow them to coexist alongside but with apologies to plants, animals and rocks. Nihilists are secular Buddhists, hankering for a means to exist and not exist at the same time, but preferring their own non-existence if they can take the lovers of life they depend on with them into it. (The actual Buddhists at least keep to themselves.) If they can’t kill or have the lovers of life killed by some means, then they want to make their lives as painful and joyless and burdensome as possible.

Thus Taggart’s confession that he wants to hear Galt scream as Galt is being tortured on the “Ferris Persuader.” Thus the whole “green” movement, which philosophically clueless automakers and “renewable energy” technocrats and all sorts of bizarre, rudderless people are submitting to. Thus the militancy of political, economic, and cultural egalitarians. From top to bottom and across the board, the nihilists’ motivating premise is death, or pain, or destruction, or all three. Concede any of their arguments at your own peril -- and concession to their arguments is what our policymakers have made, guaranteeing the economic decline of this country, not to mention its inability to defend itself from global predators.

For example, environmentalists object strenuously to the Navy’s use of sonar in the oceans, because it allegedly “disorients” whales. They place no value on this country being able to defend itself, which they would benefit from, and ostensibly some mystical value on the uninterrupted freedom of whales, from which they derive no conceivable or measurable benefit. This is altruism, or the application of that code to the relationship between man and nature. Since environmentalists treat man and nature as coequals, or nature as intrinsically superior to man, if nature is in any way imperiled, man is expected to do “the right thing” (à la Kant), and erase himself from existence. Altruism and nihilism are natural partners.

The Dadaists and the avant garde of abstract art and atonal composers in the early 20th century posed as “artists” and professed a passion for art. But their primary motivation was to destroy art which they couldn’t begin to match and which their “souls“ nevertheless would not permit them to emulate; their “passion“ was actually a hatred of it. They were as value-impoverished as Obama is. They had no values to preserve or betray. The art historian who tells you that a urinal with a Barbie doll sitting in it is just as great a work of art and an instance of a profound esthetic appreciation or statement on the meaning of life as Michelangelo’s David or Daniel French’s The Minute Man, is a nihilist seeking to sabotage your mind, your values, and art as such. (I include French’s statue here because it is a special symbol of what Obama and his nihilist cohorts wish to obliterate in Americans’ minds, the necessity and willingness of men to fight for freedom.)

The critic who tells you that someone like Willie Nelson or Ice-Cube or John Cage is just as great an artist and composer as Rachmaninoff and that there is no difference in spirit or talent between them, is such a nihilist. And for years whole schools of nihilists were busy in the literary and academic realms as constructionists, deconstructionists, and post-deconstructionists, actively destroying the value of great literature in the minds of college students. That carnage, wrought over decades of that kind of “education,” is responsible for the arid, colorless, and windless landscape of modern literature.

Toohey’s speech to Peter Keating near the end of The Fountainhead about his means and ends to power is but an introduction to that part of Galt’s speech which deals with the means and ends of the nihilists, of the murderers of man’s spirit.

As for the Department of Defense’s brass-shredding program, regardless of the caliber of ammo, it is just the start. The anti-gun advocates and legislators won’t stop there, as the commentator pointed out about the move to ban lead in private-sector ammunition. It’s their way of weaseling around the accusation that they are against Americans protecting themselves, just as their ilk in another venue duck the charge of censorship by rationalizing the establishment of “speech codes” or “fairness doctrines” that won’t hurt anyone’s “feelings” or “self-esteem” or to assure anyone of his “right” to speak on someone else’s time, dime or property.

Finally, some further remarks are in order on the Department of Homeland Security’s Assessment, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” I have read the entire document, and it is noteworthy that while it focuses on “rightwing paranoia” as a potential catalyst for violence, it is itself written from a state of left-wing paranoia. It dwells almost exclusively on the alleged nemesis of a supposedly rival ideology, on any group purportedly governed by “rightwing” thinking, from white supremacists to returning “disgruntled” veterans to antigovernment militias, and just about anyone or any group that questions the wisdom, rightness, and efficacy of government interventionist and extra-Constitutional policies. That Assessment is one of the crudest instances of political “package-dealing” I have ever read.

As I read this document, I could not help but suspect that it is an expression of the left’s worst nightmares. Remember that the DHS was created with Republican President George W. Bush’s encouragement and blessing, and is the child of the “right” intended to detect and combat Islamic terrorism. Predictably, an agency vested with extra-legal powers such as those possessed by the DHS must sooner or later regard itself as the end-all and be-all of national policy, see itself as a permanent adjunct to any political party that assumed the reins of power, and turn against the population it was intended to safeguard. The April 7th Assessment assumes the possibility of a general “rightwing” uprising against the federal government, or at least general civil disobedience in revolt against a federal government encroaching upon and obviating freedom, to which the government would have no answer and only two options open to it: to “back off” or to impose martial law, including censorship.

The DHS, in cooperation with the FBI, monitored the Tea Parties of April 15th and presumably recorded the faces and identities of thousands of Americans who took part in the “antigovernment” events. Doubtless all that information has gone into the DHS database.

The Assessment is also noteworthy in regards to its omissions. If the DHS is concerned about the potential for violence and “rightwing” terrorism, there is not a single mention in the memo of the terrorism the agency was originally created to detect and combat, Islamic jihad. But it does cite instances of “rightwing” violence, such as the “shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 4 April 2009.”

“The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled ‘one world government.’”

Of course, the DHS can argue that Islamic jihadists are hardly “rightwing extremists,” and so were not the subject of the memo, but it cannot deny that Islamic “extremists” also subscribe to conspiracy theories, train for urban warfare on private compounds in this country, are anti-Semitic in principle, seek to convert this country to Islam and replace the Constitution with Sharia law, and dream of a “one world government,” as well, in the form of a global caliphate. Why discriminate between them and Aryan race skinheads or white supremacist militias? I found it interesting that while the Assessment memo cited the Pittsburgh killings, it did not cite the recent killings of the four Oakland, California police officers by a Muslim, nor any of the numerous attacks on non-Muslims by Muslims in this country since 9/11.

One can only suppose that the DHS considers some “extremist” violence, even if it has not occurred, more equal than other “extremist” violence, even though that violence is a matter of record. And the “extremism” of the current administration, which is hard left-wing cloaked in populist rhetoric, receives a free pass from the DHS.

“Rightwing extremism,” according to the DHS mindset (and that of the Obama administration and of left-wingers everywhere), is synonymous with fascism. But fascism, which is government control of nominally private businesses, industries and property, is simply the “right wing” of the left. The only element that distinguishes the two political and ideological phenomena is the role of religion. They are otherwise one and the same.

Had he been elected, there is no reason to believe that Senator John McCain, based on his political record, would have acted any differently from Obama over the subprime mortgage crisis, except that we would have heard more about God and patriotism as he was busy proposing bailouts, firing company executives, and holding CEOs accountable to the government. McCain and Obama are in the same fascist/socialist camp. McCain would have moved only a little more slowly in the direction of fascism. Obama and his fellow felons are in a hurry to establish a fascist/socialist state before any credible opposition to it can rally its forces and point out to Americans the false spectrum of “left-wing vs. right-wing.”

We can only hope that we can persuade Americans of the deception of that yardstick, and show that the only political alternative beyond it is laissez-faire capitalism and freedom.

The Guns of Nihilism

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

One of the best accounts of what actually happened between the Somali pirates, the U.S.S. Bainbridge, Navy SEALS, and President Barack Obama last week can be found here, in Jack Wheeler’s Half-Full Report of April 17. Note: “Zero“ is his nickname for the man who would be president:

“We can raise a full glass of your favorite adult beverage to all the Tea Party participants - and to the one group of Americans the Zerocrats despise above all others: our soldiers in the US military.

All of us want to raise our glass the highest this week to the Navy SEALs who popped those three Somali pirates. And I'm sure you want to hear the real story of what happened. Especially because there is a revoltingly opportunistic and cowardly side to it. Guess which side Zero is on.

Why, for example, did it take SEAL Team Six (aka DEVGRU, Navy Special Warfare Development Group, the Navy's equivalent of Delta Force) over 36 hours to get to the scene?

Because Zero refused to authorize the SEAL deployment for those 36 hours, during which the OSC - the on-scene commander, Cmdr. Frank Castellano of the USS Bainbridge - repeatedly requested them.

Once the SEALs arrived - parachuting from a C-17 into the ocean near the ship - Zero then imposed Rules of Engagement (ROE) specifying the SEALs could not do anything unless the life of the hostage, Captain Richard Phillips, was in "imminent" danger.

Thus, when Capt. Phillips attempted to escape by jumping off the lifeboat into the ocean, the SEAL snipers had all four pirates (one later surrendered) sighted in and could have taken them out then and there - but they could not fire due to Zero's ROE restrictions.

When the SEALs approached the lifeboat in a RIB (rigid-hull inflatable boat) carrying supplies for Capt. Phillips and the pirates, the pirates fired upon them. Not only was no fire returned due to the ROE, but as the pirates were shooting at the RIB, SEAL snipers on the Bainbridge had them all dialed in. No triggers were pulled due to the ROE.

Two specific rescue plans were developed by Cmdr. Castellano and the SEAL teams. Zero personally refused to authorize them.

After the second refusal and days of dithering, Cmdr. Castellano decided he had the Operational Area and OSC authority to ‘solely determine risk to hostage’ and did not require any further approval of the president.

Four hours later, the White House is informed that three pirates are dead and Capt. Phillips has been rescued unharmed. A WH press release is immediately issued, giving credit to the president for his ‘daring and decisive’ behavior that resulted in such success.

Zero has absolutely no military knowledge or experience whatsoever. He demanded decisional control over the entire hostage drama to the last detail. All actions required his personal approval. He dithered like a coward while the world laughed at our warships flummoxed by four illiterate teenagers with AKs in a lifeboat.

Only when the Navy Commander decided to ignore his Pantywaist-in-Chief and take action and responsibility himself, were the incredible skills of the SEALs put into play.

That Zero could cynically and opportunistically claim that his ‘bold,’ ‘calm,’ ‘tough’ leadership was responsible should remind everyone that not a single action, not a single word of this man can be trusted. He is bereft of honesty and moral character. That's why he's Zero.

The HFR raises a glass full of pride and gratitude to Navy Commander Frank Castellano, the Navy SEALs for their incredible competence, and our military. Let's hold a Tea Party in their honor.”

Wheeler’s report differs in some minor points from others. World Net Daily’s account states that the SEALs were fired on by the pirates when they tried to take supplies in the RIB to the Maersk Alabama, which had already left the scene and was on its way to Kenya.

But most accounts on the Internet credit the commander of the Bainbridge with acting to save Phillips’ life, not Obama. It is only in the sycophantic news media that truth and falsehood grappled, and truth lost. For example, the Associated Press reported that Obama gave the Navy commander the go-ahead to use force.

“…[I]t goes some way toward dispelling the notion that a liberal Democrat with a known distaste for war – Obama campaigned on his consistent opposition to the Iraq invasion – doesn’t have the chops to fire on the pirates holding the cargo ship captain at gunpoint.”

No, the notion has not been dispelled, not even a little way. Obama lacked the “chops” to call on U.S. military power, as most non-news media accounts can testify to. In fact, he sent professional hostage-negotiators from the FBI to the Bainbridge to try to talk the pirates into releasing Phillips, as though the Indian Ocean was a domestic crime scene. If Phillips had been murdered by the pirates, it is certain that the negotiators or the commander of the Bainbridge or the SEALs would have been blamed, not the pirates, not the policy of appeasing the enemy by pulling the punches our military could deliver with devastating effect.

The Indian Ocean is not your usual dangerous neighborhood too risky for an ice-cream truck or lunch wagon to venture into. And the Somali pirates declared war on commercial shipping and private pleasure vessels long ago. They very likely have strong links to al-Qada and other Islamic terrorist gangs, and must share ransoms with them. That part of the Indian Ocean is a war zone.

And Obama – a liberal Democrat?? Hubert Humphrey was a liberal Democrat, as was Lyndon Johnson. They were relatively amateur shoplifters compared to the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Obama, however, is a doctrinaire, committed fascist/socialist, dedicated to turning a proud, free nation into a submissive wallflower and a minimum security prison of indentured servitude.

I differ with Wheeler over his perception of cowardice. A coward is afraid to protect his values, unwilling to risk his life (or reputation) to preserve or keep them. The U.S. is not a value to Obama, except as a thing to betray, ruin and destroy. Obama has no moral character; ergo, no honesty, no integrity, no respect for truth. He has no values to keep or preserve. He is a nihilist to the core. I agree with Wheeler that Obama and his staff are opportunistic; what exponents of pragmatism-as-policy are not? Their pragmatism, in addition, makes possible their cynicism. Confrontation is not Obama’s “style”; he is surpassing “Slick Willy” with his penchant for weaseling out of any crisis and emerging from it unscathed.

No, Obama, during the whole “man-caused” disaster, behaved true to his career goal and followed Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to the letter. He is our Community-Organizer-in-Chief. It was just a neighborhood thing to him, you know, nothing to begin shooting guns off about, and the pirates were just poor, troubled teenagers trying to “spread the wealth around“ with armed extortion. Obama did not order anyone to fire on anyone. He hung ten in hopes that everything would just come out all right, with no bruises or bloodshed.

And instead of reducing every pirate’s den, mud hut and palace to smoldering rubble, and every pirate anchorage and boat to unrecyclable floating debris, the U.S. and other nations will continue to spend fortunes patrolling the Indian Ocean in a fruitless policing mission, hamstrung by rules of non-engagement, rather than risk one more pirate’s life or collateral casualties among the pirate’s camp followers.

I dread to speculate on the future career of Commander Frank Castellano of the Bainbridge for having belayed Obama’s orders and followed his own standing orders as the officer commanding on the scene, which are to take action against an enemy to preserve American lives and property.

Speaking of “man-caused” disasters, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will have the everlasting, notorious credit for coining one of the most evasive, cowardly euphemisms in the lexicon of diplomacy. In an interview with Spiegel on March 13, she explained why she did not pronounce the term “terrorism” in her Congressional testimony:

“…I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”

Napolitano “nuanced” what is a moral issue into a mere sociological conundrum. Never mind that Islamic terrorists have a political agenda, which is either the destruction of the U.S. or its submission to Islam. To terrorists, fear is as much a political weapon as bombs and stealth jihad. When Osama bin Laden or one of his henchmen issues another warning that Americans will die and Islam will bury the West, Napolitano wants to reply with cotton-candy language. She would rather oppose the chain-mail armor of Islamic Janissaries with tie-dyed T-shirts. Doubtless she agrees with her boss that the U.S. should engage Russia, China, Iran and North Korea in new talks leading to a revived version of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), knowing that it would effectively disarm this country and leave it to the mercies of rogue governments and nuclear-armed terrorists.

One cannot believe that Napolitano and her ilk do not understand that a defenseless America is a beaten America. They, as well as any rational being (not to confuse the two), can see the consequences of unleashed force and organized mayhem practiced by every dictator and tyrant, in the past as well as in the present. One cannot believe that they actually believe in the efficacy of regurgitated pacifist policies of the hippies. One cannot even believe that they take seriously the notion that if they feel strongly enough about peace and goodwill, universal amity will somehow, magically reign.

One can only conclude, through a rational process of elimination of possible motives, that they bear this country so much ill will that they wish to see it punished because it is great. What other creatures, for example, would imply in the recent DHS “Rightwing Extremism” memo that returning American military personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to resort to “rightwing extremist” violence because they are “disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war?” [Section U/(FOUO)DHS/IAA]

“Napolitano, on a Fox News appearance today [April 17], backtracked a little, saying ‘To the extent veterans read it as an accusation…an apology is owed.’”

And not a resignation or a firing for impugning the character of servicemen returning from combat? The “Rightwing Extremism” memo reveals that the DHS regards all Americans as suspect in terms of their possibly resisting the state, and exhibits a natural predilection for defending itself and the state over defending the nation. Its authority overrides that of all legitimate law enforcement agencies. It ought to be dismantled.

Fascism is taking on an unusual and unprecedented form.

Adolf Hitler, a nihilist, acted to expand Germany’s borders and impose a Pax Germany over Europe. He envisioned a mighty, invincible Germany that would rule the world. His self-worth was dependent on the successes of his aggressions. And when his power was reduced to the confines of a Berlin bunker, he muttered that, as punishment for its failure, Germany should be exterminated as undeserving of existence.

Barack Obama, a nihilist, is acting to diminish an America that never sought to rule the world, and his self-worth is dependent on how much he can enable the world to rule America. He bows to feudal monarchs, joshes with South American dictators, and is moving to betray this country’s only ally in the Middle East, Israel. He snubs this country’s allies and ingratiates himself with its enemies.

It is not enough that Obama and his hand-picked administration wish to render America “harmless and blameless.” They wish to disarm Americans, as well. The DHS memo complements the administration’s virulent anti-gun policy, and reveals that the government fears armed resistance to its express-speed, liberty-destroying statist policies.

The Georgia Arms Company, the nation’s fifth largest retailer of .223 ammo, received a notice from the Department of Defense advising it that the company could no longer buy spent brass cartridges from the DoD used for training on military bases. Formerly, Georgia Arms and other manufacturers and retailers bought the shells to reload for resale to law enforcement, gun shops, gun clubs, and other commercial outlets.

“…[F]rom now on the DoD will be destroying the brass – shredding it. It is no longer available to the ammo makers, unless they just buy it in a scrap shredded condition (which the makers have no use for). The shredded brass is now going to be sold by the DoD to China as scrap metal….”

Furthermore, if any ammo seller is compelled to purchase newly manufactured brass shells,

“…then the cost of ammunition to the buyer will double and triple…plus Obama wants to add a 500% tax on each shell.”

Hardworking, productive American citizens who successfully undergo lengthy criminal background checks before being allowed to purchase guns will still be disarmed if they cannot afford to buy ammo. Criminals, terrorists, and the mentally unbalanced such as the Virginia Tech and Binghamton, New York mass murderers, will acquire guns and ammo regardless of the stringency of gun controls. Moral Americans will be caught between an armed and growing police state and armed criminals.

In Book Five: Revolution of my Sparrowhawk series, the Crown-appointed lieutenant-governor of Virginia suppresses a lone, private newspaper by sending a bailiff and his men to shut down the paper. Instead of confiscating or destroying the printing press, they seize the owner’s type cases, effectively silencing the paper.

Readers will appreciate the parallels.

I freely admit to parodying the title of a great adventure film here, "The Guns of Navarone" ( 1961, directed by J. Lee Thompson, based on Alistair MacLean's novel). This finely directed and superbly cast "war" move reflects a morality largely absent in film for decades, not to mention skill in creating conflict and drama. And there is a relevance to be noted between Obama's nihilism and the pro-life, goal-directed character of the film.

Like the Castellano/Bainbridge/Navy SEAL episode, “Navarone” is also a nonpareil suspense story. In 1943, a British commando team is sent to destroy a pair of massive German anti-ship guns that can pulverize any warship attempting to evacuate British troops surrounded on a Greek island. The position of the fortified guns atop a 400-foot cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea renders them impregnable against Allied naval and air action. They can only be destroyed from within -- by the commandos. By the end of one of the most suspenseful action films ever made, they accomplish their mission.

Fast forward to the Indian Ocean, April 2009. American warships are stymied, not by mammoth German guns, not by a disciplined German army, not even by four pirates in a rowboat, but by the value-negating morality of altruism and by an American president who is, in the most fundamental moral sense, on the side of the pirates.

Pakistan's Surrender to the Taliban

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

Pakistan’s Surrender to the Taliban

Washington, D.C., April 23, 2009--In reaction to the Pakistani government’s decision to give Islamists the power to enforce sharia (Islamic law) in the north of the country, Elan Journo, fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, warned that all of Pakistan is at risk of falling under Islamic rule.

According to Mr. Journo, “Instead of living up to its stated goal of opposing the Islamists, by defeating them militarily, Islamabad has opted for the losing policy of appeasement--a policy that can only strengthen the jihadists.” If the current trend of appeasement continues to unfold, argued Mr. Journo, nuclear-armed Pakistan may soon “look a lot like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.”

Just like other cases of appeasement, noted Mr. Journo, Pakistan’s surrender “was predicated on willfully ignoring crucial facts about the goals of the Islamists--goals that are well known. For the last three-odd decades, jihadists all over the world have been vocal in asserting their ultimate aim of expanding Allah’s dominion across the face of the earth. Not alongside other forms of government, but in place of them.

“By evading the Islamist movement’s nature,” concluded Mr. Journo, “Pakistan has handed it a signal victory--the Swat Valley today, plausibly the rest of Pakistan tomorrow.”

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American, Free Thyself

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

Via Fresh Bilge is a link to a piece at The American Thinker whose interesting, scince-fictionish premise is that the Chinese, in dire economic straits around the time of the 2012 American elections, have decided to throw their influence behind defeating President Obama.

America, their largest trading partner, has become a lousy customer thanks to four years of increasing government "planning" of its economy. The Chinese, needing American prosperity, are contemplating a bold move in the next election, such as recruiting "a pro China billionaire to set up a group called Move Him Out Now ... to defeat Obama."

That is an interesting premise up to a point, but to the reader with a deep appreciation for capitalism, unbelievability quickly overwhelms:

China's future needs really, really depend on a nice capitalist return on their investment because with the one child policy, their population in future generations getting smaller .In fact, because of the preference for boys, there are already 35 million more men than women, so tens of millions Chinese men are unlikely to be even able to reproduce and have ONE child. He's screaming that if Obama's destruction of the U.S. economy keeps up much longer China will be in terrible trouble and the Party and its leaders want to stop this shift to socialism in the United States as fast as they can." [link dropped]

Let's grant that China's ruling elite would be so compartmentalized that it would work to grow a foreign market with greater freedom, while failing to grow the vastly larger domestic one right under its nose by the same means. That goes hand in hand with any government trying to steer an economy in the first place. We see similarly muddled thinking all the time in America, anyway.

But: Our future Chinese saviors still have a One Child Policy and belong to the Communist Party? We can call the Party a historical anachronism for the sake of argument, because it's the first of these that really bothers me.

(It's at this point that I'll lose most conservatives, because so many of the ones who are not openly hostile to the idea that capitalism is moral, still fail to realize that it is much more than a utilitarian, purely economic arrangement. Furthermore, I am sure that some will me with words to the effect of, "That article isn't about capitalism." Actually, if you really are interested in propserity, it is. Oh, well.)

Capitalism, as Ayn Rand said in her seminal work, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "... is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights..." [bold added] A "free market" where the actors are forced to act against their better judgment is not capitalism and will not produce prosperity for long. A slave market is not capitalism. The President firing the CEO of General Motors is not capitalism. China having a One Child Policy is also not capitalism, recent loosening up of government controls to the contrary. In each case, the government is violating individual rights, preventing individuals from acting on their own best judgment.

Since all economic decisions in a capitalist society are made by individuals on their own behalf, all government infringements on individual freedom ultimately do affect the economy (just as all economic interventions diminish freedom) -- no matter how much some conservatives wish to pretend that the moral and the practical are two separate realms. Furthermore, each such intervention both sets the precedent for others later on and, by distorting the economy, provides a convenient excuse later on for more of the same.

So, while it is conceivable that China might work to topple Barack Obama in 2012, it seems unlikely to me for the same reason I doubt China will be substantially freer under its present regime. Recent poor choices notwithstanding -- Obama is just the latest -- most Americans still understand freedom better than the Chinese leadership and personally stand to benefit from it far more than these fictional saviors anyway.

I find the prospect of persuading my countrymen to rediscover freedom much more intriguing and hopeful than fantasizing about the tactical choices facing the ruling clique of a country that has hardly begun to taste freedom.

-- CAV

Against the Drug War

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

An old student of mine recently wrote me asking my views about the drug war. Here's what I wrote in reply:

Like you, I'd like to live in a society of rational, productive, and interesting people -- as opposed to stoners, addicts, and the like. However, I would argue that drug prohibition actually undermines that goal, as well as endangers innocent people. You simply cannot force people to be rational, productive, and interesting people -- and the costs of attempting to do so are enormous.

Drug prohibition creates more serious drug problems. Due to the legal risks of using drugs, people are more inclined to seek stronger and shorter highs. That, plus the unknown nature of most street drugs, promotes overdoses, addiction, and other medical problems. As the price of drugs rises hugely with the risks, drug addicts turn to stealing to support their habit. Moreover, the scum of the earth have a strong incentive to become drug dealers. Then, because those drug dealers operate outside the law, gang warfare becomes a way of doing business. Ordinary people simply attempting to live their lives are caught in the crossfire.

Even with all those problems, the drug war has been completely ineffective: illegal drugs are as plentiful and easily available as ever. We have no reason to think that greater brutality in the drug war -- like executing drug dealers -- will make much of a difference. (Such people often have little regard for their own lives, I think.) Plus, the costs of an overzealous police force are quite severe. No-knock raids on wrong houses are quite common these days. People are routinely killed as a result -- not just innocent residents but also police officers. (The homeowner often reasonably thinks himself to be in the midst of a violent home invasion, and so shoots a police officer.) The result is that ordinary, law-abiding people are abused and endangered by the police, rather than protected by them.

Moreover, once you accept the principle that the state ought to force people to do or not do something for the sake of some supposedly greater social good, then that's the end of all individual liberty. Someone can always make a case against anything that a person might do. So if a majority of people think that the world would be a better place if you didn't read certain controversial books, watch certain violent television programs, marry certain kinds of people, and so on, then laws could be passed and law-breakers hunted down. The world would be a much poorer -- and more frightful -- place as a result.

Even if drug prohibition could stamp out drug use, I would regard it as too much of a cost to bear. However, given that drug prohibition makes the drug problem worse, I think the only sensible thing to do is repeal it. Sure, just like with alcohol, gambling, sex, food, and every other pleasure, some people will abuse drugs. They would be welcome to ruin their own lives, but in a capitalist society no one else would be obliged to associate with them, pay for their medical care, or whatnot. Absent some danger to others, like driving drunk or high, the law would not intervene. They could quietly destroy themselves, if they pleased. You could avoid such people entirely -- unless you chose to associate with or otherwise help them.

All of that is probably more than you needed or wanted to hear from me! However, you might find the following writings from the Cato Institute on the drug war of interest. I don't agree with Cato on lots of things, but I think they're pretty good on this issue.

On Durban

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Too Late, Mr. President

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

President Obama returns to Washington after a weekend of cavorting in Trinidad with the likes of Hugo Chavez and, I am sure, having to pinch himself more than once during Daniel Ortega's fifty-minute harangue just to make sure he hadn't actually dozed off during a sermon by Jeremiah Wright.

And what's he going to do after thus "representing" American interests abroad? He's going to save us money!

On Monday, Obama will gather his full Cabinet together for the first time as president and challenge it to cut a total of $100 million in the next 90 days, two senior administration officials said.

$100 million? After his near-trillion dollar stimulus bill and his multi-trillion dollar budget? A trillion is a thousand billion, and a billion is ten times the amount of savings Obama is trumpeting. $100 million is thus 1/10,000th of every trillion he just added to the budget. This is like lighting a cigar with a $100 dollar bill, and then bragging about picking up the nice, shiny penny he just spotted on the sidewalk.

Or, more precisely, when one recalls the nature of government as an agent of physical force, it's like Obama walked up to you, took a $100 bill at gunpoint, used it to light his cigar, and then promised you the nice, shiny penny he just picked up -- after it fell, unbeknownst to you, from a hole in your pocket. You would find this not only unjust, but insulting to your intelligence, would you not?

So why does Obama think he can get away with it?

I propose looking no further than his conservative "opposition", best exemplified by the self-proclaimed "pork busters," who, as I have said before, "[focus] on petty theft and [turn] a blind eye to grand larceny." So long as even his opposition regards spending on welfare state programs as legitimate -- as long as it's not "wasteful" -- Obama will have all the moral cover he needs to crow about being, as the Heritage Foundation might put it, "efficient."

The fact remains that Barack Obama is still a thief, and any welfare state "benefit" one might receive from the government is redistributed loot. Until more people stand up to the practice of the state stealing money, massive government theft will improperly be regarded as above question, and Barack Obama will get away with his pretense of responsibility. It's high time to end charades like this -- and the massive theft they try to cover -- by recalling the proper purpose of government and loudly insisting at every election on that instead.

-- CAV

Tea Party Story: Hannah Krening

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

From pianist Hannah Krening:

I attended the rally in Colorado Springs. I'm not good at estimates, but there were at least 1,000 people. I carried a hand-lettered sign on a stick that said "Atlas will Shrug" on one side and "I (heart) Capitalism...on principle" on the other. Both sides had "www.aynrand.org" at the bottom in red marker (Thanks Ari for that suggestion!). I carried 30 flyers: [Ayn Rand Center's] flyer on one side and Diana's [Front Range Objectivism] flyer on the other (I would have liked to include more, but I figured simpler was better). I only offered flyers to those I spoke to, and I spoke to anyone who made eye contact and who looked interested. Several people came up from behind to ask for a flyer (I kept them visible in my hand). I circulated around as much as I could, which helped; I think most people read my sign.

I came home with 2 flyers left over, and had my picture taken multiple times (no news outlets that I know of took my picture, though two local TV stations were there). I spoke to several people who seemed seriously interested, one of whom commented that she was glad to have the flyer as she is "looking for like-minded people." There were at least 5 signs with reference to Atlas Shrugged (I saw Linda Rogers there; she had a nice one), and I tried to speak to those people (and did to all but one). My hands were full and so I did not get pictures. I had no hostile interactions. I had to leave before 1 PM, as I needed to get back to work (to earn money to pay taxes...).

Thanks for the flyer, Diana! It came in handy, as I mentioned the local group to everyone I spoke to. I would have loved to have heard or even given the kind of speech I printed off the [Ayn Rand Center] website, but there was no way to even approach the speaker's platform. There was the usual Colorado Springs religious contingent (evidenced by response to some talking points from the podium), which is one reason I wanted to go there. But the vast majority of the signs had no religious reference at all. One referred to immigration, but most were anti-Tax, anti-Obama, anti-Big government, etc. Lots of flags (American and Don't Tread on Me).

Whew! It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It was a good chance to try some verbal communication, and I gained some confidence. I will try to attend future tea parties.

Way to go, Hannah!

Tweenbots

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Via Flibbertigibbet and The Crucible, I recently discovered the fabulous little experiment of the the tweenbots. Here's the basic idea, as described by its creator, Kacie Kinzer:

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot's progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot--a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary--bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the "right" direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can't go that way, it's toward the road."

The actual robots are quite adorable, so I definitely recommend checking out the pictures on the web site.

Regarding the significance of the experiment, Kendall writes:

There is an idea that I've heard repeated at various times in my life, that there is not enough charitable feeling in naturally "self-centered" man to be of meaningful help to those in need. When I respond that there is ample benevolence in man, and in a capitalist society, ample surplus of productive resource (time, money, etc) that we should not make it a forced duty to be charitable, but rather allow man's natural benevolence to take its course, most people tell me that resources have to be aggregated and centrally directed to be effective.

Kendall then observes that the tweenbot experiment shows the dismal view of man to be false. He's right.

I'd say something in addition, however. As Flibby's own hope to see a tweenbot illustrates, many people are eager for some fresh novelty in their lives. They want to experience interesting things outside the ordinary humdrum of their daily tasks. To a benevolent person, such experiences brighten the mood. They make a day particularly memorable and pleasant. They highlight the simple joys of being a human creature living in a hospitable world.

Many such experiences are mere happenstance -- yet a person can also seek them out for himself. He can visit places he's never seen, attend to the small features of his surroundings, and pause to consider bright spots therein. The happy little tweenbots offer much reward to people who do that. So to offer the tweenbots a little help in return seems like a very reasonable trade.

How to End Piracy in the High Seas

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

How to End Piracy in the High Seas

Washington, D.C., April 20, 2009--In a dramatic rescue operation a week ago, U.S. Navy Seals succeeded in freeing Capt. Richard Phillips from captivity by Somali pirates.
 
According to Elan Journo, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, even though the operation was successful, it did not teach the pirates the appropriate lesson, as evidenced by news of a pirate attack on another American-flagged ship, the Liberty Sun.
 
“The pirates have not been deterred,” said Mr. Journo, “because we have emboldened them for years through an entrenched policy of passivity and accommodation--and the freeing of Capt. Phillips was unfortunately just one halting step in a better direction.
 
“What we need--in response to piracy as well as other foreign threats--is an across-the-board reversal in U.S. policy. When, for example, it became clear more than a year ago that the waters off the coast of Somalia are a playground for pirates, the minimum that Washington should have done was to lay down an ultimatum to the pirates to leave Americans alone or else--and lived up to it.
 
“The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force.
 
“When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross,” Mr. Journo concluded, “we won’t have to worry about pirates.”

-------------
 

 

Quick Roundup 424

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

Tea Party Updates

There is too much commentary on the tea party protests for me to attempt a roundup, and that's even if I confine myself strictly to activity by Objectivist bloggers, which I see as a very encouraging sign.

I also got sidelined from joining the protests myself, thanks to several obligations that fell on or immediately around tax day. These included my first encounter with Massachusetts Form 1 -- why am I not surprised that the state chose that number for its income tax form? So instead of joining friends to protest in Houston, where I am most of the time these days, I wasting energy on such questions as whether it was indeed okay for my wife and me to file jointly at the federal level, but separately at the state level. Believe me: I was there in spirit!

So I'll content myself with a sort of uber-roundup, pointing to selected commentary and other roundups. Certainly, feel welcome to mention your own story or commentary here in the comments, but you should also visit at least one of the roundup posts below and do the same if you do.

Briefly, Diana Hsieh plans a roundup later today at Noodle Food and C. August has already posted one at Titanic Deck Chairs. Both are soliciting comments and links. The photo at right, taken by a television station in Houston, I obtained from a link at Noodle Food, and I am pretty sure I know who it is! (Pertinent to the issue brought up by the sign is an excellent short post by Amit Ghate on the impropriety of the whole question of, "How would you run the economy.")

Speaking of Houston, Brian Phillips spearheaded participation by local Objectivists, and, in a post about "Tea Parties and Coalitions," has some pertinent commentary about where the protests might go, and why:

While many pundits have predicted that the Tea Party movement will duplicate the Republican Revolution of 1994, I am doubtful. First, that revolution was electorally successful because it had a clearly stated set of principles. Second, when that revolution abandoned those principles it fell apart and ultimately gave control of Congress back to the Democrats.

They say that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I'd prefer that we learn from one era of our history -- the American Revolution -- and repeat that by declaring an intransigent devotion to the principle of individual rights. If the Tea Party movement does that, it just might realize its potential and launch the revolution that is truly needed -- a moral revolution.

This is a long-term view, and contrasts sharply with the libertarian view, put forth in a recent column by Glenn Reynolds -- who makes the grave mistake of forgetting about principles and falls into the consequent folly of supporting the idea of a new political party. That didn't work for the fledgling abolitionist movement back in the mid 1800's, and it won't work for advocates of individual rights today.

And what of the short term? I have my disagreements with the source he cites, but Myrhaf notes that the protests do get the word out to politicians that a significant portion of the population is unhappy with Obama's economic policies. Galileo further offers that this is a chance to make a moral stand against the monstrous injustice of this administration and Congress. This was Galileo's first protest.

Doug Reich and Brad Harper each note the predictable -- if very disappointing -- "news" "coverage" typical of the leftist media establishment. Reich pretty much says all that needs to be said about this: "The news that the news doesn't take the news seriously is not news."

I'll end by embedding video shot by Harry Binswanger of part of a speech at the New York protest by someone he called "one of the better speakers."


If you know who this is, let me know directly or in the comments, and I'll pass the information along, if you don't subscribe to HBList.

All Hat and No Cattle

I'd like to thank Myrhaf for saying exactly what needed to be said about Texas Governor Rick Perry's opportunistic and irresponsible recent babbling about secession:

States should not think of separating from a free country. I know that the federal government is expanding like some monster in a bad 1950’s science fiction movie, but America still has free speech, free elections and a (hampered) free market with a system of prices for making economic calculations. The task before us at the moment is to use our free speech to move America in the right direction.

...

Is Governor Perry prepared to go to the mattresses, as they say in The Godfather? ... Are Texans ready to go to war with the USA?

If he is not ready for all that, then the Governor is all hat and no cattle, as a Texan might put it. Rick Perry should shut up.

This is not just irresponsible. It is a confession of intellectual impotence. If Perry had any clue what a great value freedom is, he would realize that he should at least try to offer it to the rest of his countrymen before writing them off or choosing to "go down fighting". But, appearances to the contrary, he really did neither: His proposal is so patently absurd that we can safely conclude that he never even thought that far.

Rand in Court

Amit Ghate points to an ARC blog posting by Thomas Bowden on a legal first:

For the first time in American legal history, a judge has explicitly endorsed important principles of Ayn Rand’s political theory in a published appellate opinion.

Read the whole thing.

Objectivist Roundup

Stop by Tito's Blog for the latest collection. I count something like seventeen posts, but I've trained as a mathematician, so you should stop by to make sure I'm right!

Round. Up.

Following a link from GeekPress yesterday, I became interested in seeing a chef toss pizza dough and learned that there are competitions in the art. Here's a video of a champion, who juggles two crusts at one point.

-- CAV

Tea Party Report

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Without further ado... here's the various reports on Objectivist activism at Tax Day Tea Party Protests that I've found:

Colorado

• Ari Armstrong: Denver: report and pictures
  
• Diana Hsieh: Denver: report and pictures
  
• Hannah Krening: Colorado Springs: report

Idaho

• Greg Perkins: Boise: report, pictures, and video

Georgia

• Rational Jenn: Atlanta: report, links to pictures, and video
  
• John: Atlanta: report and pictures

North Carolina

• John Lewis: Charlotte: report and video
  
• John Park Jennings: Columbia: pictures

Ohio

• Brian: Canton and Cleveland: report
  
• rarabecca: Cleveland: pictures

Illinois

• TK: Chicago: report and pictures
  
• Chicago: pictures

Massachusetts

• Jared Rhoads: Boston: report and pictures
  
• Dan McAllister: Boston: pictures

Kansas

• Grant Jones: Manhattan: report and pictures

Texas

• Joe Reed: Houston: picture
  
• Houston: picture
  
• Dismuke: Dallas: report and pictures

Pennsylvania

• Philadelphia: pictures

New Mexico

• Sylvia Bokor: Albuquerque: report
  
• Albuquerque: pictures

California

• Kyle Haight: San Jose: report and pictures
  
• Haynesbe: San Jose: report and video
  
• Orange County: picture

New York

• Galileo Blogs: New York City: report
  
• Stella Daily: New York City: report
  
• Rosemary Gately: Albany: report and pictures

Florida

• Ardsgaine: Tallahassee: report and pictures

Oregon

• Gaia: Bend: report and pictures

Kentucky

• Miranda Barzey: Bowling Green: pictures
  
• Darren Cauthon: Overland Park: report with picture and more pictures

Arizona

• Bill Brown: Phoenix: report

Whew! Amazing! Please post any more reports, pictures, and videos in the comments! And e-mail me if I've screwed something up.

I'd love to see even more activism by Objectivists at the July 4th Tea Party Protests!

Denver Tea Party

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Yesterday, I was able to stop by the Denver Tea Party for about 45 minutes on my way to Boulder. I was surprised and pleased by the large turnout. A Denver Post article estimates a crowd of "more than 5,000 people" in attendance. Ari Armstrong has more details, including a slew of great pictures. From what I saw, he's right to call the event "a limited success," I think.



I was frazzled and overwhelmed, so I didn't spend much time passing out the fliers I brought with me. (Next time, I'd like to make that my primary purpose.) Instead, new doggie Conrad and I walked about, being petted by and chatting with people on occasion. (I'll leave you to figure out who was petted and who was chatting!) Although one of many dogs at the event, Conrad attracted quite a bit of attention because he was the only dog smart enough to wear his own sign:



Here's a close-up:



And here's the other side:



As you can tell, I didn't prepare these signs carefully in advance. The idea only really occurred to me as I was driving to Denver. I was able to buy the requisite paper at Kinko's, then make them hurriedly in the car with some markers I brought with me.

Despite that lack of good preparation, I was happy with the results. Many people noticed my signs: we got lots of friendly comments. Conrad definitely attracted far more attention than I would have carrying my own sign. Next time, I'll make better signs and attach them more securely to him. It helps to have a gimmick for these kinds of events, I think.

Oh, and in light of Flibby's well-justified scolding about the use of "tea bag" as a verb, I couldn't help but take a picture of this unfortunate sign:



Um, wow. And, uh, no thanks...

Request: Tea Party Report

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm going to put together a quick report collecting various pictures and commentary from Objectivists about their local tax day tea parties. So please post the relevant links in the comments of this post by tomorrow at 4 pm MDT, so that I can compose and post the report tomorrow evening. Oh, and be sure to note the city.

Feel free to post links to random pictures of signs mentioning Atlas, Ayn Rand, etc as well. Nothing beats this gem though!

Tea Party Story: John Lewis

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

From historian Dr. John Lewis:

On April 15 I had the pleasure of addressing a tea party at Charlotte, North Carolina. Attendance was probably 3,000 people, and they were well equipped with signs, placards and tee shirts bearing messages of outrage against the present state of government. Every individual came not by some orchestrated plan, but by a desire to support liberty.

The event was non-partisan. There were lots of anti-Obama signs, but not a one pro-Bush that I saw. Nor did I hear any religious right propaganda; the only mention of abortion was the assertion that a doctor who does not want to do an abortion should not be forced to do it. The overriding message was outrage against the growth of government power.

My own talk focused on the moral aspects of the crisis. I contrasted the elevated view of man and his rights that is enshrined in the American founding documents, versus the cancerous view of man and the phony rights that dominate today. I noted that those who think that such events must be financed by billionaires have no conception of autonomous individuals with independent minds, and thus cannot understand people who come together out of love for liberty.

The video of my talk is here:



[And here's the interview:]



My mention of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" brought cheers. Afterward, at least two dozen people told me that Atlas was their favorite book. The crowd was hungry for ideas; I passed out hundreds of pieces of literature, and talked to dozens of people about the nature of this crisis.

These tea parties are expressions of an emotion, outrage, that is directed against a rising tide of taxation and increasing government coercion. But emotions are not guides to life, and will not tell a person either how to oppose a motivated socialist movement, or how to formulate a rational alternative. Unless some intellectual focus is brought to these events, they are likely to fade into irrelevance.

Thanks go to Andy Clarkson for the video, to Matthew Ridenhour for organizing the event, and to Lin Zinser and Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

Dr. John David Lewis
Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science, Duke University
Author, Solon the Thinker and Early Greek Lawgivers
www.classicalideals.com
esse quam videri

Thank you, John Lewis!

A Cavalcade of Collectivism

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

So many thing are happening now that, as I take time off to participate in the Tea Party in Newport News, Virginia on April 15, I have decided to devote just brief commentary on a selection of events.

Legislated Slavery

Presumably to give themselves more time to sweeten the idea of slavery or indentured servitude for future “volunteers,” Congressmen have dropped a provision from the GIVE Act, HR 1388, to establish a commission to study the idea, and included it in HR 1444 and called the provision the “Congressional Commission on Civic Service Act.” “GIVE’ is the acronym for the hokey, cumbersomely named “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act,” passed by the House in March. That bill is intended to rope all Americans into servitude, regardless of age. The HR 1444 commission’s focus, however, is specifically Americans about to embark on adulthood. It is to ruminate on:

“The effect on the Nation, on those who serve, and on the families of those who serve, if all individuals in the United States were expected to perform national service or were required to perform a certain amount of national service.

“Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

This bill and its predecessor are absolutely immoral and antithetical to the idea of this country being a society of free individuals. What I found especially curious about HR 1444 was the term “social fabric” and the idea that it needed “strengthening.” Are the bill’s sponsors and advocates worried that the nation’s “social fabric” is coming apart at the seams? They would do well to worry, for there are signs it is, and they would need to look no further for its cause than the floor of the House, the scene of so much fiscal improvidence, theft of wealth, abridgement of liberty, and collectivist arrogance (not to mention pork barrel corruption).

But, whether or not HR 1444 reaches the Senate and passes there unmolested, the more unsettling news is a phenomenon I call “SDS: The Next Generation.” The White House and cabinet, agency, and department realms are now top-heavy with the Left of Old, from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Barack and Michelle Obama, ideally representing that next generation, are the plastic figures fixed atop the wedding cake. And far, far below in our “social fabric” is the generation educated and indoctrinated by the lefties who careered into education, à la William Ayers of the Weathermen, or by former Students for a Democratic Society and their countless fellow travelers who decided to wreak their vengeance on America by drilling its young in so many boot camps of selflessness and sacrifice, from kindergarten up through college. The new bills will ensure the line of succession of the Old Left so that the New Left can continue the campaign of producing selfless drones of service.

The New York Times of April 12 reported that many college graduates no longer look to Wall Street, business, industry, medicine, and science as fields of potential employment. An increasing number aspire to become community organizers, “just like the world’s most famous one, Barack Obama.”

“A job that has not been all that alluring to college graduates is in resurgence, according to leading community organizers and educators. Once thought of as a destination for lefty radicals committed to living lives of low pay, frustration and bitter burnout, community organizing is now seen by many young people an exciting career.

“With their jobs, students envision helping communities address urgent issues -- economics or the environment, education or social justice -- while developing leadership skills. And these jobs, students say, can actually lead to…well, you know.”

To the chancellorship of Nazi America? Well…you know. Further on in the article, its writer notes:

“Dr. [Marshall] Ganz, the veteran organizer, trained thousands of Obama campaign volunteers to organize communities and voters….Three years ago, Dr. Ganz, who earned a doctorate in sociology and is now a lecturer at Harvard, taught 40 students in his community organizing class at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government….Three years ago, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, began using Dr. Ganz’s curriculum. It is now taught at the College of the Holy Cross, Providence College and Wellesley. And more institutions, like M.I.T. and Northwestern, are calling him.”

The article does not once mention Ganz’s Old Left mentor, but clearly he, Obama, and thousands of college students and their current mentors are avid disciples of Saul Alinsky, the patron saint of “community organizers” everywhere.

Speaking of Harvard, Democratic congressman and domestic Somali pirate Barney Frank spoke at the Kennedy School of Government on April 13 and got into a verbal brouhaha with a law student who asked a fair question: “How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?” Note that the student did not accuse Frank of being up to his ears in responsibility

Frank, of course, took personal exception to the question, as any guilty liar would, and accused the student of repeating what he called “right-wing talking points” and of ignorance of the issue. He more or less implied that the student should have come armed with all 1,000+ pages of the first stimulus package, or perhaps a copy of the Community Reinvestment Act and Frank’s voting record on the matter or perhaps a transcript of his statements from five years ago, which would contain, for example, Frank’s assertion that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis.”

To his credit, the student stuck to his guns, and repeatedly asked Frank to simply answer the question. Frank repeatedly subjected the student and the audience to a bewildering kaleidoscope of half-truths and contextless concretes no one could examine and refute in anything less than a book, all the while the fingers of his left hand twitching nervously and his posture betraying a man on the point of panic.

Creeping Censorship

On April 3rd, an article by Democratic Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland appeared in The Washington Post, “A Plan to Save our Free Press.” I have already reported on this move to establish a more financially sound but suborned press in “Freedom of Speech: Silence is Not Golden,” about the plan to convert failing newspapers into nonprofit entities such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Aside from the fact that Cardin’s Newspaper Revitalization Act would relieve these papers of significant tax obligations not enjoyed by papers not tottering on the brink of bankruptcy, it would be a first step to bring all newspapers under federal control, or at least marginalize those which do not succumb to the temptation to “go public.”

“My bill would allow newspapers -- if they choose -- to operate under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasters [read, government or tax-supported TV and radio stations]…. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements but would be permitted to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. They would be able to editorialize and take positions on issues affecting their communities. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax-deductible.”

How can a newspaper editorialize without making political endorsements? By doing exactly what PBS and all its affiliates around the country do every day: propagate ideas advocated by the persons they are not allowed to politically endorse or favor. That is, for example, editorialize positively about “hope” and “change,” wealth “redistribution” and “social equity,” but not blatantly agree with Obama or any other politician or candidate who promotes those things.

The Confiscation of Offshore Wealth

Reuters reported on April 13 that Credit Suisse will enable the U.S. government to more easily tax and/or confiscate money Americans once thought was safely deposited in Swiss bank accounts.

“Sonntagszeitung [a Swiss newspaper] said the bank had about 2,500-5,000 U.S. clients with undeclared offshore accounts worth about 3 billion francs….The paper said that Credit Suisse had started parting company with its U.S. offshore clients, giving them the option of moving their accounts to its CS Private Advisors subsidiary, which would report the accounts to the U.S. tax authorities, or writing them a check.

“The move comes after rival UBS said last year it would stop offering offshore services to U.S. citizens after U.S. authorities alleged that the Swiss bank has helped rich Americans hide money away from the taxman in Swiss accounts.”

Switzerland isn’t what it used to be. The Associated Press also reports that UBS, aside from losing about $18.41 billion in the subprime mortgage fiasco, also stands to lose about $14.8 billion in American deposits when it turns over the records of about 52,000 Americans to the IRS.

“UBS already has agreed in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department to pay $780 million and disclose up to 300 UBS account holders suspected of tax fraud.

“Oswald J. Gruebel told staff the bank had to stick strictly to the law in order to protect its reputation.”

Whose law? Swiss law, or American? What reputation? A Swiss bank now is no better a “safe” deposit vault than the shoe boxes of American banks.

When a politician, American or foreign, talks about the benefits of a global economy, take it for granted that he means a fascist global economy in which there are no sanctuaries or safe havens from government theft and pillaging. When Obama, a celebrity sensation at the G20 summit in London, where he agreed to place American companies under the authority of an international Financial Stability Board (with no recognized recourse to American courts) assured Joe the Plumber during the campaign that he just wanted to “spread the wealth around,” he meant instead that he intended to spread the poverty around. For that is his and his administration’s aim, to ensure that the rich are as destitute and defenseless as the middle class, and unable to escape anywhere from their “duty“ to sacrifice and serve. The U.S. government and the European Union have pressured Swiss banks to betray their customers.

Of course, the “undeclared” billions in those banks are but a drop in the bucket, compared to the Niagara Falls of trillions Obama and Congress wish to create out of nothing and spend on rearranging America along fascist/socialist lines. One might then ask: If that is true, why send posses after the individuals who own those billions? How can destroying that wealth make a difference? The answer: envy. To leave no slave behind in the quest for totalitarian control. To leave no cent behind that could be tossed into the bottomless pit of need. And the root motive behind such a quest is hatred of the good for being the good -- in this instance, hatred of anyone who has outwitted the looters and pillagers by preserving his wealth beyond their grasp. It is destruction for the sake of destruction.

The next time you hear someone ask, “Have you paid your taxes?” you should answer, “Whose taxes?”

Profile Muslims, no! Profile “Rightwingers,” si!

And the next time you brace yourself for a frisk and a search at the airport and watch helplessly as some otherwise unemployable drudge rifles through your luggage, you might also be want to be prepared to account for the copy of Atlas Shrugged you might have in your carry-on. Or perhaps one of those specially trained attitude detectors might interpret the sour look on your face as evidence of a probable terrorist, and have you pulled from the line to be interrogated in the TSA version of George Orwell’s Room 101.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on April 7 released (or leaked) a “threat assessment” memo called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The Solons of the DHS just might correctly consider Ayn Rand’s novel as “radical,” though in its fathomless wisdom they wouldn’t be able to explain why. You, the advocate of individual rights, of limited, rights-protecting government, of the rule of objective law and not of power-lusting men, would be lumped together with racists, anarchists, neo-Nazis, basement-bomb conspirators, and any other group that could be identified as “anti-government” and your identity red-flagged for special attention. You, the cleanly rational radical for capitalism who opposes the initiation of force by criminals and government alike, might someday be locked in a holding pen with the ilk of Timothy McVey, the Unabomber, anti-abortion assassins, and other unsavory company.

The two troubling terms in the memo’s title and their usage throughout the memo itself are extremism and rightwing. Nowhere are they defined. The irony is that the term extremism is meaningless. As Ayn Rand notes in her 1964 essay, “Extremism, or the Art of Smearing”:

“The concept of ‘extreme’ denotes a relation, a measurement, a degree. The dictionary gives the following definitions: ‘Extreme, adj. -- 1. of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average. 2. utmost or exceedingly great in degree.’ It is obvious that the first question one has to ask, before using that term, is: a degree -- of what?”*

In the context of the memo and the alleged function of the DHS, which was created shortly after 9/11 to deter further terrorist attacks on the U.S., the term implies an unspecified potential for violent acts against the government and/or American citizens in this country. Michelle Malkin, in her dissection of the memo, questions the timing of the memo’s release a week before the hundreds of Tax Day Tea Parties and concludes that the memo exclusively targets conservatives, noting that no left-wing groups are cited.

“In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.”

She managed to speak with persons in the DHS but was not able to persuade them to identify which “rightwing extremist” groups were busy “recruiting” people to join them, and no one in the DHS was willing to identify for her the nature of the “rightwing extremist chatter” on the Internet that alarmed the authors of the memo. (And the memo’s mention of that chatter confirms that the DHS, and probably the National Security Agency, monitor not only domestic phone calls but the Internet, as well.) Section U of the memo cites one cause of the alleged increase in “rightwing extremist” activity: the “economic downturn.” Another alleged cause is dissatisfaction with the new administration’s economic, spending, and social policies.

“Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical [sic] election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use….From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.”

Surely a news media in lockstep with promoting the administration’s policies would have jumped at the chance to report a swelling of the ranks of “rightwing” vigilante groups or a dramatic growth in subscriptions to conspiracy-theory newsletters, and issued their own dire warnings. But, as Malkin and other commentators point out, the DHS offers no evidence that substantiates the memo’s assertions. The only concrete thing that might have given insecure Homelanders the jitters is the reported spike in gun sales, but even the news media concedes that this is a result of the administration’s wish to gut the Second Amendment.

Every other section of the memo similarly smears anyone who opposes the new administration’s policies by implying that he is a potential terrorist or an unhinged malcontent frothing at the mouth, ready to mow down Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, and IRS clerks. Malkin is wrong to conclude that the memo libels only conservatives. Its insinuating language is broad enough to include all men of reason who oppose the socialization of America, and to include all Americans who know that Obama and Congress are guilty of exacerbating the logical and inevitable destructive consequences of government interventionist policies and of implementing a socialist agenda that would destroy what liberties remain to them.

All of which renders the term rightwing meaningless, as well, if it is implied that “rightwingers” are “capitalist” fascists, which would necessarily include left-wingers, or those who advocate government management of the economy, of private property, and the scrapping of the Bill of Rights. Fascists are fundamentally socialists. The terms left-wing and rightwing constitute a bait-and-switch game of terms. (I lost count of the number of Tea Party protesters I spoke with who no longer see a difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties.)

Further, it is noteworthy that the DHS felt it necessary to circulate the memo to law enforcement agencies and departments around the country on the eve of a phenomenon, the nationwide Tea Party. But the DHS and the Obama White House cannot but have helped to observe months before a grassroots opposition to Obama’s and Congress’s policies, long before the first Tea Parties in February.

The Wall Street Journal on April 15 ran an excellent analysis of the Tax Day Tea Party phenomenon, tracing its roots and discussing its portentous political consequences, and also the role of the Internet in making it possible. It concludes with these predictions:

“This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.”

The Republicans will ignore the Tax Day Tea Party at their own peril. The Democrats are not ignoring it, even though the news media largely did ignore it or downplayed the significance of over half a million Americans saying “No!” to the Obama administration.

Those half million Americans, drawn from almost every thread of the country’s “social fabric,” may be the answer to the government’s worried “Who is John Galt?” and may represent an unwelcome species of “volunteerism” that can scuttle the plans of “community organizers” everywhere. The Internet, as The Wall Street Journal article suggests, can turn all liberty-valuing Americans into Minute Men.



*In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet softcover, 1967, pp. 173-182. The reader is urged to read the entire essay for how the term “extremism” has been and continues to be employed politically to smear advocates of capitalism or anyone who takes a rationally principled stand on any given issue.

Objectivist Round Up

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Prometheus Initiative: Update

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

China Rediscovers Gold

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

I am speaking metaphorically, so far, but China, which owns much of our national debt, has been buying lots of copper lately, according to the Telegraph:

John Reade, metals chief at UBS, said Beijing may have a made strategic decision to stockpile metal as an alternative to foreign bonds. "We're very surprised by Chinese demand. They are buying much more copper than they will need this year. If this is strategic, there may be no effective limit on the purchases as China's pockets are deep."

Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank governor, piqued the interest of metal buffs last month by calling for a world currency modelled on the "Bancor", floated by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944.

...

One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," he said. [bold added]

None of this is really news, but what really killed me was what I read later on.

The beauty of recycling China's surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth's crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China's industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis. [bold added]

The logic leading up to this, culminating in the mention of the ease of storage for metals reminded me of past, wiser words from none other than Alan Greenspan, who would later betray those very words as one of the chief architects of the financial crisis.

What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. Where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible.

And yet, China has not chosen gold, nor has it announced a metal standard for its currency, but I have commented on why a government would stop short of this already, and using the older, self-lobotomized Greenspan as a source, to boot.

Perhaps the grandest irony in all of this is that what we will likely see in response to this story is that readers -- and pundits of all stripes -- will be transfixed in awe at the cleverness of the Chinese, rather than considering their own situation and concluding that their own best interests would be served best by real, metal-backed money. Why not call for our own government to do what the Chinese ought to be doing, but aren't? This concrete-bound perspective, limited as it is by the failure to draw principled conclusions from this lesson, is a direct result of pragmatism, the intellectual plague of our age.

If there is one good thing about this financial crisis, it is that it is exposing the inherent broken-ness of fiat money almost as thoroughly as any comparative set of photographs of East and West Berlin could show the dismal failure of socialism two decades ago. That is well and good, but if the lesson is to stick better than the one about socialism, which China has backed off from in recent years and the United States is preparing to try whole hog, more people are going to have to start thinking in terms of principles. We are not off to a very good start at all here in the West, so far.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added a short clarification.

My 3.5 Minutes of Fame at a Tax Day Tea Party Protest

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog



Here's a great example of what the Ayn Rand Center is enabling around the nation.

They made some excellent material available, and I thought it would come in handy for any tea party protests that might happen here in Boise. When I found out that there was indeed one being organized here, I quickly put together a single-sheet front/back handout and printed several hundred in full color to distribute. Quick and easy cultural activism!

And then Tammy suggested that I offer myself as a speaker, on the off-chance that the organizers might be receptive to an Objectivist and find a way to fit me in. So I sent them a note the night before and heard back the morning of that they would like to have me speak! I cribbed and customized the backside of my handout, and voila, a 3.5-minute speech ready for delivery with almost no notice.

They ended up using me as their opening speaker! You can see me above in the lower-right, a while before I took the stage (it was cold and drizzly, and my papers were getting soggy). By the time I had the mic there were thousands of people in the audience, and I was surprised at how vocal and receptive they were! Tammy was off handing out the flyers (likewise, surprisingly popular) and didn't expect me to take the stage so early, but she nonetheless managed to capture a nice chunk of my performance on her little point-n-shoot camera:



Lots of people expressed gratitude and enthusiasm after I left the stage. The crowd was mostly stock conservative folks unhappy with the current situation and filled with all sorts of mixed, inconsistent, disintegrated ideas. And of course (ugh) there was the inevitable handful of crackpots. One conspiracy nutter buttonholed me to let me in on the secrets of the Federal Reserve, and we moved on pretty quickly. I was also pulled aside by a couple of far-Left media people looking to confirm that I was some crank trying to rewrite history or something -- I just responded pleasantly and explained more about what I was saying. We'll see what shows up in their outlets, if anything.

Quite a day for a guy who simply didn't have the time to design a flyer or write a speech from scratch. Thank you, ARC!

Books and Badges

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dallas Tea Party 2009 [Flickr]

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

HeroicLife posted a photo:

Dallas
Tea
Party
Tax
Protest
TeaParty

The Obligation to Render Assistance

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Right around the time of the CU Boulder "Think!" debate on Ayn Rand's ethics between Onkar Ghate and Mike Huemer, I listened to a very interesting discussion of the obligation to offer minimal aid to a person in distress in one of Leonard Peikoff's podcasts.

Kevin McAllister -- of the blog Logical Disconnect -- was kind enough to transcribe the question and answer for me. Here it is:

Episode 41: 10:25 - 11:37

Q: Am I morally obligated to call for help if I see someone in a car accident or experiencing a heart attack?

This is obviously from someone who does not know what the Objectivist view of selfishness is. Absolutely yes, you are morally obligated. If you have chosen to live in a society of human beings and your mode of survival depends on your trade with them then you have to value human life so far as it's not guilty or criminal to your knowledge. In that case if you know no evil about a person and no sacrifice is involved then only a psychopath would turn away from such cases. And that would mean besides all the psychological things a direct contradiction of the value of human life. You can't value your life and decide to live with others of your species and say, "They're nothing to me, I don't care if they live or die." That's self-contradiction.

Dr. Peikoff's analysis is substantially Aristotelian, I think. (That's a compliment, in this context: Aristotle's moral psychology is superb.) It's not a cost-benefit analysis: the point is not that the person might reward you with cash, that he might be a talented neurosurgeon who might someday save the life of your dear mother, that he might invent some widget that you'd like to buy, or whatnot. Rather, Dr. Peikoff focuses on the kinds of attitudes and dispositions toward other people required to live and live well among other men. That's the right approach to these kinds of cases, I think.

Kevin also transcribed the relevant portion from another of Dr. Peikoff's podcasts -- one I've not yet heard -- on the validity of "lifeboat" scenarios in ethics:

Episode 48: 12:30 - 15:48

Okay, do you know what a lifeboat question is? You know, what do you do when there [are] more people in the lifeboat then there is food and someone has to die, what does Objectivism say? And why those questions are completely illegitimate, because morality is for the circumstances when it is possible for men to coexist. If they can't, then you can't have any morality.

Now, this is a lifeboat question, which I normally wouldn't answer but it's from a high school student from another continent. So I'll read it. This is a really... Okay I won't comment, just listen.

He made this up, it's not true: My wife is extremely sick she is my greatest value, but she will die in 24 hours if I do not acquire a certain medicine for her. I leave the house and go to the pharmacy and find out that the last bottle of medicine has been sold to the man in front of me. There is no other place I can get this medicine. By coincidence the man who purchased the medicine is walking home in front of me. I approach the man and explain to him my situation and request that he give me the medicine. However, he says no, as his wife is in the same situation as mine. He turns around and continues to walk away. I know that if I wanted to I could easily overpower this man and steal the medicine. Now my question is, what is the moral thing to do?

Now, I'd like to know some things about the realistic possibility of this example. For instance, she is only going to live for 24 hours. Who long did you know that? Who told you? And why did you wait? How many other pharmacies have you tried? How many websites? Did you try the manufacturer? I mean this whole thing, point after point, is a completely unreal situation. You are just setting up, two men, for no reason, with no plausibility, want the same thing desperately, should they kill each other? Without the faintest expectation... at least in the life boat, you know that they're there you know and ... but here, there is no reason at all. So, what you have to do, before you ask moral questions, is figure out are they realistic, and what should the characters in them have done, what could have done that would have eviscerated and wiped out the very possibility of the situation.

Notably, Objectivism does not oppose reasoning from lifeboat scenarios in ethics merely because a person is unlikely to ever encounter such circumstances in his lifetime. I'm very unlikely to ever be propositioned with large sums of money by a student seeking an undeserved grade, yet we can certainly say that my accepting that offer would be grossly immoral.

Rather, as can be seen from Dr. Peikoff's remarks, the problem with "lifeboat ethics" is that the proposed scenarios are concocted so as to produce irresolvable conflicts between people. By various artificial constraints, they make life in society impossible. They preclude any rational solutions to the problem at hand. Is it then any wonder that the results are unseemly? Of course not.

The simple fact is that lifeboat scenarios do not reflect the most basic facts about human nature, namely our distinctively human methods of producing and trading the values required to sustain life. Consequently, moral principles cannot be applied to such scenarios, nor induced from them.

Pat Condell on Free Speech

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog



Pat Condell's argument for free speech as his new religion in this video is similar to the simple reductio ad absurdem of Leon Kass's intuitionist appeal to "repugnance" as grounds for banning human cloning. That reductio says the following:

In his case against cloning, Kass relies heavily on his own moral feelings of repugnance, without any serious attempt to justify them by plausible appeal to facts. Of course, Kass does offer some arguments against cloning, but those arguments are quite laughable. They would imply that we should ban in vitro fertilization, identical twins, and step-parents too.

Unfortunately for Kass, I find his appeal to repugnance itself repugnant. I'm an advocate of solid reasoning based on facts, after all. Heck, I find his pathetic attempts at substantive arguments -- rationalization, really -- quite repugnant too.

So if repugnance is as wise as Kass himself claims, then his whole method of arguing against cloning can and ought to be rejected on that very basis. Heads I win, tails he loses!

Obviously, that's not the strongest argument against mystical theocrats of various stripes, not by a long shot. Nonetheless, it highlights the absurdity of ethical and political claims based on a corrupt epistemology. It's a way of hoisting these folks with their own petard.

Will Wilkinson has more on the question-begging appeal to repugnance. Here's the short version:

...just do the following: Make a list of all the very morally worthy and life-enhancing procedures Kass finds repugnant. Now, declare that what we need to do is re-engineer people so that we don't find those things repugnant anymore, because those kinds of unreasoned sentiments prevent us from improving our lot here on Earth. How can a Kassian respond? The only non-fallacious course is to argue for the moral authority of the human moral sense as it is presently constituted, without assuming its authority in the argument. And that's what I want from Kass, and from all those who argue via "the argument from 'yuck.'" And that's what we never get.

An Emergency of Ethics

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

Over at MDOD, a medical blog I occasionally visit, are two morbidly interesting snapshots of what the altruistic ideal of sacrifice, as forcibly implemented by the state, has been doing to medicine. Specifically, each of these shows what is happening at emergency departments across the nation thanks to EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act), an unfunded congressional mandate that makes it "illegal for a hospital to refuse care in an emergency setting, regardless of [a patient's] ability to pay."

In the first such snapshot, 911Doc solicits from his readers the "worst example of ER or EMS abuse that you have personally witnessed." As of now, not counting the example he used to kick off the thread, there are twenty-eight comments, some detailing more than one example. Since these are personal accounts, no one has listed the news story I recently encountered in which nine "people ... racked up 2,678 emergency room visits in Central Texas, costing hospitals, taxpayers and others $3 million." Here's a survey:

• An astounding number or patients come in specifically for non-emergency reasons, including: pregnancy tests ("I didn't trust the home pregnancy test, and I know that yours are better."), MRI (in order to sue an employer for disability), medical "paperwork" (in order to sue a contractor her landlord had hired to do work on her home), prescriptions for narcotics or other unnecessary drugs, and even transportation (e.g., "to visit her friend who lives a block away from [the] hospital," and "he had a drag show to get to").
• Some patients are not sick at all, but only believe they are. In one case, emergency personnel had the pleasure of explaining to a female patient that she had described the symptoms of a perfectly normal occurrence. It was an orgasm. Another patient had a mysterious burning sensation in his throat -- after consuming an entire jar of hot sauce. Still another found herself alarmed to be menstruating -- after she had stopped taking the pill. One patient explained during triage that he was still hungry after six bowls of cereal. At least he was caught at triage. Some locales, notably Detroit, do not triage at all, meaning that such "cases" sometimes delay treatment for real, urgent emergencies.
• Some patients, if they are to be believed, suddenly go from gross neglect of one condition or another to blind panic. One patient came in for severe pain -- fifteen years after an automobile accident. Many simply skip the long-term neglect and panic immediately. Complaints included pink-eye (transport was by ambulance), low-grade fever (without taking anything for it before seeking medical advice), a paper cut, sore throat, insomnia, and cold symptoms.
• Some patients are actually sick, and some urgently need medical attention, but this is due to their own negligence, such as failing to heed earlier medical advice. Not surprisingly, such patients are often also found to be suffering from other medical conditions when being examined and have to be treated for those as well.

Such visits waste the time of emergency department personnel and money (often stolen from third parties by the government) intended for medical care. Also, they often directly endanger the lives of people with real medical emergencies.

The only thing more astounding than the above list is the fact that the one simple thing that could end practically all of it is not even on the political radar. That would be, of course, bringing freedom back to medicine. Specifically, if patients had to pay for their own medical care, they might think once or twice before taking an expensive ambulance ride to a hospital or occupying the emergency room.

The next post shows just how far away from bringing freedom back to medicine we are, politically. The same author explains that, "every time a reasonable solution to the crisis has been tried it has been found to be illegal by a court of law OR has brought such an outcry from victim groups." Even the nominal fee of five dollars for emergency transport and treatment has been shot down.

911Doc's angle in this second post is interesting, too. He notes that in the face of being constantly taken advantage of and never being able to even begin to change things for the better, many emergency medical personnel experience burnout within a decade of starting their jobs. He ends on an ominous note: "[I]f a bunch of us ER docs quit, and the specialty is already underserved across the country, it wont matter much if you are riding the ambulance in with an intracranial hemorrhage or a broken toe, you will not receive care."

The consequences of continuing to treat one man's need as a moral claim on the property, time, and effort of another are clear, and yet our current political trends are not to begin to stop doing so, or even to reconsider whether any of this is a good idea, but to do even more of this. Why?

911Doc partially answers his own question when he notes whose voices are heard -- the alleged spokesmen of "victims" -- and by the kinds of objections he raises to all of this. The "victims" appear to be in the right because the dominant morality in America is altruism, and all he seems able to do is raise practical objections.

There is nothing wrong with a physician profiting from his own work just like anyone else. In fact, it is just that he be paid and it is good that his own efforts promote his own life when he trades with you to promote yours. Until more people start to question the idea that a person's need (real or imagined) is an entitlement to what others own, there will be no political resistance to socialized medicine, no matter how lousy it turns out to be. Patients will fail to see that it is in their own best interest that physicians be free to name the terms for their services and the physicians themselves will, as we see here, feel morally disarmed, overwhelmed, and, rightly, taken advantage of.

-- CAV

Amit Ghate: Ayn Rand as Prophet?

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Congratulations to Amit Ghate for his recent essay on Ayn Rand which was just published by PajamasMedia. Here's the introduction:

Ayn Rand as Prophet
April 13, 2009 - by Amit Ghate

In recent months there has been a surge of interest in Ayn Rand's works. Fifty-two years after its first publication, her novel Atlas Shrugged is once again topping best-seller lists. As businesses are "bailed out" and quasi-nationalized; as one regulation leads inexorably to the next; and as the productive and innocent are increasingly burdened with the sins and failures of the guilty -- many people recognize the haunting resemblance to the world depicted in Atlas. Some now characterize Rand as a "prophet.”" Others, as seen on placards at "tea parties" nationwide, simply observe: "Rand was Right." But that she was right is, in some respects, less important than why she was right...

Read the rest here.

I'm glad to see Rand's ideas receiving the attention they deserve. And I'm glad to see Objectivists stepping up to help promote those ideas in venues like PajamasMedia.

Here's the comment I left in response:

Thanks for a terrific essay, Amit!

The original Tea Party protesters were not just fighting against higher taxes but *for* something positive -- the idea of individual rights. And in the process they helped create the greatest nation on earth.

Similarly, today's Tea Party protesters need to do more than just oppose bad government bailouts. They also need to support the positive case for limited government and capitalism. Fortunately, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged provides us with precisely the positive case we need -- a philosophy that defends the morality of rational self-interest and the importance of freedom in allowing honest men and women to pursue their own happiness.

Ayn Rand's ideas provide the necessary intellectual foundation that Americans need to save America. Let’s hope more people read her books and debate her ideas. The future of our country may well depend on it!

Once again, Amit -- thank you!

Renewal

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here's a scary but potentially useful resource on religious environmentalism: the documentary Renewal. Here's how the film's web site describes the project:

Across the nation, people of faith are standing up for the environment. Evangelical Christians are fighting mountaintop removal, a coal mining process that is decimating Appalachia. Muslims are supporting sustainable farming. Jews are helping children experience the bond between nature and spirituality. Interfaith Power and Light is mobilizing people of all faiths in a religious response to global warming.

For the first time, the combined energy of these diverse activists is the driving force behind a feature-length documentary, entitled RENEWAL. Veteran film producers Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rockefeller have crisscrossed the country to capture these exciting stories of people whose passion and deep moral commitment are making a difference in a time of grave ecological threats.

The RENEWAL Project has been designed to make the documentary and its inspiring stories available to people and organizations who want to be a part of this growing movement to protect life on our planet and reverse the damage that humans have done to the environment. Learn how you can get involved today!

You can view a trailer on their web site. (Via Ari Armstrong.)

Against Public Works

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

On a mailing list, someone recently asked about Adam Smith's "third duty of government," namely:

... the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.

The person asked, and reasonably so:

How is this determined; and to what extent is the benefit of the majority a reasonable argument for the forced expense of any individual? (i.e., National defense)

Here was my reply:

Adam Smith's view puts us on a slippery slope, I think. It concedes the moral superiority of the collective over the individual.

If you grant that it's acceptable to forcibly tax people to provide for "public works" and "public institutions," then you'll soon be forcibly taxing people to satisfy the demands of narrow special interests. Why? Because the mechanism of doling out such public funds can and will be used by the special interests that stand to gain so many unearned dollars from it.

That's certainly has happened in American history, to such an extent that we're now spending billions on special interests with barely any discussion thereof. Everyone expects their slice of the government pie, they demand it at other people's expense, and they get it. While many people question the legitimacy of this or that project, few people question the legitimacy of the basic principle. They accept that some people should be forced to part with their money for the sake of projects of no interest to them -- or even projects contrary to their values. But that's wrong.

If some project is truly of great benefit to humanity, then either (1) the users of that project should be willing to pay for the benefit they get (e.g. by paying to visit the museum, attend the opera, drive on the road, attend the school, or use the open space) or (2) benefactors, whether large or small, must be found to fund it (e.g. to endow the school, museum, or opera). Often, some combination of those two methods is perfectly workable -- as history itself shows. (The National Gallery of Art, for example, was created and endowed by Andrew Mellon and other private collectors.)

If some grand project cannot be funded by either of those two voluntary methods, then it's clearly not valued by the public. And in that case, to force people to spend their hard-earned dollars on it is utterly indefensible. It's a sham, in fact.

As a side note, I regard the military, the police, and the courts as a different kind of case than "public works": they are legitimate functions of government. Yes, they do benefit everyone, and they are necessary to the existence of a civilized society. Yet even in their case, coercive taxation is morally wrong -- and practically dangerous. All government should be financed by voluntary contributions. If we can have an all-volunteer military -- where men and women put their lives on the line for too-low pay in order to protect America (and more, unfortunately) -- then citizens voluntarily contributing their part in taxes is hardly far-fetched.

Thoughts?

QUIPTOON FOR TAX DAY

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I am glad to see that they will arrange a tea party in my old home state, Ohio. In the news: Tax Day Tea Party planned to protest government spending - Dayton Daily News.


John Cox Art.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." -- Winston Churchill. (QuoteDB.com)

Great resource: Ayn Rand Center On The Tea Parties.

The Dip of the Iceberg

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

Yesterday, I noted with dismay the fact that Barack Obama kowtowed to a barbarian king and then had a minor functionary lie about it. Today, I find that Charles Krauthammer has painstakingly cataloged the damage Obama has done (so far) on his overseas tour. Here are highlights:

• After vowing to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, Obama responded to North Korea's missile launch by calling for a "strong international response." What he got was, in Krauthammer's words, was, thanks to China and Russia, "not even ... a U.N. statement that dared express 'concern,' let alone condemnation."
• "The very next day, [Obama's] defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the 'realism' Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy."
• "Obama seems not even to understand that [renewed disarmament] talks are a gift to the Russians for whom a return to anachronistic Reagan-era START talks is a return to the glory of U.S.-Soviet summitry."
• "Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world."
• "He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing."
• "From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea."
• "And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?"

Obama isn't just style, he's substance, and I clearly don't mean that as a compliment.

Whether Obama is deliberately trying to sabotage our nation as an unadmitted leftist radical or his mind is completely addled by his self-sacrificial ideals -- or both -- is immaterial. He will sell us out as a matter of principle, and it is this principle -- that self-sacrifice is noble -- that we Americans must renounce, once and for all.

In the meantime, we have a columnist at home chiding Obama for bowing -- but conceding the false premise that the Saudis "own" the oil he chalks up as an impetus for the bow. Much of that is actually our oil, which makes the bow even worse. This "king" has no business being in charge of anything but a bunch of half-starved, superstitious nomads.

Before our body politic will stop electing Bushes and Obamas, it will have to re-learn the proper purpose of government, which will require it to better grasp the actual meaning of the term, "individual rights" as well as accept their moral basis in selfishness. In other words, we Americans will not have a Commander-in-Chief until we begin to stand up for ourselves consistently, as a matter of principle, and on the grounds that our lives are sacrosanct.

At the moment, this looks like an uphill battle, with many showing a slippery grasp of the message in Atlas Shrugged, the book which best expounds these prinicples and demonstrates their goodness and efficacy.

But the word is out, and the battle is on.

-- CAV

Objectivist Greeting Cards

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Tod, the creator of the popular Isaac Newton Christmas cards has expanded his line of offerings. Check them out here!

Here's his description:

Last Christmas, I sold a greeting card celebrating Isaac Newton instead of Jesus. It turned out to be unexpectedly popular. So I've designed some more, all on an Objectivist theme. You can actually use these for activism. A birthday or a holiday can be an excuse to send someone a positive message. It's passive and easy.

I get a bit weary writing what seems like the same letters, giving the same speeches, and grudgingly being drawn into debates I don't want to have. The thought of giving someone a colorful card with a shocking message in it really is exciting. Of course a greeting card does not replace detailed exposition on philosophy. It's just a small, and different, way of reaching people.

The culture is sending us insidious messages about ourselves and what our values should be. We can hear it in all forms of media, the language of our politicians, and even social customs. You can't even have a movie hero who isn't an alcoholic these days.

So often, in trying to build a culture of individualism, we focus on the horrible things spewing out of Washington. That's an important battle to have, but it's only part of a larger whole. We need a culture in which people are not automatically suspicious of anyone with a profit motive, and in which the mystical is mocked and ridiculed and not taken seriously, among other things.

How do you create that? I mean, just think of all the self-deprecating little phrases that people utter to themselves every day. Altruism has crept into absolutely everything.

One way to change it is to be a fearless example of your values. You have to live them, every day, consistently. You have to keep sending the same message, and the right message, tirelessly.

Philosophical messages do not need complex prose to be expressed. An image of a proud man, in the proper context, affirms that the achievement of one's values is real and possible. And we have very few of those grand images on TV or in the news today.

The future of this culture matters enough to me that I want to use every tool I have to change its course. These cards will start conversations. They will get attention. Find excuses to send them to people you barely know. Wear down the layers of cynicism and apathy and hopelessness drop by drop, like water. Greeting cards are a very small thing, but small things can add up. Like drops of water.

He has cards suitable for birthdays, "Get well soon", and Christmas. And more designs are on the way.

Thank you, Tod, for your artistry and creativity!

Traditional Easter Celebration

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Some of you may be surprised to learn that I am a committed traditionalist about Easter. The Easter holidays should be focused on bunnies, eggs, and other symbols of fertility -- not that newcomer "Jesus."

So, in the spirit of that glorious tradition, I bring you two delights:

See the best entries of the Peeps Diorama Contest. They're even better than last year, I think. My favorites are #4 and #40.

It's about time that someone created an Easter Turducken. It consists of Cadbury cream eggs wrapped in Peeps, then stuffed into a hollow chocolate rabbit. The linked page has a very useful set of illustrative pictures of the assembly process, but don't miss gems like the following in the description:

Many children wonder around Easter how it is that bunnies lay eggs. As a side benefit, Easter turducken illustrates clearly that this "theory" is wrong. Obviously bunnies lay chickens, which then lay the eggs. Mystery solved.

Indeed. Even more importantly, this Easter turducken -- a.k.a. the "bunpeepegg" -- shows that the "chicken or the egg" controversy is a vicious false alternative. Clearly, the chicken and the egg come into the world simultaneously: the chicken is "born" from the bunny already containing the egg!

It's just all so obvious now.

Smaller Farms = Higher Prices?

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Why is food purchased from local farms often so damn expensive? I recently ran across two interesting essays on the topic via the blog Food Renegade, both focused on livestock.

First, in Unfair Fare, part-time New York farmer Bob Comis argues that the problem stems from a failure on the part of many small farmers to take advantage of economies of scale. Instead, these farmers tend to rely on the willingness of some not-so-bright folks to pay exorbitant prices for locally-produced food. Undoubtedly, many consumers do need to be smarter shoppers.

Second, in Why Local Food Is More Expensive, farmer Joel Salatin argues that the high prices are largely the product of massive government controls. These controls are not merely ill-suited to the workings of the small farm; they also entail fixed costs that burden small farms far more than large farms.

Whether you will ever buy food direct from a farm or not, I heartily suggest reading this second article. The inanity, burden, and expense of these government controls on farmers is worth glimpsing in its concrete details. It's not a pretty picture.

Notably, while these two explanations for high prices of locally-produced food differ, they are not mutually exclusive. However, in the long run, the government controls over farms are clearly far more significant than the poor judgment of some farmers and consumers. The market can and will weed out inefficient farms via competition over time. In contrast, government controls can only be remedied by a massive cultural and political u-turn toward free market agriculture. Given the general confusion about and hostility to free markets today -- and given that large farms often support such controls as a means of suppressing their competition -- that u-turn will be no easy task.

Obama Evades Government's Role in the Crisis

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

Obama Evades Government’s Role in the Crisis

Washington, D.C., April 10, 2009--In an op-ed published this week by Canada’s Financial Post, Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, argued that “In calling for a massive increase in government control over the economy,” Obama “has evaded the mountain of evidence implicating the government.”
 
The primary cause of the current crisis, explained Mr. Epstein, was “drastic attempts by the government to control the housing and financial markets--via a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates to all-time lows, and via a gigantic increase in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s size and influence.” Through these entities, Epstein pointed out, “the government sought to ‘stimulate the economy’ and promote homeownership by artificially extending cheap credit to home-buyers.”
 
But, Mr. Epstein noted, Obama did not mention the Fed, Fannie, or Freddie even once, during his recent 52-minute speech to Congress. “Not once did he suggest that government manipulation of markets could have any possible role in the present crisis. He just went full steam ahead and called for more spending, more intervention, and more government housing programs as the solution.”
 
But the “fundamental solution to our problems,” said Epstein, is “to disentangle the government from the markets to prevent future manipulation.” To achieve that, Epstein concluded, we need to consider “pro-free-market remedies such as letting banks foreclose, letting prices reach market levels, letting bad banks fail, dismantling Fannie and Freddie, ending bailout promises, and getting rid of the Fed’s power to manipulate interest rates.”

----------

 

Of Obama and Obeisance

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

More disgusting than former President George W. Bush holding the hand of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (when the latter was but a “crown prince”) on Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch years ago, was the signature demonstration of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy when he bowed before the king at the G20 meeting in London and presumably kissed that same hand. This was an uncalled-for gesture on the part of a man who poses as a friend of the “unwashed masses” but who apparently experiences a “high” when hobnobbing with the rich and powerful.

And as a politician who likes to place himself on the same historical plane with Abraham Lincoln and FDR, surely he must have known that Saudi Arabia and the Koran condone slavery, that Abdullah very likely owns a dozen or more slaves himself, and that Saudi Arabia is a repressive theocracy with designs to convert the U.S. to Islam with stealth jihad through CAIR and other Saudi “civil rights” organizations in this country.

Not that he cares. There is King Abdullah, and there is Prince Barack. A very tenuous excuse might be made for Bush; he was an unlikable and unliked man, who knew he was mocked by Congress, the news media, and the public. He wanted to be liked by everyone, even if it meant rubbing shoulders with Vladimir Putin, King Abdullah and other unsavory creatures in hopes of teasing a grin from them.

No excuse can be made for Obama. His contempt for the United States in his every action since taking office in January is so apparent that it would have been surprising had he not emphasized it by bowing to a relic of medievalism. It was his way of proving that he is not a product of what he claimed in Germany was American “arrogance,” a euphemism for the United States asserting its right to exist and for being the freest, most prosperous country in history (for the time being). I do not think that contempt for the U.S. has been lost on this country’s enemies. Obama has more or less telegraphed his willingness to damage this country with his domestic and foreign policies as much as they would were they in his shoes. He’s their man.

George Stephanopoulos, his unofficial press secretary on ABC (who does a better job of shilling for Obama‘s policies than the official press secretary, the Elmer Fuddish Robert Gibbs), last Sunday gave Obama high marks for “stagecraft” on his European tour. The term means a series of orchestrated hale-fellow-well-met magic moments in domestic and exotic locales, but apparently those high marks do not include preserving the dignity of the office of president. It is doubtful that Abdullah even expected a president of the United States to be so extraordinarily obsequious.

The American Thinker site, in reporting and discussing this shameful episode on April 7, poses the question in answer to any possible White House or State Department denial that bowing to Abdullah was not an act of subservient inferiority:

“If it was not a gesture of subordination, why did the Saudi king fail to respond with a similar bow?”

Because potentates do not bow to their subjects or inferiors. When I learned of this “stagecraft” on the Internet (it certainly wasn’t through the news media, not for them to report such a disquieting event), the final scene of “The Godfather” flashed in my memory, in which Michael Corleone, acknowledged head of a crime family, receives the hand-kissing fealty of his underlings.

At a time when rogue governments such as Iran’s and North Korea’s are working to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems, Obama has reached a tentative agreement with another rogue government, Vladimir Putin’s, to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles. Which means the emasculation of this country’s defense capabilities -- not Russia’s or Iran’s or China’s or North Korea’s offensive capabilities. No totalitarian government or other brand of dictatorship has ever felt morally bound or constrained by any weapons reduction treaty signed between it and another statist regime or between it and any coalition of Western “democracies.” Read the history and consequences of such agreements and treaties from long before World War One up through the twentieth century. One might then ask how such a self-proclaimed student of history could make such a concession when the overwhelming evidence points to a guarantee of aggression and war.

There are two possible answers to this question. The first is that Obama knows that history but is confident his wishes will overcome reality. He wants it to be so; ergo, it will be so. One might call it the King Canute syndrome. The tides will cease on command; dictators and enemies of this country will be nice enough to refrain from arming themselves and their proxies.

The more likely answer is that defenseless is how Obama imagines the U.S. should be against regimes that wish to harm or destroy this country, or at least compel it to submit under the threat of destruction. It would be fit punishment for its past “transgressions” and “arrogance.”

And in Turkey, he proclaimed that the U.S. “is not and will never be at war with Islam.” Maybe not. But Islam is certainly at war with the U.S. Surely he must know that, as well. It is fairly common knowledge in the Muslim world. If he doesn’t know it, then he’s not reading his intelligence reports, or their authors are not mentioning it for fear of offending his sense of “diversity” and risking their immediate redundancy. But, like Bush, he will not blame Islam for the attacks on the U.S. and the West, only its kamikaze pilots. Thus his grandstanding about “defeating” Al-Qada in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Addressing the Turkish parliament on April 6, Obama asserted:

“We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country.”

Excuse me? Were Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and James Madison secret Muslims? Or Lincoln? Stating that Islam helped to “shape” the United States is as specious an assertion as the claim that a confederation of American Indian tribes served as a model for the U.S. government before ratification of the Constitution. In attempting to establish a détente with Islam, Obama either dismisses or is ignorant of the totalitarian nature of the Islamic faith and its record of destruction, massacre, rape, genocide and enslavement over the centuries, one that rivals only the Catholic Church’s and its wars with dissenting sects. In that sense, yes, the Islamic faith has done much to shape the world -- but not for the better.

One might even hypothesize that Obama envies the Islamic faith, because it requires immediate and unquestioning submission to its ideology, something he would like to see happen in this country at the snap of his fingers.

Obama has his own notion of submission. A power-luster will respect a power-holder; this would also help to explain his toady-ish behavior upon meeting the Saudi king. But, back home, submission is what he expects of American business executives. When he met with banking CEO’s for an hour and a half on April 2, he was in his Michael Corleone mode. He stopped the friendly chitchat and attempts by the bankers to explain why they and their employees needed bonuses, and went to the point, reports the Politico site:

“My administration,” the president said, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Corleone couldn’t have said it better.

After ranting on about how he saw the economic crisis and why people were outraged over Wall Street’s executive bonuses (and the only people who seem to be outraged are the news media and the “man-in-the-street” dimwits they pick to emote angrily about the bonuses), he invited the bankers to talk.

They were true to their record of moral cowardice.

“JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon complimented Obama on the economic team he’d assembled…Dimon also insisted that he’d like to give the government’s TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] money back as soon as practical and asked the president to ’streamline’ that process.”

Nix to that, replied Obama. Returning the money might “send a bad signal,” or create the wrong impression. Appearances trump reality. Appearances will become the reality. Reality is what he wishes it to be. Obama regards himself the master illusionist.

“Several CEO’s disagreed, arguing instead that returning the TARP money was their patriotic duty, that they didn’t need it anymore, and that publicity surrounding the return would send a positive signal of confidence to the markets.”

No dice. Apparently, career bankers know nothing about finance, markets or banking. Or perhaps Obama would concede that they do know those things, and that he and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and their economic advisors do not. None of that mattered. Barack Obama, who has never worked a productive, wealth-creating day in his life but spent years in unproductive “public service,” knows better, because he has a personal line to a higher authority. Call it the Kant-Hegel-Marx triumvirate.

Besides, it was more “patriotic” and safer to be his yes-men. And accepting the TARP money back from the banks might cause people to suspect that perhaps the government is the chief culprit behind the crisis and that it is attempting to paper over its responsibility by literally printing more paper money and granting itself more credit so that impoverished Americans can pay it off in about six generations.

Provided, of course, there are still an economy and an America. In fact, the debt Obama and his predecessors in the Oval Office and in Congress have rung up can never be paid off, not without the government garnishing and attaching the full incomes of every American and granting everyone an “allowance.” The catch is that such an economy is not productive and if it exists at all it is because there is a freer economy elsewhere propping it up. If there are no free economies, then the world is in another Dark Age.

If one ever sought proof that Obama and his gang do not want the economy to recover, there it was, in that meeting with the banking CEO‘s, the willing whipping boys for the government‘s policy failures. If the road to perdition is paved with good intentions, there is only one verdict to reach about a man and his clique whose intentions are not good.

House of Cards, Jail of Lies

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

Via Arts and Letters Daily is the story of a once-eminent Australian judge that illustrates very eloquently both the hazards of waging the war against reality that is lying and the importance of always upholding one's principles. The judge, caught in a so-called "white lie" he made in an effort to get out of a minor traffic infraction, refused to stop perjuring himself, and has landed in jail for a minimum of two years.

There is a whiff or two of egalitarian schadenfreude to get past in the story, but not as much as one might expect from a European news outlet, which calls the tale a tragedy, in the classical sense of the term.

On the face of it, you can't call his disaster a tragedy. A tragedy, according to classical principles, is a fall from high degree because of some great flaw.

Marcus Einfeld, the judge in question, was certainly of high enough degree - none higher. Queens Counsel since 1977, Australian Living Treasure 1997, United Nations Peace Award 2002, the list goes on. He retired a few years ago but has continually been brought back to judge important cases about refugees because the Australian legal system can't do without his experience and prestige.

What makes the story worth reading is that it shows a relatively good grasp not just of the former stature of the man, but of the greatness of Einfeld's flaw.

He doesn't need me or anyone else to tell him that a judge who commits perjury, over no matter how trivial a matter, has sinned against the spirit of his profession.

That's why his case really is a tragedy, and not just a farce. It's a tragedy because he not only fell from high degree, there really was a tragic flaw: a capacity to forget, at the critical moment, the central ethical precept of the calling to which he had given his life.

The report even demonstrates a grasp of the personal and psychological consequences of such a failure.

The judge is already hearing about it from himself. He's hearing about the fatal road that led from the speed camera to the truly tragic climax, which wasn't the moment when one of his fellow judges had to send him down for three years, two of them without parole.

The tragic climax came when the distinguished Judge Marcus Einfeld found himself on the telephone to his mother saying: "Mum, remember how you lent me your Toyota that day?" and she said "Marcus, what have you got yourself into?"

And suddenly he was a little boy again, as all men are when the truth they must face is about a mess of their own making.

This judge inadvertently chose almost the perfect example to jail for perjury. May his past stature and reputation not fool anyone into forgetting that respect for the truth is actually everyone's business, and everyone's best friend. He was just under greater scrutiny than most when he got caught making himself vulnerable to the ability of other men to see the truth.

And principles, being truths discoverable from the facts of reality, are no less forgiving of evasion or ignorance than more mundane facts.

-- CAV

Congratulations, Ari Armstrong!

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Wow:

Media Release: Freecolorado.Com Wins Sam Adams Award

The Sam Adams Alliance announced that Ari Armstrong, publisher of FreeColorado.com, has received the 2009 "Modern-Day Sam Adams Award," the organization's top prize, for "his relentless -- and ubiquitous -- defense of free markets and individual liberty in the state of Colorado."

The organization's media release is available here.

Armstrong will receive his "Golden Sammie" April 18 in Chicago. Presenting the awards will be Michelle Malkin, Stephen Moore, John Fund, Jonathan Hoenig, Mary Katharine, and Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher.

In his entry, Armstrong summarized his "food stamp" diets of 2007 and 2009, his fight against political correctness (as with the "bitch slap" controversy of 2008), his work on health policy, and various other projects.

Armstrong said, "I congratulate the other winners and look forward to learning from their example. I thank the Sam Adams Alliance for recognizing the important work for liberty done at the regional level. Finally, I thank my fellow liberty activists in Colorado -- especially my wife -- for teaching me so much about liberty, individual rights, and free markets, and how to advocate those values through intellectual activism. This award is for you, my brothers and sisters in liberty."

Armstrong founded FreeColorado.com (then co-freedom.com) in late 1998, before the term "blog" had been coined.

Congratulations, Ari!

Misrepresenting "How We Arrived at This Moment"

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

Misrepresenting “How We Arrived at This Moment”

By Alex Epstein

What must be done to recover from this financial crisis? Barack Obama rightly stresses that we first must understand how today’s problems emerged. It is “only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament."

Unfortunately, Obama (along with most of the Washington establishment) has created only misunderstanding. In calling for a massive increase in government control over the economy, he has evaded the mountain of evidence implicating the government.

For example, Obama’s core explanation of all the destructive behavior leading up to today’s crisis is that the market was too free. But the market that led to today’s crisis was systematically manipulated by government. Fact: this decade saw drastic attempts by the government to control the housing and financial markets--via a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates to all-time lows, and via a gigantic increase in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s size and influence. Fact: through these entities, the government sought to “stimulate the economy” and promote homeownership (sound familiar?) by artificially extending cheap credit to home-buyers. Fact: most of the (very few) economists who actually predicted the financial crisis blame Fed policy or housing policy for inflating a bubble that was bound to collapse.

How does all this evidence factor into Obama’s understanding of “how we arrived at this moment”? It doesn’t. Not once, during the solemn 52 minutes and 5,902 words of his speech to Congress did he mention the Fed, Fannie, or Freddie. Not once did he suggest that government manipulation of markets could have any possible role in the present crisis. He just went full steam ahead and called for more spending, more intervention, and more government housing programs as the solution.

But a genuine explanation of the financial crisis must take into account all the facts. What role did the Fed play? What about Fannie and Freddie? To be sure, some companies and CEOs seem to have made irrational business decisions. Was the primary cause “greed,” as so many claim--and what does this even mean? Or was the primary cause government intervention like artificially low interest rates, which distorted economic decision-making and encouraged less competent and more reckless companies and CEOs while marginalizing and paralyzing the more competent ones?

Entertaining such questions would also mean considering the idea that the fundamental solution to our problems is to disentangle the government from the markets to prevent future manipulation. It would mean considering pro-free-market remedies such as letting banks foreclose, letting prices reach market levels, letting bad banks fail, dismantling Fannie and Freddie, ending bailout promises, and getting rid of the Fed’s power to manipulate interest rates.

But it is not genuine understanding the administration seeks. For them, the wisdom and necessity of previous government intervention is self-evident; no matter the contrary evidence, the crisis can only have been caused by insufficient government intervention. Besides, they are too busy following Obama’s chief of staff’s dictum, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” by proposing a virtual takeover of not only financial markets, but also the problem-riddled energy and health-care markets--which, they conveniently ignore, are also already among the most government-controlled in the economy.

While Obama has not sought a real explanation of today’s economic problems, Americans should. Otherwise, we will simply swallow “solutions” that dogmatically assume the free market got us here--namely, Obama’s plans to swamp this country in an ocean of government debt, government controls, and government make-work projects. But alternative, free-market explanations for the crisis do exist--ones that consider the inconvenient facts Washington ignores--and every American should seek to understand them.

Those who do will likely end up telling our leaders to stop saying “Yes, we can” to each new proposal for expanding government power, and start saying “Yes, you can” to Americans who seek to exercise their right to produce and trade on a free market.

 

Mob Rule Comes to Washington

By Peter Schwartz from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Mob Rule Comes to Washington

By Peter Schwartz

In dealing with AIG, why are people pussyfooting around? They believe that the bonus money was stolen from the public and must be retrieved by any means possible. So why not bypass the niceties and just send in some well-armed “enforcers” to confiscate the bonus recipients’ cars and houses and bank accounts? 

If this raises fear about ushering in mob rule, it’s too late. AIG employees have been crudely vilified, they have been targets of death threats, a U.S. senator has urged them to kill themselves, protestors “tour” their homes, they have had to hire security guards and AIG has removed its name from the front of its Manhattan offices. 

This mass hysteria is being fueled by the government, which is proceeding on the premise of: “Get the money back first, rationalize later.” The House passed an extraordinary piece of punitive--and unconstitutional--legislation to tax away almost all the bonus money. New York’s attorney general, abetted by the threat of making their names public, has gotten many of the recipients to “voluntarily” return their bonuses. Perversely, the rights of captured Islamic jihadists generate greater concern in Washington. 

All these actions are tantamount to rule by mob action.

A mob is driven by rampant emotionalism, with no concern for facts--facts such as: Are these particular recipients guilty of anything? Are they competent individuals, necessary to keep the company operational? Would they have resigned without the inducement of the bonuses? Didn’t Washington consent to the bonuses at the time of the bailout? Aren’t the recipients entitled to the bonuses by contract?

The essence of mob rule is arbitrary and unchecked force, in disregard of all rights. If so, then when the government spends our money with virtually no limits--when trillions of dollars are gleefully disbursed through unrestrained horse-trading and arm-twisting among members of Congress--when trillions more are poured down the rat holes of failing companies at the uncontrolled discretion of bureaucrats--when government “czars” can select a company’s CEO and dictate its product line--then what we have is government by mob rule. That is, we have government with arbitrary, unchecked power to do as it wishes--which means: government unconstrained by the principle of individual freedom.  

Like any mob, Washington desires a scapegoat. It blames capitalism for the mortgage and credit crisis, in order to divert attention from the real culprit: government intervention. Every housing-related measure taken by Washington has made the standards for homeownership looser than they would be in a free market. Government has stepped in to override private companies’ aversion to undue risk. Regulators criticized banks for turning down too many mortgage applications. FNMA and FHLMC were created to encourage the issuance of mortgages that would not be prudent in a free market. The FDIC anesthetizes depositors against risks taken with their funds. And the entire Federal Reserve exists to pump paper money into the economy, and to keep interest rates artificially low--often below the rate of inflation--so that more lending occurs.  Yet when this house of cards collapsed, it is capitalism that was denounced, and more government power that was demanded.

The administration’s latest proposal, for a “systemic risk regulator,” should leave little doubt that it seeks carte blanche in ruling the economy. This is a plan for an economic dictator, an “enforcer” who will have the frightening authority to oversee every decision that, in his opinion, significantly influences the economy.

Of course, once the mob-rule mentality takes hold, everyone becomes a potential target. If you obtain a mortgage or a college loan, the government may subject you too to “risk regulation.” You may be told that you can’t buy a plasma TV or take a vacation or quit your job, because the risk to your finances is “unacceptable.” But isn’t that a purely private decision?--you will indignantly demand. If government power keeps expanding, however, there may no longer be any private decisions.

Peter Schwartz is the author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America. He is a distinguished fellow, and former chairman of the board, of the Ayn Rand Institute.

The Portugal of Camões and the America of today

By West from The Pursuit,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Today we have a guest contributor, Eliot Davila. Eliot's knowledge of literature and the great works of history never ceases to amaze me. I hope you'll enjoy this post as much as I do.  --West

Without further ado:

Those who have read the epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) written by Luís Vaz de Camões will likely recognize the following excerpt from Canto X. Reading it today, it almost seems as if Camões was talking not just about Portugal in the 16th century, but also about America in the 21st:

10.145
Nô mais, Musa, nô mais, que a Lira tenho
Destemperada e a voz enrouquecida,
E não do canto, mas de ver que venho
Cantar a gente surda e endurecida.
O favor com que mais se acende o engenho
Não no dá a pátria, não, que está metida
No gosto da cobiça e na rudeza
Düa austera, apagada e vil tristeza.

146
E não sei por que influxo de Destino
Não tem um ledo orgulho e geral gosto,
Que os ânimos levanta de contino
A ter pera trabalhos ledo o rosto.

Roughly translated:

No more, Muse, no more, my lyre 
Is out of tune and my throat hoarse, 
Not from singing but from wasting song 
On a deaf and coarsened people. 
Those rewards which encourage genius 
My country ignores, being given over 
To avarice and philistinism, 
Heartlessness and degrading pessimism. 

I do not know by what twist of fate 
It has lost that pride, that zest for life, 
Which lifts the spirits unfailingly 
And welcomes work with a smiling face. 

We, as Objectivists, may be a bit more perceptive than Camões, since we know by what "twist of fate" America has lost "that zest for life", but we may also often feel as if we are "wasting song / On a deaf and coarsened people." Luckily, great writers like Camões, Homer, Vergil, Milton, Hugo, and Rand "encourage genius" by fueling our souls with great art "which lifts the spirits unfailingly" and drives us to happily "welcome work with a smiling face." 

Consider, for instance, the final lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. The evil deed done, and the Fall of Man confirmed, God sends the angel Michael to escort Adam and Eve from Paradise. Michael first tells Adam that if he acts virtuously, then he may "leave this Paradise, but shalt possess / A Paradise within thee, happier farr." (XII. 586-87). With that glimmer of hope, the angel then escorts Adam and Eve from Paradise:

High in Front advanc't,
The brandisht Sword of God before them blaz'd
Fierce as a Comet; which with torrid heat,
And vapour as the Libyan Air adust, [ 635 ]
Began to parch that temperate Clime; whereat
In either hand the hastning Angel caught
Our lingring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd. [ 640 ]
They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; [ 645 ]
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

Despite losing their "happie seat" in Paradise, Adam and Eve soon "wip'd" their tears. Rather than looking back and lamenting over what had been lost, "our lingring Parents" looked forward and realized that "the World was all before them." Thus, the realization of that they were free to "choose / thir place of rest" led them to "welcome work with a smiling face." 

Milton has unfailingly lifted my spirit. What of yours?

Gettin' Write with Jesus?

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

At City Journal is a thought-provoking piece by Benjamin Plotinsky, who maintains that popular science fiction, from Superman to The Matrix, has been taking on a decidedly more religious cast in recent years.

Agreeing with Ayn Rand that philosophical ideas drive a culture, part of me initially reacted by thinking something like, "Well, that's not only borderline obvious, it's almost a forgone conclusion since Christianity saturates our culture." (Men do have free will, however. No intellectual influence determines culture.)

But as a veteran of an undergraduate major in English literature at a Catholic university, part of my initial reaction was also a deep skepticism. Some Christians are so intent on reading their faith into other people's minds and words that sometimes, it seems, so much as a mention of a right angle is treated like an allusion to Calvary. I recall at one point hearing Rand's John Galt likened to Jesus Christ at least in part due to his initials being J.G., the letter "G" being a Roman variant of the letter "C." We all know what Ayn Rand was really up to, despite her profession of atheism. Yeah, right!

But overall, I think Plotinsky is on the mark regarding what he describes. I think he also makes an interesting connection regarding when Gilles Kepel's "Revenge of God" started, as he puts it, to "begun to be felt even in secular Hollywood."

... In the 1980 [Star Wars] sequel, Yoda ... instructed Luke to "feel the Force around you: here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere!" Such language, smacking of the period's flirtation with natural mysticism, gave way in the new movies to an explanation more in keeping with our current fascination with molecular biology: the Force, we learned in [post Cold War] The Phantom Menace, was actually the product of microorganisms in the blood. It's as though Lucas, instinctively realizing the intellectual poverty of the New Age, gave it up, exchanged it for something resembling science, and then turned, elsewhere in the script, to a far older, more powerful story.

The Christ-like quality of the origins of Anakin Skywalker, usually bestowed on heroes is, here, written into a villain, but this paragraph ties together several lines of Plotinsky's reasoning, which I would summarize as something like, "During the Cold War, science fiction had a more geopolitical inspiration. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, science fiction writers were lost in terms of models for moral conflict, and this loss exposed the poverty of 'the New Age' (read: modern philosophy) as a source of either an artistic inspiration or a moral foundation for heroic fiction."

As far as that goes, Plotinsky is correct, but he doesn't go far enough. Religion, being based on faith, has, as such, no intellectual intercourse with reality. Assertions of Christ's divinity -- and indeed the whole concept of divinity -- are arbitrary and completely unsupported and unsupportable by evidence and logic. Whatever "power" Christianity has as an intellectual force, it does not lie in helping its followers understand or deal with reality.

This is not to say that Christianity is powerless, though. As Ayn Rand once noted,

Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping. The grandeur, the reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication to the pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly belong to the field of philosophy. ("The Chickens' Homecoming," Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 46)

Her point is that the aspirations of religion, to discover truth and to learn how how to live properly, are legitimate, but its means, blind faith, contradict those ends. Consequently, religion does not deserve the monopoly it has over discussions of man's aspirations or higher emotions.

And furthermore:

Since religion is a primitive form of philosophy -- an attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality -- many of its myths are distorted, dramatized allegories based on some element of truth, some actual, if profoundly elusive, aspect of man's existence. ("Philosophy and Sense of Life," The Romantic Manifesto, 25.)

We can see some of this when Plotinsky cites a work that originally inspired Gorge Lucas:

[Star Wars] doubtless owes much of that success to mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose book The Hero with a Thousand Faces described certain features of the "standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero." The adventure's outline was simple: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." Many myths shared even more than this, explained Campbell; for example, "the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or an old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass." Think of Arthur, Merlin, and Excalibur.

The story of Christ, like many Biblical stories, shares many elements with (and is probably based on) the myths of other, more ancient religions. But the similarity is deeper than that. Morality and life -- Ayn Rand is the only philosopher to demonstrate how the one can be rationally discovered from the requirements of the latter -- are all about good men overcoming obstacles, including the evil of other men. (Rand's morality alone rejects the altruistic call for human sacrifice.) All good stories involve conflict for this very reason, and all heroes will share certain moral attributes as a result.

But what qualities? Our mythologies,being products of more primitive times when men had to face much more physical danger (and with much less intellectual sophistication) than we do today, make much of physical strength. But as "resourceful" Ulysses indicates, the more fundamental quality of a strong mind has been indicated since ancient times. Virgin birth is common, too, but that is a biological impossibility, and, but for the obscene doctrine of original sin, would not even be on the radar as a moral requirement.

The hero is good, in touch with reality, and efficacious. The morality underlying the story determines the answer to the question of what "good" means and of the question "efficacious -- for what?" But how one becomes in touch with reality is the really interesting question, and it explains why the science has been undercut and is disappearing from science fiction.

Science fiction is -- or used to be -- premised on the idea that the universe is intelligible to man, or, perhaps that at least physical phenomena were amenable to rational inquiry. As such, it provided a refuge (much like science itself) for many people from the irrationality of an increasingly irrational culture. The heroes were men of science, whose extraordinary capabilities were usually made possible by the application of past rational inquiry to such diverse fields as space travel, biology, and engineering.

The characters of Star Trek might appear on the surface of a planet moments after being in space on the Enterprise, but they got there thanks, ultimately, to reason. And often, a character had to think for himself to get through the events of an episode. As seen in "The Corbomite Maneuver", neither technology (nor deductive reasoning) alone are enough.

But something went wrong, and it wasn't just the collapse of the Soviet Union. What the Cold War provided was a life-and-death conflict that almost anyone could understand, at least up to a point. (And that point was passed, and all understanding lost, any time someone said he agreed with the ends of the Soviets, but not their means.) The Russians were the bad guys, and they were threatening our lives. Contrary to the actual implications of the altruism pervading Western culture, it was easy to gloss over the fact that "morality" conflicted with the requirements of life and spin a heroic yarn.

And once the Cold War ended?

... Star Trek, for example, continued to imitate geopolitics as it launched a phenomenally boring new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, in 1987 (it would end its run in 1994). The Federation and the Klingons were now at peace, and the Enterprise resembled a spaceborne United Nations, a bustling enclave safe enough for the crew to bring children with them. So yawn-inducing was the galaxy that the show frequently sought to introduce drama with a device called the "holodeck," a virtual-reality entertainment area where the characters could cavort in more exciting locales -- the Wild West, say, or 221B Baker Street. ...

Yes and no. Yes, the writers were using a geopolitical model, but no, that's not the whole story behind why Star Trek: The Next Generation was boring. And yes, geopolitics as it was was insufficient inspiration for an exciting show, but no, turning to the Bible was not the only viable alternative. (I do not here claim that Plotinisky is necessarily saying this, either.) Neither science fiction nor anything else can help us evade moral or philopsophical questions forever, and the end of the Cold War marked the end of that refuge for science fiction writers and their audiences.

Is having one's world, or nation, or even just one's existence directly threatened by an enemy a necessary plot element for a story of heroism? No. Just watch The Pursuit of Happyness. Is having super powers? Or being armed to the teeth with lasers and nuclear weaponry? Or being born of a virgin? Or having mystical powers? No, no, no, and no. Just read Atlas Shrugged, which does have other elements of science fiction, although I would not classify it as such.

Without having time to elaborate, I would suggest that the problem being "answered" by God, so to speak, is that most writers in our culture today do not really understand heroism or romantic realism. The "good", as preached by altruism, is fundamentally at odds with rationality -- Just ask why you're expected to commit sacrifices some time -- and practicality. Since it is at odds with the requirements of man's life, its goals offer nothing personally motivating to an audience used to the pursuit of its own happiness. This is what made The Next Generation boring. Worse, when practiced consistently, altruism is deadly, as every "hero" of altruism shows, and as every deus ex machina that magically renders such acts world-saving actually attests.

And this is why writers are turning to the Bible when they run out of other movies to remake or serialize. The modern, secular philosophies held by (or that have influenced) many science fiction writers agree with Christianity that altruism is a proper morality, which means that they do not and can not see how the goodness and efficacy of a hero really do, in fact, go together. They reject reason in favor of an empty skepticism, which means they have already rejected the means by which to correct this earlier fatal error of aesthetics. And, as pragmatists, they throw their hands up and notice that lots of people find the Bible compelling, or at least familiar, and borrow heavily from it.

And then, of course, actual Christians who want to write science fiction will also be more than happy to step in to fill the modernist void.

Call it the Cold War Bubble of Romantic Fiction, if you will. There is indeed no shortage of grist for the pulp mill. But you have to understand what the essential qualities of a hero -- contact with reality, morality, and efficacy -- really mean before you will know how to find it. The alternative isn't "God or boredom," but: reason -- or self-immolation.

You know, that sounds like the kind of conflict one could write an epic novel around....

-- CAV

Man Detained for Carrying Cash

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Agitator says: "Detained by TSA in town for a conference, a director of Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty is detained by TSA at the St. Louis airport because when asked to explain why he's carrying $4,700 in cash (it was proceeds from book and ticket sales at the conference), he asks the agents to tell him what law requires him to do so. He managed to surreptitiously record his conversations with TSA officers on a cell phone. The audio is infuriating."



Wow. While I'm no fan of Ran Paul, I'm completely horrified by the attitude displayed by these government employees toward a man guilty of nothing more than carrying a few thousand dollars of cash.

The fact is that too many people -- many of them working for government now -- would willing participate in police state, even to the point of inflicting torture and death on innocent persons. Stanley Milgram's famous experiments on obedience to authority prove that with frightening certainty.

The Two "Sides" of Freedom of Conscience

By Greg Perkins from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

"Freedom of Conscience for Pharmacists," Idaho House Bill 216, passed the House last Monday and will now be taken up by the Idaho Senate. The debate has split along party lines, but what's remarkable is how it reveals an utter hostility to individual rights on both sides, even while they pose as defenders of rights.

The bill's proponents on the Right appeal (correctly) to the need to respect freedom of conscience and the right to refuse to engage in activities one considers immoral, citing the example of supplying emergency birth-control like the "morning after pill." But of course, pharmacists are not required to dispense anything: they can always exercise their right to freedom of association and quit, joining or forming another pharmacy. Or the pharmacy could see the light and choose to change its policies if it doesn't choose to fire the insubordinate for breach of contract, an exercise of its freedom of association and property rights. But the bill's proponents are apparently unhappy with what genuine freedom and mutual respect for rights would allow in response to someone acting on their religious beliefs regarding birth control and abortion. So now they are attempting to ban legitimate exercises of rights by pharmacy owners, and seeking to shield pharmacists from the ramifications of breach of contract.

The bill's opponents on the Left fail to highlight that fundamental problem. Instead, they focus on the potential for conscientious objectors to similarly refuse to dispense drugs like birth control and Viagra (maybe the pharmacist is a prude) and insulin (perhaps he's an animal-rights advocate), frustrating the satisfaction of important needs. But of course nobody has a right to buy anything independent of someone else being willing to sell it. The bill's opponents are apparently unhappy with what genuine freedom and mutual respect for rights would allow from those who disagree with them about what is best for business, people, and society. And so the opponents advocate mandatory dispensing of whatever prescriptions are written -- or at the very least mandatory referrals to someone who is willing -- independent of the pharmacist having freely agreed to do so. This would likewise constitute an obvious violation of rights to freedom of association and property.

So here we have a microcosm illustrating what is going wrong in American politics. One "side" seeks to violate pharmacy owners' authentic rights in the name of pharmacists' pseudo-rights -- while the other "counters" by advocating violation of the authentic rights of both in the name of consumers' pseudo-rights. No wonder Atlas is threatening to shrug.

(Submitted to The Idaho Statesman)

Evolution in Action

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Back in January, I blogged about the routine use of antibiotics in livestock. As I explained, I'm opposed to the practice, particularly due to its potential to create resistant strains of bacteria harmful if not deadly to humans. Not long after I wrote that post, I found this report from Scientific American: A New Strain of Drug-Resistant Staph Infection Found in U.S. Pigs. Here's a bit from the article:

A strain of drug-resistant staph identified in pigs in the Netherlands five years ago, which accounts for nearly one third of all staph in humans there, has been found in the U.S. for the first time, according to a new study. Seventy percent of 209 pigs and nine of 14 workers on seven linked farms in Iowa and Illinois were found to be carrying the ST398 strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The study marks the first time researchers have tested for the strain in the U.S., so there's no way yet to tell when or how it arrived or how widespread it may be, says Tara Smith, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and lead author of the study published today in the online Public Library of Science journal, PLoS ONE. The infection "could be due to movement of animals from farm to farm, or it could be de novo acquisition of [resistance] on this farm," she says. "It is such a small sample that we don't know whether it has larger significance or not."

The article is short, but it includes quite a bit of detail. I definitely recommend reading it in full if you're interested enough to form even a preliminary opinion on this topic.

Personally, I'd very much like to see more research on the effects of the the routine use of antibiotics in livestock. Based on our general knowledge of evolution and antibiotics, we have good reason to think that the practice would create antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, including strains harmful if not deadly to persons and property. Based on the above quote from the researcher -- a different Tara Smith than the author of Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, I imagine -- the matter hasn't been studied in any substantial or systematic way. Consequently, the dangers could be very real, yet largely unknown. Or they could be minimal. It would be good to know one way or the other.

The One Minute Case for Designer Babies

By heroic@gmail.com (David Veksler) from One Minute Cases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The term “designer baby” is a derogative term for the use of reproductive and genetic technologies in order to accomplish an optimal recombination of the parents’ genes. This case argues that the voluntary use of genetic technologies, as well as prenatal screening and abortion is both moral and desirable. It does not address the morality of abortion (defended in this case) or the safety of particular technologies – an important consideration, but not a fundamental issue.

Parents ought to desire healthy children

While there are many valid motivations to become a parent, in choosing to create a human being, parents assume a moral obligation to provide for and educate their children to become independent, mature adults. Beyond the legal obligation of providing minimum care, to the extent that parents love and value their children (and there is no reason to have children otherwise), parents ought to strive to maximize their child’s ability to become fully functional adult human beings - physically, spiritually, socially, romantically, etc. This means providing both appropriate education, and taking care of their physical needs.

Health can be objectively defined in relation to the requirements of human life

It is possible to make judgments about which mental and physical states are objectively superior in relation to other states. For example, a broken leg, a bout of flu, or a headache are undesirable because they prevent one from accomplishing a whole range of actions which are required for human life. We recognize this when we use technology (medicine) to help people overcome and heal from their injuries and illnesses. The same applies to genetic physical and mental deformities, which adversely impact one’s ability to accomplish his values. If someone suffers from clinical depression or schizophrenia, we offer them drugs that improve their ability to use reason to deal with reality and achieve the values they desire. If healthy, successful, productive human life is a value, then it is moral to use all available technology to maximize human potential to achieve the values they desire.

Biotechnology adds new tools to an ancient arsenal of genetic techniques for better offspring

If health is desirable and can be objectively defined, then parents ought to choose to have healthy children. They do this in a variety of means: Genetically, humans instinctively seek mates likely to produce healthy offspring - this is the basis of selective sexual attraction based on physical traits. Consciously, parents choose partners who share their child-rearing values. They also take measures to prevent child defects, such as abstaining from drugs during pregnancy and choosing to have children earlier in their life. Genetic counseling and prenatal screening are just two new tools for enhancing an ancient process.

The Gattaca objection confuses the potential for the actual

The Gattaca objection to screening undesirable traits is that people with undesirable traits have made many valuable contributions, and are capable of living fully productive lives. Supporters often give examples of great scientists like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawkins with genetic or developmental abnormalities, or of people with serious impairments such as Down Syndrome who nevertheless hold jobs and assume most of the functions of normal adults.

This objection confuses between the seen and the unseen. What we see is that many people with undesirable traits are unusually successful, either in relation the average person, or in relation to people with their symptoms. What we don’t see are all the people who failed to achieve their values because of their symptoms. If their genotype or embryo had been eliminated before birth, the unhealthy people would not exist, but an equivalent number of healthy people would. Unless the undesirable symptom itself contributed to their success, the percentage of unusually successful healthy people would be far higher than the number of extraordinarily successful unhealthy people. Certainly, healthy people would have a better chance at a normal life than someone with a chronic syndrome such as Down Syndrome, Tay-Sachs, or Spina bifida.

Genetic diversity is valuable – but only if it is used to enhance human life, not impair it

The “neurodiversity” movement opposes genetic screening on the grounds that atypical neurological development should be recognized and respected. The movement has a valid point insofar as neurodiversity has played a critical part in the development of human civilization. If every human being had exactly the same intelligence and developed in the same way, we would have no great scientists, artists, intellectuals, or entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately, the neurodiversity advocates only support “diversity” when it is due to ignorance, not conscious choice. They support a baby being born with Autism, Parkinson’s disease, dyslexia, or other disorders because the parents had no choice in the matter, but they oppose giving the parents the power to choose to have a child which is healthier than he would “naturally” be. If most parents could consciously choose what traits to give their children, they might prefer more intelligence, curiosity, a longer life, or stronger muscles. These are also varieties of genetic diversity.

Objections to genetic counseling and gene engineering are ultimately objections to technology

Few parents would choose to have their children be born blind, deaf, retarded, or crippled. Yet this is precisely what the “diversity” advocates want: to prevent parents from being able to improve on the “natural” forms of biodiversity.  Traits due to  sexual selection, random genetic mutation, and embryonic variation are acceptable to them, but traits due to conscious human choice are not.

Genetic screening via sexual selection has been practiced since the dawn of life itself.  No one suggests that we should pick a mate entirely at random, so the objection to genetic screening and engineering is due to the element of technology. Their objections are not to “designer babies” as such, but to the use of technology to improve the lives of human beings. They apply equally to a child whose genes are altered after birth, or to an adult. The logical conclusion of this neo-luddism is the opposition of all man-made improvements to human life as “unnatural.”

Is Rand Relevant?

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

Is Rand Relevant?

By Yaron Brook (The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2009)

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.

There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society--particularly its dominant moral ideas.

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote "affordable housing," which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

The message is always the same: "Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand said this message is wrong--selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others à la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness--that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest--she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.

Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism--and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention--and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.

Rand offered us a way out--to fight for a morality of rational self-interest, and for capitalism, the system which is its expression. And that is the source of her relevance today.

Dr. Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

------

Here is the link to the Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123698976776126461.html

 

Supporters of Smoking Bans Are Ignoring a Crucial Danger

By Don Watkins from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Supporters of Smoking Bans Are Ignoring a Crucial Danger

By Don Watkins (Santa Monica Daily Press, March 23, 2009)

Referring to my March 12 op-ed criticizing a proposal to further restrict smoking in Newport Beach, Jack Neworth accuses me of ignoring “the reason for smoking bans--the dangers of second-hand smoke.” But it’s the supporters of smoking bans who are ignoring a crucial danger: the danger of allowing the government to violate private property rights.

Is second-hand smoke obnoxious? Some of us think so--just as some of us think certain kinds of music are obnoxious. Can second-hand smoke pose certain risks? Perhaps--just as certain foods may put us in danger of developing various diseases. Property rights protect our ability to make these kinds of assessments, and thereby pursue our health and happiness. If you abhor second-hand smoke, for instance, you can refuse to allow smokers into your home or your restaurant.

But by the same token, you must recognize others’ right to allow smoking in their home or restaurant. That means if the owner of your favorite diner wants to let customers light up, you can voluntarily choose to tolerate the smoke, try to persuade the owner to change his policy, or take your business elsewhere--but you can’t force him to comply with your views. To be free to act on your own judgment, you have to leave others free to act on theirs.

While supporters of smoking bans may cheer today, they should keep in mind: there is no telling what voluntary activity a government that rejects property rights will ban tomorrow.

National Service Is Un-American

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

National Service Is Un-American

Washington, D.C., April 2, 2009--By a wide (79-19) margin, the Senate approved a bill, the Serve America Act, last week that will massively expand so-called community service programs. Boosters have gushed that “This legislation represents the best of America’s ideals,” but according to Elan Journo, fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “the Serve America Act represents a repudiation of the best of America’s ideals.”

“What made America unique in history,” said Journo in the Voices for Reason blog, “was its foundational political-moral recognition that each individual has a right to live for his own sake and pursue his own happiness, and that he has no duty to subordinate his time or effort to any allegedly higher good-neither his neighbor, nor the community, nor the government.”

Mr. Journo warned us to “not believe that pushers of ‘national service’ want it to remain voluntary,” and recalled that “past initiatives of this kind made receiving a high school diploma contingent on fulfilling a service requirement. They’ve now succeeded in expanding the gambit. What’s the end game? Compulsory service as a requirement of maintaining citizenship? There’s now good reason to believe that could become a reality.”

To learn more about the Ayn Rand Center’s opposition to “national service” initiatives, read the following two articles, one released during the Clinton administration, the other released during G.W. Bush’s administration.

 

Atlas Shrugged #1 on Amazon's Bestseller List

By from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Atlas Shrugged #1 on Amazon’s Bestseller List

Washington, D.C., March 27, 2009--Atlas Shrugged, which ranked #3 in the U.S. Literature and Fiction category merely a week ago, has now climbed to #1!

According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, “The explosion of interest in Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s ideas that we’re seeing right now is remarkable. As the United States’ economy deteriorates and the free market takes the blame for the disastrous consequences of government policies, Americans are increasingly turning to Atlas Shrugged, whose parallels to the current crisis are truly breathtaking.

“Anyone genuinely concerned with the expanding role of government and the accelerating erosion of freedom in this country should pick up a copy of Atlas and read it. In Atlas they will find the deeper philosophical explanation for what is going on today and, more important, they will find the revolutionary philosophy needed to guide us to a brighter future.”

----------------
 
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is a contributing editor of The Objective Standard and his articles have been featured in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared on the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business, and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact media@aynrandcenter.org.

 

 

 

"Earth Hour" Symbolizes the Renunciation of Industrial Civilization

By Keith Lockitch from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

“Earth Hour” Symbolizes the Renunciation of Industrial Civilization

Washington, DC, March 26, 2009--On Saturday, March 28, cities around the world will turn off their lights to observe “Earth Hour.” Iconic landmarks from the Sydney Opera House to Manhattan’s skyscrapers will be darkened to encourage reduced energy use and signal a commitment to fighting climate change.

But according to a recently released op-ed by Dr. Keith Lockitch, resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “The symbolic message that Earth Hour sends is deceptive and destructive.”

“Cutting off our carbon emissions would be a global catastrophe. Carbon-based energy is a life-and-death necessity in today’s world. A truly massive reduction in carbon emissions means a massive reduction in our energy use and would cause significant harm.

“The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.”

 

The Ayn Rand Institute Speaks Out on 'Going Galt'

By from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Ayn Rand Institute Speaks Out on ‘Going Galt’

Irvine, CA, March 18, 2009--In a recent appearance on PJTV, Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, addressed the current media sensation known as “going Galt,” in which productive individuals consider withdrawing their labor from society. The phrase is a reference to John Galt, the central character in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, and a strike that he leads against an oppressive government, and the society that supports it.

“I would encourage people not to go on strike, in that sense,” says Brook. “It’s not time to go on strike, to leave and go to Galt’s Gulch. It’s time to fight. What I would call for is a moral revolution. Let’s get rid of the morality that says ‘your moral responsibility is toward your neighbor,’ that ‘you are your brother’s keeper.’ Ayn Rand presents us with a new morality, a morality of rational self-interest. There is a lot of fight left in us, and I think it’s too early to give up on this world.”

### ### ###
 

 

The Real Meaning of Earth Hour

By Keith Lockitch from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Real Meaning of Earth Hour

By Keith Lockitch (March 23, 2009)

On Saturday, March 28, cities around the world will turn off their lights to observe “Earth Hour.” Iconic landmarks from the Sydney Opera House to Manhattan’s skyscrapers will be darkened to encourage reduced energy use and signal a commitment to fighting climate change.

While a one-hour blackout will admittedly have little effect on carbon emissions, what matters, organizers say, is the event’s symbolic meaning. That’s true, but not in the way organizers intend.

We hear constantly that the debate is over on climate change--that man-made greenhouse gases are indisputably causing a planetary emergency. But there is ample scientific evidence to reject the claims of climate catastrophe. And what’s never mentioned? The fact that reducing greenhouse gases to the degree sought by climate activists would, itself, cause significant harm.

Politicians and environmentalists, including those behind Earth Hour, are not calling on people just to change a few light bulbs, they are calling for a truly massive reduction in carbon emissions--as much as 80 percent below 1990 levels. Because our energy is overwhelmingly carbon-based (fossil fuels provide more than 80 percent of world energy), and because the claims of abundant “green energy” from breezes and sunbeams are a myth--this necessarily means a massive reduction in our energy use.

People don’t have a clear view of what this would mean in practice. We, in the industrialized world, take our abundant energy for granted and don’t consider just how much we benefit from its use in every minute of every day. Driving our cars to work and school, sitting in our lighted, heated homes and offices, powering our computers and countless other labor-saving appliances, we count on the indispensable values that industrial energy makes possible: hospitals and grocery stores, factories and farms, international travel and global telecommunications. It is hard for us to project the degree of sacrifice and harm that proposed climate policies would force upon us.

This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits. It sends the comforting-but-false message: Cutting off fossil fuels would be easy and even fun! People spend the hour stargazing and holding torch-lit beach parties; restaurants offer special candle-lit dinners. Earth Hour makes the renunciation of energy seem like a big party.

Participants spend an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, safe in the knowledge that the life-saving benefits of industrial civilization are just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what life would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that climate activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.

Forget one measly hour with just the lights off. How about Earth Month, without any form of fossil fuel energy? Try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or generators; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible.

Those who claim that we must cut off our carbon emissions to prevent an alleged global catastrophe need to learn the indisputable fact that cutting off our carbon emissions would be a global catastrophe. What we really need is greater awareness of just how indispensable carbon-based energy is to human life (including, of course, to our ability to cope with any changes in the climate).

It is true that the importance of Earth Hour is its symbolic meaning. But that meaning is the opposite of the one intended. The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

 

Atlas Shrugged Tops Amazon's Bestseller List

By from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Atlas Shrugged Tops Amazon’s Bestseller List

Washington, D.C., March 18, 2009--Earlier this year Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel Atlas Shrugged was selling at triple the rate it sold at in the beginning of 2008. Now the novel is soaring to even greater heights, and its trade paperback edition is currently in first place in the Classics category on Amazon.com’s best-seller list for sales in the United States. The 50th anniversary mass-market paperback edition of Atlas Shrugged ranks as #2 and the trade paperback Centennial edition ranks as #3. For several weeks Atlas Shrugged has been holding steady in the top 10 best-sellers in the broader United States Literature and Fiction category, and as of the writing of this release, different editions of the novel stand at #3, #5 and #6 in Amazon’s ranking.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, explained the parallels between Atlas Shrugged and today’s events.

“In Atlas Shrugged, Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?”

Brook also stressed the importance today of the book’s often overlooked message that capitalism cannot be properly defended without morally defending profit and self-interest: “. . . only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism--and that as long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention--and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.”

Those interested in understanding the morality of capitalism can learn more in Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness--which, at #12 in the Classics category, is setting records of its own.

----------------
 
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is a contributing editor of The Objective Standard and his articles have been featured in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared on the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business, and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact media@aynrandcenter.org.

 

 

 

Ayn Rand Center Launches Blog: Voices for Reason

By from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Center Launches Blog: Voices for Reason

Washington, D.C., March 17, 2009--The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched its blog, Voices for Reason. The Center’s experts post commentary every weekday on today’s most pressing issues from the perspective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of reason, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism.
 
At Voices for Reason media professionals will find unique, thoughtful and controversial commentary on current events and the state of our culture, which can be found nowhere else. The blog covers the economic crisis, environmentalism, foreign policy, free speech and property rights, and provides journalists and the general public with the principled answers Ayn Rand’s philosophy offers to today’s political, economic and cultural problems.
 
Experts from the Ayn Rand Center are available for print, radio and TV interviews based on the commentary they publish.
 
To read our most recent commentary in Voices for Reason, go to http://blog.aynrandcenter.org/. To interview our experts, e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org
 
----
 
About the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights:
 
The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights (ARC) is a public policy research and outreach group. The Ayn Rand Center’s mission is to advance individual rights (the rights of each person to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) as the moral basis for a fully free, laissez-faire capitalist society.

Give One - Get One!

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Prometheus Initiative

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

How to Stop an Outrage

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

The Austin American-Statesman, stating that a non-profit task force is looking for ways to "divert non-emergencies away from emergency rooms," reports the following:

In the past six years, eight people from Austin and one from Luling racked up 2,678 emergency room visits in Central Texas, costing hospitals, taxpayers and others $3 million ...

One of the nine spent more than a third of last year in the ER: 145 days. That same patient totaled 554 ER visits from 2003 through 2008.

We looked at frequent users of emergency departments ... and that's the extreme," said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the Integrated Care Collaboration, the group that presented the report last week to the Travis County Healthcare District board. "What we're really trying to do is find out who's using our emergency rooms ... and find solutions."

The health district, one of 26 members of the ICC, has long been concerned about overuse and crowding of ERs, a problem that has hit hospitals around the country. [bold added]

Kitchen later says that each ER visit costs about a thousand dollars.

Although the article does not delve into the types of solutions we might hear about, it does mention one stab at the problem: The health district has expanded hours at its public clinics.

The government is already heavily involved in providing medical care. The ICC is working "with safety-net providers to improve access to and quality of care" [link added]. Current trends are towards ever more government involvement in every aspect of our lives. Given all these things, we can expect, in the very near future, to hear this outrageous waste of money cited as justification for even more government hectoring about our personal habits, intrusion into our daily lives, and pilfering from our wallets.

There are many reasons for this, the primary one being that in our culture, most people wrongly take for granted that we are our bothers' keepers, and that we are obligated to provide care for the more "needy". But there is another reason, of which this article is a prime example.

Notice its treatment of the emergency room crisis as being almost a natural phenomenon: "[O]veruse and crowding of ERs [is] a problem that has hit hospitals around the country." How and why has it "hit" hospitals across the country? You might as well ask why gravity exists to read this article.

In fact, the emergency room crisis is man-made, in large part by a federal mandate that forces emergency rooms to treat all comers. Writing for The Undercurrent, Laura Mazer writes that:

What drives the nation’s hospitals to operate at an obvious deficit, giving away for free a service that is neither cheap nor easy to produce? They do it in part because they are legally required to do so. In 1986, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act made it illegal for a hospital to refuse care in an emergency setting, regardless of ability to pay. The Act essentially transformed emergency rooms into primary care facilities for the uninsured.

If the government is running the hospital, this means that ordinary citizens are robbed at government gunpoint so certain individuals can treat hospital emergency rooms like vacation homes for four months of the year. (If not, the hospital will pay for it, meaning that its owners make less money and its physicians cannot be paid as well. This is also wrong.)

But this never comes up in the article, which is an unforgivable omission, given that some form government intervention is all but certain to be offered as a "solution" to a crisis that government intervention caused in the first place.

The best way to prevent people from camping out in emergency rooms at the expense of other people is to reintroduce the trader principle to the business of medicine, specifically by having patients pay for the medical care they receive on terms the physician finds agreeable. If someone has the resources and the desire to spend 145 days of the year in an emergency room, then the only money he wastes is his own. If not, he wastes no money. And, in either case, others have money that otherwise would have been taken from them, making them better able to afford their own medical care.

Given the widespread acceptance of altruism, that proposal is hardly uncontroversial, but anyone who advocates more freedom as a solution to the myriad government-induced crises in our economy must be alert for situations like this, where government intervention is treated as if it is an immutable law of the universe, which it isn't.

As have indicated before in a different context, a non-problem commonly regarded as a major problem may really be a manifestation of the effect of the welfare state on the economy in disguise. For example, immigrants sucking up social services is not an argument against immigration, but against the welfare state. (How would immigrants cost us anything if the government didn't make it possible for people to freeload in the first place?) Likewise, people abusing emergency rooms is not an argument for further government funding or control of medicine, but against the government paying for medical care at all.

-- CAV

US Debt

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I'm not an economist, but even I find stories like the following to be a bit unsettling.

First, there's this announcement by US Senator Gregg (R-NH) that, "The United States wouldn't even be eligible to enter the European Union if it wanted to because of its debt levels".

For a visual representation of the projected deficit (which is only how much we're adding each year to the total cumulative debt), the Washington Post has a nice graphic:

In the first independent analysis, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that President Obama's budget would rack up massive deficits even after the economy recovers, forcing the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade.

Second, there's this OpEd in the March 29, 2009 Washington Post which warns against an Argentina-style financial crisis in the US. Here's an excerpt:

...Many economists and analysts are worrying that the United States might go the way of Japan, which suffered a "lost decade" after its own real estate market fell apart in the early 1990s. But I'm more concerned that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we're trying to fix it.

Again, I don't think that an Argentina-style collapse is the most likely scenario for the US.

But the fact that more mainstream analysts are mentioning this as a live possibility is not a good sign.

And of course, if you want to know what sorts of problems ordinary Argentinians faced (and how they coped), don't forget this detailed essay which has been making the blogosphere rounds lately.

I sincerely hope the US never gets to this point. But it's not outside the realm of possibility.

From the Academy to Atlas Shrugged: An Appreciation

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

Were you alive in Aristotle‘s time, had attended his lectures at the Academy, and had read his works, as well, would you have grasped the importance of those works to your existence? Would you have evaluated his contribution to the lives of other men and gasped in unbounded gratitude? Would you have understood the scope and breadth of his bequest to posterity? Could you have projected how his philosophy would influence the actions of men yet unborn, and what effect his ideas would have on their lives? Could you have projected the consequences of his work, such as skyscrapers, or robots exploring Mars, or microscopic cameras and lasers eradicating cancer, or genetically perfected crops, or communications through radio waves?

Could you have imagined a tableau like Raphael’s “The School of Athens,” in the hall of philosophers, with Aristotle and Plato, deep in conversation, striding from beneath the arch, one pointing upward to the heavens, the other gesturing to the earth? Would you have rejected Plato, and venerated Aristotle?

After the eclipse of ancient Greece, and following the interim of ancient Rome before the heavy, impenetrable curtain of the Dark Ages fell to hide the Greco-Roman millennium from the knowledge and sight of men, it took another millennium for them to rediscover Aristotle. The ruins and artifacts of his and Rome’s civilizations lay buried or weed-grown and crumbling in the chaotic, terrifying landscape of the Dark Ages, presenting a paradox and mystery to men who did not understand the source and significance of those ruins and artifacts. His works were salvaged and preserved by a culture, Islam, which ultimately, logically, had to reject them. Aristotle’s rediscovery in the Middle Ages made possible the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution -- and America.

In a dramatically telescoped way, Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, is experiencing the same rediscovery in the 21st century. It was the most important book of the 20th century, published in New York City in 1957. Although its sales success has been steady and almost without precedent since its publication, until now the novel was ignored, relegated to the cultural sidelines, and deprecated by the cultural establishment. As far as modern philosophers and intellectuals were concerned, it did not exist as a work worthy of serious attention, or exist at all in their minds. It was, and still is, invariably dismissed by critics, leftists, collectivists of every stripe, and most academics as a badly written, unfeeling, hateful, overlong screed posing as a work of literature. Or, it was studiously ignored.

It has taken little over half a century for men to rediscover it and the significance of Rand’s mind and work. Men are gasping, if not in grateful appreciation, then in simple astonishment in the knowledge that she was right. The parallels between the events in the novel and those in the real world have become too obvious for even the novel’s detractors to ignore. They still hurry to denigrate it, but their protests sound peevishly feeble. Hardly a week goes by without Atlas Shrugged being discussed in newspapers, magazines, on the air, or on the Internet. (The latest mention, in the Drudge Report, can be seen here.) The instances are too numerous to cite here. The catalyst for the rediscovery is the current moral and economic crisis for which government actions are only the symptom. What men will do about it remains to be seen.

In an intellectual and philosophic sense, the works of Aristotle acted as a “prime mover” of human culture and civilization. Without them, no Renaissance and Enlightenment would have been possible. Their rediscovery and advocacy by the men of those periods accelerated human progress in terms of a mastery of the physical world, which manifested itself in the Industrial Revolution. But, as Rand herself so succinctly and eloquently observed in her numerous articles and speeches, the Aristotelian influence went only so far, because the skeleton hands of the philosophy of altruism and unreason remained clutched firmly to men’s notion of morality and men did not bother to throw them off. They believed that microwave ovens and cars could coexist with a morality that condemned the ovens and cars, as well as themselves.

Also in an intellectual and philosophic sense, Atlas Shrugged is acting as a “prime mover,” reemerging from behind its curtain of unrecognized existence as something to fear or to reexamine. Men are learning now that the philosophy which made possible their earthly well-being is irreconcilable with its antipode, which makes possible their recurring moral crises. Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that. They are beginning to see that contentment with their pragmatic, unstated “rapprochement” between the opposites can only lead to tyranny, destruction and death, to a condition of existence, as Rand once put it, worse than that of the Dark Ages, for if a partial application to reason fueled the rapid material progress of man, its total absence will cause an even more rapid collapse into anarchic savagery. And reason is what the world’s intellectuals and political leaders are asking men to abandon.

That is what we are beginning to witness now, here in America and abroad.

Atlas Shrugged is about the necessity of a full, unreserved commitment to reason, capitalism and freedom versus a careless, unthinking defaulting to mysticism, “duty,“ slavery and misery. Its theme is the role of the mind in man’s existence. It dramatizes what happens when the rational mind withdraws its power from a society that wishes to both enslave it and kill it. When statist laws and physical force become the “moral” norm in any society, rational minds, which do not take orders or obey edicts, begin to hide, vanish, and go on strike. Just as they did in the Dark Ages. Just as the heroes do in the novel.

In the broadest historic and philosophic sense, the American Revolution was a form of such a strike. As an historic event, it was unprecedented. Its “No, thank you!” was flung in the face of Crown tyranny. Unlike the heroes of Atlas Shrugged, however, the American revolutionaries had to fight a war to win their freedom from that tyranny. Someone has remarked that the novel was America’s second declaration of independence, a completion of the principles present in the first Declaration. That document contains the beginnings of a philosophy which ought to have been explicated, but which was merely implied. Given the enormity of their accomplishment, however, there is neither profit nor point in gainsaying its authors for what they did not do.

For the Founders, because of their circumstances and the means at their disposal, it was necessary to risk the fortunes of a violent separation, which could have ended with defeat and execution in their attempt to dissolve the political bonds which they realized were ensuring their enslavement. In our time, it will become necessary to repudiate and dissolve the bonds of a philosophy which is ensuring our own incremental enslavement. It will require the ratification of a consistent philosophy of reason, one which corrects even Aristotle’s errors. Once that is done, the execrable politics based on a morality of selflessness and sacrifice now robbing us of our own lives, fortunes and sacred honor, will dissolve, as well.

In 1782, replying to James Monroe about calls for Jefferson to abandon plans to retire from public service and return to his personal life, Jefferson wrote:

“In this country…since the present government has been established the point has been settled by uniform, pointed and multiplied precedents, offices of every kind, and given by every power, have been daily and hourly declined and resigned from the Declaration of Independence to this moment….If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less right in himself than one of his neighbors or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery and not that liberty which the Bill of Rights has made inviolable and for the preservation of which our government has been charged. Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion that the state has a perpetual right to the services of all its members. This to men of certain ways of thinking would be to annihilate the blessing of existence; to contradict the giver of life who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness, and certainly to such it were better that they had never been born….”

Had he pursued the thought further, Jefferson might have concluded that neither the state nor society nor “others” had any right or claim to the services of any of its members. Had he done that, and in deference to his incomparable stature as a political thinker and child of the Enlightenment, Jefferson would have attained the heights of Aristotle and his philosophical heir.

One hundred and seventy-five years later, Rand, in Atlas Shrugged, completed that thought:

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

It is as simple as that.


**Jefferson: Writings, New York: The Library of America (1984), “The Limits of Public Duty,” pp. 778-779.

NY 20: No Referendum

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

A special election in a Republican-leaning New York congressional district is being mistaken for a referendum on Barack Obama's economic policies by some in the media and political establishments. In fact, it is no such thing, and the cynical Republican candidate deserves to lose by double digits. Why? Because he is running on exactly the opposite message he should be, although it may not be obvious that he is doing so.

The article correctly notes that Republican Jim Tedisco stands to profit from outrage at Barack Obama's lurch towards fascism:

... Peter Holderied, whose family owns the Golden Arrow Hotel in Lake Placid, said he was dismayed by Obama's economic stimulus bill, passed by the Democratic Congress in February.

"It's unreal," he said, shaking his head. "People are just getting wind of what this is going to cost us."

The article also, unsurprisingly for a mainstream media outlet, is quick to note both that Tedisco's victory is far from assured and that a Tedisco victory would not necessarily be a seismic event.

But Tedisco's campaign isn't much of an insurgency. [Now-Senator Kirsten] Gillibrand's win here in 2006 was viewed as a major upset. The district has a solid Republican majority; the late Gerald Solomon, a popular Republican, held the seat for 20 years.

That should make Tedisco the favorite. For much of this brief campaign, he was, but that seems to have changed.

The latest poll, released Friday and conducted by nearby Siena College, showed Murphy up by 4 points. Tedisco led by 12 points in the same poll a month ago.

So Tedisco is running in a GOP district and his lead has been slipping even as Obama has become even more blatantly statist in his handling of the economy, most recently (and very inappropriately) micromanaging General Motors by "firing" its CEO.

The Los Angeles Times is right about the Tedisco campaign not being "much of an insurgency", but for entirely the wrong reason. The real story here is that this race is even as close as it is. Tedisco ought to be poised for a blowout victory, and yet he's probably going to eke out a win of a percentage point or two. Why? Because he's not really running against Barack Obama at all.

Tedisco, who has served in New York's General Assembly for 27 years, has ridden that populist, anti-Wall Street message hard, painting [his opponent, Scott] Murphy, who made millions as a venture capitalist, as an out-of-touch creature of the financial sector.

In essence, the dynamic that existed during last year's election cycle has been stood on its head. The way Tedisco portrays it, two months into Obama's administration, Democrats are now the overreaching party, a friend to big business. Republicans like himself are the grass-roots fighters, trying to bring change.

So it's not that Barack Obama is trampling over our rights, or that one man can't possibly know enough to run an economy as huge as America's, or even that he's killing the Golden Goose by reducing the incentives for good performance by CEOs and taxing the hell out of what's left -- it's that Obama hasn't jawboned Wall Street enough. The last thing America's persecuted minority needs right now is for someone from the supposedly pro-business party to jump onto the pile.

If Tedisco is any indication, the GOP has learned exactly the wrong lesson from its resounding defeat in November, and has begun me-tooing the Democrats. This is why Tedisco is not exactly trouncing his Democratic opponent. What does he offer to voters genuinely opposed to Obama? More of the same, at least to the ones who are paying attention. And what about voters who are impatient with Obama for not having already nationalized everything? Tedisco is a good protest vote because, if he wins, he'll probably squeak by, he won't have anything of substance to say against Obama, it's just one vote, anyway, and other GOP candidates fundamentally opposed to big business will be emboldened.

In immediate terms, the cause of freedom has already lost in this election. The GOP candidate deserves to get trounced, and voting against him is the best way to ensure that the Republicans learn that the best way to win against Obama is to beat him, not to join him.

The best way for this to happen in this race is for Tedisco to lose by a narrow margin, and for genuine friends of freedom to protest that he failed to offer a real alternative to Barack Obama's meddlesome policies.

-- CAV

Questioner vs. Answerer

By Jennifer Snow from Literatrix,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I got to thinking after a conversation with a friend of mine and realized that we have very distinct and different approaches to the way we think when we don't know something. For those familiar with Objectivist terminology: we have different psycho-epistemologies. After some more thinking, I realized that this distinction is actually pretty common, so I decided to write about it.

I realized that when people don't know something, most fall into one of two approaches to dealing with it. Some immediately start asking questions of whoever or whatever is available, while some sit down, summon up all of their relevant knowledge, and try to think through it themselves. I call these two types (obviously enough) the Questioner and the Answerer.

My friend is very definitely a Questioner, and he is pushy about it. Not in a bad way, he just wants you to explain and explain and explain and explain until you have to leave--conversations with him are never "finished", they just get interrupted by outside considerations. I'm very definitely an Answerer, which is why I wind up doing most of the explaining. Now, while I like being an Answerer (to the point where I can find persistent Questioners annoying after a while), I don't think that there's any moral significance to either approach. Neither type is more or less likely to be intellectually passive. The two just have *different* benefits and pitfalls.

Questioners have to understand that questions are not an end in themselves and to restrain their tendency to niggle at unimportant details, which means that they have to learn to distinguish what is important and what isn't. Questioners always have to be aware of and pay attention to fundamentals, which is often difficult for them to do. If they don't do this, many wind up as purposeless skeptics who refuse to accept any idea because they can still think of a few questions to ask--regardless of whether those questions make any sense or not. Questioners also have to spend some time learning how to answer their own questions instead of immediately turning to other people for the answers, a practice that has many pitfalls of its own as "other people" are not necessarily any more knowledgeable than you are. Conversations between two Questioners often launch into realms of increasingly bizarre arcana until the participants get bored or are forcibly separated. I think that this mental habit comes about as a result of enjoying picking apart statements. A questioner feels confident about his or her mental abilities when he or she spots and illuminates flaws.

Answerers, like me, have to first learn that "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer. This is VERY hard for some to learn because an Answerer's general trait is that we enjoy knowing what we are talking about. The urge to have the answer can overcome logic and common sense, causing the Answerer to spout all kinds of nonsense very authoritatively. My housemate does this--he's another Answerer and sometimes we drive each other insane. Conversations between two Answerers are either a dance of careful ettiquette or they degenerate into shouting and epithets. You can always spot intellectually passive Answerers because they deliver pat answers to arcane questions in fields they know nothing about. Answerers with good memories (me) also sometimes have problems because they tend to rely on occasionally faulty memory rather than going and looking things up again. While this saves time, this can also run you intellectually into the weeds. With Questioners around, this can be really humiliating. Intellectually active Answerers learn from their humiliating mistakes and become increasingly careful about their utterances. Passive ones seek to surround themselves with people who never ask questions--they are EXTREMELY touchy about being contradicted and view this as tantamount to an assault.

People don't always fall entirely into one camp or the other, and some switch camps depending on the circumstances. Answerers, from what I've seen, tend to be older people with more life experience to draw on, although this is not always the case. I've ALWAYS been an answerer as far as I can remember, I'm sure my parents will back me up on this. My most common epithet as a child was "know-it-all" and my third-grade teacher found it a little alarming to be corrected in her pronounciation of "pterodactyl" by a seven-year-old.

Answerers also gain a lot of traction on the Internet (particularly in forums), where they can speak and be heard without being interrupted, whereas in real-time communications Questioners tend to hog most of the air time. (This is based on my personal experience, anyway. Your Mileage May Vary.) Intellectually passive Answerers in positions of authority make life miserable for everyone, but the intellectually active ones make reasonably good leaders--but so do intellectually active Questioners. They just differ in approach--the Answerer is decisive and definite, while the Questioner gets ALL the data before making a decision. Thus Answerers are somewhat better leaders in emergencies while Questioners are often better in more static situations.

The only area where I've seen a significant difference is in training--Questioners are godawful at training. Not teaching. Many Questioners are excellent teachers of the Socratic type because the ultimate purpose of teaching isn't to learn specific information but to learn how to approach a given class of problems or problems in general. When they are trying to train you on a specific task, however, they fail miserably, derailing themselves almost instantly into minutae instead of conveying any kind of global or methodical approach to the task. This may just be a result of the fact that I'm not good at memorizing a billion dissociated steps unless I know why I'm doing any given thing, but for training give me an Answerer every time. It works out, though, because Answerers tend to enjoy training. It allows us to show off our vast amounts of Knowledge.

If you're ever in any doubt about whether someone is a Questioner or an Answerer, a single question will set you straight: "Do you have any questions?" The Questioner mentality will probably have a round dozen. An Answerer will most likely stare at you blankly for several seconds and then either say "no, not really" or, at best, offer up some really easy and obvious question to show willing. They expect to figure things out as they go along, which is their usual method anyway.

Democracy != Justice

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Obama is clueless

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Mob Rule

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Gutter Journalism

By Roberto 'Tito' Sarrionandia from Tito's Blog,cross-posted by MetaBlog