Good News on Free Speech

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Wow, this news from the Institute for Justice is surprisingly hopeful:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 29,2009

First Amendment Blockbuster at the Supreme Court:

Court Orders New Arguments in Citizens United, Majority Appears Poised
To Strike Down Electioneering Communications and Corporate Speech Bans

First-Ever Study of Impact on Nonprofits Demonstrates Need
To Rein in Out-of-Control Speech Regulations

Arlington, Va.--The U.S. Supreme Court today ordered a new round of oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, the "Hillary: The Movie" case. The Court wants parties to address whether Austin v. Michigan, a case that bans certain political speech by corporations, including nonprofit corporations such as Citizens United, should be overturned. The Court also wants to consider whether part of McConnell v. FEC, upholding the so-called "electioneering communications" ban in McCain-Feingold, should likewise be overturned and the ban struck down entirely.

"The Court has set up a blockbuster case about Americans' First Amendment rights to join together and speak freely about politics," said Steve Simpson, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Citizens United v. FEC. "A majority of the High Court appears to recognize the grave threat to free speech posed by both the electioneering communications ban in McCain-Feingold and the ban on corporate political speech. This case could mark a significant advance for First Amendment rights and will have major implications for state laws nationwide."

Indeed, a study released today shows the critical need to rein in speech regulations that have flourished since the Court upheld the electioneering communications ban in McConnell. At least 15 states have electioneering communications laws, and in many cases those laws regulate even more speech by more groups than the federal ban. Indeed, just last month, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, a federal judge struck down Florida's law. He noted that "no court has ever upheld such a sweeping regulation of political speech."

The study is the first ever to examine the impact of speech regulations on the kind of nonprofit corporations at issue in Austin. The study shows that these laws impose on nonprofit groups a heavy regulatory burden for their speech and most lack the resources to comply. "Locking Up Political Speech: How Electioneering Communications Laws Burden Free Speech and Civic Engagement" by political scientist Dr. Michael Munger of Duke University is available at http://www.ij.org/citizensunited.

"Since McCain-Feingold, campaign finance regulation has exploded, leaving practically no room for free speech about politics," said Bill Maurer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice and lead counsel for the Institute on its Citizens United brief. "With each new regulation, more citizens are shut out of the political process. That is why it is essential for the Court to revisit and indeed overturn Austin and McConnell."

The Citizens United case came about because the Federal Election Commission banned the airing of "Hillary: The Movie," produced by the nonprofit Citizens United, on cable TV and required the group to "name names" of the film's backers by disclosing to the government detailed personal information about donors if the group ran TV ads for the film. At oral argument, justices appeared concerned that if the government could ban corporate-funded films about candidates, it could also ban books. Revisiting Austin and McConnell allows the Court to fully consider whether speech regulation has gone too far.

"The Court will now squarely confront the inevitable consequences of regulating political speech: If the government can ban ads, it can ban movies and books as well," said Simpson. "But we don't ban books in America. Once you start regulating political speech, there is no place to stop. This is exactly why the First Amendment forbids government from controlling and limiting speech in the first place."

Simpson continued, "It takes money to speak effectively, so the right to free speech must include the right to spend money and raise money to make that speech heard."

"Reconsidering Austin and McConnell is a critical start to fixing what is wrong with campaign finance regulation, but it should not be the end," said Simpson. "The root of the problem stretches back 30 years to Buckley: the belief that some speech deserves government regulation simply because it advocates for one candidate over another. In America, we have the right to try to convince fellow citizens how to vote. It's called 'political speech,' and it's exactly what the First Amendment was designed to protect. We cannot fully protect First Amendment rights until the Court does away with the distinction between 'good' speech and 'bad' speech altogether."

All my hopes are with Steve Simpson and the other good folks at the Institute for Justice! I am so grateful for their hard work hard to protect our rights -- and for this ray of sunshine in the bleak landscape of American politics today.

Atlas Shrugged on Floor Displays at Largest Bookstores

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

Atlas Shrugged on Floor Displays at Largest Bookstores

Washington, D.C., June 29, 2009-- Shortly after Independence Day, new free-standing floor displays of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, first published 52 years ago, will be placed in more than 850 bookstores across the United States. Borders will display the novel’s trade edition at 520 of its stores and Waldenbooks will feature the mass market paperback edition at 336 of its stores. Thousands of copies of Atlas Shrugged will be on display.

Barnes & Noble also had copies of Atlas Shrugged for sale in special floor displays in most of its bookstores from late May into early June.

According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “This is the most prominent and widespread display for this novel in all of its publishing history. It is particularly remarkable because it comes more than a half century after its initial publication.

“The fact that the largest bookstore chains in America have chosen to make such a prominent display of Atlas Shrugged is a testimony to the current and growing interest in Ayn Rand’s novels and ideas, and an encouraging sign for America’s future.

“As Americans confront the scary growth of government control over their lives and the economy, they need, more than ever, to learn about Ayn Rand’s conception of a new morality of rational self-interest and her unprecedented defense of freedom and individual rights.”

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The New Sons of Liberty

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

A good friend wrote me about the speed with which the government is erasing freedom and establishing a fascist regime, and the despair this phenomenon can cause: “If presented with an existential crisis, I don‘t see a modern day Sons of Liberty around to fight for liberty.”

I will reply that we are the new Sons of Liberty. We’re all over the place. You will recall that the Sons of Liberty, for about ten years leading up to Concord and Bunker Hill, communicated with each other all over the colonies through committees of correspondence, trading intelligence, ideas, strategies, and progress reports. The new committees are facilitated by the Internet. Fundamentally, there is no difference between their functions, except the element of time. It might have taken two weeks for correspondence from Boston and Sam Adams to reach Richmond and Richard Henry Lee. Now, it takes mere seconds for anyone‘s communications to reach a hundred times the number of addressees.

Another chief difference is that the committees of yore were guided in their policies and actions by many of the Founders, who acted as intellectual workmen. Today, many of the movers behind the Tea Parties are acting in the same capacity. They are not especially intellectuals, but they will come around eventually, out of necessity, in order to present arguments, and not just stage ad hoc demonstrations of anger and disgust. Objectivists are making their presence known at the Tea Parties, and they are attracting lots of attention, especially from protestors looking for moral and intellectual guidance and not more of the “same old, same old.”

Here’s another parallel: In the Founders’ time, before the Declaration, opposition to Crown policies was expressed by a number of groups. Call them 18th century “libertarians,” religious based groups, conservatives, and the like. But by the time of Bunker Hill and the second Continental Congress, most of them were agreed on the fundamentals of why the colonies should separate from the Crown. We are in the same situation today. Religious groups, libertarians, conservatives, and other groups opposed to Obama and the Democratic Congress’s policies are all vying for attention and trying to dominate especially the Tea Parties. But Objectivism is the only philosophy that offers a consistently rational politics. None of the other forces do.

If Yaron Brook and ARI don’t exhaust themselves with speeches and appearances, in time Objectivism will come to dominate the political thinking. All the other groups are capable of compromise, whereas Objectivism is not. This stops the rationalizers and compromisers cold, and they have nothing to say, nothing to add, nothing to refute. You’ve heard especially Yaron on TV and on the radio expound the philosophy of individual rights and handily discard or rebut objections and reservations about the necessity of a consistent policy of individual rights, that is, a moral philosophy based on the nature of man, and not on religion or utilitarianism (capitalism and freedom promote the greatest good for the greatest number, etc.). He doesn’t give an inch. He doesn’t concede the fallacies of any of his opponents.

I agree with you that many Americans are now emerging tentatively from what Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick might have called their “Plato’s caves.” Some are blinking, others are shutting their eyes or sidling back into the caves. They don’t matter. And some are bravely moving ahead. But it is we, the new Sons of Liberty, who never inhabited those caves, who are the point men in this conflict. Objectivists are now running and contributing to dozens of “committees of correspondence” today.

Remember also that all throughout the pre-Revolutionary period and during the war itself, the population here remained roughly divided in thirds: one-third loyalist, one-third neutral dross, and one-third that fought for independence or supported it. You cite the overwhelming number of people in the “masses.” The “masses” don’t count. Look what happened in Iran. For days hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets and had running fights with the mullahs’ armed thugs and their “thought police,” but the numbers of the protestors didn’t matter. They probably outnumbered the thugs. They were moved not by radical ideas, but by emotions. Their protests had to peter out. They have only a vague glimmering of “freedom” and worse yet some notion of “democracy,” which they associate with freedom. Well, “majority rule,” or those who support Ahmadinejad, spoke, and that was “democracy.” I haven’t observed any evidence, through the news, that anyone there has grasped that. (And I think that the U.S.’s Voice of America broadcasts to Iran and other countries ruled by dictatorships do more harm than good, because in a mealy mouthed way, they also promote “democracy”; this is the confused confusing already confused minds.)

Of course, victory for us isn’t guaranteed. It wasn’t guaranteed for the Founders, either. How it will all end, and when, is an open question. If Obama and the Democrats move to their final folly, which is censorship (and we know they very much would like to silence any and all moral opposition), then we may see actual rebellion against government force, and that may or may not be a good thing, given the state of the culture. It could backfire, as some Objectivists elsewhere have noted, and only provoke the government to impose even more stringent controls, and possibly result in the arrest of the most outspoken and rational critics. The statists are too close to their final goal, a “democratic” dictatorship in which everyone exists in support of and for the sake of the state, to concede rationality in any quarter or on any issue. If that end can only be achieved by becoming bestial, they’ll have nothing to lose and won’t hesitate to bloody a few heads (and that may be their undoing -- or not).

One thing we should not doubt -- and I noted this in “Obama contra Churchill” and in past commentaries -- is that if they cannot exercise complete political power over the country, they would rather see it die or descend into anarchy. That’s their death premise. No one should underestimate their viciousness. The obvious glee with which they legislate our freedom away will be matched by their bottomless malice for any resistance. Fundamentally, it’s as much “either/or” for the statists as it is for the advocates of a philosophy of reason, who act on the life premise. You can see it in their faces and hear it in their words. Their capacity for evil is sustained only by the confusion and mixed premises of their current and future victims. Atlas Shrugged dramatized that in no uncertain terms.

A major problem is the state of the American spirit. Generations of dumbing-down and educational indoctrination can’t be undone during a single repressive administration (which is how the Obama administration can only be characterized). Perhaps Americans will wake up quickly to their peril, perhaps not. They must be taught the value of freedom. Many do not even know what it is, and many don’t put a value on it. Where the Founders had the advantage of the spread of Enlightenment ideas, and a population receptive to them, we have the disadvantage of the decline of those ideas, and a population largely indifferent to or ignorant of them. This is quite an obstacle.

All we can do for now is keep on arguing, talking, writing, and protesting, to get as many people on our side as possible. To paraphrase Rand, by fighting for our future, we are living it now. For the moment, this is all that is within our power to do.

Long Live Lady Liberty!

Quick Roundup 442

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

More than You'd Ever Want to Know ...

... about pressure cookers.

I was in the process of simplifying this recipe for chicken pot pie recently when it occurred to me that a pressure cooker I unpacked earlier in the day could speed up cooking the chicken, if only I knew how to use it.

So I googled something like "how to use a pressure cooker" and stumbled upon Miss Vickie's site. There's a wealth of information there on how to use these devices, probably including how to blog with one if you were to look hard enough.

I was able, in pretty short order, to test mine and find a problem without ruining dinner. (See "beginner basics" at the top menu and proceed to "test drive" at the bottom of the left sidebar. If you've been reading for the past few days or know about my past professional background, you'll see why I am a big fan of testing gadgets before using them.)

Once I replace a defective overpressure relief on said cooker, I'll be back: The recipe came out really well, but I would really like to eliminate the twenty minute lull that came with having to boil the meat in a normal pot. Then, my total preparation time will clock in under an hour and I will be occupied throughout.

Leftists Never Kill Leftists?

Via HBL, I learned of a leftist blogger getting into a tizzy over a recent appearance of Harry Binswanger on the Glenn Beck Show. He concludes his post with, "Leftists hellbent on killing leftists--the Nazis were special that way."

Yeah. That never happens. And the national socialist variety of socialism is fundamentally, opposite-end-of-a-spectrum different from Communism, too.

Nor could it possibly ever happen. Wikipedia summarizes the approach of President Obama's mentor for achieving leftist goals as, "the most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired ends." How reassuring!

Or maybe Steve Rendall always agrees with Barack Obama, and thinks that anyone who disagrees with him is, ipso facto, not really a leftist.

Better Living through Blogging/Desktop Update

I have often had commenters here come through with helpful advice when I have found myself in some kind of bind, as was most recently the case with my computer.

Now, I've had a question I was pondering recently preemptively asked and answered by someone in the industry over at Rational Jenn's. I was leaning in the direction he indicated already, but learned through his answer of a way to save more money on a land line than I thought we could. (I'll file that idea away for now as it turns out that we have free basic phone service in our new place.)

As for the computer, the troubleshooting was not as straightforward as it could have been. But the advice I got both helped me do the troubleshooting and to think of other things I could look into, like BIOS beep codes. I was unable to determine the exact set of beep codes for my particular BIOS, but I am fairly sure the problem is probably with the motherboard or the power supply, as I'd feared. I'll start making phone calls about it this morning.

Oddly, with only a RAM stick, the hard drive, and the video card installed, I can get as far as the boot loader. Once. (I don't want to boot all the way until I fix this.) If I power off and try again, no boot loader at all. Without RAM, I get a continuous beep and nothing else. In any other case, I get one beep and either progress to the boot loader or no progress at all. There is the further option of buying a PC board diagnostic test card, but I don't think I'm going to learn anything new with one.

Objectivist Roundup

This week, Rule of Reason is hosting.

Obama Kills a Bug

No, he didn't bomb Iran overnight. He literally killed a bug about a month ago, and PETA is fulminating.

As Dismuke puts it, "What was considered a COMIC ABSURDITY in 1930 is now taken seriously."


The above clip, from a 1930's movie about the future, presents the song as funny even by the Anthem-like, every man's a number standards of its fictional society.

-- CAV

The Hell of Perpetual Youth

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Wow: Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age:

Brooke Greenberg is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler. She turned 16 in January. "Why doesn't she age?" Howard Greenberg, 52, asked of his daughter. "Is she the fountain of youth?"

Such questions are why scientists are fascinated by Brooke. Among the many documented instances of children who fail to grow or develop in some way, Brooke's case may be unique, according to her doctor, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine pediatrician Lawrence Pakula, in Baltimore. "Many of the best-known names in medicine, in their experience ... had not seen anyone who matched up to Brooke," Pakula said. "She is always a surprise."

Brooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.

The whole story is well worth reading. Her medical history is interesting -- albeit in a kind of gruesome way. However, I'm far more disturbed by the way in which the family, particularly the parents, have devoted their whole lives to caring for this perpetual child.

Brooke has a caretaker during daytime hours, but the family's schedule revolves around her, year after year. The Greenbergs take no vacations, have few nights out and involve Brooke in as many family activities as possible. "To go to a swimming pool for the summer, or belong to a summer club ... we tried all those things, and it's lacking something," her mother said. "Brooke's not there. We're not a family without Brooke."

And, of course, Brooke goes to school at taxpayer expense:

Brooke goes to a Baltimore County public school, Ridge Ruxton, dedicated to special education. Based on her age, she would be a junior in high school. Jewel Adiele, one of Brooke's teachers, said she wonders sometimes what Brooke is thinking or perceiving.

Brooke's whole life is a strange kind of tragedy. It's abhorrent to think of her parents caring for her as a perpetual infant until the end of their days, but I cannot see what else they might do. And what will happen to her if she outlives them? Will her siblings inherit the burden, as often happens with severely autistic children? Even worse, the parents seem in the grip of warm and fuzzy feelings for their daughter, not guided by an honest recognition of the degradation and sacrifice involved in caring for a perpetual infant. They're spending their one and only lives on the care of a creature that -- by its very nature -- is more like a pet than a daughter. That's a terrible waste of a life.

Objectivist Blog Round-Up #102

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

Welcome to the February 19th, 2009 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up. This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:

Andy Clarkson presents On WBT With Pete Kaliner Last Night posted at The Charlotte Capitalist, saying, "Was on WBT-AM 1110/99.3 FM in Charlotte "The Colossus of The South" asking the question why there has been no moral condemnation of the Flint, Michigan policies to buy, tear down and"green over" private property. Principles vs. pragmatism."

Lucy Hugel presents National Service: An Immoral Ideal posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "This spring the President signed into law The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, much of which specifically targets young adults. This legislation means more than just spending a summer in a soup kitchen or a year in a South American village, although these are not small matters..."

Sarah presents The Enchanted World of Pushing Daisies posted at Art, Love, & Philosophy, saying, "A review of ABC's delightful, though recently canceled, TV series."

Grant Jones presents Buka: 16 June 1943 posted at The Dougout, saying, "Action in the nearly forgotten Southwest Pacific"

Diana Hsieh presents The News posted at NoodleFood, saying, "What happened at my dissertation defense? In short, Diana Hsieh became Dr. Diana Hsieh. Hooray!"

Kirk presents Anti-Trust Part One posted at A is A, saying, "A two part case study on Anti-Trust legislation and the damages they cause."

Paul Hsieh presents The Unfree Market in Health Care posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "Don't blame the free market for our current health care problems!"

Ari Armstrong presents Sotomayor On Abortion posted at AriArmstrong.com, saying, "The reasons to oppose Sotomayor's nomination do not include her support for the right to get an abortion."

JStotts presents Objectivism and Sexuality posted at Erosophia, saying, "Overview of the speech I recently gave to the Ohio Objectivist Society on the Objectivist theory of sexuality as understood through its underlying operations. Instructions for how to obtain the full version of the speech are in the post."

Khartoum presents The Sparrowhawk series – Book One: Jack Frake posted at Philosophy, Law and Life., saying, "A review of the book, Jack Frake, the first in the Sparrowhawk series.

Ryan Krause presents Governance Issue at Apple posted at The Money Speech, saying, "What Apple has started doing right with its governance, and how Sarbanes-Oxley impedes the process, in general."

Ryan Krause presents Fighting Back by Opting Out (Or Going Galt, If the Term Appeals to You) posted at The Money Speech, saying, "What some capitalists are NOT doing to deal with encroaching government."

Daniel presents One Question, One Answer with Burgess Laughlin posted at The Nearby Pen, saying, "Burgess Laughlin answers the question 'If a biography is a selective account of someone's life according to the author's judgments about what is important, what makes for a good (or bad) biography?'"

Amy Mossoff presents A Baby Maybe posted at The Little Things, saying, "Book review of "A Baby? Maybe" - an excellent book to assist in considering whether or not to have children."

Gus Van Horn presents Second-Hander posted at Gus Van Horn, saying, "The Atlantic has published a glowing eulogy of William F. Buckley by Garry Wills which I highly recommend -- but with one proviso..."

C. August presents A Blind, Indifferent Juggernaut posted at Titanic Deck Chairs, saying, "I discuss what appears to be the recent acceleration of tyranny and how Americans are (or aren't) dealing with it in light of how tyranny was dealt with in the Founding Era. Some commenters offer an interesting historical perspective as well."

Rational Jenn presents A Little Bit About My Day posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "Helping the kids through the steps of solving their own conflicts--rather than solving their problems for them--gives them good chances to practice Objectivist virtues. Even though the process sure takes a long time!"

Miranda Barzey presents Mia Michaels is Anti-Life posted at Ramen & Rand, saying, "So You Think You Can Dance choreographer Mia Michaels is brilliant in her craft, but her sense of life is horrible. Looking through her work there is evidence of her malevolent idea of life."

Doug Reich presents To Know Capitalism Is to Love Capitalism posted at The Rational Capitalist, saying, "Modern writers implicitly define capitalism by non-essentials with the consequence that capitalism is often regarded to be something approximating its antithesis. Properly defining the concept of capitalism is half the battle."

Peter Cresswell presents If this is ‘not so bad,’ then what have you got for afters? posted at Not PC, saying, "When one of your country's parliamentarians quotes Ayn Rand at the head of a speech on the recession -- the very parliamentarian who once cut a swathe through New Zealand's big government -- in a speech that counsels facing up to reality -- it's appropriate to take heed, don't you think? And to celebrate the power of good ideas to capture the mainstream, however tentatively."

Edward Cline presents Obama contra Churchill posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "The joke may be on President Barack Obama. One of his first “house cleaning” chores was to order the removal from the White House Oval Office of the bust of Winston Churchill, a temporary gift from Britain in the wake of 9/11, and to replace it in that same spot with one of Abraham Lincoln. After all, didn’t Lincoln oversee a calamitous Civil War to free the slaves? One wonders just how well versed Obama is in the speeches of one of his political heroes."

Brian Phillips presents What Can One Do? posted at Houston Property Rights, saying, "In response to a question regarding what one person can do to spread rational ideas, Ayn Rand once said: “Speak on any scale open to you, large or small--to your friends, your associates, your professional organizations, or any legitimate public forum. You can never tell when your words will reach the right mind at the right time.” A friend recently demonstrated this in a simple, but effective way."

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

Second-Hander

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

The Atlantic has published a glowing eulogy of William F. Buckley by Garry Wills which I highly recommend -- but with the proviso that one read the following passage from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead shortly before or after:

Isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison . . . . They're second-handers . . . .

They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don't ask: "Is this true?" They ask: "Is this what others think is true?" Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. (605, and more here) [bold added]

Wills praises Buckley in turns for such exploits as using "big words" he does not know the meanings of, beating a CIA polygraph test, being let off the hook as a favor by the police at a traffic stop, defying other Catholics in political squabbling over papal encyclicals, attending Spanish Masses with his servants, and habitually riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Wills marshals all these things in an attempt to portray a man of physical courage, moral strength, and common appeal. Too bad that the real common thread is an elevation of the perceptions of others over all else, including the facts of reality.

Revealingly, Wills praises Buckley for being "basically egalitarian" "[d]espite [sic] his religious and ideological preferences" -- and then goes right along with Buckley's lack of concern for facts (and hypocrisy) with the following passage under the heading of "Ideological Snob?"

By the time of his death, even Bill's earlier critics admitted that he had done much to make conservatism respectable by purging it of racist and fanatical traits earlier embedded in it. He distanced his followers from the southern prejudices of George Wallace, the anti-Semitism of the Liberty Lobby, the fanaticism of the John Birch Society, the glorification of selfishness by Ayn Rand (famously excoriated in National Review by Whittaker Chambers), the paranoia and conspiratorialism of the neocons. In each of these cases, some right-wingers tried to cut off donations to National Review, but Bill stood his ground. In doing so, he elevated the discourse of American politics, making civil debate possible between responsible liberals and conservatives.

Buckley's egalitarianism apparently went out the window when he thought his "preferences" might not be deemed "respectable." I hold no esteem for egalitarianism and think ideas far too important to relegate to the realm of whim, so I leave it to Wills to explain the above discrepancy. Intellectual standards cannot be based on whim and, as such, cannot coexist with egalitarianism. Buckley and Wills's deliberate injustice towards Rand bears this out. History is also bearing this out: Read on.

It is of interest that, other than advertising links to books, the above hyperlink is the only one in the article. The fact that the Whittaker Chambers piece is a review in name only speaks volumes about Buckley's (and Wills's) "concern for facts" and reveals that Ayn Rand understood him far better than he understood her or, I hazard to guess, cared to understand himself.

But yes, I'll grant that Buckley was selfless. Fortunately, if relative book sales figures for God and Man at Yale and Atlas Shrugged are any indication, it would appear that the facts of reality so blithely flouted by Buckley and his boy Wills are vindicating Ayn Rand, and leaving Buckley's intellectual legacy where it belongs: in the same ash heap to which his followers continue trying to consign her.

Wills devotes an entire article to debunking the charge that Buckley was a snob, going so far as to address three distinct types of snobbishness: social, ideological, and intellectual. Nevertheless, Buckley was a snob, but more important, his snobbishness is rooted in his second-handedness. Wills might not see this, and Buckley's other admirers might not see this, but anyone with an independent mind will, as soon as he spends any time with the man through the verbiage he left behind.

Egalitarianism, as an intellectual fashion, often goes hand-in-hand with snobbishness, and a truly selfish man who understands the potential value of other people will not be a snob. Nor will he read Buckley and fail to see either the egalitarianism or the snobbery.

-- CAV

Another Doctor "Goes Galt"

By Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Psychiatrist-blogger "Dr. Sanity" explain why she's stopped fighting against socialized medicine. Here are some excerpts from her June 13, 2009 blog post:

THIS TIME, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE...LET THE ZOMBIES TAKE OVER MEDICINE

...My entire professional life as a physician and psychiatrist I have been exceptionally vocal about the prospect of government medicine here in the US. I have given impassioned speeches (when I was younger); written essays in medical journals and elsewhere; and talked until I am blue in the face to anyone and everyone about the horrors of socialized medicine and government interference in the health care system of this country. Once it would have seemed impossible that I would ever want to quit medicine; to stop practicing psychiatry.

I have watched with dismay as every year we have inched closer and closer to the Democrats and the left's goals; goals which I firmly believe will completely destroy American medicine. I have watched up close and personal the utter soul-destroying consequences to both patients and doctors alike, of the pervasive cultural collectivist and looter thinking in my specialty. Every time this madness is killed, it just doesn't stay dead. Like some kind of putrefying zombie, the left just keeps resurrecting it. Logic doesn't matter. Facts don't matter.

Let's face it. To the zombies of the left, reality doesn't matter. With President Postmodern in office, aided and abetted by zombie hordes in Congress; why should I pretend anymore that it does?

This time around, I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE. If that's what people want, so be it.

I'm done. If Congress passes Obama's destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.

I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It's an honest living and Obama isn't interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants--yet.

Let me be clear. I don't believe that people have a "right" to health care; because, what advocating such a "right" basically means is that you believe you have a "right" to my mind; you have a "right" to my professional competence; i.e., you have a "right" to enslave me.

Read the whole thing.

This doctor understands the central moral issue -- namely, that "guaranteed" health care enslaves the physician.

If Obama's health care plan passes, we'll see more doctors taking her approach and quitting the field.

And yet another "prophecy" from Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged will have become true. In the words of the character Dr. Hendricks:

Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything -- except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only "to serve."

...I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind -- yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?

(Cross posted from the We Stand FIRM blog.)

Obama contra Churchill

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

The joke may be on President Barack Obama. One of his first “house cleaning” chores was to order the removal from the White House Oval Office of the bust of Winston Churchill, a temporary gift from Britain in the wake of 9/11, and to replace it in that same spot with one of Abraham Lincoln. After all, didn’t Lincoln oversee a calamitous Civil War to free the slaves? One wonders just how well versed Obama is in the speeches of one of his political heroes. Here is an excerpt from a Lincoln speech, cited in Judge Andrew Napolitano’s icon-dissolving book on Lincoln, Dredd Scott‘s Revenge, from a debate with Stephen A. Douglas in Illinois in September 1858:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”*

That is just one of many revealing quotations from Lincoln’s written record on the issue of slavery. The evidence has been available to scholars for decades. Napolitano’s book dissects Lincoln’s role in empowering the federal government to override the Constitution and to consciously misinterpret especially the commerce and general welfare clauses in it to excuse its intervention in the economy and to reduce the scope of individual liberty. (See also Napolitano’s remarks on the Department of Homeland Security memo of April 7.)

Lincoln’s chief motivation for prosecuting the Civil War was to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. The obvious evil of slavery is not the subject here. We have little to thank Lincoln for. He endorsed the country’s first income tax and the first military draft, and suspended habeas corpus. These were precedent-setting exercises of government power to confiscate wealth and life, in pursuit of a “noble cause,” emulated later by his successors in office and certainly countenanced by Congress in pursuit of causes arguably less “noble.”

Countless other Americans at the time desired to abolish slavery and enlisted in the army and navy for that reason, or were involved in the abolitionist movement, but Lincoln’s motivation was highly ambivalent. The myth surrounding Lincoln, one that has been propagated in textbooks for over a century, that he regarded slavery as a moral abomination and fought a war to eradicate it, is no less a myth than the one surrounding Franklin D. Roosevelt, that he saved the country from the alleged excesses of unregulated capitalism. Of course, Obama also admires FDR.

Does Obama value Lincoln for the slavery issue, or for Lincoln’s wholesale violations of the Constitution and the ensuing, steady diminution of freedom? If he reveres Lincoln as an emancipator, then he is a posturing fool. If he reveres him as a symbol of a successful usurpation of Constitutional limitations in the guise of “liberation,” then he is slyer than most critics have credited him for being.

On the other hand, Obama might have chucked Churchill out because he was a reproach, in that he spoke eloquently against dictators and men who pursued power for the sake of power and had a more contentious political career. Perhaps Obama is better versed in Churchill’s speeches than he is in Lincoln’s. Or, it may have something to do with Churchill’s suppression of the Mau Mau terrorism in colonial Kenya, when Obama’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was jailed on suspicion of being a Mau Mau subversive. Which, if true, suggests that Obama approves of terrorism and can boast of having a terrorist sympathizer for a relative.

One can even score Churchill for his early praise of Hitler and Mussolini long before World War II. He repudiated and withdrew that praise when he grasped the nature of their tyrannies. Obama’s praise is silent. For example, under the pretence of not wanting to “meddle” in the Iranian election turmoil, his remarks have been tepid and reluctant. How can he criticize an authoritarian soul-mate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for having won a rigged election? He and the Democratic Congress have a demonstrable affinity for fascism and are gathering to themselves unprecedented political power over virtually every aspect of American life. Everything -- the truth behind the Lincoln and FDR myths and the myth that Obama loves this country and is only trying to save it by emulating his predecessors -- is buried beneath the excelsior of irrelevancies and inconsequentials.

(The bust itself, by Sir Jacob Epstein, is an artistic malignity. Churchill’s features are barely discernible through a leprous percolation of bumps and swellings, leading one to imagine the work was rescued just in time from a blaze, damaged but still intact. But it is doubtful that Obama’s esthetic sense was so offended by the bust that he decided to rid the Oval Office of it.)

In his “The Lights are Going Out” speech of October, 1938, broadcast to the United States, in which he discusses the triumphs of Hitler in Europe, and the victories of fascist Italy and Spain, Churchill had this to say about dictators:

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, airplanes, fortifications, and the like -- they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest of potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar out thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armory of potent and indestructible knowledge?”**

In the “A Hush over Europe,“ August 1939 speech, also broadcast to the U.S., he noted:

“One thing has struck me as very strange, and that is the resurgence of the one-man power after all these centuries of experience and progress. It is curious how the English-speaking peoples have always had this horror of one-man power. They are quite ready to follow a leader for a time, as long as he is serviceable to them; but the idea of handing themselves over, lock, stock and barrel, body and soul, to one man, and worshipping him as if he were an idol -- that has always been odious to the whole theme and nature of our civilization. The architects of the American Constitution were as careful as those who shaped the British Constitution to guard against the whole life and fortunes, and all the laws and freedom of the nation, being placed in the hands of a tyrant.” [Italics mine.]

Obama’s Cairo speech was his “Munich” gesture. The West, he said, is not at war with Islam. The difference between Neville Chamberlain’s capitulation and Obama’s, however, is that Chamberlain believed that Hitler’s words, promises and signature on a sheet of paper would bring “peace in our time.” It is unlikely he saw no radical distinction between Britain and totalitarian Nazi Germany. He simply and disastrously believed that evil was good at its word, that it saw no benefit in war, and that it had exhausted its ambition for conquest and expropriation.

Obama clearly makes no such distinction, nor will he ever make it. Individual rights, liberty, freedom, the rule of law, the sanctity of contract, private property, freedom of speech -- these he is dedicated to trampling and extinguishing, so he could see no difference between them and the abject selflessness required of and demanded by Islam. He is envious of anyone who holds absolute power elsewhere in the world -- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, to name a few -- and has a vested interest in Americans “handing themselves over, lock, stock and barrel, body and soul, to one man, and worshipping him as if he were an idol.” Has he not managed to achieve that goal among his supporters and the news media?

Those to whom he should show respect, he slights. Those whom he should slight, he gushes over and establishes a grinning rapport with. Those whom he should be wary of -- such as the growing portion of the electorate that was never enamored of his alleged charisma and never dazzled by his populist rhetoric, together with those of his supporters who are having second thoughts about him -- he is oblivious to, or told by his staff and advisors are merely disaffected with his programs and policies and can be ignored.

The worst one can say about Churchill is that his record is spotty on the issue of totalitarians. He was not in a commanding position when FDR made Stalin and Soviet Russia allies to fight Nazi Germany. Speaking in 1921, Churchill had this to say about Lenin, whom he was never tempted to praise, and the totalitarian slaughter being revealed in the West:

“He was told that private property existed as the reward of human toil and thrift. He did not believe it. He killed many thousands of people with whom he disagreed, and caused the deaths of many thousands more, in order to find out the truth of that proposition before he came to the conclusion that they were right and he was wrong….Monsieur Lenin then turned his attention to the currency, and, seeing machines making bank notes, he had a flash of pure Communistic genius. He thought that all he had to do to solve the social problem was to keep the machine going as fast as possible. He thought he had thus found a way of making everybody rich, and paying every workman several thousands a year. He destroyed the currency of Russia….He has not yet started on the Ten Commandments -- ‘Thou shall not steal,’ and ‘Thou shall do no murder’….As we watch this terrible panorama of Russian misery, let us abstract a moral which should be a guidance and an aid. Russia cannot save herself by her exertion, but she may at least save other nations by her example. The lesson from Russia, writ in glaring letters, is the utter failure of this Socialist and Communistic theory, and the ruin which it brings to those subjected to its cruel yoke.”

The lesson has not been lost on Obama and the Democratic Congress. It is precisely that yoke they are fitting over the necks of Americans. Hopefully, they will be voted out of power in the next general election, or perhaps checkmated in the next round of Congressional contests. But one may be sure of this: that should that happen, he and Congress will do as much damage to this country as they can before vacating the halls and committee rooms of power. Even after the votes have been counted and the winner has been announced, they will try to take what is left of the country with them. The legislation they are hastily writing and enacting now is intended for perpetuity. It will take some kind of revolution to cause its permanent repeal, and the repeal of all such legislation that preceded it.

In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand dramatized the workings of the death premise. This point cannot be over-emphasized. If they cannot live to exercise their power, if they cannot reap the benefits of usurpation, if they cannot take satisfaction in the spectacle of men blindly taking orders and in forcing the recalcitrant to act against their will, they will want the country to die. That is, as well and after all, the jihadist way. Obama and his allies wish Americans to submit, or else perish as a free people. In that respect, they share the goals and means of the Islamists.

Which returns us to 9/11, and Tony Blair presenting President Bush with the Churchill bust, which Obama understandably did not want.


*Dredd Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, by Judge Andrew Napolitano. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009. P. 89.
**All Churchill quotations are from Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches, selected by his grandson, Winston S. Churchill. New York: Hyperion, 2003.

The One Minute Case For Capitalism

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

Capitalism a social system based on the principle of individual rights.

A capitalist society is based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights. Under capitalism, all property is privately owned, and the state is separated from economics just as it is from religion. Economically, capitalism is a system of laissez faire, or free markets, where the government plays no part whatsoever in economic decisions.

Capitalism is the only social system compatible with the requirements of man’s life

To pursue the values necessary for his life a society, man requires only one thing from others: freedom of action. Freedom means the ability to act however one pleases as long as one does not infringe on the same and equal freedom of others.   In a political context, freedom means solely the freedom from the initiation of force by other men. Only by the initiation of force can man’s rights be violated. Whether it is by a theft, force, fraud, or government censorship, man’s rights can be violated only by the initiation of force. Because man’s life depends on the use of reason to achieve the values necessary for his life, the initiation of force renders his mind useless as a means of survival. To live, man must achieve the values necessary to sustain his live. To achieve values, man must be free to think and to act on his judgment. To live, man must be free to think. To be free to think, man must be free to act. In the words of Ayn Rand, “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”

Capitalism recognizes the inherent worth of the individual

In a human society – one that recognizes the independence of each man’s mind – each individual is an end in himself.  He owns his life, and no one else’s.  Other men are not his slaves, and he is not theirs.  They have no claim on his life or on the values he creates to maintain his life, and he has no claim on theirs.  In a free society, men can gain immense values from each other by voluntarily trading the values they create to mutual gain.  However, they can only create values if they are free to use their minds to exercise their creativity.  A man is better living off on his own than as a slave to his brothers.  Capitalism recognizes each man as an independent, thinking being.

The individual is an end in himself

Just as no individual has the right to initiate force against anyone, neither does any group of men, in any private or public capacity. It is immoral to initiate force against any individual for any reason. This includes the initiation of force for “the public good.” The “public” is merely a collection of individuals, each possessing the same rights, and each being an end in himself. Any attempt to benefit the “public good” is an immoral attempt to provide a benefit to one group of individuals at the expense of another. In a free society, no individual benefits at the expense of another: men exchange the values they create in voluntary trade to mutual gain. The rule of law in a free society has just one purpose: to protect the rights of the individual.

Capitalism leads to freedom and prosperity

A free, capitalist economy has never existed anywhere in the world. The closest the world came to a free market was during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and during the late 19th century in the United States. The Industrial Revolution was a period of unprecedented economic growth and unimaginable improvements in quality of life. In less than two hundred years, the life of most people in the Western world changed from a a short life filled with poverty, plague, and near-constant war to a modern, comfortable existence that  even the kings of medieval Europe couldn’t have imagined.  Since 1820, the leading capitalist nations have increased their wealth sixteen fold, their populations more than four-fold, their productivity twenty-fold.  Annual working hours went from 3,000 to less than 1,700 and life expectancy doubled from thirty to over seventy years. ¹

Yet despite the undeniable material superiority of capitalist societies, its critics continue to attack it as inhuman and selfish.  What the world lacks is not evidence of capitalism’s practical superiority, but a moral defense of a man’s right to his own life.

Reference

1. Angus Maddison. Phases of Capitalist Development, p4 (1982)

Further Reading

• Andrew Bernstein: The Capitalist Manifesto
• Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The One Minute Case For Individual Rights
• The One Minute Case Against Interventionism
• The Bernstein Declaration On the Principles and Possibilities of Capitalism
• The Capitalism Site

Record Number of People Are Listening to Atlas Shrugged

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

Record Number of People Are Listening to Atlas Shrugged

Washington, D.C., June 22, 2009--The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and the media have been reporting on the surge in sales of Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged over the last six months. Not surprisingly, sales of the Atlas Shrugged audio book are also making impressive gains.

According to Blackstone Audio, one of the publishers of the full text audio edition of Atlas Shrugged, 16,000 audio copies of the novel were sold in the first five months of 2009, compared to around 20,000 in all of 2008. “This is a huge increase,” noted Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “This year audio copies of Atlas Shrugged are selling at about twice the rate as last year.”

Reports from trade sources have indicated that book purchases of Atlas Shrugged have also spiked recently, having tripled in the first four months of 2009 compared to the first four months of 2008. “The tripling in sales of Atlas Shrugged is remarkable,” said Dr. Brook, “especially considering that in 2008 a new all-time record in annual sales of the novel was established with more than 200,000 copies sold in the United States.”

More than 6,500,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged have been sold to date.

“Given the striking similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day, more Americans are reading and listening to Atlas Shrugged than ever before,” said Yaron Brook. “Hopefully, they will find in Atlas Shrugged the principled solutions to the problems we face today.”

--------------

 

HELP IRAN ELECTION DOT COM

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I am planning to add a green overlay to my Twitter avatar. For more information, go to www.HelpIranElection.com.


Do Not Read This

John Cox is in the news:




Meanwhile, in Berlin...


Mir Hossein Mousavi

Related: My post, FROM ZORO TO SHIITE IN IRAN.

On Nudism

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Katie Granju on the fundamental problem with nudism:

I used to know a man who did restaurant health inspections for the state, and one of the food service establishments on his regular route happened to be the cafeteria at some "naturalist" colony in Middle [Tennessee]. I'll never forget his story about how odd and vulnerable and unattractive all the nudists seemed when he would encounter them pressed up against the protective glass on the salad bar line, or queued up for a second helping of banana pudding. Really, nobody, and I mean nobody can pull off looking good au naturel when illuminated by flourescent bulbs and clutching a plastic cafeteria tray topped with a sloppy joe.

Heh.

I'm not stuffy about my own nudity, in the sense that I don't much care if other people see me naked. However, I presume that other people don't wish to see me naked, hopefully just as much as I really don't want to see them naked. Even if a person is not repulsive, I'm just not interested in observing them in all their glory. Rolls of fat, saggy breasts, and/or a shriveled frank and beans don't augment a person's appeal to the eye. So outside a sexual context, I'd much, much rather admire even the most attractive person in flattering clothing than naked. They'll surely look better. Conversely, if someone other than Paul did want to see me naked, that would be creepy. It would indicate a most unwelcome kind of interest in me.

In any case, the point about all that is to say that (1) I'm not prudish about nudity but (2) nudism completely baffles me. Why do some people -- mostly men, it seems -- feel a need to put their usually less-than-attractive bodies on display? I just don't get it.

(Just to be clear, I have no objections whatsoever to women breastfeeding in public. The objections to that practice strike me as prudish, precisely because the practice of breastfeeding is good and proper.)

Gifting at Gunpoint

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

The government has announced it is to send £5m in aid to... Zimbabwe. No, really.

The reasoning is outrageous:

Many donors are still wary of sending money which could be misused by Mr Mugabe and his allies.

Donors are wary of sending money to Zimbabwe for good reason. The regime has shown itself to be a corrupt, socialistic, violent slave pen. Even if all £5m goes to buying food and school supplies (and that is a big if), this frees up the little wealth that is produced in Zimbabwe to be used for beating up reformists, lining the pockets of the executive and nationalising property by military force.

Though this is aside from the main issue. Donors have the absolute right to choose how to donate their money. If they choose not to support a certain cause, whether or not they have good reasoning, then it is wholly unacceptable for the cause to force them to donate. If a charity collector turned up at your doorstep and said "Donate to my charity or I will throw you in prison", it would not be tolerated - yet we accept the government being the intermediary for the very same illiberal process.

It makes a mockery of the word charity, and destroys the concept of benevolence, for charitable causes to receive funding taken by force.

The One Minute Case For Capitalism

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

Capitalism a social system based on the principle of individual rights.

A capitalist society is based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights. Under capitalism, all property is privately owned, and the state is separated from economics just as it is from religion. Economically, capitalism is a system of laissez faire, or free markets, where the government plays no part whatsoever in economic decisions.

Capitalism is the only social system compatible with the requirements of man’s life

To pursue the values necessary for his life a society, man requires only one thing from others: freedom of action. Freedom means the ability to act however one pleases as long as one does not infringe on the same and equal freedom of others.   In a political context, freedom means solely the freedom from the initiation of force by other men. Only by the initiation of force can man’s rights be violated. Whether it is by a theft, force, fraud, or government censorship, man’s rights can be violated only by the initiation of force. Because man’s life depends on the use of reason to achieve the values necessary for his life, the initiation of force renders his mind useless as a means of survival. To live, man must achieve the values necessary to sustain his live. To achieve values, man must be free to think and to act on his judgment. To live, man must be free to think. To be free to think, man must be free to act. In the words of Ayn Rand, “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”

Capitalism recognizes the inherent worth of the individual

In a human society – one that recognizes the independence of each man’s mind – each individual is an end in himself.  He owns his life, and no one else’s.  Other men are not his slaves, and he is not theirs.  They have no claim on his life or on the values he creates to maintain his life, and he has no claim on theirs.  In a free society, men can gain immense values from each other by voluntarily trading the values they create to mutual gain.  However, they can only create values if they are free to use their minds to exercise their creativity.  A man is better living off on his own than as a slave to his brothers.  Capitalism recognizes each man as an independent, thinking being.

The individual is an end in himself

Just as no individual has the right to initiate force against anyone, neither does any group of men, in any private or public capacity. It is immoral to initiate force against any individual for any reason. This includes the initiation of force for “the public good.” The “public” is merely a collection of individuals, each possessing the same rights, and each being an end in himself. Any attempt to benefit the “public good” is an immoral attempt to provide a benefit to one group of individuals at the expense of another. In a free society, no individual benefits at the expense of another: men exchange the values they create in voluntary trade to mutual gain. The rule of law in a free society has just one purpose: to protect the rights of the individual.

Capitalism leads to freedom and prosperity

A free, capitalist economy has never existed anywhere in the world. The closest the world came to a free market was during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and during the late 19th century in the United States. The Industrial Revolution was a period of unprecedented economic growth and unimaginable improvements in quality of life. In less than two hundred years, the life of most people in the Western world changed from a a short life filled with poverty, plague, and near-constant war to a modern, comfortable existence that  even the kings of medieval Europe couldn’t have imagined.  Since 1820, the leading capitalist nations have increased their wealth sixteen fold, their populations more than four-fold, their productivity twenty-fold.  Annual working hours went from 3,000 to less than 1,700 and life expectancy doubled from thirty to over seventy years. ¹

Yet despite the undeniable material superiority of capitalist societies, its critics continue to attack it as inhuman and selfish.  What the world lacks is not evidence of capitalism’s practical superiority, but a moral defense of a man’s right to his own life.

Reference

1. Angus Maddison. Phases of Capitalist Development, p4 (1982)

Further Reading

• Andrew Bernstein: The Capitalist Manifesto
• Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The One Minute Case For Individual Rights
• The One Minute Case Against Interventionism
• The Bernstein Declaration On the Principles and Possibilities of Capitalism
• The Capitalism Site

The One Minute Case For Capitalism

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

Capitalism a social system based on the principle of individual rights.

A capitalist society is based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights. Under capitalism, all property is privately owned, and the state is separated from economics just as it is from religion. Economically, capitalism is a system of laissez faire, or free markets, where the government plays no part whatsoever in economic decisions.

Capitalism is the only social system compatible with the requirements of man’s life

To pursue the values necessary for his life a society, man requires only one thing from others: freedom of action. Freedom means the ability to act however one pleases as long as one does not infringe on the same and equal freedom of others.   In a political context, freedom means solely the freedom from the initiation of force by other men. Only by the initiation of force can man’s rights be violated. Whether it is by a theft, force, fraud, or government censorship, man’s rights can be violated only by the initiation of force. Because man’s life depends on the use of reason to achieve the values necessary for his life, the initiation of force renders his mind useless as a means of survival. To live, man must achieve the values necessary to sustain his live. To achieve values, man must be free to think and to act on his judgment. To live, man must be free to think. To be free to think, man must be free to act. In the words of Ayn Rand, “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”

Capitalism recognizes the inherent worth of the individual

In a human society – one that recognizes the independence of each man’s mind – each individual is an end in himself.  He owns his life, and no one else’s.  Other men are not his slaves, and he is not theirs.  They have no claim on his life or on the values he creates to maintain his life, and he has no claim on theirs.  In a free society, men can gain immense values from each other by voluntarily trading the values they create to mutual gain.  However, they can only create values if they are free to use their minds to exercise their creativity.  A man is better living off on his own than as a slave to his brothers.  Capitalism recognizes each man as an independent, thinking being.

The individual is an end in himself

Just as no individual has the right to initiate force against anyone, neither does any group of men, in any private or public capacity. It is immoral to initiate force against any individual for any reason. This includes the initiation of force for “the public good.” The “public” is merely a collection of individuals, each possessing the same rights, and each being an end in himself. Any attempt to benefit the “public good” is an immoral attempt to provide a benefit to one group of individuals at the expense of another. In a free society, no individual benefits at the expense of another: men exchange the values they create in voluntary trade to mutual gain. The rule of law in a free society has just one purpose: to protect the rights of the individual.

Capitalism leads to freedom and prosperity

A free, capitalist economy has never existed anywhere in the world. The closest the world came to a free market was during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and during the late 19th century in the United States. The Industrial Revolution was a period of unprecedented economic growth and unimaginable improvements in quality of life. In less than two hundred years, the life of most people in the Western world changed from a a short life filled with poverty, plague, and near-constant war to a modern, comfortable existence that  even the kings of medieval Europe couldn’t have imagined.  Since 1820, the leading capitalist nations have increased their wealth sixteen fold, their populations more than four-fold, their productivity twenty-fold.  Annual working hours went from 3,000 to less than 1,700 and life expectancy doubled from thirty to over seventy years. ¹

Yet despite the undeniable material superiority of capitalist societies, its critics continue to attack it as inhuman and selfish.  What the world lacks is not evidence of capitalism’s practical superiority, but a moral defense of a man’s right to his own life.

Reference

1. Angus Maddison. Phases of Capitalist Development, p4 (1982)

Further Reading

• Andrew Bernstein: The Capitalist Manifesto
• Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The One Minute Case For Individual Rights
• The One Minute Case Against Interventionism
• The Bernstein Declaration On the Principles and Possibilities of Capitalism
• The Capitalism Site

The One Minute Case For Strict Civil Liability of the Justice System

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

What is the problem?

The growing use of non-lethal weapons such as tasers by the police has to calls to ban or restrict their use. The real issue being debated is the extent to which police officers should risk their safety to detain suspects. Should they only use force when someone’s life is in danger, or to avoid the risk of injury when attempting to tackle a suspect, or to avoid a sprain from having to run after someone? It is likely that further debate will result in a consensus enforced by the legislative and judicial branches of government. But what criteria should be used to determine the level of risk that police officers may be exposed to before using force?

Under the current system, police officers are only held responsible for injuring others only if found guilty of a miscarriage of justice, that is, willful malice or negligent behavior in the performance of their job. This provides an incentive for the judicial branch to minimize liability by maximizing the leeway officers have in deciding whether to use force. Furthermore, establishing standards for proper police procedure is a highly-non objective process, based on factors such as the public’s fear of police brutality, their desire for safety, the cost of lawsuits from police actions, and the political gain politicians find from pushing more or less draconian policies. One means of improving on this process is to establish a strict liability criteria for police actions.

What is strict liability?

Under a strict liability standard, it is not necessary to find a party guilty of malice or negligence, only of fault. Perpetrators of damages arising from inherently dangerous activities are responsible for damages regardless of whether they acted improperly. For instance, drivers at fault for damaging another car or injuring a driver are held financially responsible regardless of whether they acted maliciously or negligently. Under strict liability, a police agency would be held responsible for personal injury and property damage if an officer injures an innocent suspect, or unnecessarily injures a criminal — even if the officer acted properly in the performance of his duty. For example, an officer who fires at a guilty suspect who poses a real threat would not be liable, but an officer who fires at a suspect who does not pose a threat will be held liable for damages whether the officer is guilty of a miscarriage of duty or simply made an error in judgment. Furthermore, such a system would repay defendants who are exonerated at trial for their time and suffering.

Strict liability shifts incentives to the party best qualified to control costs

One objection to the strict liability standard is that it would greatly increase the financial risk faced by police departments and courts. However, by placing the burden of minimizing costs on the judicial agency, a strong incentive is created to minimize mistakes – and therefore costs. It is likely that police departments would attempt to insure themselves against risk, and the insurance agents would in turn establish guidelines that seek to minimize their risk. Such guidelines may ban tasers because of their health dangers – or they may require them in most situations where deadly weapons were formerly employed. Police agencies may prefer to hire men because they would find it easier to tackle suspects (and thus avoid a major incentive for taser use) or women because they are better at resolving conflicts peacefully. Because they would bear the cost of mistakes, police agencies would be motivated to experiment on the most effective way to perform their jobs, while the public they protect would be financially shielded from their mistakes by a strict liability standard.

Strict liability discourages prosecution of victimless crimes

Another objection to strict liability under the current legal framework is that it would make police agencies averse to enforcing laws that are prone to mistakes or unsuccessful prosecutions – namely, those known as “victimless crimes.” Adultery, gambling, homosexuality, and the trade of illicit substances and goods are areas where the lack of a victim makes errors in suspect identification and successful prosecutions especially likely. This is especially true of laws pushed by vocal voters on unwilling recipients – for example, communities that favor drug or alcohol prohibition on communities that tolerate drug and alcohol users. Yet this only illustrates the insulation of government policies (and by extension taxpayers) from the cost of economically expensive (and thus socially destructive) laws. If enforcement agencies are required to pay for their mistakes, they will favor laws that can be objectively enforced, and violations of which result in victims pushing for enforcement.

Further reading

• Civil Liability for Government Wrongdoing

Yaron Brook on The Strategy Room

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

News from the Ayn Rand Center:

Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, is scheduled to appear today on The Strategy Room with Judge Andrew Napolitano. The live on-line streaming appearance will start at 2:10 p.m., Eastern time (11:10 a.m., Pacific time). Dr. Brook will discuss Obama's new financial plan and government infringement on the free market.

ABC News aka OBC News

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

The Drudge Report was the first to announce the latest step in the fascist/socialist march to dictatorship in the United States. To guarantee that there is no “debate” on the government’s plan to impose mandatory health care “reform” on the nation, President Barack Obama has made a deal with ABC News to conduct a phony prime time “town hall” style meeting from the Blue Room of the White House on June 24. The sanctimonious and overly chummy anchor Charles Gibson will host “World News” from that precious vantage point. He will welcome the nation to the to the first airing of the Obama Broadcasting Corporation.

Not even FDR was brazen enough to co-opt a broadcaster to shill for the New Deal.

No one in the Reichstag -- excuse me, in Congress -- is protesting this blatantly bogus “reality show” except in the most wimpish manner. Republican National Committee chief of staff Ken McKay, according to Drudge, “fired off a complaint to the head of ABC News.” The text of his letter is really just a complaint that the Republicans have not been invited to participate in the “debate.”

“Today, the RNC requested an opportunity to add our Party’s views to those of the President’s to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected.”

Drudge reported that ABC News Senior Vice President Kerry Smith replied to the RNC, claiming it contained “false premises.”

“ABC News prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers -- of all political persuasions -- even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABC News is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue. ABC News alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president….ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience.”

Kerry Smith’s rebuttal must be taken with a hefty dose of sea salt. She is as much a liar as Obama when he states he doesn’t want to run a car company, or the banking industry, or any American business. “Thoughtful and diverse voices” are the last thing she and Obama want to hear. Note the disparagement of any political opposition that is to be excluded as a “partisan approach,” and the dismissal of “criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum” as a kind of unnecessarily divisive “polarization.” There is no such thing as an objectively verifiable truth, according to Smith, just a comfortable, non-judgmental middle ground amenable to the wishes of an administration willing to initiate force in its quest to “do good.”

Given the leftist bias of ABC News (and of its rivals, CBS and NBC), one can guess the composition of the audience and predict the kinds of prearranged questions that will be asked Obama. Sure, ABC News will “select” the audience and have “complete editorial control,” but not without every person and virtually every word first being vetted by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and press secretary Robert Gibbs and whoever else on Obama’s staff is responsible for scripts. This kind of circus will not be put on without an enormous amount of preparation, and every precaution will be taken to prevent any untoward “dialogue” between Obama and any of the dupes in the audience. The June 24th broadcast will have all the spontaneity of a White House press conference. Furthermore, ABC News has always broadcast from one extreme end of the political spectrum, that of total government control over everything. It is immaterial, however, which network was chosen to be Obama’s stalking horse. They are all equally culpable.

The denial for “equal time” should have come as no surprise. The Republicans, because they abandoned individual rights and reason, can only suggest a watered-down version of socialized health care. They will not oppose the idea of socialized medicine. Why should Obama and Congress settle for less when they have demonstrated they can go the limit with no fundamental opposition?

Did ABC deny the request? Yes. On its own initiative? Doubtful. Neither Obama nor his allies in Congress want to hear any other “views“ on socialized medicine. Therefore, any request for “equal time” is unwelcome. Rational arguments against socialized medicine and health care would only prove to be distractions, or worse, illuminating. The arrangement is a preview of the reinstatement of the “Fairness Doctrine” under another label, a doctrine whose very nature guarantees the suppression of dissent for as long as the government controls the airwaves and has the power to dictate the content and character of speech. Obama and the Democrats want to enact that doctrine without it being called censorship. If ABC wishes to continue to be the favored network, it will take orders. Apparently, that will be voluntarily.

There must be more behind ABC’s anointment than just a “deal.” One can imagine the bidding war for Obama’s favor between ABC, CBS and NBC; one cannot help but wonder what promises ABC made to the White House for this show and for all future “town halls.“ One can even speculate on the reasons behind the choice of Gibson as the “moderator” of the forthcoming broadcast. CBS anchor Katie Couric has little or no verisimilitude. Anchor Brian Williams of NBC is even more abrasively sanctimonious and authoritarian than is Gibson. One can only suppose it was decided that Gibson’s features are less annoying and patronizing. Image is everything. They don’t want to bore or frighten the kiddies.

Drudge reports that the arrangement has “ignited an ethical firestorm.” But this development represents more than an issue of ethics. It represents a paucity of moral courage, which I do not believe ABC News ever knew the meaning of or was ever bothered by, coupled with a blind avarice for high ratings. Most importantly, ABC News endorses the government’s rapidly expanding control of not only the economy but of virtually every aspect of the lives of this country’s citizens. But the fact remains that all three news anchors and their co-anchors report the government’s wishes as the metaphysically given. “It is raining outside.” “You will be fined by the government for not enrolling in its health care program.” Period.

The print press is no less guilty. Frank Rich, for example, in his New York Times article of June 14, “The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers,“ was moved to smear any verbal opposition to the Obama agenda as goading “violent extremists.” This position is in complete agreement with the DHS memo of April (discussed in “A Cavalcade of Collectivism,” April 17), which lumped together all opposition, rational, semi-rational and irrational, as phenomena to be monitored and possibly stymied by the authorities, and insinuates that it is this kind of “free speech” that provokes assassins and civil unrest. To judge by the frenetic tone of his op-ed, Rich would likely welcome an Obama and Congressional version of Hitler’s 1933 Enabling Act, one that would suppress all “provocative” speech.

One cannot doubt the news media’s complicity in bringing fascism to this country. It is a complicity whose root is not some vast ignorance of what was being done. Ignorance of the law of identity is no excuse for breaking it; in an individual, reality will correct such ignorance. But there is no possible excuse, either, for a news organization that poses as politically sophisticated. It acts with full knowledge of the fraud and deception perpetrated by the Democrats on the country ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency.

The accession of ABC News as a de facto department of the Obama administration ought to serve as convincing evidence of that complicity.

A Brief Review of "The Brothers Bloom"

By Daniel J Casper from The Pursuit,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A new piece has been added to the annals of romantic literature and its name is "The Brothers Bloom." In keeping with the spirit of romanticism, this story is about the necessity of man to make choices he can live with. These choices are the only options for him to obtain happiness and fufillment, therefore he must discover them - and then act. What happens when a man defaults on this? The answer lies in the character of Bloom: a neurotic self torn by inner-doubt and plagued with unhappiness. Due to Bloom's own lack of certainty and conviction, he allows his brother to plot his life and thus he denies his own desires, leading him to this state. Bloom's inner conflict is present from start to finish in this story, which not only generates most of the suspense present in the script, but allows for an impressive climax which concretizes this theme perfectly. Each central character in the story achieves their highest values, in whatever variation, by virtue of their choices, an important moral conclusion which Bloom arrives at because of, ironically, his brother's plot. While this might seem self-defeating of the theme, it is not: Bloom's conclusion is wholly his own, and while his brother might have given him the concretes which led to this, it is Bloom's individual action which earns him the love of a woman and his own happiness. Even his brother, whose plot led to an unforeseen complication, earns his own happiness, paid for by his brother's new self-awareness. The plot is a testament to the intense devotion one should have for one's own values.

Perhaps the greatest character on the screen is that of Penelope, whose beautiful innocence and intelligence shines as a sort of beacon that not only leads Bloom to a renewed love of existence, but is a case study in hero-worship. To her, Bloom is the adventure which her life lacked - an opportunity to employ the skills and hobbies she acquired in isolation, in service to the man she loves. Her desire and actions are unashamed and consistent, and better, she is explicitly aware of this. Despite her lack of previous dealings with men, she, by virtue of her intelligence, is able to pin-point Bloom's inner conflict which she describes as a sort of "constipation of the soul." This is a perfect summation of Bloom's own frustation with the discovery and pursuit of what he actually wants. She loves Bloom so much that even when he is about to become the victim of this unresolved conflict, she seeks him out and tells him exactly what he needs to hear: that he is in love with her. Bloom's own actions, which he had come to doubt, demonstrate this, and it is at this moment that he comes to the realization that not only is she correct, but that he finally has a personal stake in his own life.

This realization does not garuntee Bloom his happiness - he is still required to act for it. Yet this realization gives Bloom the fuel and the reasoning necessary to overcome his chronic self-dobut and make the correct decision for his happiness at the necessary moment. This thematic message is repeated in several variations throughout the movie, but it is best stated in the last line of Penelope: "We're going to live like we're telling the best story in the world." This is the only proper approach to existence for a man, and "The Brothers Bloom" is an example of how it rewards him. That experience is well worth the price of admission.

The One Minute Case For Capitalism

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

Capitalism a social system based on the principle of individual rights.

A capitalist society is based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights. Under capitalism, all property is privately owned, and the state is separated from economics just as it is from religion. Economically, capitalism is a system of laissez faire, or free markets, where the government plays no part whatsoever in economic decisions.

Capitalism is the only social system compatible with the requirements of man’s life

To pursue the values necessary for his life a society, man requires only one thing from others: freedom of action. Freedom means the ability to act however one pleases as long as one does not infringe on the same and equal freedom of others.   In a political context, freedom means solely the freedom from the initiation of force by other men. Only by the initiation of force can man’s rights be violated. Whether it is by a theft, force, fraud, or government censorship, man’s rights can be violated only by the initiation of force. Because man’s life depends on the use of reason to achieve the values necessary for his life, the initiation of force renders his mind useless as a means of survival. To live, man must achieve the values necessary to sustain his live. To achieve values, man must be free to think and to act on his judgment. To live, man must be free to think. To be free to think, man must be free to act. In the words of Ayn Rand, “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”

Capitalism recognizes the inherent worth of the individual

In a human society – one that recognizes the independence of each man’s mind – each individual is an end in himself.  He owns his life, and no one else’s.  Other men are not his slaves, and he is not theirs.  They have no claim on his life or on the values he creates to maintain his life, and he has no claim on theirs.  In a free society, men can gain immense values from each other by voluntarily trading the values they create to mutual gain.  However, they can only create values if they are free to use their minds to exercise their creativity.  A man is better living off on his own than as a slave to his brothers.  Capitalism recognizes each man as an independent, thinking being.

The individual is an end in himself

Just as no individual has the right to initiate force against anyone, neither does any group of men, in any private or public capacity. It is immoral to initiate force against any individual for any reason. This includes the initiation of force for “the public good.” The “public” is merely a collection of individuals, each possessing the same rights, and each being an end in himself. Any attempt to benefit the “public good” is an immoral attempt to provide a benefit to one group of individuals at the expense of another. In a free society, no individual benefits at the expense of another: men exchange the values they create in voluntary trade to mutual gain. The rule of law in a free society has just one purpose: to protect the rights of the individual.

Capitalism leads to freedom and prosperity

A free, capitalist economy has never existed anywhere in the world. The closest the world came to a free market was during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and during the late 19th century in the United States. The Industrial Revolution was a period of unprecedented economic growth and unimaginable improvements in quality of life. In less than two hundred years, the life of most people in the Western world changed from a a short life filled with poverty, plague, and near-constant war to a modern, comfortable existence that  even the kings of medieval Europe couldn’t have imagined.  Since 1820, the leading capitalist nations have increased their wealth sixteen fold, their populations more than four-fold, their productivity twenty-fold.  Annual working hours went from 3,000 to less than 1,700 and life expectancy doubled from thirty to over seventy years. ¹

Yet despite the undeniable material superiority of capitalist societies, its critics continue to attack it as inhuman and selfish.  What the world lacks is not evidence of capitalism’s practical superiority, but a moral defense of a man’s right to his own life.

Reference

1. Angus Maddison. Phases of Capitalist Development, p4 (1982)

Further Reading

• Andrew Bernstein: The Capitalist Manifesto
• Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The One Minute Case For Individual Rights
• The One Minute Case Against Interventionism
• The Bernstein Declaration On the Principles and Possibilities of Capitalism
• The Capitalism Site

Castro Needs Spies?

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

It isn't news to me that Fidel Castro has legions of sympathizers among the American left, but even so, Humberto Fontova's recent piece (HT: Dismuke) on the Walter Myers spy scandal is upsetting.

To highlight that difficulty in catching Castro's spies that bedevils U.S. spy-catchers, let's play a game I've titled, "Castro Spy or Democratic Official? Who Said It?"

"Fidel has lifted the Cuban people out of the degrading and oppressive conditions which characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba. He has helped the Cubans to save their own souls. Cubans don't need to try very hard to make the point that we have been the exploiters."

If you answered, "Castro spy Kendall Myers, from his diaries," you're right.

"I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime…"

If you answered, "Democratic President of the United States John F. Kennedy speaking to French Journalist Jean Daniel in Nov. 1963," you're right again.

No less of a challenge to the spy catchers -- or to my stomach -- has been the high demand in "high" society for Fidel Castro that Fontova describes on top of that.

Castro has huge numbers of aspiring spies and little need for them for precisely the same reason: The dominant code of morality in our society is altruism, of which communism -- as preached and practiced by Castro and his Soviet mentors -- is a consistent political expression.

Now that we've seen a very ugly rip here, what to do?

Keep after the spies and fight against "improving" American relations with Cuba to the extent possible, of course. But there is also a more effective long-term solution available: Repair our social fabric by arguing for a superior moral code or supporting those who do. With an improved culture in America, sympathy for communism here will, like Castro's decrepit body, inevitably wither away.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 440

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

Wow!

Via HBL, I learned of a remarkable column by Joseph McHugh in The American Chronicle regarding William F. Buckley's unjust treatment of Ayn Rand.

McHugh starts out with comments about his son, Christopher's just-published memoir, but that is only a point of departure. The real strength of his article is that it considers the elder Buckley's long, ignominious record of unjustified, personal attacks on Rand on as well as what other intellectuals influenced by Rand have had to say about the matter. The piece ends:

Rand made the case against the welfare state root and branch. She was the first to make a secular case against Communism and Socialism, and the first to make a fully secular defense of American values. The fact that her ideas were shut out by Buckley hurt the entire cause of Americanism.

These days people are flocking to read Atlas Shrugged. They are not burning a hole in their wallets to buy God and Man at Yale.

And that's a good thing. [minor edits]

It is refreshing to see journalism like this, and frustrating at the same time, because (a) I wish I'd written it myself, and (b) I want to quote the whole thing here, verbatim. McHugh says several things that have needed saying for a very long time.

I will indulge myself one more quote, though: "... Buckley made a career out of trashing Rand personally, not intellectually, and one cannot help but feel justice at his public bubble being burst."

Amen! (So to speak.)

Another Satisfied Customer

I am delighted to see that Paul Hsieh is enjoying his new Asus Eee PC 1000, and, owning one of the older models, find myself slightly jealous at the same time. Fortunately, thanks to an earlier post of his on the same subject, I can at least upgrade my operating system soon. I hadn't had time to look into that, and was reluctant to do so anyway while bouncing back and forth between cities so much over the past year.

Working from Home

I will be working from home for awhile once I return to Boston for good next week, so I found this post (and the ensuing comments) over at Noodlefood on the subject to be of interest. (I'd swear I have encountered the wonko.com post before, but I'd forgotten about it.)

Also, I am considering a career change to a type of work that, in a few years, I could make into an at-home occupation. A major issue with such a move is setting clear boundaries between work and leisure.

A History Primer for Barack Obama

Via Ron Pisaturo, I see that there is a nice refutation of Barack Obama's unjust praise of the Islam for the cultural achievements of the ancient Arab world over at The Charlotte Capitalist.

-- CAV

OList and Activist Mailing Lists

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here's a reminder about mailing lists potentially of interest to NoodleFood readers:

First, OList.com is the home of three specialized e-mail lists for Objectivists. All aim to help promote Objectivist ideas in the culture at large:

• OActivists: OActivists is an informal e-mail list for Objectivists committed to fostering positive cultural and political change. Its purpose is to facilitate and encourage effective advocacy of Objectivist ideas in non-Objectivist forums by facilitating communication with other Objectivist activists. Posts to the list alert subscribers to opportunities to speak out, recommend sources of information, discuss effective arguments and principled strategies, reproduce op-eds and letters written by subscribers, announce events, and more. Click here for a full description of this list and its membership requirements.
  
  
• OBloggers: OBloggers is an informal mailing list for Objectivist bloggers. Its basic purpose is to facilitate communication about matters of mutual interest, such as upcoming events, posts of interest, best blogging practices, and the like. Click here for a full description of this list and its membership requirements.
  
  
• OAcademics: OAcademics is a forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia. Click here for a full description of this list and its membership requirements.

Please feel free to join if you're interested, provided that you meet the criteria for membership.

Second, I heartily support the following activism-oriented e-mail lists. They do not require agreement with Objectivism, but they do require support for the mission statement of the organization.

• FIRM Activists: An unmoderated, low-volume mailing list for activists for free market medicine with Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM).
  
  
• CSG Activists: An unmoderated, low-volume mailing list for activists for government solely based on secular principles of individual rights with the Coalition for Secular Government (CSG).
  
  
• FA/RM Activists: An unmoderated, low-volume mailing list for activists for agricultural and health policies based solely on the principles of individual rights with Free Agriculture - Restore Markets (FA/RM).
  
  
• Colorado Free Marketeers: Ari Armstrong's new list for free-market activism in Colorado. He describes the list as follows: "Colorado Free Marketeers is a moderated list for activists looking for information and inspiration. Membership is open to any person committed to the principles of free markets and willing to engage in activism involving public speaking or writing at least every three months. While the list focuses on Colorado activism, those outside Colorado may join the list to track activism in the state and pick up ideas for activism where they live."

Please do join if you're interested.

What you WON'T Know Can Kill You

By Paula Hall from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A New Way to Fail

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

Around a decade ago, when I was in grad school, a column I'd written in a student newspaper -- quite contrary to my pessimistic expectations -- helped a Libertarian, as he put it, "see the light." Said recovering Libertarian and I subsequently engaged in a back-and-forth correspondence that he initiated with "You'd make a good Libertarian," and ended with his saying, "Chalk one up to pamphleteering." Enjoying the exchange, but finding my time at a premium, I finally ended up recommending Peter Schwartz's Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty, and letting him read my copy.

I was on the verge of asking for him to return it after quite some time when I finally did hear back from him. Also, to my great surprise, he went on to found a campus Objectivist club which even had decent regular attendance. There wasn't a club before? I and a good friend were, I thought, the only two Objectivists on campus, and didn't see the point. My lesson on the importance of holding correct principles was more than repaid with one on the importance of communicating them effectively.

I recall this story, because something I encountered this morning at the web site of the New York Times reminded me of an email one of the members of this club once sent me about a libertarianesque scheme to build artificial islands in the middle of the sea and, with them, fully free societies out of whole cloth. That fantasy has never really died down and, thanks to new technology, it seems to be growing new legs.

Such dreamers aren't alone, or the first, as several articles note (links below). "For decades, an assortment of romantics and whack jobs have fantasized about fleeing the oppressive strictures of modern government and creating a laissez-faire society on the high seas," Wired observed earlier this year. "Over the decades, they've tried everything from fortified sandbars to mammoth cruise ships. Nearly all have been disasters."

True, but one difference today is improved knowhow, as The Futurist notes -- be it in the design of floating utopias or built-up artificial islands (the latter a specialty of Dubai, above).

The pertinent question here is "Disasters? By what standard?" Certainly, technology makes us able to create artificial land more readily, but a society is much more than the land it sits on. I have argued repeatedly here that technology is no substitute for a rational culture (or thinking for oneself) among the denizens of any such society.

At this point, the casual reader might think I am making the same pessimism-inducing mistake I was making years ago by discounting this movement, but he would be wrong on that count. It is, in fact, the people who want to build such island-states who are the pessimists: They are the ones not developing a solid understanding of the theoretical basis and justification for freedom so that they can make its case to the rational people in their very midst. (They do exist.) The island-builders are the ones giving up without a fight (of the intellectual variety).

They are, in fact, deliriously and recklessly pessimistic.

One moment's thought about the viability of such islands as states should make the point. Even assuming one achieves a capitalist society on such an island, which is no trivial feat, what of self-defense? How would one stop the pirate island ten miles away from enslaving or laying waste to his? With weapons? Purchased from where? The now-socialist United States one fled? Before or after the pirates strike? Before or after Obama invades your island instead, seeing it as a threat to hope and change? You started out with nukes? How nice: So did the pirates. And Obama.

When dealing with other men, we all have two fundamental choices that technology will never change: reasoned persuasion or force. The island builders aren't even giving reasoned persuasion a chance, and are defaulting to force, and with a poor strategy at that. That is, if they aren't guilty of an even greater sin, which is basically pretending that conflict will pass them by if they pretend that other men don't exist.

Certainly, freedom must be won by guns, as the American Revolution demonstrated, but it cannot exist at all within a society that does not understand and value it -- as the same war and our misguided and fruitless occupation of Iraq both make clear. This is why it is important to make the case for freedom in America, and, incidentally, why fleeing to an island really isn't a guarantee of having freedom even there for very long.

Principles are like maps. If I had to flee an oncoming hurricane, I'd take a good map and a working Model T over a blindfold and a Lamborghini any day. The island-builders are spending too much time ogling fancy technology and ignoring the theoretical basis that makes it -- and their lives as free men -- possible.

-- CAV

Obama’s Lexicographer

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

The New York Times ran an interesting article on June 4, “Obama Names a Republican to Lead the Humanities Endowment.” The nominee, Jim Leach, is a former representative for Iowa who endorsed Barack Obama for president. “He founded and was co-chairman of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, which advocates on behalf of the humanities in the House and seeks to raise the profile of humanities nationwide.” Leach is currently a professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His appointment must be confirmed by Congress.

There is no Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) School of Individualism and Laissez-Faire Studies at any university, so where else is a retired congressman to go? To The Woodrow Wilson School, named after the president who, more than any of his predecessors in office, set the United States on its course to the welfare state and fascism by signing the income tax act, the federal reserve act, and a host of other government interventionist legislation, and got the country into a European war whose issues and terms were beyond his power to set. As president, he was an unqualified failure. As a humanitarian, he was a great success. Americans owe him a debt of boundless ingratitude.

“The endowment is a federal agency with a budget of $155 million that gives grants to support research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.”

Leach is one of those men who wishes to see America organized and collectively committed to furthering a more “humane” society. According to the Times article, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, vice chairman of the Century Foundation, and has been a board member of the Social Sciences Research Council and of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Like Wilson, who spent much of his life in “public service,” Leach “served” the public for thirty years in Congress, and of course, expects everyone else to serve with the same ardor, as well. And if Americans won’t voluntarily serve, he wants to ensure that they involuntarily serve by having the NEH direct their taxes to causes and programs they may or may not approve or even have heard of. A satirist could not have invented a more copasetic surname for the nominee. It is almost as good as Ayn Rand’s Wesley Mouch, the economic dictator in Atlas Shrugged, or Sheridan’s Mr. Puff or Mrs. Malaprop in The Critic and The Rivals.

What is interesting about the article, however, besides the presumptuous assertions by both Leach and the article’s author that the nation needs a humanities czar to promote and exercise federal powers not anywhere enumerated in the Constitution, are some of Leach’s statements about words. These statements underscore just how disconnected he and the political leadership are from reality.

When Leach was interviewed for the article, he revealed a clue to that disconnection:

“He suggested that the National Endowment for the Humanities could depoliticize terms that have been co-opted by interest groups. ‘There are words bandied about that are being misused -- words like socialism, words like communism, words like fascism,’ he said.” [Italics mine.]

Perhaps those “interest groups” do not want to be looted and enslaved by communism, socialism, or fascism. Those “words” mean what they stand for. They cannot be “depoliticized.” They did not just pop into existence without any referents or any attached definitions and then were arbitrarily “co-opted” by those interest groups, who appended their own portentous meanings to them. Why would Leach think that they could have other than their established and recognized political meanings? The answer is in the paragraph that follows his charge of “misuse”:

“I think America is going to have to think through whether it wants to uplift the political dialogue or advance an approach that divides and, frankly, can lead to violence. I think this is a time to reflect vibrant differentnesses with greater decency. And that is an enormous challenge.” [Italics mine; “differentnesses“ is Leach’s neologism, not a misspelling, and may be his genteel euphemism for “diversity.”]

The imposition on a country of communism, socialism or fascism has always been accompanied by violence between the imposers and men opposed to those political systems. The approach that “divides” and leads to violence has always been the one adopted by the initiators of force. Does Leach believe that if those terms are defanged or stripped of their concrete, political denotations, that is, of their definitions, they can be used safely without concern that the populace will begin to riot or rebel, if someone perchance names or identifies the system? Given the dumbing down of Americans over the course of several generations, he may be justified in thinking that it is possible. Witness how the liberals have gotten away with dropping the label “liberals” and prefer now to be identified as “progressives,” confident that no one will be curious enough to read the political and educational history of the country from the end of the 19th century through the first decade of the 20th. What the term “Progressivism” meant was a program of incremental socialism.

But the terms communism, socialism, and fascism still retain their denotative powers among those whose minds have not been turned into mush by their education.

Note that Leach’s disparaging reference to “interest groups” presumably excludes his own interest groups, that is, the ones that wish the government to “uplift the political dialogue” by reflecting “differentnesses with greater decency.” Earlier he referred to the current administration as a “unique, uplifting presidency.” These favored “interest groups” will not turn “violent,” except to spend money coerced from taxpayers on what they deem to be “uplifting” and “different.”

Note also that Leach did not say he wants to see these terms abolished or banished as politically incorrect speech. Rather, he wants them to connote “positive” things. Since he does not have the power to discard the terms or erase them from men‘s minds, he seeks to subject them to a cosmetic makeover.

Announcing his pick to head the NEH, Obama stated:

“I am confident that with Jim as its head, the National Endowment for the Humanities will continue on its vital mission of supporting the humanities and giving the American public access to the rich resources of our culture.”

However, a far more culturally significant individual wrote about definitions, words and their proper usage over forty years ago, Ayn Rand.

“A definition is a statement that identifies the nature of the units subsumed under a concept.

“It is often said that definitions state the meaning of words. This is true, but it is not exact. A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept; a word has no meaning other than that of the concept it symbolizes, and the meaning of a concept consists of its units. It is not words, but concepts that man defines -- by specifying their referents.

“The purpose of a definition is to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and thus to keep its units differentiated from all other existents.”*

So, according to Leach, the units subsumed under the concepts of communism, socialism and fascism should be toyed with like the letters on Scrabble tiles to mean anything the chairman of the moment of the NEH wishes them to mean. Imagine the possibilities: Communism could mean “a universal system of joyous penury,” socialism “a design for responsible frugality,” and fascism “to follow my leader to glorious pauperism.”**

The implications in Leach’s statement invite the obvious parallels to George Orwell’s three inverted, totalitarian maxims in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

One is naturally tempted to wonder who or what prompted Leach to make such a bizarre statement. Obama and his staff cannot help but know that, all over the Internet, but certainly not in the mainstream media, he and his cohorts are being linked to or associated with communism, socialism and fascism. It may be coincidence, or happenstance.

Or it may be, as the villain in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger remarked, “enemy action” in the most unlikely of battlefields: the dictionary.


*From Introduction of Objectivist Epistemology, by Ayn Rand (1966-1967). New York: Meridian-Penguin, 1990, eds. Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff. P. 40.
**With thanks to the title of Terence Rattigan’s unproduced 1938 play, Follow My Leader, a satire on Hitler and Nazi Germany, which he co-wrote with Tony Goldschmidt. “As the Munich crisis loomed and the British government shilly-shallied about standing up to Hitler, Rattigan and Goldschmidt wanted to rush their play into immediate production. However, their script got no further than the Lord Chamberlain’s office. He banned it outright as likely to give offence to a friendly country.” From Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work, by Michael Darlow and Gillian Hodson. London: Quartet Books, 1979. P. 97.

Probably Not

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

Glenn Reynolds asks,

CAN MITCH DANIELS SAVE THE GOP?

If you aren't from Indiana, you might well stop asking, "Who is John Galt," long enough to shrug and ask, "Who is Mitch Daniels?"

He's the governor of Indiana, and at least by today's mixed economy standards, he has an impressive-sounding resume:

There's no doubt Daniels is an intriguing prospect [to head the 2012 GOP ticket]. A former corporate executive and foundation head, he was George W. Bush's first budget chief, serving from 2001 to 2003. Going home to Indiana, he not only was elected governor on his first try, but won a second term last November by 18 points -- at a time when a Democratic presidential candidate won Indiana for the first time in 40 years. In victory, Daniels attracted a lot of Democratic votes, and 20 percent of the African-American vote. He inherited a deficit and turned it into a surplus. And he has a huge job approval rating -- almost 70 percent.

Daniels' stock with the national party began rising as the full extent of last November's damage began to sink in. His reputation has gone up still more as his performance with Indiana's economy continues to shine amid national financial calamity.

Clearly, Daniels can get reelected. He seems, at first blush, to have some inkling of fiscal restraint. He can connect with a broad cross section of the voters, including Democrats. These have all been glaringly absent from his party in recent years.

But then, for those of us who want a meaningful alternative to the Democrats, the other shoe drops.

Then came May 10, when Daniels gave the commencement speech at Butler University in Indianapolis. Facing graduates born in the late 1980s, Daniels delivered a roundhouse condemnation of the selfishness of the Baby Boomer generation and a call for today's young people to live more responsibly than their elders.

"All our lives, it's been all about us," Daniels, who recently turned 60, said of his generation. "We were the 'Me Generation.' We wore t-shirts that said 'If it feels good, do it.' The year of my high school commencement, a hit song featured the immortal lyric 'Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today.'" [bold added]

Yes -- and this wasn't just another journalist giving a sloppy summary of someone else's words -- Mitch Daniels condemned selfishness. In fact, he places it at the lowest rung of the hell of short-range moral dereliction:

As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish.

To be completely fair, Daniels's speech is inconsistent about the meaning of the term, confusing (or package-dealing) it with legitimate vices, but the fact remains that his words are at odds with those of John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (which is prophetic for a good reason). In a time of crisis such as this, there is a dire need for moral clarity.

John Galt was clear that actual selfishness is anything but short-range or whim-driven and, most importantly, not sacrificial -- of self to others or of others to self. Consider Galt's Oath, taken by the strikers in the novel:

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. (675)

The Baby Boomers certainly did their share of asking everyone else to live for their sake, which is actually anything but selfish. But the course taken to be the opposite (and too frequently equated with "responsibility" today), sacrificing oneself to others, is also wrong. It is also -- like that of the Baby Boomers -- the very morality of altruism to which the GOP has succumbed, and which has driven it to become the other big government party rather than a proper government party of freedom and individual rights. Mitchell is certainly a proponent of this morality, as evidenced by a favorite government program of his.

If there is one major change America needs post haste, it is to pull back from the current orgy of human sacrifice. There is an alternative to being a moocher versus being a sucker, and that is to choose to be neither, to be an individualist. Daniels, by condemning the only morality that supports such a choice, has made it clear to me that he doesn't have the big moral guns needed to point the GOP in the right direction, much less save it.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 439

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

Rand Gets the Last Laugh

Via HBL is an interesting, mostly positive, book review of Atlas Shrugged which focuses on the story of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, drawing parallels between its theme of false hope and the election of Barack Obama, as well as between that company's downfall and that of General Motors.

And so the workers voted overwhelmingly to follow the new plan, which would mean that no worker would fall through the cracks -- everyone would take care of everyone else. "We thought it was good," the tramp says wearily. "No, that's not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good."

And so begins this experiment in "modified" capitalism. As the worker explains it, "The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need." Of course, in the long run, "modified capitalism" turns out to be socialism or worse, and as Rand points out with brutal logic, it leads inevitably to a system that encourages laziness and lying and punishes success. [bold added]

Reviewer Frank Miele does accuse Rand of unspecified "excesses" once or twice, and, similarly to an issue Diana Hsieh raises regarding a recent Amity Shlaes column on the same novel, his appreciation of the novel is mainly at the political level. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see wider acceptance of Rand as a serious commentator among a growing number of intellectuals after the savaging her work often got in the past.

And Speaking of Bankruptcy

A Rasmussen poll indicates that fewer than half of all current owners of GM cars would buy from the same company again.

That figure includes just 30% who are Very Likely to do so. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% of current GM owners are not likely to buy another GM car, while 16% are not sure.

My wife and I will be able to make do with the occasional Zip Car, now that we're in Boston, but as far as cars go, I am a Honda man.

That said, I was about to say something cute like, "If you put a gun to my head and made me buy an American car (That was only a figure of speech, Barry.), I expect that it would be a Ford."

Of course, as Frank Miele pointed out:

Pity poor Ford Motor Co. which was the only one of the Big Three automakers in the United States that was healthy enough to pass up government bailout money last November. Now, instead of owing money to the government, they actually have to compete AGAINST the government (the new owner of GM) selling cars.

And remember, the government has the improper power of regulating that industry, setting the terms by which Ford will "compete" with it and, not to put too fine a point on things, holding a gun to our heads and making us buy from GM. So, actually, Barry is poised to hold a gun to my head and make me buy GM, only his pal Cass Sunstein might call that "nudging."

I haven't driven a Ford lately, but perhaps, instead of "Fix Or Repair Daily," we could come up with a new pseudo acronym.

I propose, "Free OR Die."

Clean Air Standards vs. Biodiesel

When I first encountered this story about how hippie regulations have made it impossible to run 100% hippie fuel in diesel engines, I laughed out loud:

Until two years ago, all diesel engines were [compatible with pure biodiesel (aka B100)]. Then standards set by both the Environment Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board, phased in for 2007, required all passenger vehicles to meet the same, stricter emissions. That meant diesel manufacturers had to reduce emissions of NOX and particulate matter to meet those of gas-powered cars. These standards were created with good intentions -- to look out for our health by improving the air that we breath. (After all, particulate matter is a known carcinogen.) But the way most manufacturers did this created a setback for those of us trying to use biofuels. [link dropped]

As a bonus, get a load of how slavishly loyal to the government the author is. The government, which improperly bullies everyone around nowadays, is doing so "to look out for our health." But the manufacturers who have to design engines around its arbitrary regulations are villains because this means that if you buy from some of them, you might have to (gasp!) adulterate your fuel by 2% with fuel stolen straight from Mother Earth's veins.

Somehow, I would not be surprised if, pressed on the matter, this man would exhibit other symptoms of "Vitamin F deficiency" and demand that diesel particulate filters be outlawed.

Stop to Smell the Flowers

It's been a while since I've done so, but this morning's visit to Thrutch was richly rewarded with no less than three picture sets of the latest of his stunning orchids! I especially like the last of the three.

-- CAV

The Not-So-Forgotten Woman

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This spring, I enjoyed reading Amity Schlaes' new political history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man. Although I disliked the meandering, narrative style of the book, I learned much of value about the politics that created and sustained the Great Depression for it. I definitely recommend it.

Given that background, I was very interested to read this Bloomburg column by the same author on Atlas Shrugged: Rand's Atlas Is Shrugging With a Growing Load. (It was published last week, but I only read it yesterday.) The column isn't particularly deep: it reads Atlas on a purely political level. Here's a sample:

Rand knew that government tends to drive the most- productive economic figures away even as it pretends to utilize them. Today's shortage of primary care doctors serves as an example. Various administrations, Democratic and Republican, have tried to nudge more medical students into primary care. Young doctors simply haven't complied. That is in part because of the higher compensation of specialties. But it is also because the great charm of being a primary care doctor -- autonomy to work in a range of areas -- has been removed.

Rand foresaw this: "Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce," says one of her characters. "It is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled."

Long before managed-care existed, Rand was describing doctors' frustration with it.

Back in March, Greg Salmieri wrote the following about the tendency to focus only on the political lessons of Atlas:

Most of the recent discussion of Atlas has focused on its political themes, creating the impression that the novel is essentially a condemnation of government intervention in the economy. However, its scope, its relevance to the current crisis, and the reasons for its enduring appeal go much wider and much deeper than this. Galt goes on strike not simply against high taxes and unjust regulations, but against the morality of altruism, which Rand identifies as the cause of such measures, and against the world-view of which this moral code is an expression--a philosophy that denies the efficacy of reason and the absolutism of reality.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel about the role of the mind in man's existence. In it, Rand diagnoses not only political and economic trends, but also much of the frustration, injustice, and pain that we experience in our personal lives, tracing them all back to the mind-stultifying ideology that has come to dominate western culture and has replaced the Enlightenment ideals on which America was founded. As a prescription for the rebirth of America, and as a guide to anyone who seeks to make the most of his life, Atlas offers a revolutionary philosophy of reason and egoism.

First and foremost, however, Atlas Shrugged is a literary masterpiece: Rand presents her ideas in the form of an ingeniously plotted mystery, with unforgettable characters, heart-wrenching conflicts, and an inspiring resolution. The thousands who have picked the novel up as a result of the financial crisis are getting more than they bargained for, and they're in for a real treat.

Dr. Salmieri recommends Robert Mayhew's new anthology, Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I've not yet had a chance to read it, but based on the quality of the prior volumes and the contributors, I definitely recommend it to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the novel.

In any case, I do not mean to complain about Amity Schlaes' focus on the politics of Atlas in her column. Reasonably accurate and positive reviews -- particularly of a book published 50 years ago -- are always welcome. As Salmieri observes, most readers will find more to interest them in the book than just commonality with current political trends.

Brad Thompson Lecture in Denver

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Brad Thompson will be in Denver to speak at the Leadership Program of the Rockies this upcoming Friday, and he will be giving a lecture for Front Range Objectivism entitled "Atlas Shrugged: The Great American Novel" on Saturday evening. Here's the information -- please forward it to any fans of Atlas Shrugged you know in Colorado:

Dr. C. Bradley Thompson on "Atlas Shrugged: The Great American Novel"

• Date: Saturday, June 13th, 2009
  
• Time: 8:00-10:00 pm lecture; doors open at 7:15 pm
  
• Location: Broomfield Auditorium, 3 Community Park Road, Broomfield, Colorado
  
• Cost: $20.00 non-students, $5.00 for students. Make checks payable to FROGS and send your check to FROGS c/o Betty Evans, 1140 US Hwy 287 STE 400-283, Broomfield, CO 80020; use Paypal to send your payment to betty@frontrangeobjectivism.com; or you can pay in cash or check at the event.
  
• RSVP: Please RSVP to Betty Evans via e-mail (betty@frontrangeobjectivism.com) or phone (303.421.7334). An approximate attendance count is needed for the event but please feel free to attend without an RSVP.

Atlas Shrugged is a book about America and for America. The novel's themes, while universal in nature, find their existential expression in the history and culture of the United States. In this lecture, Dr. Thompson demonstrates how Ayn Rand defended and completed the original principles of the American Founding through the presentation of her revolutionary philosophy, Objectivism. Dr. Thompson will argue that Atlas Shrugged is the "great American novel."

C. Bradley Thompson is the BB&T Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study Capitalism. He received his Ph.D at Brown University, and he has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London. Professor Thompson is the author of the award-winning book John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty.

Because of the resurgence in the popularity of Atlas Shrugged, this FROST event will be a lecture only. Please invite anyone that you know who might enjoy the talk.

Recap #45

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I haven't done a recap for a few weeks, so this recap covers more than just this past week.

Lately, on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM: Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine:

• Monday, May 18, 2009: How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, May 19, 2009: More Waiting in Massachusetts by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, May 20, 2009: Massachusetts Cost Containment by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Thursday, May 21, 2009: Bernstein On Innovation by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Friday, May 22, 2009: How Washington Will Ration Health Care by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, May 26, 2009: Luntz's Talking Points by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, May 27, 2009: Physician Shortages by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Thursday, May 28, 2009: Video: Universal Car Care by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Friday, May 29, 2009: Ups and Downs in Massachusetts by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Monday, June 1, 2009: How US Health Care Stacks Up by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, June 2, 2009: Rhoads: Force Is Not Competition by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, June 3, 2009: Trojan Horse by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Thursday, June 4, 2009: Killing Medical Innovation by Paul Hsieh, MD
  

Lately on FA/RM, the blog of Free Agriculture - Restore Markets:

• Wednesday, May 20, 2009: Opposition to NAIS Dominates the Listening Sessions by Monica
  
• Wednesday, May 27, 2009: Forbidden Fruits by Monica
  
• Wednesday, June 3, 2009: Feedlot Cattle Fattened on Gummy Bears by Monica
  
• Saturday, June 6, 2009: Opposition to NAIS Remains Strong by Monica
  

Punishing Google for Its Success

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

Punishing Google for Its Success

By Alex Epstein (Investor's Business Daily, June 4, 2009)

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice recently announced that it will dramatically increase enforcement of antitrust laws against successful, dominant companies who allegedly harm competition by wielding too much “market power.” What sorts of companies? Experts agree that the first targets might include one of America’s most beloved. “This will be bad news for heavyweights in the tech industries,” a leading scholar told the New York Times, “companies like Google.”

But wait: Isn’t Google a company whose products and services, centered around its fabulously popular search engine, benefit millions of Americans and businesses? Shouldn’t Americans be celebrating Google, and shouldn’t the government be leaving it alone?

No, antitrust enforcers say. Google has become too “dominant” in the search engine market--that is, too many of us choose to type in http://www.google.com/ instead of http://www.yahoo.com/ or http://www.live.com/. This allegedly gives Google too much power over those who wish to buy its coveted, keyword-based advertising. In an influential article on leading technology blog TechCrunch, Wharton professor Eric Clemons argued that “Google enjoys monopoly power over corporations that participate in its keyword auctions” and “Google is abusing its monopoly position by overcharging corporations for access to consumers.”

But what does it even mean to have “abusive monopoly power?”  Well, consider what the “power” of Google--a company no one is forced to deal with and anyone is free to compete with--really amounts to.

Through incredible technical innovation and brilliant management and marketing, Google has created by far the most popular search engine on the planet, attracting hundreds of millions of users. Through additional innovation, it has created the AdSense program, which offers advertisers the ability to reach users whose searches contain keywords associated with the advertisers’ products. Millions of advertisers eager to reach that Google user-base are willing to pay substantially higher rates than less-popular search engines can charge. Google even holds expensive auctions for top keywords.

Google’s prices and terms, often denigrated as “overcharging” and “unfair,” are in fact earned. And Google’s power to attain them exists only as long as it continues to offer superior value to its advertising customers. The minute AdSense’s rates stop making financial sense to advertisers, Google will see its dominance disappear. Critics bemoan the difficulty faced by competitors trying to overtake Google in search and advertising revenue--but that just proves how much value Google brings to the table, relative to anyone else. This is grounds for admiration of a superior competitornot prosecution for being “anticompetitive.”

Google has no power to force consumers to use its products and no power to prevent competitors from offering products of their own. Consequently, it can pose no threat to anyone’s rights or to the competitive process. (If Google ever does use coercion, as is alleged in a copyright case against the company, it should be prosecuted--but this has nothing to do with antitrust.)

There is, however, one player in today’s market that can thwart competition: the government. By using the vast and arbitrary political power given to it by antitrust law, the government can forcibly control successful companies such as Google and Microsoft, telling them what products they cannot sell, what markets they cannot enter, what prices they cannot charge. Obama’s new push to “protect competition” is the real threat to competition. Under the reign of antitrust, any superior company can be stopped in its tracks because some bureaucrat, company, or academic decides that the prices in its voluntary contracts are too high, or its voluntary terms are too onerous, or evento take another common accusation against Google--that its stable of free products is too large! In other words, Google is to be shackled so that future competitors can catch up to Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Books.

Success earned in a free, competitive process is an achievement. Our Department of Justice regards it as a crime. Thus, we may well see Google undergo the fate of Microsoft, which has been tortured, drained, and shackled by more than a decade of antitrust persecution--for adding a web browser to its fabulously successful operating system. Google famously encourages employees to devote 20% of their time to creative projects of their own choosing. An antitrust case could effectively force much of that precious time and energy to be devoted to mollifying and obeying Washington’s economic little Caesars. Let’s challenge this travesty-in-the-making, along with its underlying theory that successful companies possess “monopoly power,” before America commits yet another sin against capitalism.

 

Obama Submits

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

One could devote a career to dissecting President Barack Obama‘s speech at Cairo University in Egypt on June 4th and point out in detail its numerous errors, fallacies and untruths. One could even dwell on how apparently naïve his is about the nature of Islam, an ignorance of it that is all the more revealing because he claims to have been exposed to Muslim instruction in Indonesia as a child. His patronizing boast of having come from a Kenyan family “that includes generations of Muslims” is utterly irrelevant. A man is not made by his ancestors -- not unless he chooses to be.

On minor errors, Daniel Pipes, the prominent authority on Islam, noted that:

“Barack Obama’s mention of ’seven million American Muslims’ in the course of his rambling and complex six-thousand-word address to the Muslim world from Cairo symbolizes the whole message….Study after study has found that demographic figure about three times too high. But Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] and the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] relentlessly promote the notion of seven or even ten million American Muslims. Obama’s accepting their version amounts to a giveaway, a cheap way to win the approbation of Islamists who so widely influence Muslim opinion.”

In short, Obama was soap-boxing for an American voting bloc. But it would be profitable to first dismiss his assertion that America and Islam are “not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead they overlap and share common principles, principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings,” an assertion he echoes throughout the rest of his speech whose theme could only be called, to second Pipes’ appraisal, “sucking up to the Muslims.”

America and Islam are not only “exclusive,” but political and philosophical antipodes. America stands for individual rights, freedom of thought and speech, objective justice, progress, and the liberty to live and conduct one’s life without encountering or resorting to force. Islam has never stood for those things, which are in fact objects of its scorn and hostility. Islam is a political/religious ideology that does not tolerate intellectual or religious freedom and which requires of its adherents complete and unquestioning submission to the words and wishes of a ghost and its marauding prophet. Its concept of justice is barbaric and tribal. Very little of that brutal “justice” as it is practiced in Muslim countries makes headlines in the West; but then again, such murders, mutilations, “honor” killings and the like also occur in the West and the U.S., but do not attract any news coverage, because that would be construed as “stereotyping” Islam and Muslims.

There is no “dignity” to be observed in seeing a single person prostrate himself in obeisance to Mecca, while the spectacle of hundreds performing the same submission is obscene. (It could be humorous; I oft times hope that some comedy group would be brave enough to satirize Islam and Muslims, just as the Monty Python group satirized Christianity.) There is no “dignity” to be observed in Muslim women forced to wear drab, de-sexing traditional garb. Muslims would probably agree with the latter evaluation. What is there in Islam or any of its practitioners to “respect”?

Islam, after the Catholic Church, was the most intolerant creed in history and in existence now. One is either a Muslim, a conquered kaffir or dhimmi -- or dead. Islamists believe in progress only if there is something to loot and that can be had without violating the primitive precepts of the Koran -- such as camels, slaves, oil fields, or foreign property -- but Islam itself is not by its nature a genesis of progress, nor can it ever be. A moral code that requires the voluntary or enforced stunting or compartmentalization of the mind is not going to invent air-conditioning or nuclear power plants or open heart surgery. It can appropriate the products of a free mind, but never originate them. That makes it a preeminently parasitical ideology.

Islam’s chief source of moral authority is the Koran, which, like the Torah and the Bible, is a hodge-podge of fanciful, disparate, and unintegrated casuistic imperatives and fables of questionable moral import. Moreover, it encourages and sanctions holy war or jihad against non-believers and their conquest by force or taqiya or deception. There is no theological “subtext” in its exhortations to kill or enslave Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims “wherever you find them”; these and similarly belligerent injunctions throughout the Koran are not euphemistic commands to “love thy neighbor“ and “cast not the first stone.” They are to be taken literally. The “violent extremists” Obama inveighed against in his speech are only practicing the core tenets of Islam; as I have remarked in past commentaries, remove those tenets from Islam, and what would be left would not be Islam, but a creed as insipid and pacific as that of the Amish.

Yet, the fundamental, anti-mind, anti-philosophy, and anti-moral character of the Koran was selectively overlooked, allowing Obama to quote from it three times during his speech. Those taken-out-of-context nuggets were lifted from a mountain of contaminated verbal slag. But, then, Obama and his aides are not particularly finicky about where they find “wisdom.” Look at the composition of his White House staff and the character of his appointees.

In one section of his speech, Obama delivers a series of compliments to “Islam” which are in fact calumnies against the West, in which he credits Islam with technological and medical achievements. But the Arabs who largely rediscovered Greek and Roman thought and science a millennia ago were exceptions to the rule of Islam. “Tolerant” Islam snuffed out the Arab Enlightenment. For an excellent refutation of Obama’s assertion that the West owes Islam any kind of cultural debt, see Andy Clarkson’s “The United States of America and Islam have nothing fundamental in common.”

As ideas, America and Islam are mutually exclusive and fundamentally incompatible. There is no reconciliation possible between freedom and servitude, between reason and faith, between progress and stagnation, between the sanctity of property and legalized theft, between individual rights and societies policed by priestly castes. As with reason versus any other faith or religion, it is a matter of “either-or.” Obama repeated what he said in Ankara, Turkey in April, that the United States “is not and never will be at war with Islam.” That may be true, however, Islam has been and is certainly now at war with the U.S. and with the West. Obama refuses to acknowledge that reality, because, politically, psychologically, and morally, he would be at home in any Muslim society. One can easily imagine him rising through the echelons of such a society to become a power in it or over it.

“I know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second president, John Adams, wrote ‘The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.’ And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.”

He knows no such thing. One cannot imagine how a collection of undifferentiated manqués can “enrich” any nation. Look at what is happening to Britain and Europe. True, Islam has “always” been a part of America’s story in that Muslim pirates preyed on American merchant vessels and Muslim monarchs seized American oil fields. In fact, well into the first quarter of the 19th century, Muslims raided European port towns from Iceland to Ireland to Britain to France and Spain, and in the Mediterranean, for slaves. And, with all due respect to John Adams, he never had to deal personally with Muslims. If he had ever gone to Morocco or Algiers or any other part of the world in which Islam held sway, he might have agreed with Winston Churchill’s evaluation a century later of how pathetic and miserable the life of a Muslim was.

Furthermore, given all the research facilities in Washington available to Obama and his speech-writers, one wonders where they find this “history.” The treaty of 1786 with Morocco, which implicitly recognized the United States, was secured with what can only be called a bribe of gifts worth $10,000 to the Emperor of Morocco. Had it not been paid, it would have been piracy as usual, in competition with the potentates of Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis to seize American merchant vessels and hold the crews for ransom.

France was the first nation to recognize the United States as an independent nation, when it assisted the Revolution with money, troops, and naval support. Britain necessarily recognized the U.S. when it agreed in 1782 to negotiate a treaty with the “13 U.S.,” signed in Paris in 1783 and ratified by Congress in 1784. Next to recognize the U.S. was the Netherlands. For a summary account of American relations with the Barbary States, see the Avalon Project at Yale Law School.

See also my commentaries, Barbary Pirates: Old and New, on Rule of Reason, from August 2007; The Janus Face of Islam from September 2006; or Our Islamic Nemesis, Then and Now from August 2006 for further discussions of the impossibility of “peace” with Islam, a political/religious ideology fundamentally and necessarily driven to conquest by the same psychopathic forces that drove Nazism, with which Islamic leaders sympathized then and probably still do, although they are keeping that under their headdresses. The paramilitary organizations of Hamas and Hezbollah have adopted the Nazi military parade style; their mass salutes are merely closed-fist versions of the Nazi “sieg heil.”

The latter subject is not one much known in this country. Muslim hatred of the Jews in the Middle East predates World War I. Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was especially eager to exterminate Jews in Palestine and personally discussed the project with Hitler. Saudi Arabia was another pro-Nazi sympathizer. In point of fact, I cannot recall a single Middle Eastern, 20th century dictator or strongman who at one time or another had not expressed admiration for the Nazis, except, perhaps, the Shah of Iran (the son, 1919-1980). For a revealing account of how the Nazis planned to exploit the Arab “liberation movement” by assigning special military units to the region to direct the Middle Eastern branch of the Holocaust, see Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers’ “’Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine‘: The Einsatzkommando of the Panzer Army Africa, 1942.” These units were modeled on the ones that directed the massacres of Jews in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia, or aided in rounding them up for transport to the death camps.

Before flying to Cairo, Obama stopped in Saudi Arabia to “consult” with King Abdullah, the creature he bowed to at the London summit. Saudi Arabia and its repressive Wahhabist monarchy are ample proof that Islam can only appropriate the products of free minds, not originate or create them, in this instance, having seized Western created oil fields and investing the loot from them in the West. And, one must question Obama’s apparent fascination with the Saudis. Is it rooted in power-envy, or an obsession founded on pragmatism?

“Saudi Arabia and the United States have a near 60-year-old relationship based on guaranteeing oil supplies in return for U.S. protection for the Saudi monarchy.”

The “relationship” can only be characterized as extortionate, one made possible by American willingness to prop up a medieval oligarchy by prohibiting the development of oil deposits in the U.S. One can bet that the Saudis have an army of well-paid lobbyists in Washington who ensure that an “environmentally conscious” Congress perpetuates that extortion.

It is a significant clue to how receptive the 3,000 guests at Cairo University who listened to Obama were to the idea of coexisting with Jews and Israel when they remained silent and unresponsive when he touched on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Buchenwald. As one ABC correspondent remarked, “You could’ve heard a pin drop.” But each statement of capitulation and compromise earned him applause. Every Islamist knows that a “two-state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is but a formula for bringing about the destruction of Israel. Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their policymakers do not know it. Or perhaps they do, but are counting on “empathy” to prevent it from happening.

All this is aside from the manner in which Obama began his address to the Muslim world.

“We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world, tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation but also conflict and religious wars.”

You can’t get more Marxist-Hegelian than that. America and Islam are thesis and antithesis struggling against each other in what must ultimately result in a tension-releasing starburst of collectivist union -- of pure communism, or socialism, or fascism, or a global caliphate, or whatever facilitates “global amity” and animates our “collective conscience.” This belief in the mystical powers of “coexistence and cooperation” and wishing they would work, of course, is stressed by Obama in his assertion that “Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.” That assertion must have provoked disgust in the defenders of the West, and laughter among Islamists.

What is Obama’s solution? What rain dance of his is expected to promote the climax of those impersonal “historical forces”? Not ideas. Not principles. Not the assertion of reason and rights. But “dialogue.” That is, compromise and give-and-take. It cannot mean anything else but have-not Muslims negotiating what they will take from the haves, and Islamists looting the carcass of Israel. It also means, as Obama stated, pouring more billions of dollars into the corrupt cesspool economies of Pakistan and Afghanistan and other areas of Islamist hegemony. “Humanity” and Immanuel Kant will it; Obama is dutifully unmindful of the deleterious consequences to the West. Or, perhaps not.

There is so much more in Obama’s Cairo speech that could be dissected. All his verbiage about freedom of religion, freedom of speech, “human rights” and “democracy“ is just one pre-packaged, mandatory shibboleth undercut by his demonstrable penchant for statism. In summary, however, his speech was one which George W. Bush himself could have delivered. It simply reaffirmed the evasive, non-judgmental, accommodating policies of the Bush years and broadened their scope.

It was a defining act of submission.

Adventure Box

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This idea of an Adventure Box from Amy Mossoff is just too fantastic:

The Mossoffs are a young family (although the individuals composing it are not so young), and until now we've been a bit unsettled, but we've managed to start at least one family tradition that I think will stick. I call it the Adventure Box. Every year at Christmas time, we decorate a shoe box in gift wrap and put it on a shelf that is easy to access. Throughout the year, we put mementos from trips, special occasions, along with all the greeting cards we receive, into the box. Next Christmas, we go through the box and label each item so that we won't forget what it meant. Then we write the year on the box and put it away and start a new one.

It's a simple idea, but we love doing it. It gives us a place to put all of those things that you don't want to throw away, but which have no "home." And we don't stress out about getting a souvenir from every single place we go, but having the Adventure Box in mind gives us something to think about when we're at a new place, and helps to tie all those experiences together. Going through the box is a great way to wrap up the year, and every single time, we're surprised at how many fun things we did.

For further details, read Amy's whole post. I love the idea, and I'm definitely going to implement it. I'm not a collector, nor particularly sentimental about stuff. However, I would like to save some important personal mementos of Paul's and my life in a reasonably organized and compact way. (I hate clutter.) Also, Paul and I do enjoy reflecting on the unexpected and interesting twists and turns of our lives. The holidays are an excellent time for such reflections. An annual "Adventure Box" would allow us to do all that -- without much time or effort.

Thanks for the great idea, Amy!

Conceptualizing "recession"

By SN from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Officially, recessions are measured by how the economy is changing. I think this is wrong. While it is useful to know if an economy is getting better or if it is getting worse, the primary measure of health ought to measure it against what it could be, not against what it was in the last quarter.

Example: Imagine that the economy goes into a tailspin, that unemployment shoots up from 5% to 10%, and that GDP plummets from $ 14 trillion to $13 trillion. Now, imagine that things start to improve after about 1 year. However, imagine two different scenarios...

Come-back scenario: A year after turning downward, the economy starts to pick up again. In another year, it is back where it began, with unemployment at 5% and GDP back to $14 trillion. The dip and return took two years; but, as currently conceptualized, the recession would be measured as being 1 year long, because that is when the economy started to rebound. (i.e. the recession is measured from "peak" to "trough").

"New normal" scenario: Under an alternative scenario, a year after turning downward, the economy flattens, and then climbs almost imperceptibly. Then, another year out, it starts to climb a little faster, but is still quite laggard. Finally, 5 years later unemployment is back down at 5%, and GDP is back to $14 trillion. Even though the dip and return took so many years, the recession would be measured as being 1 year long, because that is when the economy stopped going any lower.

This way of conceptualizing a recession is faulty. We need a measure of economic health that meaningfully describes how an economy is doing, compared to its potential, not a measure that accepts the previous quarter as a "new normal" and rejoices in small upturns.

When Will We Abolish This?

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

Writing at City Journal, teacher Marc Epstein blows out of the water all illusions of reform of the New York City public school system since Chancellor Joel Klein's adoption of a "business model" of "accountability and results."

There are so many gory details -- like universal promotion -- within his piece that I'd just about have to reproduce its entirety here to do it justice, but the most important one just about says all that needs saying:

For years now, schools have been switching to "annualization" of their course offerings. Under this structure, students who fail the first semester of a sequential course (say, English 5 and 6) can get credit for both terms if they pass the second semester. The practical effect of this change is to destroy the work ethic of those students who've figured out how to game the system. By their junior and senior years, they know that they can blow off the first term and, with some effort in the second, get credit for the full course. For the schools' part, annualization obviates the need to create costly, inefficient "off-track" spring sections of sequential courses for students who failed the fall section. This helps cut down drastically on night school and summer school, and also sends graduation rates skyward. Under this flawed model, teachers face inexorable pressure to get their numbers up in the second term, however they can. [bold added]

One of the metrics Klein's "business model" employs happens to be graduation rates.

Too bad that in the real business world, customers who have not been pickpocketed before entering the free market would not be confronted with a single huge, heavily-subsidized, inept (but apparently cheap) competitor and an army of small, expensive ones. And too bad that in a free market, it is the customer who sets his own standards for what constitutes an acceptable return on his investment.

In a free market, parents would have to spend actual, hard-earned money on their children's education, and might not be placated by simply having a piece of paper with "diploma" stamped on it in Gothic lettering shoved at them after their child has been coddled for several years. They might look at things like how successful a school's graduates were at such things as winning gainful employment or entering college. The inflationary, statistical expedients of publicity-hungry career politicians would no longer be able serve as a pretty facade for the mass disfigurement and extermination of young souls (See item 4.) that is happening at their parents' expense.

"But how would the poor go to school?" the whining will go. Hustling in the streets would be preferable to the above in many respects. The whole idea behind public education is that everyone needs and ought to have education, because education helps prepare children to survive as adults. Everyone ought to have two arms, too, but if the state started sending children to "public gymnasiums" to have one or both of them crippled or removed, there would be a massive public outrage and a loud call for the immediate abolition of the practice.

I see no essential difference between this and what is going on in many public schools today. Again, I call for a freeing of the educational sector from government control. New York should stop toying with cheap, toxic models from communist countries and use the real thing to educate its children.

-- CAV

Time for another default?

By SN from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Should the U.S. declare a default on its governmental debt?

I never imagined I would suggest that the U.S.A. renege on its borrowings, but I'm starting to entertain the idea as a "lesser evil". Federal debt was about 55% to 65 % of GDP at the start of 2007; now, with all then new government spending and "rescuing", it is slated to rise to 90% of GDP by 2011.

The Bostonians

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

The 2nd book in my reading goal is completed. Reading this one was painful, and while I now have Anna Karenina on my nightstand, I’m convinced that it will be a far easier task than plowing my way through Henry James’ The Bostonians.

Published in 1886, The Bostonians tells the story of Boston feminist Olive Chancellor, and her rivalry with Southern lawyer and cousin Basil Ransom. At stake in this rivalry is the allegiance of young Verena Tarrant, a young Bostonian woman, whom Olive has recruited as a protégé in the feminist movement. Verena is a capable public speaker and Olive hopes that she will use those skills in the interest of advancing women’s independence. Basil’s interest in Verena is purely romantic; however, he is a Southern conservative and disagrees with her feminist views entirely.

The plot of the novel chronicles the interactions of these three characters and revolves around Verena’s choices as a result of the influence exerted on her by Ransom and Olive Chancellor. The plot concept has potential and James could have taken it in several interesting directions. However, the book falls flat due to several key aspects.

First, James prose is stiltingly dull and tiresome. I am used to the long extended sentences prevalent during the period, but his descriptions are lifeless and far too abstract.  Second, James characterizations do not add to the plot or help explain the characters actions. In fact, the key plot turn centers around Verena’s final decision. To explain this decision he does not expose us to the arguments that Basil uses to effect her change of heart. Even more egregious, he misleads the reader in regards to Verena’s character, effectively saying that her final decision reflects the fact that her actual character is nothing like what he has described throughout the entire book! This is the equivalent to the pulp crime mystery whose final attribution is explained by the revelation of critical knowledge heretofore unavailable to the reader.

I have been told that The American is James’ best novel, but unfortunately, it’ll be a while before I can muster the courage to plunge back into a book by this author.

Obama’s Assault on the Mind

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

White House press secretaries have earned the reputation over the last half dozen administrations of being practiced in the arts of obfuscation, deception and lying with straight faces as opaque as plastomer. The White House press corps, for their part, have become inured to the hyperbolic and elliptical rhetoric. Depending on whether the corps are friendly or hostile to the administration, individual members can read the subtexts of a press secretary’s statements and, governed by their biases and subjectivist preferences, tailor their interpretations one way or the other and project them as kinda-sorta news or analyses of what may or may not be official policies or positions. Their talent is to describe a pea-soup fog. This is what passes for modern journalism.

The press corps of President Barack Obama’s White House are not a true press corps. The majority of its members have betrayed their vocation and attend these rigged press conferences as a formality. The events seem to be more dumb-show and noise for groundlings than opportunities for news-gathering. One gets the sense that the White House would rather just dispense with the formality. The corps may as well be animated mannequins; they rise on cue to ask pre-screened questions of the press secretary or president; the latter will have prepared answers to those questions, the former is a skilled fog-making machine. Teleprompter or no teleprompter, nothing could be phonier than give-and-take spontaneity that may as well be rehearsed.

Former President George W. Bush at least had a modicum of honesty and, during his infrequent press conferences, faced a largely hostile press corps and did not do well. His advisors kept him off-stage as much as possible and let his press secretary run interference. But now the news media have largely become a collective shill for Obama’s policies, allies who give him a free pass for his contradictions and flip-flop policies, and who can be trusted to pass on to the public the latest official ukase. If any one of them decides not to play ball, presumably he will be put on a press conference “do not recognize” list.

Robert Gibbs, 38, a career political creature, has been Obama’s press secretary since January, and has worked for Obama before, during and after the latter’s Senate days. It should come as no surprise that he was also press spokesman for Senator John Kerry and other Democratic politicians. While he is no Joseph Goebbels, the maniacal propaganda chief of Nazi Germany whose obfuscations, deceptions, and lies were dutifully repeated as news by an unfree press, Gibbs performs much the same role for a press that chooses to be unfree. As Goebbels did, as the “public image” managers of tyrants in the past have done, he helped to create the myth of infallibility and the populist persona of Barack Obama, and now is responsible for preserving them. In that unconscionable fraud he is aided by a largely obliging news media.

But cracks are appearing in the façade of Obama’s “open presidency.” They are becoming more and more evident in Gibbs. On May 27, in response to a blog statement by Newt Gingrich that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, ought to withdraw from consideration or be withdrawn because of racist and feminist remarks she made, Gibbs said something that was in the spirit of Goebbels. Responding to the Republicans’ opposition to Sotomayor, one based on her past affiliations, her less than stellar record of understanding the Constitution or even being cognizant of it, her apparent hostility to white males, and the media-generated myth that she is the daughter of immigrants (who, being Puerto Ricans, were actually U.S. citizens) who rose by her own efforts against tremendous odds (but, like Obama, probably the beneficiary of affirmative action or racial, gender, or “diversity” quota policies). Gibbs said, in the innocuous, undramatic tone of a garage mechanic recommending a certain grade of engine oil:

“I think it is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation.”

Briefly, there is no “aspect“ of Sotomayor‘s character or record which should be open to description, identification or debate. If anyone breaks that rule, Gibbs implied, the offending party will be smeared as a racist, bigot, and misogynist. Gibbs and chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel are in charge of the White House machinery that can manufacture a backlash of outrage. Ask Sotomayor legitimate questions at your own risk. Her confirmation hearing will be a “debate” in name only. Besides, her confirmation is “impending,” in the cards, a sure thing, so why bother dredging up inconvenient truths about her?

When you watch Gibbs fielding questions from the press corps, you do not have the sense that you are observing evil incarnate. You do not see a Goebbels-like maniac. What you see is a person who very likely never once placed a value on truth or honesty. You see a non-entity whose existence is assured by his willingness to obfuscate, deceive, lie and juggle banalities commensurate with his character and task. You see a human face that reflects little else but calculation of how best to say nothing that could be interpreted as an absolute, a nondescript face with blank, evasive eyes and a self-effacing manner that expects and gets the cooperation of his auditors in putting one over on themselves and on the whole country.

Whether Gibbs’ warning to the Republicans not to press too hard on Sotomayor’s qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court was a conscious flouting of the First Amendment -- he should know that even Senators have First Amendment rights that should not be threatened or abridged by a mere press secretary or anyone else, let alone by a president -- or was an impromptu rebuke that was insensible to that Amendment, is irrelevant. What matters is that, for a moment, in a handful of incautious but revealing words, the mask of respect for anyone’s right to freedom of speech was dropped. His warning was aimed not just at Senators, Internet bloggers and Newt Gingrich, but at the press and the news media. It was an all-encompassing growl of disapproval of any questioning of the alleged wisdom of his employer and of resentment for any questioning of his own assertions.

In the real world, the one beyond the White House and Congress, one would not give anyone like Gibbs or his assertions a second thought. His ilk are many, mean, and small. But threats emanating from the representative of a man who is consciously wreaking destruction on this country, who is contemptuous of the Constitution, individual rights, private property, and freedom of speech, should not be taken as a matter of routine. This is not the first time Obama‘s gofers have warned individuals away from speaking out on certain issues and facts. Gibbs’ statements are uttered with the tacit approval of the president. Neither the president, nor Gibbs, nor anyone else on the White House staff, wishes anyone to think and speak with any gravity about Sotomayor or to trouble her with inopportune questions, which, under oath, she must answer with possibly damaging truths, during Senate confirmation hearings or in any other setting. They are all prepared to take retaliatory measures if anyone does.

What remains to be seen is whether or not any member of the Senate committee will be brave enough to take his First Amendment rights seriously enough to pose a single inopportune question, one that may suggest why Obama is so ideologically comfortable with her.

Gibbs’ admonitory “advice” to critics of Sotomayor is an order not to think. A prohibition of thought necessarily extends to a prohibition from action, in this instance, to voluntarily refrain from asking questions lest the White House become “exceedingly“ nasty. After all, why bother thinking about a matter when one is proscribed from acting on it? It is a blatant and unforgivable attack on the mind. Further, Sotomayor’s silence on Gibbs’ mealy-mouth diktat speaks volumes about her own position on the issue of the First Amendment; she does not seem to be aware that Gibbs violated it, or perhaps she is hoping that no one has noticed.

But then, this has been the constant leitmotif of Obama’s conduct in office.

Public Funding vs. Education

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

I almost never listen to talk radio anymore, but if I did, I bet I'd hear this story get beaten like a dead horse today:

A kindergartner's mother cannot read Scripture during show and tell, even if the Bible is the boy's favorite book, a U.S. appeals court said Monday in the latest challenge over religion in public schools.

The Marple Newtown School District in suburban Philadelphia told plaintiff Donna Kay Busch in October 2004 that she could not read the Bible passages during her son's "All About Me" program. The school did permit the boy to discuss a poster that included references to his church as well as his family, pet and best friend.

The reasoning behind the ruling is sound: A mother was attempting to proselytize and the state, having no business promoting any specific viewpoint, had to forbid the activity from taking place in a forum intended for education and paid for with public funds.

Within the context of this case, the judge did well. What's interesting about the case is the context in which it occurs, and the questions about government funding of education it quickly leads to.

Why should the state not be in the business of promoting one ideology or another? (And yes, theocratic protests to the contrary, Christianity is an ideology.) Because government's modus operandi is the deployment of physical force against individuals. Properly, this force is retaliatory in nature, and employed only for the protection of individual rights. In short, the government makes us safe to live our lives as we see fit.

Since life does not come with an instruction manual, a crucial part of this freedom involves the free examination and exchange of philosophical views. Should the government give even the remotest appearance of taking sides in such a debate, that debate is stifled, if not ended outright. That is precisely why the Founding Fathers wrote religious freedom into law and why America is under attack on all fronts from religious totalitarians today.

This case is an example.

Even if the Bible really were this child's favorite book, no one had any business reading from it at a government function. [Note: Except students. See first two comments.] (We'll get to the question of whether this should be a government function shortly.) But later in the story, that assertion is cast into doubt. The boy's mother apparently reads it to him every day and, being an evangelical Christian, also seems to feel that her mission is to do exactly what she was doing, preaching to the captive audience this event provided her.

Conservatives on talk radio and elsewhere -- and not even particularly religious or zealous ones at that -- will pooh-pooh this, asking what harm a little Bible story can do to a child. They will hold this decision up like a leper's shroud as a blatant example of "the left-wing agenda" gone mad. They will be right that one story might be harmless, but wide off the mark about the important point, and especially so if they complain that freedom of speech has been abridged.

That point would be that the government should not be telling us how to educate our own children, and the conservatives will be wrong because freedom of property was abridged first. Were the education system completely private, parents like Donna Kay Busch would be perfectly free to read Bible verses to their children all day in kindergartens run by like-minded individuals or, failing that, within their own homes. But they would not be free to force this on the children of other parents who do not agree that pounding Bible verses into the skulls of children all day is the best way to educate them.

If most rank-and-file conservatives appreciated the danger to property rights posed by public education, they would not support it. And if theocrats were sincerely interested in freedom of speech, they would also fight against public education because they would realize that every attempt on their part to inculcate their values in a school setting would, at best, end up in court and that other values will necessarily end up being taught. (Read on.) But they find the opportunity to preach at captive audiences too great to resist.

And it is these "other values" that "will necessarily end up being taught" that make this case really interesting. Like America's Founding Fathers (but for different reasons), leftists will insist that we must have public education so the citizenry will have the skills and knowledge necessary to function as responsible citizens of a republic.

This is true, but how do we decide what skills are appropriate or what constitutes knowledge? Should children be taught to obey the alleged word of an alleged god? Should children be taught to question all assertions? Should they be taught the scientific method? Should they be trained to accept any and every "consensus", so long as it is held by men who claim to be scientists?

Ultimately, the question of what constitutes knowledge is a philosophical one, and any educator, state-sponsored or not, will end up having to take a stand on it. In other words, public education, by its very nature, involves government interference in the realm of public debate. Specifically, public education forces anyone who has to pay for it, to promulgate ideas one may or may not agree with. This is always wrong.

So the left is also wrong here. While the conservatives mouth pieties to freedom of speech while ignoring the fact that nobody is keeping Ms. Busch from reading the Bible to her own child, leftists will, for example, hide behind the "scientific" "consensus" while ignoring the fact that environmentalism is an ideology, is not scientifically sound, and would not equal political guidance even if it were.

Freesom is of a piece, and violating part of it eventually endangers all of it. Stealing property by government force, even for a good purpose like education, lands people in court for things they ought to be free to do on their own, and obscures the proper political solution, freedom, from view.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added parenthetical note.

"Babbit" by Sinclair Lewis

By SN from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The protagonist, Mr. Babbitt is a middle-aged, middle-class real-estate broker, who votes Republican, goes to church, and is the member of the right club; but, he is not very zealous about any of these aspects of his life. He is even open to alternatives in morality and politics, and he explores some of them. Babbitt is not a caricature we would reject as ridiculous. He is a realistic portrayal of a man who has chosen values which are about average for his background.

He's No Rand Disciple

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

He's No Rand Disciple

By Alex Epstein (Published in American Banker, May 20, 2009)

In a recent story about former BB&T CEO John Allison’s support of Ayn Rand’s laissez-faire ideas, including a gold standard, (“Allison Shrugs”) American Banker repeats an unfortunate misconception about Rand, one that is often used to undermine anyone who agrees with her: “Even former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, Rand’s most famous student, has backed away from her ideas as the financial crisis has deepened.”

But Greenspan can’t “back away” from something he hasn’t believed or supported for decades. Remember, this is a man who for two decades reveled in wielding the manipulative power granted to him as Fed Chairman--a job he once (rightly) argued should not exist. The New York Times called him “the infallible maestro of the financial system.” Free markets don’t have “infallible maestros”; they liberate us from such “maestros”--the central planners who have time and again falsely claimed the ability and the right to orchestrate (dictate) millions of economic lives.

Greenspan long ago degenerated into another central planner--and a particularly bad one, both because of his highly inflationary policies (a fundamental cause of the crisis) and because he implemented them under the banner of laissez-faire. If one wishes to understand or argue with the laissez-faire ideas of Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan is the last person to look to. He stands for free markets about as much as a Chinese censor stands for free speech.

A Doomsayers Postscript

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

This is in reply to some readers of “The Doomsayers.”

IMH: Yes, “global-cooling” was the sky-is-falling mania back in the 1970’s and I guess the mid-1980’s, before the alarmists discovered that no one was listening or buying it; so they switched to “global-warming” and ramped up their propaganda efforts, using the same but tweaked gossamer computer data. Which is why I wrote “a little over a decade ago.” It seems like a century ago, given the current level of thinking (or non-thinking). I don’t wonder about the root motivation of climate alarmists, either, which must be the same species of man-hatred as that of Waxman, Obama and company.

Michael Smith: Thanks for the CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute?) run-down on the House committee votes. Yes, I agree that Waxman’s and his ilk’s purpose, through their bill, is to compel Americans to commit economic suicide and reduce the survivors to rags and handouts from the government. They know that this would be the sole consequence, not as objective knowledge, but as the same kind of feral knowledge that Floyd Ferris exhibited in Atlas Shrugged. (They are practiced evaders of objective knowledge and of reality.) The worst thing anyone could do is what the Republicans did when they proposed the amendments to Waxman’s climate bill (which were predictably defeated), which was to assume that Waxman and his ilk have the best interests of the country at heart; thus the futility of proposing amendments to a piece of legislation they ought to know was authored by killers; all their amendments would have accomplished, had they been adopted, was to soften the blow and prolong the death-throes of this country.

Waxman and his ilk are not “misguided idealists.” They are killers posing as “public servants” in service to the “ideal” of non-existence. They know what they are doing. The Republicans and conservatives do not know what they are doing, because they are obsessed with concrete issues (such as vote-rigging, which I‘m certain Obama is guilty of through ACORN and George Soros and the Democratic National Committee), or God, or “traditional” values, or all three irrelevancies and so miss the whole point of such legislation. There is no one in either the House or Senate who understands the evil and who can call Waxman out on his malignancy and ulterior agenda. Or Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, et al.

And, we mustn’t forget the role that George Bush played in this on-going tragedy. John Lewis commented with his usual clarity on Bush’s responsibility for it on the Oactivists blog. Obama is simply his anxious, in-a-hurry successor to the very same policies that Bush initiated and endorsed for eight years. (Some years ago on Rule of Reason I called Bush a socialist.) Even some Democrats are noticing the similarities between Bush‘s rhetoric and actions and Obama‘s. If Obama had been president on 9/11, he would have committed the same treason as Bush’s, which was to not eradicate states that sponsor terrorism or ask Congress for a declaration of war against them, but to evade knowledge of the evil of our enemies, and commit American lives and treasure to a no-win “police” action against the Muslim “bad guys” and those who attacked this country.

Observe Obama‘s “patriotic” commitment of more troops to Afghanistan; do you really think he wants to defeat the Taliban, or is it to expend and sacrifice our military vitality and resources? I have never believed that his words and actions stem from ignorance or un-intelligence. He is a valueless man who seeks to destroy values. I curse every time I hear him “honor” our soldiers, and wish I could tell him he has no right to lay wreathes on their tombs or set foot on any American battlefield or even to visit Normandy. If any of the Marines or Secret Service assigned to his protection had an ounce of moral certitude, they should quit, rather than guard the life of this anti-American, anti-life president.

Note that Obama, like Bush, constantly harps on the necessity of “sacrifice,” not only of American civilians, but of our troops. Is or is not that the same code of altruism? What matters the Republican or Democratic label? And now that the United Nations and the European Union have taken Obama’s measure, they have become even more obviously our “drooling beasts.” They know he is one of them.

Note also that Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and other wealthy apologists for their wealth, and many other Obama supporters, as well, haven’t said much lately, because Obama and Congress have marked them for poverty, too. As far as Obama and other socialists are concerned, their past philanthropy won’t be enough to admit them to Marxist heaven; they must give and give and give until it really hurts. If I weren’t going to be affected by Obama’s “spread the wealth around” plans, I would say that is perfect justice for having supported the irrational from either conviction or from pragmatism and got this creature elected.

Jim Douthit’s analogy of Osama bin Laden as president who enacts policies designed to destroy this country is a brilliant piece of thinking (forwarded to me after I posted “The Doomsayers“) that ought to be sent to every member of Congress, and to the White House, as well, if only to put them all on notice that men of reason know what they’re up to (which may or may not stall them, probably not). So, we have every right, every justification, every piece of evidence, to dub Barack “Obama bin Laden.”

If bin Laden’s purpose on 9/11 was to plunge the country into economic and political chaos as a prelude to its downfall and takeover by an Islam-friendly dictator -- one who is also friendly with other America-haters, such as Hugo Chavez and the Saudis, to name a few -- Obama is accomplishing that very same purpose; but Bush, as John Lewis emphasized, was there first. Waxman and his ilk have been and continue to be only their accessories to the crime-in-progress.