End-of-Year Post

This post will be my last of the year as I will start my annual hiatus from blogging once I hit the "Publish Post" button. Look for me to be back here by January 2, 2007.

I find myself feeling a bit rushed (and preoccupied) at the moment, mainly due to the numerous things I still need to do for the holidays. If this post seems a bit disjointed, that would be why....

Looking back at the previous two end-of-year posts, I see that I never posted blog stats for last year and that I have gotten out of the habit of keeping track of them this year. So just for kicks, I'll go ahead and pull up the stats for comparison of all three years now:

statistic	2004	2005	2006
visits/month (1)	130	2,973	4,125
technorati rank	780,679	43,294	37,607
TTLB rank	14,889	5,363	4,546
TTLB creature	wiggly worm	crawly amphibian	flappy bird
blogshares valuation (B$)	1,000.00	25,586.63	45,959.95

(1) This is sitemeter's automatic projection for the month based on visits in the past week.

While it is fun to see the old corporation growing, such statistics really do not mean all that much. Why? Because the value of any activity to the person doing it cannot really be measured by comparing his output to that of others.

Is blogging a worthwhile activity to me? On balance, it has been, but it has also been disappointing in some respects.

On the positive side of the ledger, I have gotten myself into the habit of keeping an eye out for developments in politics and culture to the point that it is becoming second nature: I can be quite efficient at it now. I have also noticed over the past couple of years that my thinking about the relationship between philosophy and politics has become clearer and more sophisticated. I am not so sure that blogging has helped my writing, although it has taught me several things about writing in general and my writing in particular. Among them:

• I need to become better at judging whether something I want to have published is, in fact, good enough for publication.
• I need to raise the bar a little. Blogging is fun, but it will not advance my opinion writing career as much as getting into a print outlet.
• Blogging is easy. Writing a column is hard. I need to do less of the former and more of the latter.

Another positive of blogging has been that it has allowed me to meet lots of people I would otherwise probably have never met. I have gained quite an impressive collection of friends and contacts over the past couple of years. This alone makes blogging a worthwhile activity.

On the negative side of the ledger is that blogging takes quite a bit of time. I do not recall exactly when I decided to blog at the frequency I have maintained over the past year, but I decided to do it in part just to see whether I could. Well, I can and I know that I can, but I am feeling somewhat ragged right now and wondering how valuable this knowledge really is!

Even though I have been able to blog rather efficiently, I have come to realize that I cannot continue at quite the frenetic pace I have maintained over the past year. I am sure that for blogging to continue to be as worthwhile as it has been to me that I must continue posting regularly, but I will have to post less in order to have more time for other purposes. (A facility at work I have been waiting on should finally be complete and I want to devote more time to getting myself seen in print outlets.) Also, I over the past year, I have felt like I was working two jobs most of the time. I have no problem with that, but I want to realize more tangible benefits for this amount of effort.

I haven't worked out how I will adjust my blogging to achieve the best balance between good, regularly-published content and time for other writing, but finding that balance will be my major goal over the next year. So expect changes, but don't expect me to tell you what they will be, because I don't know myself!

In the meantime, I plan to enjoy some time off with my family and hope all of you can do the same. Thank you very much for taking the time to visit my blog. I wish all of you a very merry Christmas!

-- CAV

PS: Internet connectivity will be spotty. I may or may not get to comments or email over the next ten days.

Quick Roundup 130

Ten Five Things

Being introverted, my usual tendency with meme tags is to ignore them. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by Craig Ceeley's approach to the meme, "Ten Things I Love about America". He writes, "I thought I'd go with some items that I don't see mentioned every day, or are somewhat offbeat or otherwise uniquely appealing to me."

So here's my wrinkle on Craig Ceeley's twist: I can get very peevish about things that waste my time, don't measure up, or, worst of all, distract me from what I am thinking about. (That drawing up there on my masthead has its origins (scroll down to #3) in this -- erm, quality -- of my personality.)

Without further ado, here is my list, shortened because I am long on wind, but short on time -- and I am "doing" each item twice anyway!

Five Things I Love about America that Also Annoy Me

1. the telephone -- I hate being interrupted by the ring of a telephone when I am trying to think and yet feel the need to check on whether the call might be important. Most calls that are not deliberate intrusions, like telemarketing calls, are for things that could be more effectively handled through email anyway. Knowing this adds further annoyance to the distraction and to the inconvenience I feel because I cannot really accomplish anything else important at the same time as a call. I especially loathe telemarketers. (The worst are from firms such as Bank of America that abuse their business relationships in order to do an end run around the National Do Not Call Registry.)

But properly used, this marvelous American invention allows me to keep in touch with my loved ones, handle emergencies with sometimes ridiculous ease, or save enormous amounts of time and money getting valuable information.

2. Microsoft Windows -- No. I am not a Mac Addict. I cut my computing teeth in a Unix environment, meaning that I got used to such conveniences as an extremely customizable windowing environment, strict controls on who can access my data, not having to reboot twelve times when I could be doing actual work, not having to be physically present at the console of a machine I want to work on, not having to worry about viruses, etc., etc.

But, as Neal Stephenson once argued, the overwhelming market dominance of Windows led to widespread standardization (or at least interoperability) of the components of computer hardware, which was crucial for the eventual emergence of the open source software movement and therefore, of that successful Unix offshoot, Linux. I love Linux! Thank you, Mr. Gates, and congratulations on your enormous success!

3. "Milweiser" (i.e., nearly flavorless lager beer) -- I am a beer snob. In fact, I refused to drink beer at all until I went to college in Europe for a semester and tasted the real thing. I don't know why anyone drinks Miller or Budweiser or any of their countless imitators. Six ounces of the stuff will send you to the head without the slightest buzz. It is cheap and thus, I suppose you could use it as water for home brewing in a pinch. But, dear God! You can't taste anything!

Be that as it may, at one time, these brands were it. They were the American beer industry after (and thanks to) Prohibition. The presence of this beer industry, such as it was (with its pool of brewing expertise, its cultivation of a pool of beer drinkers, and its supporting supply infrastructure), made it easier for many of the home brewers who went on to become commercial craft brewers to get their start. American "Macrobrew" is thus even better in the enjoyment and the procreation departments than sex! Sex in a canoe, anyway!

4. SUV's -- For whatever reason, about 95% of the people who drive SUV's seem oblivious to the fact that they are driving trucks. In failing to take into account what they are driving, they are reckless on the road. They are also quite often very rude, for example, becoming obstacles in parking lots. Many will think nothing of blocking everyone else behind them for five minutes as they wait on someone to pull out of a place near the store so they can "save time" on walking -- only to spend five more minutes moving their damned boat back and forth in order to get into the place.

Meanwhile, I am a captive audience to a display of gross incompetence that takes longer than my entire errand would have taken even if I had parked on the outermost rim of the lot and negotiated the whole thing blindfolded. Many drivers will talk about how "safe" their vehicles are -- because when their incompetence causes a crash, the other driver suffers. And yet these same drivers will whine about the idea that they ought to pay higher collision insurance rates.

But SUV's do have their uses. They are good for the occasional need to haul large objects or groups of people. Many can perform well off the road, though the most any ever see is the edge of a flower bed or a highway median. And, during times of high gasoline prices, they can multitask: They annoy the hell out of the greens and they do cost their owners wads of cash at the pump!

5. Blogger -- I needn't elaborate for fellow Blogger users the many travails of this platform and I haven't the time to do so anyway.

But it is free. The servers are rarely down. The huge number of customers assures that the company won't suddenly go out of business, forcing me to move my blog quickly to another location. Blogger is also improving all the time. When big problems happen, the support team is very responsive. In fact, I count myself quite satisfied overall. (Incidentally, although I look forward to it, I haven't yet moved to the "new Blogger" because I am concerned that the migration might goof up my self-customized template and I want to have time to fix it.)

America abounds with wonders. Many things lots of us take for granted or even strongly dislike are, in fact, good things, made possible by a free, inventive, and productive people. This great country seems a victim of its own success sometimes. We have it so good that we often lose sight of just how great it really is.

A little perspective is always a good thing.

Windows Vista

Having just bashed Windows, I see that David Veksler has given the next generation of that operating system a test drive. It wasn't smooth, but he seems satisfied overall.

On the other hand, there is a list of 25 shortcomings of Vista over at All about Linux (HT: Linux Today).

Three hundred dollars, eh? And a new computer? Why?

Pattern Recognition

Lisa VanDamme has written a very interesting post on why her school doesn't give multiple choice tests:

The vast majority of the students' work at VDA is written -- in complete sentences, paragraphs, or essays. There is no surer way for the student to master the material, and for the teacher to determine whether he has mastered it.

For the student to write explanations, in complete sentences, about every subject, requires that he have a true understanding of the concepts at hand.

But he can often do well on multiple choice, matching, or other rote exercises with no real understanding.

Children have incredible, sponge-like brains, that give them an almost unlimited capacity for memorization and pattern recognition. The teacher's job is to ensure that this amazing talent does not become a substitute for understanding.

My wife and I are thinking about having kids soon. Reading Lisa VanDamme almost makes me wish we were going to raise them in California so they could attend her school!

Robert Tracinski, ARI Part Ways

Nick Provenzo -- because a reader sent him a tip -- learned that Robert Tracinski is no longer associated with the Ayn Rand Institute. I fully agree with him -- and with Diana Hsieh -- on the following point:

Objectivists are often criticized for their public break-ups, but I think being forthright when a relationship ends is the more honest approach. Reality demands an unflinching dedication to the truth, including the fact that some relationships deserve to end.

In my opinion, Tracinski has publicly embraced a theory of history that rejects the importance of Objectivism and principled consistency in defining and defending the long term good. As such, it would be dishonest to claim that he continues to be a public advocate for Ayn Rand's philosophy. If the end of Tracinski's association with ARI was brought on by his recent thinking, I am glad for it, for it would be an honest end to recent events.

As I pointed out some time ago:

If Robert Tracinski, upon finally stating his theory, believes (or even suspects) that it is at variance with Objectivism, I would hope that he would publicly announce that, although he is strongly influenced by her ideas, he is not an adherent to her philosophy.

He has not, to my knowledge, done this. (And his "What Went Right?" series remains incomplete.)

If Robert Tracinski himself realizes that he is in disagreement with Objectivism on how ideas affect history, but that his thoughts on the subject are, as he put it, "most important, [more consistent than Ayn Rand's philosophy] with the facts of reality", then he should, because ideas are important, do everything he can to correct our misunderstanding. Unless, of course, he also disagrees that ideas are important.

Good Review of The Virtuous Egoist

Diana Hsieh also points to an academic book review of Tara Smith's latest book. I loved the way it ended.

It should be stressed in conclusion that whether one is a fan or a detractor of Ayn Rand, the issues raised by this book are manifold and provocative. This book should force a debate of renewed vigor about what we mean by egoism, whether and how the egoism / altruism dichotomy should be applied within eudaimonistic ethical theories, and what our ethical theories imply about our political outlook. Smith provides us with a version of egoism that will need to be argued against by those who find it distasteful or misguided, rather than simply dismissed. [bold added]

Twenty years ago, such a paragraph -- let alone such a respectful review -- would have been unimaginable in academia.

Death for "Trespassing"

As excerpted by Isaac Schrodinger.

Mr Joseph, who was based in Jeddah, where he was an employee of an electronics company, traveled towards where he thought his wife was based, and lost his way. He found himself on the road to Medina.

Unbeknownst to Mr Joseph, during the pilgrimage season, this road was forbidden to non-Muslims. He was arrested by police at Al-Azeez, and was hauled before a religious court on Monday. Full of that Islamic tolerance which the Saudis like to promote in the West, the religious court ordered that Mr Joseph should have his head sliced off on Tuesday, merely for "trespassing into a Muslim-only area".

Here's the full post.

-- CAV

Booming Iraq: Cause vs. Effect

Via Glenn Reynolds, I learned his morning of this interesting post about the war in Iraq. Its title is "What if we are winning?" and it makes a good case that conditions in most parts of Iraq are better than news reports would have us believe. On a quick read, author Tom Donelson will seem to many to have made a good case, but I disagree with him.

The following passage at once summarizes his case and what is wrong with most thinking on both sides of this argument.

One meaning of all of this is that we may not be losing after all. If most of the country is prospering and Iraqis are forming new businesses, then can we assume that overall, we are indeed winning? Another meaning is that Iraqis are showing that they can operate in a liberated economy and if they can work in a free market economy during a war time setting; imagine what they could do if the insurgency is defeated? One important aspect of a liberal democracy succeeding is a liberal economy that frees entrepreneurs from the shackles of government. And Iraqis, with lower tax rates than even seen in the United States, have the money to form new businesses and spend money on new goods. [bold added]

Yes. Iraqis can "work in a free market economy" (to speak somewhat imprecisely) -- as could Russians during the Cold War, Germans during World War II, the Chinese ever since the Maoists took over China, and Moslems today. The major difference is that of these groups only these Iraqis have not had to emigrate to free societies in order to enjoy prosperity.

But what does it really mean that anyone can thrive in a free society? What must one do, precisely, in order to succeed? Man is the rational animal. To survive, he must use his mind -- e.g., solve the problems that face him immediately, invent things, or plan ahead. The reason freedom permits prosperity is twofold.

First, the rights of all individuals to think and act upon their best judgement are protected by the government from the initiation of force. Criminals are not free to defraud, rob, or physically harm the individuals of a free society because it has an effective police force and court system. Foreign invaders are likewise repelled by an effective military. Large numbers of people cannot simply self-organize into a functioning, let alone prosperous, economy for very long without such protection.

Second, the government itself is limited to its proper function (just outlined) and does not play the role of an organized criminal gang, which is essentially what it does in any tyranny.

While the prosperity in a free or semi-free society can, in a sort of inductive positive feedback, make it easier for its inhabitants to learn more easily some profitable moral lessons (e.g., that racism is foolish) and improve the overall standard of living in intangible ways, prosperity cannot cause freedom. Individual rights must be protected as a necessary initial condition for a free market economy.

Having said that, are we winning in Iraq? As Donelson points out, much of Iraq is prospering. At the same time, its government seems weak and ineffective at many of its proper functions, and worse, Islam is named in its constitution as a source of its laws, an error ratified by its people, who elected a majority of religious political parties to its parliament. Given the totalitarian nature of Islamic rule, as evidenced in every single Islamic regime in the world, it will only be a matter of time before this prosperity is ground to a halt and replaced by tyranny or outright anarchy as we see in "Palestine" today.

Iraq's prosperity today follows on the heels of an American invasion of a country that had suppressed its Islamic elements beforehand. Whatever freedom there is in Iraq for the moment exists partly due to the American presence and partly because the invasion caused a power vacuum, which will remain unfilled for a time as theocrats are distracted by the battle to gain overall control over the country. The Americans have filled some of the proper functions of government and the Islamists have not yet had a chance to work to abuse governmental power.

As with any other Moslem nation today, theocracy is the major long-term threat to freedom in Iraq, and it is theocracy which we must prevent if we are to win. As John Lewis put it so well recently, America has already shown in history that this threat can be eradicated as it did when its post-war occupation of Japan systematically separated the Shinto religion and state. Our military is perfectly capable of succeeding in winning battles in Iraq, but if we do not reverse our mistake of failing to insist on a repudiation of theocracy, we will continue to confuse cause and effect, thereby winning many battles, but losing the war.

Economic prosperity is only an effect of political and economic freedom. It is not a sufficient cause of freedom, but a manifestation of the fact that numerous individuals are free only to act for their own benefit without harming others. Without a government designed for the sole purpose of protecting that freedom, economic freedom will not survive for long.

Those who say we are winning in Iraq based on evidence like this are wrong about the big picture. Those who see the big picture and say that we are losing are all too often wrong in claiming that there is no military solution to the current war. We are not winning, but this is not a military problem.

-- CAV

Nondiscrimination against Liars?

If it seems that the busybodies working to expand the power of the state to prevent us from smoking or eating trans fat -- for our own good, of course -- are making alarming progress, another group of busybodies isn't far behind.

Under the banner of "transgender rights", another breed of activists has been making comparable progress in its fight against the only kind of rights there really are: individual rights.

Recently, we heard that the New York City Board of Health may soon, as George Reisman put it, "attempt to forcibly impose the fantasy of some people on everyone else". In other words, under a rule being considered there, individuals of one sex who wished to live as members of the opposite sex would not even have to have an operation to be legally recognized as such.

Lest you think this is an isolated case of blue state lunacy, here in Houston, Texas, a federal lawsuit is being filed with exactly the same goal in mind: to wedge the state in as an intermediary between each individual's grasp of reality and his rational judgement. Here is the whole story from the Houston Chronicle.

A man who lives as a woman sued a would-be employer Monday for allegedly revoking a job offer after realizing she [sic] is transgender.

Izza Lopez, 26, filed the lawsuit in federal court against Houston-based River Oaks Imaging and Diagnostic. She alleges employment discrimination.

She is seeking damages for lost pay and benefits, and for emotional distress, pain and suffering.

The suit says company officials told Lopez she misrepresented herself as a woman. Lopez had been hired to manage appointments, it says.

Company president and CEO James W. King didn't comment on the lawsuit because he wasn't familiar with it.

The suit claims Lopez was out of work for several months after the position was rescinded and she could not get her old job back.

Lopez, who was born Raul Lopez Jr., has lived as a woman for several years and is accepted as female by her extended family, friends and previous co-workers, the lawsuit says. [bold added]

Some passages from a slightly longer report at the web site 365Gay.com are also worth noting.

Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit Monday on behalf of a 26-year old trans woman whose employment offer was rescinded because she [sic] is transgender.

...

"When the HR Director found out the company offered a job to a transgender person, the offer was rescinded," said Cole Thaler, Transgender Rights Attorney at Lambda Legal. "Even though Izza was the best applicant for the job, the company decided that it didn't want a transgender employee and claimed that she 'misrepresented' herself."

Lambda Legal filed the suit in the Southern District of Texas in the Fifth Circuit of the federal court system. The lawsuit charges that River Oaks violated Lopez's rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in employment.

"As an applicant, I was interviewed by a manager and a director who both felt I was qualified to do the job," said Lopez. "I was shocked when I received the call from human resources taking away the job they'd offered me --- it felt as if they'd said to me 'you're a monster; we don't want you here.'" [bold added]

In other words, a man successfully pretended to be a woman during the process of applying for a job. Until it became evident he is a liar, he appeared to be the most qualified for the job. But then, his prospective employer discovered that he was lying and, reasonably, rescinded the offer. Leaving aside the fact that the federal government has no business telling employers whom they should hire, there is nothing special about this case except what this job applicant chose to lie about.

Neither version of this story treats the dishonesty of Izza Lopez as if it is particularly relevant. In fact, 365Gay.com appears to take the position that Lopez is in fact a woman simply because he wishes to be one. Note the use of the feminine third person pronoun in reference to Lopez, the scare quotes around the term "misrepresented", and the framing of the rescinded offer as being due to Lopez's psychological makeup.

It is dishonest to imply that River Oaks Imaging and Diagnostic rescinded its offer to Lopez "because" he is transgendered due to the fact that the company never had the opportunity to evaluate him for employment knowing of his self-identification as a woman independently of the fact that he is also apparently unwilling to be up-front about it. At some point, Lopez was doubtlessly asked whether he was male of female. He lied at that point and throughout the process of seeking employment.

But we are to ignore his unwillingness to admit reality because of his hurt feelings. In other words, we are to pretend that he is a woman and that he is forthright on such a basis. We are also to pretend that River Oaks Imaging and Diagnostic turned him down out of spite rather than the desire to employ the most honest individuals it can find. And that forcing everyone to play along with Lopez's fantasies is a legitimate function of the government.

Even if this lawsuit is thrown out (as it should be) on the basis of Lopez's dishonesty, the idea is now on the table that anti-discrimination law should apply to similar cases. The next step will be for an openly transgendered person to apply for a job -- like waitressing at Hooter's -- where he will likely not be hired on that basis. Just wait, if such a suit isn't already in the works. And if this case is not thrown out, we could move ever closer and more quickly to seeing one of New York's silliest proposed rules imposed upon us as national policy.

If man, as the rational animal, has reason as his tool of survival, how can anyone claim that an allegedly well-fed, smoke-free public has benefitted from the nanny state when it keeps us from acting upon even the simplest decisions, such as whether someone is a man or a woman, or whether someone is honest? We might as well be fattened up and blindfolded on the way to the slaughterhouse.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 129

United Nations Irredeemable

Elan Journo writes in the Hawaii Reporter:

That the UN benefits evil regimes is a necessary consequence of its avowed ideal of neutrality. The willful refusal to discriminate between good and evil, between freedom and slavery, can benefit only the vicious. It is only an evil regime that fears moral scrutiny, that needs to conceal its crimes, and that struggles for a veneer of moral legitimacy. The UN's policy of moral neutrality is precisely what evil desperately craves: a license to commit any depravity, and escape with a reputation for being decent.

Read the whole thing. (HT: The Charlotte Capitalist)

Even More Clarity on Pinochet and Capitalism Needed

With the recent death of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet have come the predictable attempts by the left to smear capitalism by noting that this right-wing dictator adopted a few free-market reforms during his rule. Unfortunately, conservatives have had mixed success in answering these trumped-up charges. Consider the following example, excerpted from The Weekly Standard:

[Pinochet's] embrace of economic reform seems unlikely to have sprung from a commitment to freedom, given the overarching contempt for liberty that characterized the rest of his government. Rather, in order to insulate himself from the consequences of his murderous seizure of power, Pinochet sought out political allies, and his free market reforms helped him to garner support domestically on the right, and also among members of the international community. One must be careful not to fall into Pinochet's trap--accepting his brutal seizure of power and tyrannical rule as a natural accompaniment of free market reforms. Propagandists on the left lost no time in seeking to discredit economic freedom by associating it with Pinochet. To this day, we hear from Moscow that it takes a Pinochet to implement economic reforms successfully; Vladimir Putin seems all too willing to have Pinochet's uniform taken in a few sizes so he can try it on. [bold added]

This starts out well enough -- quite well, in fact. But the moment John Londegren brings up Putin, it falls apart. Given Putin's recent jawboning of foreign petroleum companies and his abridgment of free trade in order to bully nearby countries, it is ludicrous to imply that Putin is attempting anything like free market reforms!

If we're going to be clear that free market reforms at the point of a gun are not capitalism, then we should at least be clear about what constitutes a "free market reform"!

Zoning in Future Houston Backwater?

Houston, the largest American city without zoning, has a small neighborhood that reportedly has zoning and may have just employed it to violate the property rights of a developer.

What's really interesting is that the news story, which has a definite pro-zoning slant, reports on how this enclave ended up with zoning in the first place. In doing so, it unwittingly comes to within a hair's breadth of explaining why zoning is bad.

The story of how zoning came to this small piece of Houston starts with developer Robert Silvers, who in the late 1980s started buying property in Lamar Terrace, a post-World War II subdivision that was succumbing to urban blight.

Residents had voted out the neighborhood's deed restrictions, in part because they expected the Galleria to expand westward and create a hot market for commercial property, said David Hawes, the executive director of the St. George Place zone.

As Silvers began planning to develop the property, a lawyer told him about tax increment reinvestment zones, districts where tax revenue from increased property values is reinvested in neighborhood improvements.

The lawyer advised Silvers that state law gave the districts created by petition the authority to adopt their own zoning rules.

"All of a sudden," Silvers recalled, "sugar plums were dancing in my head."

The very same objective Silvers decided to achieve through government force -- a consistent, wholly residential subdivision -- should be and could have been (in a truly free economy) achieved through deed restrictions. Note that this is exactly what Lamar Terrace had before its decline. Note also that as obsolescence made Lamar Terrace less desirable, its own residents voted to remove their deed restrictions in order to take advantage of the higher value they thought their property would have to commercial developers!

I am not that familiar with the Texas law on Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones. At best, they are practically the same thing as deed restrictions, in the sense that they can just as easily be voted away by the land owners. In such a case, the article is dishonest to equate the arrangement in Lamar Terrace/St. George Place to actual zoning.

At worst, the article is right. Except in the first case, property owners in St. George Place have less control over their own property than they would otherwise have had under deed restrictions and will be unable to avail themselves as easily (if at all) of the opportunity to use or sell their land for commercial redevelopment if the area declines again. Given the direction I see some nearby residential areas taking, the residents of St. George may in a few years' time regret their decision to use government force to restrict what their neighbors can do with their own property.

Houston is as vibrant as it is in large part because it is so easy to tear down buildings on dilapidated (and therefore inexpensive) properties and rebuild for a more appropriate purpose.

-- CAV

The Missing Variable: Philosophy

Great. Thanks to sloppy journalism about a statistical study, everyone who knows a crusader for vegetarianism can look forward to being called an idiot. Again. And with "proof", this time. From the first linked article:

Frequently dismissed as cranks, their fussy eating habits tend to make them unpopular with dinner party hosts and guests alike.

But now it seems they may have the last laugh, with research showing vegetarians are more intelligent than their meat-eating friends.

Yep. These are the first two lines of the article: all many people will have time to read, all any leftist needs to know, and all that will fit into any of the sound bites we're all going to be subjected to non-stop from every direction in the broadcast media. Prepare to have it beaten into your skull that vegetarians have been proven, once and for all, to be more intelligent than everyone else.

And we all know that intelligence is exactly the same thing as infallibility.

Essentially, the news articles I have seen on this are fluff used to disguise one small detail about the study they are so busy touting: The study doesn't really prove anything about the intelligence of vegetarians or any implications about it concerning the alleged merits of vegetarianism.

There was no difference in IQ between strict vegetarians and those who classed themselves as veggie but still ate fish or chicken.

However, vegans - vegetarians who also avoid dairy products - scored significantly lower, averaging an IQ score of 95 at the age of 10.

Researcher Dr Catharine Gale said there could be several explanations for the findings, including intelligent people being more likely to consider both animal welfare issues and the possible health benefits of a vegetarian diet. [bold added]

Got that? All this study (third link) shows is that people who consider themselves vegetarians (even if they are not) scored a few points higher on IQ tests -- as children. We'll even ignore that pesky group of nine vegans who were below average intelligence overall.

And on top of that, the paper admits that:

[S]ome attrition has occurred in the cohort over time. The participants at the 30 year follow-up did gain significantly higher IQ scores at age 10 than those who did not take part, although the size of the differences was modest (0.3 of a standard deviation). Unless the relation between childhood mental ability and vegetarianism is in the opposite direction in non-participants, little bias will have been introduced in our study.

Given that "some attrition" means that over a third of the original 17,198 subjects did not report on vegetarian status as adults and that the article's own literature review admits that "Findings are mixed" in previous studies that attempted to link vegetarianism to educational attainment (which is a "strong correlate of mental ability"), this finding has to be viewed as a preliminary addition to "mixed" evidence at best.

But let's entertain the possibility for a moment that Gale et al. are right, as I suspect they are. Future studies vindicate them. What have they shown? We'll start with some of their own ruminations:

Although the vegetarians in this cohort were, on average, more intelligent, better educated, and of higher occupational social class than the non-vegetarians, these socioeconomic advantages were not reflected in their income. It may be that ethical considerations determined not just their diet but also their choice of employment. Compared with non-vegetarians, vegetarians were less likely to be working in the private sector and more likely to be working in charitable organisations, local government, or education: 17% of the vegetarians worked in education compared with 9% of non-vegetarians. When asked, as part of the follow-up survey, what they thought of the statement "The government should redistribute income," 50% of vegetarians said they agreed compared with 41% of nonvegetarians, and this proportion was even higher among male vegetarians (61% v 42%). Such views may not be compatible with a career in the more lucrative employment sectors. [bold added]

In other words, the vegetarians are more left-wing than non-vegetarians! This comes as no surprise since those who are more intelligent generally remain in school longer, where they are subjected to more of the same relentless left-wing indoctrination than their counterparts. I would have loved to see a statistical analysis of that! Or even the slightest acknowlegement of that fact in the news media.

Credit the scientists, at least, with providing what Paul Harvey would call, "the rest of the story". The paper openly admits the objections one might raise to its conclusions and even states several times that vegetarianism is often chosen for "ethical" (i.e., philosophical) reasons regardless of any alleged health benefits.

Although our results suggest that children who are more intelligent may be more likely to become vegetarian as adolescents or as young adults, it does not rule out the possibility that such a diet might have some beneficial effect on subsequent cognitive performance. Might the nature of the vegetarians' diet in this cohort have enhanced their apparently superior brain power? Was this the mechanism that helped them to achieve the disproportionate number of higher degrees? Benjamin Franklin and George Bernard Shaw, both ardent vegetarians, would have us believe so. According to Shaw in an article published in The Star in 1890, "A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows."

...

Alternatively it is possible that the link between childhood IQ and vegetarianism in later life is not on a causal chain of mechanisms related to health. People with a higher IQ may well differ from those with less superior brain power in many of their lifestyle decisions: for instance, choice of newspaper, type of books read, preferred form of entertainment. The association between IQ and vegetarianism may be merely an example of many other lifestyle preferences that might be expected to vary with intelligence but which may or may not have implications for health. [bold added]

The bit about the study not "ruling out" an intelligence boost due to vegetarianism is worth noting. The study has nothing whatsoever to say about whether a vegetarian diet might yield the benefits to intelligence alleged by some famous vegetarians in the past: Those who called themselves vegetarians started out that way and there was no difference between real and fake vegetarians among that group!

In other words, this study reinforces the point that it is a person's philosophy that affects whether they make a lifestyle choice -- such as to become a vegetarian -- that may conflict with their own self-interest and whose benefits (if any) have not been firmly established.

It is too bad that the news media have chosen to pretend that science has vindicated vegetarianism. In fact, this study can only point to a correlation between a mildly higher IQ (whatever that means) and a desire to be known as a vegetarian! Not only can it merely "not rule out" the notion that vegetarianism enhances cognitive function, it cannot even state that actual vegetarians really did start out as more intelligent.

Journalism about science really makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes.

-- CAV

Around the Web on 12-14-06

Ugh and Yippee! Christmas is only eleven days away! The "ugh" comes from the realization that I have a substantial amount of shopping to do. The "yippee" is for the fact that I'll be reunited with my wife the weekend before.

Blogging may be lighter than usual next week and I will take a week off from blogging as I do every year the following week, so today's roundup may be the last of the year....

Congratulations!

Michael Bahr, who has been sweating law school exams since I became aware of his blog, can now append J.D. to his name! Or, as he put it himself, "As Jesus Christ once said, 'It is finished.'"

Move Zig -- er, Chad. For great justice!

Bubblehead has asked us to "set up us the vote" in his quest to win in this year's Weblog Awards.

Friday Night Pig Racin' -- Coming Soon to Katy!

A while back, I ran into this somewhat incoherent news story about a land owner in a suburb of Houston who was basically told to move from land that had been in his family for ages by his new neighbors: a local Moslem association who had just bought adjacent land and decided to build a mosque.

These pigs are subtle weapons, here to show the new neighbors -- the Katy Islamic Association -- they aren't entirely welcome. Tension has been growing in this west Harris County community since September when the Muslim group announced it had purchased 11 acres south of Interstate 10 to build a mosque, school, community center and athletic facilities.

Hard feelings started when Baker met association officials, who, he said, advised him he should move his stone shop.

"They told me it was time for my family to pack up," said Baker, whose family has occupied its land since the early 1800s. "They said a mosque and a marble shop didn't go too good together."

Angered by the perceived insult and aware of Islamic dietary laws banning pork consumption, Baker responded by announcing he would stage weekly pig races on his Muslim neighbors' holiest day of prayer.

Student posts a video from a local newscast about the races.

Swedish Mosque Linked to Terrorism

It galls me that Moslems feel they have any room whatsoever to complain about Baker's pig races (or his marble shop for that matter) when their "houses of worship" so frequently figure in the plotting of murder.

Martin Lindeskog provides us with the latest example of that, from Sweden. According to a Radio Sweden report, "The [U.S.] Treasury also says the 41 year old [terrorism suspect] 'was the uncontested leader of an extremist group centered around' a mosque in the Swedish capital."

Reverse Rejection Letter

Diana Hsieh, who recently celebrated her birthday and whose blog is one of my favorites, has posted a very funny "reverse rejection letter". I re-post it here for the benefit of my wife, who has been following my blog since heading up to Chicago a couple of weeks ago.

Herbert A. Millington
Chair - Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall, Whitson University
College Hill, MA 34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen

Mrs. Van Horn is applying for medical residencies and I will need a new position some time in the near future as well. This approach should come in quite handy for us. Thank you, Diana!

The "two body problem" has been solved!

Medical Tourism

David Veksler posts on medical tourism and asks, "[W]hy do you think medical procedures are so much cheaper in India? Could medical liability laws and the FDA have something to do with it?"

The "Crimes" of Youth, the Price of "Friends"

Software Nerd has a couple of interesting posts up.

First, he posts on a very stupid type of law being considered in Germany.

In Germany, two state governments have drawn up laws would could criminalize violence against computer game animated characters, if those characters are human-looking.

He thinks these laws won't get passed. I also hear he is thinking about retitling his blog as "PollyannaPundit".

Second, he tells us of a "friendship merchant":

Someone is betting that there are enough people with MySpace pages who want to appear to have "cool" friends so that they can impress others.

Since you can tell your new "friends" what kind of comments to leave, you can bet that a bunch of clueless horn-dog men are going to have pretty women leaving slutty remarks on their sites: Precisely the kinds of remarks that anyone else -- especially the women they hope to impress -- will know couldn't possibly be things actual women would really say! A fool and his money are soon parted.

Selling to Idiots Crowded Field in '06

Just when I thought Software Nerd had found the silliest way to empty one's wallet, I went over to Tim Blair's blog, where I found a post on the following ad:

What do reindeer do when they're not flying around the world delivering presents?

They graze, burp and fart!

Did you know? Together, Santa's nine reindeer - Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph - produce 3.75 tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution per year.

We guarantee that if you choose to offset the pollution created by Santa's reindeer, we will reduce CO2 pollution by 3.75 tonnes.

You'll receive a certificate and special Carbon Neutral Christmas card confirming that you've made Santa's reindeer Carbon Neutral!

That's seventy five smackers, Australian for a card listing carbon credits to abate nonexistent emissions in order to solve an imaginary crisis. That would be $58.74 down the toilet -- if the purchaser still uses one.

What Went Wrong?

Andy offers his take on Robert Tracinski's still unfinished "What Went Right" series:

I don't know Robert and have not spoken with him about this. But it seems to me what went wrong with Tracinski is that he himself carried rationalistic ideas about Objectivism, discovered his error, and then went empiricist -- dropping principles and focusing no longer on self-detached ideas, but now on unconnected concretes.

He also links to the series, which Tracinski recently made available on the web.

One Man's Journey

I have added a new blog, Galileo Blogs, to my sidebar. Aspects of its author's intellectual journey from religion to reason remind me of my own, especially this part:

The interesting thing about all of it was that throughout my youth (and continuing to this day), I took religion seriously. I listened to what the priest said at mass; I excelled at Sunday school where I was a top student. I was even an altar boy and relished the opportunity to be closer to the "body of Christ" than anyone else, other than the priest.

Taking religion -- i.e., ideas -- seriously appears to be the leitmotif of those who reject the religion under which they are raised.

That last sentence is quite profound. Religion cannot withstand even the slightest modicum of honest, rational inquiry. The fact that heretics have been persecuted throughout the vast majority of human history is a confession, as it were, of this weakness. Furthermore, it serves as evidence that religion actively seeks to snuff out the best within us.

I was luckier in many respects, especially concerning my relatives. My family did not react badly at all when they learned I was no longer religious. In fact, during my agnostic stage, I decided to tell my Dad. He stole my thunder by informing me he was an atheist!

I miss him very much when I remember that conversation.

Solar Tsunami

Bothenook posts video and rightly proclaims, "Now THIS is a tsunami!"

The above quote has been corrected for capitalization, of course. Hee, hee! I haven't done that in a while!

The permalink he mentions is here.

Why End Just Busing?

I like the way Jim Woods put this:

All public schools are inferior, but some are more inferior than others. The other day I listened to part of a C-SPAN program on the Supreme Court case Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, where the public schools intend to "improve" education by using race to determine where a student attends school. Instead of using the governments monopoly on force to impose racism, it is time to recognize that force is not an educational resource. By all means get guns out of the schools, and let us start with the full privatization of education.

Yes. That is true. By the very nature of government, guns are in the public schools whether students can carry them in or not.

Is this a trend?

Two days after I took two quizzes, Grant Jones did the same. Let's see how I did on his....

Same overall result as he on the first one:

You scored as Strong Egoism. Your life is very much guided by the concept of Egoism: You work primarily to promote your own interests. "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." "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows." --Ayn Rand More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... Strong Egoism 100% Existentialism 85% Hedonism 70% Justice (Fairness) 70% Kantianism 55% Divine Command 40% Utilitarianism 20% Nihilism 10% Apathy 0% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

And on the second one? Also the same overall result!

You scored as Special Ops. Special ops. You're sneaky, tactful, and a loner. You prefer to do your jobs alone, working where you don't come into contact with people. But everyonce in a while you hit it big and are noticed and given fame. Your given the more sensitive problems. You get things done, and do what has to be done. "VULCAN NECK PINCH!!!" "owww.......(slump)" Special Ops 94% Engineer 94% Artillery/Armor 75% Support Gunner 50% Officer 44% Medic 31% Combat Infantry 31% Civilian 25% Which soldier type are you? created with QuizFarm.com

How 'bout that?

-- CAV

Time to Stop Playing

Man, that fool's just playing, man. I ain't sweatin' it.

That's your problem. Ain't nobody playin' but you. You walk up and down the street all day playing. He ain't playin'! You think he playin' about his money? You done dragged me into this. He know where my mama stay. He know where your mama stay. You say he had a gun when you seen him, right? Yeah. Well, name one person in the hood that play like that?

-- conversation between Smokey and Craig in Friday

***

In the movie Friday, Smokey is supposed to deal marijuana for Big Worm, but ends up smoking most of it and getting caught short of the money and the weed when his supplier decides to send the slow-moving merchandise elsewhere. Big Worm makes a series of threats, eventually letting Smokey see that he is holding a gun and delivering him an ultimatum: Hand over the money by 10:00 that night or die.

The case could be made that the leaders of the Western world are a playing a bunch of baked, wishful-thinking Smokeys to Iran's threat-spouting, pistol-flaunting Big Worm. Minus the facts that we could easily take care of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and that we owe him less than nothing, the analogy isn't too bad, as this news report, which I quote in full, should indicate.

The outgoing US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, is backing a call for the president of Iran to be charged with inciting genocide because of his speeches advocating the destruction of the state of Israel.

Barely a week after he announced his resignation from the UN post, Mr Bolton will appear tomorrow among a panel of diplomats and lawyers calling for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be prosecuted. The panel has been convened by a Jewish umbrella group in the US, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations.

Mr Bolton was forced to quit his post after his appointment was blocked by Democrats and several Republicans in the Senate foreign relations committee. President George Bush said he accepted the resignation but was unhappy about it.

The call for legal action came as Mr Ahmadinejad repeated his onslaught against Israel at an international gathering of holocaust deniers in Tehran. The president, who has dismissed the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis as a myth told up to 70 visiting speakers that the Israeli state would soon be wiped out.

"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will, the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.

He was praised by several participants for his "bravery and democratic actions" a source who was present told the Guardian.

The event came under fierce attack abroad. At his monthly Downing Street press conference, Tony Blair condemned the conference as "shocking beyond belief" and singled out the decision to invite David Duke, a former leading Ku Klux Klan member, as proof of Iran's extremism. Meeting Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in Berlin, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germany rejected the conference and would "act against it with all the means that we have". [Pardon me while I whistle through my teeth. --ed] Franco Frattini, the EU's justice commissioner, denounced it as "an affront to the whole democratic world".

By contrast, Mr Duke praised the event as "a tremendous step forward" and said Mr Ahmadinejad said "sensible things".

Mr Bolton will be joined in tomorrow's launch of the legal action against Mr Ahmadinejad by a Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, and the former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, together with experts from the US, Canada and Israel. A suit will be lodged with the international court of justice at The Hague, which will decide whether to hear the action. The panel said the Iranian president was guilty of inciting genocide "by making numerous threats against the United States, calling for the destruction of Israel and instigating discrimination against Christians and Jews". His words violate a 1948 UN genocide convention, to which Iran is a signatory, they said. [bold added]

You and whose army is going to bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to trial, Mr. Bolton? And after Iran's act of war in 1979 followed by state sponsorship of terrorism ever since -- not just "inciting" murder, but committing it -- we're all of a sudden getting worked up over a bunch of words? Really? Our panties are now magically in a wad about a conference of blowhards after doing nothing about Iran's killing our finest young men in its proxy war in Iraq for the past few years?

And they -- surprised gasp -- invited David Duke! Well, holding dozens of American citizens prisoners for 444 days is one thing, but we have to draw the line here! Oh, the humanity!

Somehow, I don't see Ahmadinejad falling for our bluff. And if we haven't bombed his country to hell and back by now -- and the last time I checked, we haven't -- we're a nation still not earnestly facing the prospect of war. Instead, we're acting like we don't really believe what is going on and if Ahmadinejad will just please snap out of it, we could get back to the business of negotiating in good faith with his prevaricating, repressive, homicidal regime.

This is perhaps, and if we are lucky, the lame-assed altruistic excuse our leaders were looking for -- vice a forthright statement that Iran's time is up because it is threatening America. Our leaders may soon consider starting the diplomatic spadework that will eventually enable them to perform a sneaky end-run around France and Germany. Having overcome that self-imposed hurdle, they can then provide Iran a heads-up and five years to prepare (with Russia's help) for a limited military engagement with an American force that will have to consult an Islamic calendar and call lawyers before they can deploy their weapons. But I doubt even that.

Man, that fool's just playing, man. I ain't sweatin' it.

While we're mobilizing an army of lawyers (and international good feelings) for Ahmadinejad's in absentia trial in The Hague -- probably before a sharia court to avoid offending Islamic sensibilities -- Madman Mahmoud will still be inciting genocide from the safety of Tehran and, more importantly, presiding over his nation's nuclear buildup and possibly Israel's demise. But don't worry, we'll have the best lawyers in the world on our side, arguing for a guilty verdict!

Long ago, back when it seemed that Bush had a coherent plan in this war, one based on establishing a beach-head in Iraq, those of us who supported him could feel smug about the antics -- the "fantasy politics" as one blogger put it -- of the far left.

Moore, on the other hand, "doesn't trust the government" in the sense that he believes that the US is owned and operated, right now in 2003, by an antidemocratic cabal with imminent plans to enslave the world. Now, I don't have any guns, don't know anyone who does, and don't know offhand if we're even allowed to have them in California, except perhaps in the off-site childproof vaults required for cigarettes, but if I seriously believed even half of what Michael Moore claims to, I'd be stockpiling sniper rifles in a buried strongbox at the park. [Bold added. And I'd try persuading others to join my side rather than alienating them. --ed]

And the same goes for the Moore fans. The best way to infer people's beliefs is to watch their actions, and the people who call Moore's movies "provocative" and "important" are neither fleeing the country nor forming underground resistance cells. They don't believe Moore either. At best, they're choosing to place him in a mental gray area not subject to "truth" or "falsehood" tests.

I think it's time to consider the possibility that Michael Moore is valued specifically because he's making it up and known to be making it up. It's fantasy politics, and deliberately so. So "fighting" it with reality-based tactics isn't going to work -- but if you find yourself opposed by fantasy politics, it's worth wondering whether there's all that much to be fighting about in the first place.

Unfortunately, it now seems that it is not just Michael Moore and the loony left who were playing games. Our leaders, who are preparing legal briefs rather than battle plans were and are doing the same damned thing.

This all reminds me of a remark by Edwin Locke about the fact that anticapitalists staged protests at the 2000 Democratic Convention:

Why are the protestors choosing the Democratic convention as their venue? Because they know where their ideological home is. The Democrats have always championed the "little guy," which has often meant penalizing those who made it big. But as philosopher Ayn Rand once noted, there are no little people in America. There are only people, equal before the law, yearning to breathe free and wanting to achieve the best within them. Most Americans do not hate the rich and do not feel unearned guilt because some people or nations are less rich than they are. [bold added]

I recall that many conservatives were puzzled at the strength of the anti-war movement so early on in the war. I now suspect that the answer is the same as that for the question of why anticapitalists chose one party's convention as a venue for its protests: The anti-war left recognized this administration for the fantasy role-players they have turned out to be. They saw leaders who did not fully grasp the reality of their situation or the need to pursue war mercilessly until the Islamofascists stopped being Islamofascists one way or the other: By dying or unconditionally surrendering to the might of the West.

Indeed, they probably knew this from the moment Bush changed his mind about the term "Operation Infinite Justice". And so now, when four years ago, the loony left were protesting an imminent invasion of Iraq, we are seeing John Bolton, as his last bold move before bowing out on an imminent Democrat refusal, pushing for a symbolic trial of a man who should already be dead or hiding.

Mahmoud isn't playing, and neither should we.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 128

The "Soft Bigotry" of Jimmy Carter

There is an article at RealClear Politics about Jimmy Carter's new book, whose title, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, just about says it all. The article itself is titled, "The Madness of Jimmy Carter", but I obviously think another title might have been better.

The book marks Carter's further disgraceful descent from ineffectual president and international do-gooder to apologist for the worst Arab tendencies. "It is imperative," Carter writes, "that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." In the meantime, presumably, the slaughter of Jews can continue.

Israel can't be so blithe about the murder of its citizens, which is why it built the security fence. Carter calls it an "imprisonment wall," but it has been effective in preventing Palestinian terrorists from blowing people to bits -- the kind of attacks Carter characterizes as "(unfortunate) for the peace process." Twice recently, Israel has vacated occupied land, in Southern Lebanon and Gaza, only to see attacks against it launched from those same territories. But Carter always finds a way to point a finger at Israel. [bold added]

Carter's willingness to hold only Israel accountable in the "peace process" is, of course, based on his altruism. But in what way are the "Palestinians" unfortunate, and therefore entitled to the altruist spoils? It would seem that Carter finds Arabs to be inherently unable in some way to shoulder the ordinary burdens of adulthood. The above passage makes me think of the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

And oh yeah, Carter is busily concocting a conspiracy theory to account for why universities with significantly Jewish student bodies have been turning down his offers to pontificate free of charge. After all, it couldn't be due, perhaps, to the fact that Carter has nothing of any value or originality to say, could it?

Another Salvo from John McCain

John McCain, whose "campaign finance reform" bill has already shown him to be no friend of freedom of speech, has just proposed more regulation of the Internet. This time, his excuse is child pornography.

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders.

...

Internet service providers already must follow those reporting requirements. But McCain's proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the same regulatory scheme -- and even stiffer penalties -- on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.

...

But the reporting rules could prove problematic for individuals and smaller Web sites because the definitions of child pornography have become relatively broad. [minor format changes, my bold]

Great. Consider the fact that many prominent blogs, such as The Belmont Club and Jihad Watch offer unmoderated comments. All someone would have to do under this law to cause their proprietors headaches would be to start posting comments containing images (e.g., avatars) that could be construed as kiddie porn. One obvious solution for these bloggers would be to moderate the comments or shut them down entirely. McCain's proposal will, in this way, curtail the public debate. (Incidentally, this would also significantly harm the value such blogs could offer to future visitors.)

In addition, once images are banned in this way, why not go after hyperlinks to sites, or even language that can be considered lewd? This proposal is already a bad idea and it can easily lead to worse. It should be opposed.

Too "Smart" for Simple Economics?

I read the following exchange recently in Parade's most recent "Ask Marilyn" column:

How can we be running out of water? It never disappears. It just keeps moving through the water cycle. -- Jane Marriott (city unknown)

We are not using up the water on our planet. Instead, our burgeoning population is outgrowing the available supply. For example, the seas make up the bulk of Earth's water, but we can't use saltwater to drink, feed livestock or irrigate crops. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development says it takes about 150 gallons of water to grow enough wheat for one loaf of bread. We also need water for sanitation and industry. Yet only 2.5% of our water is fresh, and two-thirds of that freshwater is in the form of glaciers or permanent snow cover. Better water management will help contain the widening shortage but will not solve the problem. [minor format changes, bold added]

Marilyn could have added something like the following without hitting space limitations: "At some point, increased demand will make such existing technologies as desalination more economically feasible."

What? Is she afraid that a pack of Democrats will question her claim to the world's "highest IQ" if she doesn't toe the green line?

Intelligence is valueless if unguided -- through ignorance or fear of opposition -- by philosophical principles that correspond to the facts of reality.

75,000

My site's 75,000th unique visitor arrived today at 8:29 a.m. from Royal Oak, Michigan.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added note on visitor 75,000.

Libertarians Mislead GOP on War

Two articles by Libertarians attempt to appeal to the Republican Party in the aftermath of its recent electoral defeat and, in the process, show how that party's intellectual leadership continues to pose a danger to the cause of individual rights due to its abdication of the principles that underly freedom. In particular, the Libertarians threaten to teach the Republicans the wrong lesson about the war.

The articles differ on their respective estimates of the size of the "libertarian" fraction of the electorate. David Kirby and David Boaz initially claim that 15% of those who actually voted this year hold "libertarian views", but later classify 44% of all voters (in the fashion of a poll they cite) as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal ... also known as libertarian". Presumably, they think such voters are fundamentally similar to actual Libertarians. (More on this later.) Bruce Bartlett, writing at RealClear Politics, sees Libertarians as representing at most 10% of the electorate.

Nevertheless, both articles agree that the Republicans have, over the past few years, alienated the Libertarians and hurt themselves among similar voters. Kirby and Boaz document this and then explain what Libertarians saw as wrong with the Republicans:

In 2006, libertarians voted 59-36 for Republican congressional candidates -- a 24-point swing from the 2002 mid-term election. To put this in perspective, front-page stories since the election have reported the dramatic 7-point shift of white conservative evangelicals away from the Republicans. The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large.

Based on the turnout in 2004, Bush's margin over Kerry dropped by 4.8 million votes among libertarians. Had he held his libertarian supporters, he would have won a smashing reelection rather than squeaking by in Ohio.

President Bush and the congressional Republicans left no libertarian button unpushed in the past six years: soaring spending, expansion of entitlements, federalization of education, cracking down on state medical marijuana initiatives, Sarbanes-Oxley, gay marriage bans, stem cell research restrictions, wiretapping, incarcerating U.S. citizens without a lawyer, unprecedented executive powers, and of course an unnecessary and apparently futile war. The striking thing may be that after all that, Democrats still looked worse to a majority of libertarians.

This is consistent with Bartlett's quick and dirty (but accurate) summary of what Libertarians believe. (And by "Libertarians", I mean actual, capital-L party members and ideologues as opposed to people who use "libertarian" as an approximate description of their views -- like the above-cited 44%. Also, for those not familiar with this blog who might happen by, I am not a Libertarian. Unlike them, I happen to realize that one cannot have freedom at home without fighting wars abroad. And I mean actually fighting them.)

Basically, libertarians are allied with the right on economic issues and the left on everything else. They believe in the free market and freedom of choice in areas such as drugs, and favor a noninterventionist foreign policy. Consequently, someone who is a libertarian could prefer to ally with the right or the left, depending on what set of issues is most important to him or her. [bold added]

Notice that both articles slip in mention of the pacifistic tendencies that pervade the Libertarians, party and intelligentsia. Bartlett starts off discussing Vietnam, and then notes that:

[T]he Iraq War has aroused the isolationist impulse among libertarians. Only a tiny number of them supported the war in the first place, and they have all now recanted.

...

Libertarians probably don't represent more than 10 percent of the electorate at most and are easy for political consultants to ignore. But they are represented in much larger percentages among opinion leaders and thus have influence disproportionate to their numbers. Republicans will miss them if they leave the party en masse. [bold added]

Kirby and Boaz take a different tack, admonishing the Republicans that they risk becoming a regional (Southern) party unless they take positions more in line with the Libertarians. To support their position, they discuss election results in which voters clearly rejected the welfare state and the injection of religion into politics. (This is not the same thing as supporting the whole Libertarian platform, as we shall see.) They then cite a Zogby poll:

We asked voters if they considered themselves "fiscally conservative and socially liberal." A whopping 59 percent said they did. When we added to the question "also known as libertarian," 44 percent still claimed that description. That's too many voters for any party to ignore. [bold added]

Presumably, not fighting the war would help this cause, since, by the way, Libertarians are "non-interventionists" and the war is "unnecessary".

Unfortunately, Kirby and Boaz's claim of a 44% libertarian electorate depends upon the same type of equivocation the Libertarian Party has been using for decades in the form of political quizzes like this one. (I am as "Libertarian" as you can get on that quiz.) These quizzes ask a series of questions many "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" Americans would find uncontroversial and score the answers they would give as "Libertarian". Nevertheless, most Americans would be appalled to learn just how far to the left Libertarians -- the ones trying to dupe them with these tests -- really are on foreign policy and war.

The reason for this strange pacifism lies with a serious lack of intellectual discipline among Libertarian intellectuals, who often expropriate (with or without credit) and misapply a principle Ayn Rand identified as the purpose of government: to protect individuals from the initiation of force. Many Libertarians forget that government is the agent of its citizens' right to self-defense (i.e., to use force in retaliation for violations of their rights). This often leads them to sloppily condemn some perfectly legitimate government action (most frequently, military) as unwarranted "coercion" or "intervention". It is the government's job to intervene through coercion in certain situations. This often includes fighting wars. I dare say that most of that 44% of the electorate understand this, at least on a gut level: There is no freedom if we do not defend ourselves from foreign threats.

So while many capital-L Libertarians would argue against fighting at all, the many so-called "libertarians" (and this would include even many from the rank-and-file of the LP) would actually favor a more vigorous prosecution of the war against the Islamofascists, as John Lewis points out in his superb "Open Letter to the Republicans". (I highly recommend reading all of it.)

It remains telling that the American people were solidly on the president's side when he promised a reduction in government coercion at home, and a victory in the war overseas (over 80% supported the invasion of Iraq) -- and that they withdrew their support only after he failed to follow through on his promises.

...

You have accepted that moral goodness means sacrificing for the (alleged) good of others, and you have worked to shape America in this image. This ideal has defined President Bush's policies overseas, which purport to wage war by bringing benefits to enemy nations. It has defined a domestic policy that sees moral goodness in expanding programs of redistribution. Whereas the Democrats do this in the name of socialism (a discredited doctrine that has wreaked havoc wherever it has been tried), Conservatives do it in the name of "compassion." Democrats base their vision on class warfare and revolution; Conservatives base it on charity. But the practical results are the same: Socialism, now anchored not in Marx, but in civic religion.

...

Support for the war in Iraq has collapsed because there are no goals being pursued except the sacrifice of our youth for strangers, and no accomplishments except a demonstration of America's weakness. Republicans need to become advocates of a foreign policy of self-interest, by which we fight to defend the freedom of Americans, and only the freedom of Americans, with the goal of a fast and decisive victory when we do fight, as a matter of principle. [bold added]

80% of all Americans supported the war. Even if the 20% who did not were all among Kirby and Boaz's purported 44% of "libertarian" voters, this would leave well over half of them supporting the war. Considering that, as Bartlett says, "Only a tiny number of [Libertarians] supported the war in the first place", this puts to the lie any implication on the part of the Libertarians that the Republicans lost because they were fighting the war and fiscally conservative social liberals would have preferred surrender.

In fact, the Republicans were not waging a war and many voters would have preferred that they do what they were elected to do in contradistinction to the appeasement the pacifist Democrats ran on. The electoral data contradict what Bartlett, Kirby, and Boaz imply the Republicans should take home from this election about the war, and the blogger Zombie notes polling data as further proof:

To the extent that the "war" is "unpopular," it's not for the reasons that the media is portraying. There is an anti-war movement, to be sure, but that's only half the equation. There's another huge segment of the population that is unhappy with the way the war is conducted because it is being waged too lightly. They want to see the overwhelming use of force, not the PC pussyfooting around that is the current modus operandi. Most polls ask the misleading question, "Do you approve of the way Bush is conducting the war?" and they get a 60% to 65% "Yes, I disapprove" response. But those polls are purposely designed to NOT ask the follow-up question, "Do you think the war is being waged to forcefully or too lightly?" I've seen just a handful of polls that did ask follow-up questions of that sort, and they all revealed that half of the disgruntled respondents were to the right of Bush. [bold added]

If there is one thing the Republicans should not do after this election, it is to continue to fail to stand up for our nation abroad. Not only does America's freedom depend upon the proper use of its military, Americans will firmly support the Republicans if they do so. The Republicans, if they ignore the Libertarians and listen instead to John Lewis, stand to do well by doing good.

-- CAV