An Exception to Prove the Rule

I am not prone to use the phrase in the title, but I can think of no better way to describe this situation....

I am glad I am not facing the prospect of raising children in Seattle. No only are the public schools dumbed down by political correctness, at least one private school is succeeding spectacularly in giving them a run for their money, according to an article at TCS Daily.

The teachers [at Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle] decided [the accidental] destruction [of a classroom Lego town] was an opportunity to explore "the inequities of private ownership." According to the teachers, "Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation."

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society -- a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice." [bold added]

Ayn Rand once wrote a famous essay, "The Comprachicos", in which she drew an analogy between a barbaric practice, once described by Victor Hugo, of forcing children to grow up encased in containers that would cause them to grow up into circus freaks -- and modern educational practices like this one, that seek to mold the minds of children rather than train them to think for themselves. The teachers tease us with quotes from some of their best -- um -- products:

"A house is good because it is a community house."

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

Would that these teachers had such a comparatively innocent motive as selling their pupils! At least they would realize the low commercial value of Marxist indoctrination!

It is easy enough to show that these teachers are at least attempting to destroy the young minds in their charge. Just consider a few of the implications of any of these arbitrary, self-contradictory notions at any length at all. If your power over "your own" building is no different than that of any passer-by, who are you to forbid the peeping tom or thief (Oops! Silly bourgeois me!) or escaped murderer from next door to move in with you? And what if you want or need a bigger house than the one you have now? Do you just take over space in another's house? Do you submit to some authority? If so, how the hell does he know what you need? What would he care, anyway? Maybe he "needs" all the houses and knows that everyone in them "needs" a one-way train ticket to a "work camp".

It may seem ironic that I, an advocate of the total privatization of education, would report such a glaring failure on the part of a private school, but it is not. No private industry is free of incompetence, shoddy quality, or even the occasional instance of fraud, and this example merely shows us what that would look like in education. The advantage of extending property rights to the field of education by privatizing it is the same as it is for any other industry: That we would not all be forced to place our children in the care of monsters like the faculty of this outfit. (Nor would its principal, upon hearing about this travesty, need fear firing these "teachers".) We could take our business -- and our children -- elsewhere.

Instead, as we see with public education every day, we have "community schools" which provide their students with the same meager -- but "standard" -- preparation for adult life, and over which everyone has "the same amount of power" (i.e., none) to change. Fleeing to private schools is not an option for most because taxation makes it harder for many parents to afford better alternatives and -- along with the fact of competition that charges nothing -- for other parties to provide them.

So by providing Marxist indoctrination to children, these child abusers are demonstrating to responsible parents everywhere the value of a private educational system. If you don't like what you are paying for, you can take your business elsewhere. That is real power, and that is what teachers like this want to take away from you and your children.

-- CAV

Quote of the Day

Which historic figure is known for saying, "We owe to our Mother-Country the Duty of Subjects but will not pay her the Submission of Slaves"?

If you took the following behavior on the part of its administration as a hint, you would never guess that the below institution was named for him.

Under pressure from those who oppose American self-defense (i.e., Islamists and/or their sympathizers), and on a technicality (i.e., the GMU Objectivist Club failed to file requisite paperwork), GMU has cancelled John Lewis's talk "'No Substitute for Victory': The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism," which was scheduled for tonight (Wed., Mar. 28)

Those who would destroy our freedom or take our lives in the name of Islam certainly do not deserve the disgraceful subservience shown them by George Mason University, nor do they even deserve to be shown anything like the "duty of subjects". All they deserve is to be presented with the same choice we offered the belligerent Japanese during World War II: "Stop acting upon your evil ideology -- or die."

Although no institution is obligated to provide anyone with a forum to air his views, George Mason agreed to host this talk, then reneged at the last moment, thereby depriving John Lewis of the opportunity to make other arrangements in a timely fashion. In doing so, George Mason University has helped silence a patriot who wanted to speak his mind.

Given the value our Founding Fathers recognized in free public debate and the subject matter of this talk, it is a sacrilege that this school continues using the name of one of our Founders. Its administration has two honorable choices: to apologize and reschedule this event, or to change its name.

In any event, I will pay close attention to the outcome of this very disappointing turn of events. After all, as a future parent, I would owe it to my children to discourage them from attending such a school, and to urge anyone else I know who shares my love of country to do the same.

-- CAV

Labor vs. Freedom of Speech

At Jewish World Review, I encountered a George Will column that details yet another left-wing attack against freedom of speech as well as property rights.

Labor unions hope [the] exquisitely mis-titled [Employee Free Choice Act], which the House of Representatives probably will pass this week, will compensate for their dwindling persuasiveness as they try to persuade workers to join. It would allow unions to organize workplaces without workers voting for unionization in elections with secret ballots. Instead, unions could use the "card check" system: Once a majority of a company's employees signs a card expressing consent, the union is automatically certified as the bargaining agent for all the workers.

Unions say the card-check system is needed to protect workers from anti-union pressure by employers before secret-ballot elections. Such supposed pressure is one of organized labor's alibis for declining membership. [Will later points out that this system would effectively silence any anti-unionization arguments that might come up in an actual vote. --ed]

There are, however, ample protections against employer pressures that really are abusive. [This is overgenerous to the unions at best. See below. --ed] Tellingly, the act would forbid employers from trying to influence -- pressure? -- employees by improving their lot: It would fine employers that, to reduce the incentive to unionize, give workers "unilateral" -- not negotiated -- improvements in compensation or working conditions during attempts at unionization. Clearly, the act aims less to help workers than to herd them as dues-payers into unions.

Under the card-check system, unions are able to, in effect, select the voters they want. It strips all workers of privacy and exposes them, one at a time, to the face-to-face pressure of union organizers who distribute and collect the cards. The Supreme Court has said that the card-check system is "admittedly inferior to the election process." [bold added]

An old saw in economics is, "Controls breed controls," based on the observation that economic distortions caused by any given instance of government meddling in the economy will result in calls for even more government interference as a "corrective" for the resulting distortions.

But that is really just a species of a broader phenomenon, which is I would phrase in this way: "Violations of individual rights lead to other violations of individual rights." Consider the legal protections already enjoyed by unions at the expense of individual rights:

Labor cartels are immune from taxation and from antitrust laws. [We should all be "exempt" from these! --ed] Companies are legally compelled to bargain with unions in "good faith." This innocent-sounding term is interpreted by the National Labor Relations Board to suppress such practices as Boulwarism, named for a former General Electric personnel director. To shorten the collective bargaining process, Lemuel Boulware communicated the "reasonableness" of GE's wage offer directly to employees, shareholders, and the public. Unions also can force companies to make their property available for union use.

Once the government ratifies a union's position as representing a group of workers, it represents them exclusively, whether particular employees want collective representation or not. Also, union officials can force compulsory union dues from employees, members and nonmembers alike, as a condition of keeping their jobs. Unions often use these funds for political purposes -- political campaigns and voter registration, for example -- unrelated to collective bargaining or to employee grievances. Unions are relatively immune from payment of tort damages for injuries inflicted in labor disputes, from federal court injunctions, and from many state laws under the "federal preemption" doctrine. Sums up Nobel Laureate Friedrich A. Hayek: "We have now reached a state where [unions] have become uniquely privileged institutions to which the general rules of law do not apply." [bold added]

And despite the unions being above the rule of law, they have been in decline for quite some time!

Union bosses are desperate and, knowing that most Americans are used to, if not wrongly sympathetic with the state of affairs described in the above passage, the bosses seek incrementally to further erode the rights of workers and employers alike in order to preserve their power. Had this injustice not been so firmly established, no one would have the temerity to propose that anyone could be forced to have anything to do with -- let alone pay dues to -- an organization on the basis of other people being duped or pressured into making check marks on cards!

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 156

A Free-Market Solution for NOLA?

Nicole Gelinas of City Journal has been following developments in and about New Orleans ever since it was hit by Hurricane Katrina. Friday, she suggested one of the more creative solutions to the problem posed by the presence of housing projects throughout the city: selling them off. She notes that the projects, unlike those many in other parts of the country, consist of architecturally interesting townhomes and that the buildings are structurally sound, although still in need of renovation.

And nearly 18 months after Katrina, New Orleans certainly isn't lacking for an underclass. In fact, the city's murder rate is once again out of control, mainly due to unparented, impulsive young men shooting other unparented, impulsive young men.

What New Orleans is lacking is enough middle-class and working-class residents, who began leaving the city long before Katrina. Without such citizens, the Big Easy won't have the committed voters and tax dollars it needs to become a functional, healthy city -- something it hasn't been for decades.

To attract a new middle class, the feds and New Orleans should do a full-scale renovation of the apartments, hiring contractors who agree in writing to do the work quickly (and who face penalties if they don't). Then the government should get out of the way, selling the newly renovated apartments as condos or co-ops to returning middle-class New Orleanians or newcomers who want to make a go of it in the city. It’s likely the market rate for each apartment would be below $150,000, making them accessible to families who earn $30,000 annually or so.

The federal and city governments, as sponsors, could certainly draw up rules about ownership, like those that other condo and co-op residents live by. They could mandate, for example, that purchasers actually live in their apartments most of the time, rather than rent them out long-term to tenants, and that buyers have decent credit records and work histories. New residents would take over the administration of the rules once the federal government had sold off a majority of the units. [link added]

There are many things wrong with this proposal, but it remains the closest to a free-market idea I have heard raised for New Orleans yet. As such, its assumptions speak volumes about where our public debate is today. (As far as I can tell, Ms. Gelinas is a fiscal conservative.)

I have yet to hear a truly capitalistic proposal for the rehabilitation of New Orleans. What might one for the projects sound like? Here's my stab.

The projects should be privatized not for the sake of bringing more tax money into a bloated city government, but because the government has no business supporting some citizens at the expense of others or serving as a landlord. It is true that selling off the buildings would bring a more productive class of person into New Orleans, but even the proposed government-financed renovations still wrongly place the burden of rebuilding upon non-owners. Furthermore, the government ought not tell people what to do with their own property once they purchase it.

Indeed, if the government simply auctioned off the properties (and assuming for the moment they could be profitably rennovated) only buyers who could afford to renovate them themselves -- because they thought they could turn a profit if they did -- would line up to buy them. Would not this class of stakeholders have an even greater interest (and ability) to impose (or support) the necessary measures to reduce crime in order to protect their investments?

And if nobody buys the properties? Perhaps those who would stand to lose their shirts if they placed winning bids think New Orleans still inadequately protected from future storms, has not decided to get serious about crime, or will sink into the sea in another couple of decades. If that's the case, why burden the public with a moment's further support?

Note that the guiding principle for government action should always be: "Does this protect individual rights?" Note also that when individual rights are protected, the energy and drive of private individuals functions best. This is why one can take any argument based on the positive economic effects of a small step towards freedom, like this proposal, and point out the even greater positive effects of more freedom. In this case, we would see a decision made on whether to renovate based on how valuable the property is to its owner.

And this leads me to ask, "Why not argue for more than just limited freedom?"

Why are atheists despised?

Via HBL, I learned of a very interesting post by Ilya Somin on American attitudes towards atheists.

[I]t is worth noting that the 53% figure for those unwilling to support an atheist presidential candidate of their own party is statistically indistinguishable from the 50% who, in another recent survey said they had a "mostly" or "very" unfavorable view of atheists, and the 51% who believe that "[i]t is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values" (see here). The 50% figure, by the way, is much higher than that for any other other minority group, with Muslims a distant second at a 31% "mostly" or "very" unfavorable rating.

...

As I have argued in the Legal Times Article linked above, and here , the widespead prejudice against atheists is in large part due to the false perception that atheism is equivalent to immorality or moral relativism....

Indeed, and with "intellectuals" like William Rees-Mogg, fanning the flames, who can blame them?

The modernist attack on religion was based on the victory of science, and particularly of neo-Darwinism. Yet science was open to the same challenge as religion; it could explain only half the world. The scientists, or some of them, sneered at religion for being unable to explain the developments of nature. Yet science itself was unable to produce a science-based morality for society. Marxism attempted to create a scientific social order that ended in monstrous and bloodthirsty tyranny. Social Darwinism either meant eugenics and the slaughter of babies who were not thought fit to survive, or it meant nothing. The Social Darwinism of George Bernard Shaw, or indeed that of Adolf Hitler, has been rejected by mankind.

Many people will read arguments like this and find them plausible, despite the fact that it is not science, but philosophy which is the proper discipline for studying such issues as the fundamental nature of existence, how we know what we know, and morality.

Rees-Mogg should know the difference between the special discipline of science, and that of philosophy, on whose conclusions about the validity of man's faculty of reason it rests. But he's interested in perpetuating the groundless belief that man "needs" religion for morality, and so he chooses to sow confusion like this instead.

Given that the religious conception of morality consists in lists of commands supposedly issued by a divine being, but always delivered by men like Rees-Mogg, his motivation for perpetuating the myth that "atheism equals immorality" should be obvious.

When more people understand this, perhaps fewer of them will be suspicious of atheists and more will look askance at salesmen of intellectual snake oil, like Rees-Mogg.

That (Should've-Been in) Science Article

A couple of years ago, I blogged about the complicity of two major scientific journals in perpetuating global warming hysteria by suppressing scientific dissent. Via HBL, I recently learned of a location for the article by Dr. Benny Peiser that I mentioned.

-- CAV

A Nuanced View of Global Warming

If you who wonder how (real) climatologists can "deny" that global warming is a foregone conclusion or know someone who does, I think this article will be helpful. Incidentally, it somehow reminded me of the Left's favorite "n-word" (nuanced) from the 2004 presidential campaign, a word which has been replaced by another (Nuremberg) in the completely inappropriate context of an ongoing scientific debate. Isn't it funny how Leftists attack any and all certainty when they want our ear, but feel powerless -- and yet suddenly know everything when they feel strong? If anything shows that Leftists regard philosophical ideas cynically, this shift in attitude is it.

Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, "big picture" understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem.

Here, for example, is an insight that even many climate scientists are unaware of: The one atmospheric process that has the greatest control on the Earth's climate is the one we understand the least - precipitation.

Over most of the planet, water is continuously evaporating, humidifying the air to form the Earth's dominant greenhouse gas: water vapor. Climate scientists will tell you that the extra CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere causes a "warming tendency" at the surface, which will evaporate even more water, which will amplify the warming. This positive water vapor feedback, so the theory goes, ends up turning the relative benign direct warming effect of CO2 - only 1 degree of warming late in this century - into a much more serious problem.

But surface evaporation is not what determines how much water vapor, on average, resides in the atmosphere - precipitation systems do. These not only control the water-vapor portion of the greenhouse effect, they directly or indirectly control most of the next most important greenhouse ingredient: clouds.

These systems continuously recycle the Earth's air, and so exert strong controls over the entire climate system. For instance, the rising air in precipitation systems is what causes the sinking, cloudless air over desert areas. Vast oceanic areas of stratus clouds form below a temperature inversion that is also caused by air being forced to sink by precipitation systems, usually thousands of miles away.

So, what does all this have to do with global warming? Unless we know how the greenhouse-limiting properties of precipitation systems change with warming, we don't know how much of our current warmth is due to mankind, and we can't estimate how much future warming there will be, either. To solve the global-warming puzzle, we first need to learn much more about the precipitation-system puzzle.

What little evidence we now have suggests that precipitation systems act as a natural thermostat to reduce warming. For instance, warm, tropical systems are more efficient at converting water vapor to precipitation than their cool high-latitude cousins. Hurricanes are believed to be the most efficient of all.

I believe that negative feedbacks such as this are the only way to explain the relative stability of our climate. Computerized models of our climate have had a habit of "drifting" too warm or too cold. This because they still don't contain all of the temperature-stabilizing processes that exist in nature. In fact, for the amount of solar energy available to it, our climate seems to have a "preferred" average temperature, damping out swings beyond 1 degree or so. [bold added]

There's much more.

I am glad to see so many good articles directed at laymen being put out on global warming. While these will certainly be wasted on most leftists, they do serve a crucial function: They strip away the veneer of scientific respectability this new form of socialism is appropriating for itself. It is this veneer which is being used to sell global warming to otherwise rational adults.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 155

Gore "Steals" Oscar!

Al Gore's environmentalist agitprop won an Academy Award for best documentary.

In other news, the sun rose this morning, scientists still disagree (HT: Myrhaf) about far less sensational claims than Gore's, and the Hollywood Left will remain completely oblivious to the irony of any further complaints on its part that Bush "stole" the 2000 Presidential election.

Church (of Climate Change) and State Joined in Delaware

Following up to a fairly recent post, I see that the governor of Delaware has instructed her state climatologist not to use his job title when -- um -- performing his job.

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner has directed Delaware's state climatologist to stop using his title in public statements on climate change, citing a clash of views on global warming and confusion over the position's ties to the administration.

Minner, who made the directive in a letter, described the move as a way to "clarify" the role of David R. Legates, a prominent skeptic of views that human activities are warming the planet and triggering climate shifts.

This is more than just another example of Lysenkoism. It is an illustration of why the government has no business involving itself in science. After all, why should a state-appointed official necessarily be regarded as a more credible scientific authority, anyway? Because our leaders, who have sworn to protect our rights are considering all evidence when consulting experts on matters of public policy?

When you really think about it, the Governor has discredited herself as an objective participant in the global warming debate and removed the taint of suspected official influence from Legates.

If I were David Legates, I would make a three-ring circus out of this.

Government Magic

Via Isaac Schrodinger is the following example of modern-day political thought:

Robert Reich says that, as a requirement for free trade deals, we should tell developing countries to "set a minimum wage that's half their median wage."

I just love the way leftists scoff at the very idea that "unbridled" capitalism (towards which many free trade agreements are baby steps at best) can improve the lot of the poor -- and yet seem to believe that government incantations will do the trick instead.

Schrodinger's reaction to this is on the mark.

Our Long History with the Middle East

Chap points to an interview with Michael Oren, who recently wrote a history of America's interactions with the Middle East. I found the following interesting.

The Adams Administration in 1790s was paying about 20 percent of its federal revenues in bribery to the Middle Eastern pirates. Thomas Jefferson was from the opposing school. He said that the more you paid off the pirates the more bribery they would demand. Jefferson said that any treaty signed with any individual pirate ruler -- whether they be from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, or Libya -- that treaty would only be good as long as the ruler’s life.

We can see how American leaders later on in American history didn't heed Jefferson's advice. Take Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He sold Iran arms in an attempt to induce the Iranians to kidnap fewer Americans in Lebanon. He basically violated Thomas Jefferson's first rule in the Barbary Wars.

Based on this interview, Power, Faith, and Fantasy looks like it will be full of valuable historical background like this on the one hand, but perhaps very weak on analysis, on the other. For example, Oren later states:

America has to get involved in theology. We've been fighting a theology with an ideology. It doesn't work. We have to get in the business of promoting a reformist Islam. It's important. It's controversial, but important.

Setting aside the facts that (1) our biggest failing has been precisely that our leaders have timidly avoided discussing "ideology" during this war and (2) theology is just a type of ideology, we should (and need) get no more involved in discussions of theology (particularly on a governmental level) with Moslems than we did with the Japanese followers of Shinto during and after World War II.

As John Lewis recently pointed out, as far as theology goes, we need only be clear that mixing religion with politics is unacceptable. I quote here his excerpt of a telegram sent by the U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes to General Douglas MacArthur, in October, 1945.

Shintoism, insofar as it is a religion of individual Japanese, is not to be interfered with. Shintoism, however, insofar as it is directed by the Japanese government, and as a measure enforced from above by the government, is to be done away with. People would not be taxed to support National Shinto and there will be no place for Shintoism in the schools. Shintoism as a state religion -- National Shinto, that is -- will go . . . Our policy on this goes beyond Shinto . . . The dissemination of Japanese militaristic and ultra-nationalistic ideology in any form will be completely suppressed. And the Japanese Government will be required to cease financial and other support of Shinto establishment.

It will be interesting to hear what others have to say about this book in the coming months.

Government Support of Iran

Amit Ghate links to an interesting Wall Street Journal editorial that points out that, "EU taxpayers underwrite trade and investment that would otherwise be deterred by the risks of doing business with a rogue regime," [my bold] and has him scratching his head:

Unfortunately, that's where European governments step in and guarantee trade with the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism. Seeing this kind of lunacy makes me wonder how anyone in their right mind can argue that big government knows better than its own citizens what's good for them.

"Conspiracies": Good vs. Evil

Get a load of the missing sense of irony in this article.

[An unnamed, Iranian-sponsored terrorist leader] threatened his terror group will target American interests in the Middle East whether any purported strike against Tehran is carried out by Israel or the U.S.

"The Zionists and the Americans are coordinated 100 percent. It doesn't matter who attacks Iran, we are planning to hit them both," said the Islamic Jihad leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said the topic was "very sensitive."

...

"We are preparing the tomb that Allah is digging for the Zionists and Americans," said [a senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees terror group].

He claimed during any U.S. or Israeli military strike against Tehran, a response will be directed against Israel and American interests by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists.

"The war will be a war on more than one front. It will be everybody against everybody. Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinian organizations will work together. War with Iran is coming and it means the Middle East will not remain the same after it," the Committees leader said. [bold added]

If the Americans and Israelis coordinate military activity (as if) in the face of a torrent of threats, it's an evil Zionist conspiracy. If the Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese Moslems, and "Palestinians" do so, to gang up on tiny Israel, it's Allah's will -- and therefore, good.

Yep. That pretty much illustrates the richness and depth of ethical thought when "informed" by blind faith.

The (Non-) Future of Plentiful Electricity

Chalk up another corporate carcass to environmentalism.

History's largest private American buyout sounds ominously like it might also be one of the last giant deals in the energy industry:

Texas' largest electricity producer, said today it has agreed to be sold to a group of private-equity firms for about $32 billion in what would be the largest private buyout in U.S. corporate history if shareholders go along.

...

The firms won support for the buyout from some environmentalists who have criticized TXU by agreeing to sharply scale back TXU's controversial $10 billion plan to build 11 new coal-fired power plants that would produce tons of new greenhouse gas emissions.

...

TXU, with more than 2.3 million customers, has prospered because electric rates in Texas are tied to the price of natural gas while TXU generates much of its power more cheaply at coal and nuclear plants.

...

The company has planned to build 11 coal-fired power plants, saying Texas needs more power to satisfy a growing population. But opponents contend that adding coal-fired plants would be unwise with concern rising over greenhouse gas emissions and the effect on the environment.

Over the weekend, KKR and Texas Pacific agreed to drop eight of the proposed plants while going ahead with three in central Texas if they take control of the company. The bidders also agreed not to propose new coal-fired plants outside Texas and to support mandatory national caps on emissions linked to global warming. [bold and link added]

The article notes that the company was worried about an increasingly hostile regulatory environment, including "tougher regulations on emissions and overcapacity (!) if conservation cuts demand for power"!

Hmmm. So much for Texas remaining self-sufficient in electricity generation for long or exporting power to other states for that matter. (This cutback of 8 comes out of the 19 new coal plants proposed for Texas as of November of last year.)

On the bright side, this might make the foolishness of environmentalism more readily apparent sooner, rather than later.

-- CAV

Playing with Numbers

Yesterday, Mike N left an interesting comment regarding my post on the debate that Texas is having over whether to sell its state lottery to a private company.

We are having the same debate in Michigan. Gov. Jennifer Granholm was considering selling the state lottery. The numbers involved are staggering. Last year the lottery had 2.2 billion dollars in ticket sales. $688 million went to Michigan schools. The remainder was paid out in prizes and overhead. The state expects to get $10 billion over the next 75 years and hopes to invest it and get about $750 milion a year in return which I suppose would make up for the missing $688m that went to schools.

I have no clue if these numbers are even realistic. But the number that took me by surprise is the fact that the $688 million that went to schools is only 5% of the state school budget. That means the total school budget is $13,760,000,000 per year. That seems like way too much for a school system in one state.

This made me curious, so I simply googled something like "Texas state budget" last night, not really expecting to find anything. But I did find something. And that "something" was pretty eye-opening: an 801-page PDF document from whose sixth page I pulled the below numbers off a table called "Summary -- All Articles (All Funds)" (Note: My row numbers are not the same as the "Article" numbers used in the document.):

Row	Category	2007 Budget, Dollars
1	General Government	1,868,962,841
2	Health and Human Services	25,168,886,971
3	Agencies of Education	31,045,826,173
4	The Judiciary	275,971,134
5	Public Safety and Criminal Justice	4,576,834,755
6	Natural Resources	1,318,576,490
7	Business and Economic Development	9,990,102,292
8	Regulatory	274,024,494
9	The Legislature	182,706,257
10	GRAND TOTAL	74,701,891,407

Texas is a larger state than Michigan, but it would appear that Mike's figures for Michigan's bloated education budget are not only correct, but typical for a state.

Several things become apparent from this table. (1) Education is somewhere between a third and a half of the state budget! (2) As with Michigan, the lottery is barely a drop in the bucket. Our lottery provided $1 billion for education in 2006. (3) As I suspected yesterday, the welfare state is the lion's share of the budget.

For the sake of simplicity, assume along the same lines I cited yesterday, that the budgets for items pertinent to the proper function of a government represent an upper ceiling for how much it should take to run Texas. Those would be lines 1, 4, 5, and 9. And let's toss in 8 as a fudge factor to account for some legitimate functions of government which are already "covered" by unwarranted government intrusion. (e.g., The government has no business forcing businesses to abide by current environmental regulations to prevent them from dumping raw sewage into rivers, but if property rights extended through river beds, there might be some means for the government to monitor for such violations of property rights.)

These five items together amount to about 8 billion. (I'm rounding numbers and adding them in my head here.) Although the Texas lottery is but a drop in the bucket (about 3 %) towards our current educational budget, it represents a significant portion (about an eighth) of the ceiling for what it ought to cost to run a fully free State of Texas.

I will close by reiterating my main point from yesterday.

Rather than complaining that greater personal freedom might make "the ignorant" more able to choose foolishly, Casey would do far more good using his regular column to point out what less freedom -- in the form of mandatory public education funded with stolen money [that dumbs down our children] -- forces everyone to endure.

... And yet there is not one peep from him about abolishing the public schools -- and with them, the need for high taxes or a huge state lottery.

Until we shift our public debate from how we are going to waste even more money on public education to how we are going to make it truly possible for parents to send their children to good schools, we have much worse to worry about than a few people paying "too much" in "idiot taxes". As it stands, we're paying enormous buy-ins so our kids can play high-stakes Russian roulette with fully-loaded revolvers. Rick Casey is far from the only one with the wrong priorities.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) By calculator, the "upper ceiling" for the state budget I guesstimated above is actually about $7.2 billion. (2) Made some minor corrections.

The "right virus" is already here.

In his "The Toxicity of Environmentalism", George Reisman memorably quotes an environmentalist research biologist as saying the following:

It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

Every time I encounter a catalogue of the damage done to man by environmentalism, I recall this quote. Consider the following from Suzanne Fields at RealClear Politics, who wants to laugh at all the fuss made over global warming, but cannot. "All this could be great fun if it weren't so dangerous," she says as she reels off some of the fatal consequences of past enviro-fads.

• After Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, DDT was banned nearly everywhere. Most of her "evidence" later turned out to be all wrong, but 2 million poor Africans die every year of malaria that DDT was on the way to eradicating.
• The original plans for the World Trade Center called for the interior steel in both towers to be covered with asbestos-based fireproofing material. Asbestos was eliminated when environmentalists objected. Engineers think the twin towers might be standing today but for the politically correct construction. Asbestos would have at least slowed the spread of the fire and the melting of the metal, giving hundreds of those who perished a chance to escape.
• Hurricane Katrina need not have been the tragedy it was. In 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to build large steel and concrete "sea gates" below sea level to prevent hurricane force winds driving storm surges into Lake Pontchartrain, overflowing into low-lying New Orleans. Such gates have been enormously successful in the Netherlands. But the Environmental Defense Fund, which had been a party to the lawsuit leading to the banning of DDT, persuaded a judge that the sea gates would discourage the mating of a certain fish species. Fishy romance trumped the lives of 3,100 Orleanians. "If we had built the barriers, New Orleans would not be flooded," says Joe Towers, who was counsel for the New Orleans District of the Corps. [bold added]
  

The "right virus" is already among us. It is called "environmentalism".

Recognizing the problem is the first step in curing it.

-- CAV

Casey on the Texas Lottery

In this Sunday's Houston Chronicle, I read a column by Rick Casey titled, "The Moral Reason Not to Sell the Lottery", in which its author attacks a plan for Texas to sell off its state lottery because private industry would run it -- get this -- too effectively! After complaining that the state would not sufficiently regulate the buyer, he ends his column in this way:

So should we sell the lottery?

The only argument that makes sense is to do so because the private sector will run it more competently.

And that is the best argument against it.

Before you accuse me of quoting Casey out of context to make him look foolish (since he must have a good reason to fear a "more competently"-run lottery), let me assure you I would actually be helping Casey look better than he deserves by leaving it at that.

Why? Because his rationale for objecting to a privately-run lottery, aside from its blatant (and incorrect) assumption that capitalism is predatory by nature, is based on the fact that a lottery is what many often call an "idiot tax".

The lottery ... preys on the ignorant.

The Texas lottery's own most recent survey proves the point.

The median amount spent by those with a high school diploma was $39 a month. Those with some college: $26. Those with a college degree: $20.

Those with a graduate degree: $12 a month.

The reason they reported median amounts (the figure reported spent by the middle person in each category) is that averages would be even uglier.

A previous report showed high school dropouts spending an average of $173 a month and those with a college degree $49.

The difference is, highly educated people know they don't have much of a chance of winning. They're buying a token number of tickets for the pleasure of an enriched fantasy life until the 10:12 p.m. drawing.

Low-income people with no math skills see the lottery as their only way out of poverty, and bet more than they can afford in desperation.

They want something for next to nothing, but then so do we higher-income taxpayers who abide a system that bilks the desperate poor because we don't want to pay full freight for the services we expect from the state. [bold added]

Notice that the smug, presumably "highly educated","higher-income taxpayer" Casey objects to improving the efficiency of a funding mechanism for the state's education system because it preys on "the ignorant" -- the vast majority of whom are doubtless in their current predicaments at least in part because they received poor educations -- courtesy of deficient educational "services ... from the state".

Notice also that Casey never once questions the presumed infallibility of the state -- except when it allows private individuals to take control of anything away from it. The state should regulate industry, protect "the ignorant" from making foolish choices, and force people to pay for its tender mercies rather than leaving whether to pay and how much up to the individual.

And speaking of tender mercies, Lisa VanDamme has an earful on what our government is forcing us to pay for -- something Casey fully supports -- under the misleading label of "education":

Perhaps the best thing that could happen to America would be the abolition of the Department of Education and government schools. Free market competition in education would allow Classical Education to compete better against Progressive Education and within years the empirical evidence would compel any responsible parent to avoid Progressive Education as if it were a disease.

But just as we pay $20 billion a year for a Department of Agriculture that stifles competition and erects regulations that give us food of less quality for more money, we pay the Department of Education $65.7 billion a year to dumb down America. $65.7 billion a year to cripple minds! [bold added]

$65.7 billion a year -- at the federal level alone -- is a lot of money to waste on a system that has proven to be disastrous in terms that even Rick Casey should be able to understand!

And yet, despite all this, Casey complains not about how poor our educational system is, despite the fact it is far more expensive than many better systems around the world, nor does he even bother to ask why we are planning to shovel even more money into its insatiable maw. No. Casey could complain about these things, but instead, he focuses on the fact that some of our schools' worst victims might be free to make a choice -- a choice that system has made them ill-equipped to make! Except that Casey never says anything about why so many people are so "ignorant"!

Rather than complaining that greater personal freedom might make "the ignorant" more able to choose foolishly, Casey would do far more good using his regular column to point out what less freedom -- in the form of mandatory public education funded with stolen money -- forces everyone to endure.

It is tempting to call Casey's "defense" of the less-educated ironic since he himself seems so ignorant about the role of big government in ruining generations of young minds, but for the fact that he is clearly someone who should know better and probably does. And yet there is not one peep from him about abolishing the public schools -- and with them, the need for high taxes or a huge state lottery.

This column struck me first as ironic, but a more accurate label would be despicable. An enemy of freedom is no friend of the poor, or of anyone else for that matter.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Quick Roundup 154

Boaz Simovici on Robert Tracinski

Stop by Noodle Food if you haven't already and read another spot-on analysis of Robert Tracinski's still-infinished "What Went Right?" series. This passage in particular reminds me of a point I have noticed myself, although Simovici does a far better job of fleshing it out.

Tracinski argues that western institutions are the mechanism of philosophical change in today's world. The experience of scientific education, capitalism and liberal democracy leads to a wider acceptance of enlightenment ideals: reason, individualism, the pursuit of happiness. Men are "inducted" into a rational worldview -- they form new and better ethical concepts implicitly -- by experiencing the rewards of certain virtues (honesty, thrift, initiative). This mechanism constitutes nothing less than a "virtuous cycle," at the end of which a philosophy of reason takes over the culture. Western institutions --> implicit philosophy --> Moral revolution....

Much of this argument has the ring of truth. It's true, for instance, that existential and political conditions play an important role in the spread of ideas. This is hardly an original point -- within or outside of Objectivism.

Incidentally, Diana notes in her comments that the post is the 2000th at her blog and that she is closing in on five years of blogging. Be sure to stop by and thank her for the superb job she has been doing there.

War Debate in Boulder

Here's another one you've probably already heard about, but which is worth repeating....

America is often harshly criticized at home and abroad for its conduct in war, not just by "doves" hoping to restrain American military might but also by "hawks" seeking more vigorous military action. So what does morality require of America in war? Is a vigorous defense of American interests abroad compatible with justice? What are the military's obligations toward the civilians of an enemy nation? What is the moral response to today's pressing problem of global terrorism? On Tuesday, March 13th, Dr. Yaron Brook and Dr. Martin Cook will debate these questions at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

What: Debate on "Justice in War" with Dr. Martin Cook and Dr. Yaron Brook

Where: Wittemeyer Courtroom, Wolf Law Building, University of Colorado at Boulder

When: Tuesday, March 13th, 2007, 8:00 to 9:30 p.m.

For more about the event, the debaters, and its sponsoring organization, Think!, follow the link.

Blogroll Addition

Via Mikes's Eyes and Principles in Practice, I have learned that Lisa VanDamme has started her own blog on education, Pedagogically Correct. You can now find it on the side bar here. The blog contains some, but not all of the content from her school's newsletter of the same name. Mike N has more details about the newsletter at his blog, where he posts an installment.

With Friends Like These...

Over at TCS Daily is one of the worst articles on taxation I have read in a very long time.

Ask an economist and she'll tell you there are two basic approaches to tax fairness. One is "benefits received" which says taxes are fair if those who use the most government pay the most taxes. The other is "ability to pay" which says to forget how much government we use -- people who make more money should pay more tax.

In today's policy world, ability to pay wears the pants. ...

So here's a question. If graduated tax rates on people are fair, are they also fair for corporations?

I hope you're sitting down, because the improbable answer is that they're not fair.

...

Every freshman economics class teaches companies can't bear taxes, only people can. Companies are just legal fictions that shove off taxes onto customers, employees and shareholders. The firm itself pays nothing. And so the age-old notion that we should hammer rich companies because "they can afford it" is really based on a simple misunderstanding.

Personally, I blame lawmakers for the mix-up. They notoriously preach the gospel of "tax companies, not people" with campaign promises to shift taxes from families onto businesses. But business taxes are just a tricky way of dumping tax burdens back onto different people. So in the world of corporate taxes, the right measure of ability to pay isn't the profits of the Fortune 500. It's our own pocketbooks.

...

Sam Walton was rich. But the poor families who bought jeans at Wal-Mart this morning aren't. Why soak them for shopping at a profitable company? Why not tax the Waltons directly, and forget the rococo con game of corporate taxes altogether?

This legalistic, sophomoric, and wholly unconvincing argument is nothing more than a cowardly attempt to avoid sticking one's neck out to make a moral stand against government redistribution of income

Why tax Sam Walton (or any other individual) at all? Aside from taxation violating his individual rights, soaking producers -- who will be "able to pay" precisely to the extent that they show ingenuity and initiative -- will rob them of significant incentives to do the work that drives our economy.

Personally, I blame economists like Andrew Chamberlain for our current welfare state quagmire. In pretending that moral issues do not matter, such men do an injustice to the world's most moral and practical political system, capitalism, while making the welfare state and foolishness like soaking the rich appear to be moral and practical.

-- CAV

Hitchens: Not Even Half-Right

Christopher Hitchens, who has had lots of important things to say about the war with the Islamofascists, recently wrote a rather puzzling column about Islamic sectarian brutality that brings up a very important aspect of the fight the Islamofascists are waging against civilization. To understand it, we must begin at the end, where he speaks against the multiculturalist/Islamofascist dogma that we "respect" the Moslems without reciprocity.

[N]o true secularist or even Christian has been involved in anything like the torching of a mosque. ... But where are the denunciations from centers of Sunni and Shiite authority of the daily murder and torture of Islamic co-religionists? Of the regular desecration of holy sites and holy books? Of the paranoid insults thrown so carelessly and callously by one Muslim group at another? This mounting ghastliness is a bit more worthy of condemnation, surely, than a few Danish cartoons or a false rumor about a profaned copy of the Quran in Guantanamo. The civilized world -- yes I do mean to say that -- should find its own voice and state firmly to Muslim leaders and citizens that respect is something to be earned and not demanded with menace. A short way of phrasing this would be to say, "See how the Muslims respect each other!" [bold added]

This last is true, but why? It certainly does not follow (or flow very smoothly) from the earlier part of his column, where he condemns indifference to the fact that some barbarians are exterminating others:

I have met a few very hard-line right-wingers who say: So what? If one lot of Islamists wants to slaughter another, who cares? It's very important to repudiate this kind of "thinking." Religious warfare is the worst thing that can happen to any society, and it now has the potential to spread to societies that are not directly involved. For the most part, official U.S. policy in Iraq has been sound in this respect, always working for a compromise and recently losing American lives to rescue the moderate Shiite leadership from a murder plot hatched by a messianic Shiite militia. Even where this policy fell short -- as in the appalling execution of Saddam Hussein -- the American Embassy urged the Maliki government not to conduct the hanging on the day of the Eid ul-Adha holiday that would most humiliate the Sunnis. We cannot flirt, either morally or politically, with divide and rule. [bold added]

Don't accuse me of being a "right-winger", but .... If family or friends of mine were about to be attacked by a pack of wolves and I saw the beasts starting to tear each other apart, I would be relieved to the extent that the wolves made themselves less able to harm my loved ones. So why is Hitchens so concerned that we repudiate applying the same kind of calculus to barbarians?

His answer, interestingly enough, is only somewhat apparent in the above passage, where he makes the common-enough error of supporting the American policy of nation-building in Iraq despite our disastrous failure to ban religion from its government. It is clearer in the first passage, in this parenthetical comment, which I removed from the excerpt:

The last time that such [religiously-motivated violence] did happen on any scale -- in Bosnia -- the United States and Britain intervened militarily to put a stop to it. We also overthrew the Taliban, which was slaughtering the Hazara Shiite minority in Afghanistan.

I have heard the invasion of Afghanistan justified in many ways, ranging from the valid (i.e., American self-defense) to the invalid (i.e., self-sacrificially providing freedom for others), but this is the first time I have heard it praised so explicitly in terms of American soldiers being used to protect Moslems from their own squabbling!

Hitchens ends sounding almost like he is defending individual rights, and yet he is clearly an altruist. The column, claiming moral justification in terms of self-sacrifice, ends, oddly, in a strange mixture of attempting to shame Moslems via altruism and demanding that they respect our rights. What is going on here?

I have frequently-enough argued here against the morality of altruism that my views on that matter are clear, and I will also not argue here again that one cannot defend individual rights on altruistic grounds. Instead, I will simply comment that Hitchens himself, like Western civilization as a whole, is influenced by two competing and antithetical intellectual traditions, the mystical, altruist-collectivist, Judeo-Christian tradition and the this-worldly Greco-Roman.

As an altruist, he feels that we must help the less fortunate, even if they are causing their own misfortune as the Moslems are. As a man of this world, he is rightly indignant that the Moslems do not respect individual rights, specifically ours. And as a man of mixed premises, I think that the fact that the concept of "rights" pertains to man's relationship with other men confuses Hitchens. (Ayn Rand once put it this way, "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context," in "Man's Rights", Virtue of Selfishness, p.124) This disjointed column strikes me as the product of a man intellectually hobbled by (or perhaps grappling with) the inherent contradiction between altruism and individual rights.

Hitchens' inability to reconcile the desire to be treated like a human being with the moral premise of altruism (expressed most purely by the bald demand by the Moslems that we simply immolate ourselves) is not entirely philosophical. It is also, I am sure, rooted at least in some part in good will: He sees fellow human beings suffering and is moved to put a stop to it. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the suffering he describes in the Moslem world is largely a direct result of the beliefs -- and the actions that flow from those beliefs -- of these very human beings. And if, as he says, "[I]t now has the potential to spread to societies that are not directly involved," might that be due, not to our failure to put an end to the suffering, but to the fact that we are propping up a medieval society, shielding its residents and supporters from seeing the full consequences of following Islam?

It seems that I have been citing John Lewis in every other post lately, but when somebody is right about so many things....

Specifically, I am thinking of the how the lesson we taught the Japanese during World War II would apply today:

The bombings marked America's total victory over a militaristic culture that had murdered millions. To return an entire nation to morality, the Japanese had to be shown the literal meaning of the war they had waged against others. The abstraction "war," the propaganda of their leaders, their twisted samurai "honor," their desire to die for the emperor--all of it had to be given concrete form. This is what firebombing Japanese cities accomplished. It showed the Japanese that "this"--point to burning buildings, screaming children scarred unmercifully, piles of corpses, the promise of starvation--"this is what you have done to others. Now it has come for you. Give it up, or die." This was the only way to show them the true nature of their philosophy, and to beat the truth of the defeat into them. [bold added]

Lewis is, of course, speaking of the successful American military campaign against a more civilized and formidable foe. But in speaking against what he calls "this kind of 'thinking'", Hitchens is shrinking from this war's analogue.

The Islamic world is weak (so far), and yet there is no shortage of "holy" warriors or their supporters. Left without American aid, the likes of the "Palestinians" would reform -- or self-destruct in very short order. Without money from nationalized (i.e., stolen) petroleum assets, there would be no massive funding of madrassas by Saudi Arabia or nuclear bomb development by Iran. Indeed, without petrodollars, these nations would have had to advance by a significant degree culturally simply to become or remain as populous as they are today.

Indeed, as many on the left claim, much of this violence is the fault of the West -- but not in the way they claim. The Islamofascists are not justifyably reacting to American "imperialism", but are simply following the malevolent dictates of their poisonous faith while living parasitically on the material bounty of Western civilization. Perversely, it is people like Hitchens, who want us to protect the Moslems from themselves, who are acting to prolong the senseless religious bloodshed, by delaying or preventing a Western victory. In the latter case, this would be merely to forestall the human cataclysm that would be life "lived" fully in accordance with Islam. In putting off the inevitable, we only ensure that more people will live as slaves, suffer, or die because of Islam.

In fact, we should, for our own sakes, not only engage in what Hitchens dismisses as "this kind of 'thinking'" (i.e., permit the barbarians to do some our work for us), and wage war ruthlessly against state sponsors of terrorism, we should also remove every single form of material assistance that is propping up the Islamic world in order to hasten the consequences of its animating ideology for any who insist on practicing it.

-- CAV

Updates

2-21-07: Reworded penultimate paragraph. Corrected two typos.

Failing the "Dickie Flatt Test"

Yesterday, I relayed my concerns that John McCain is not just an enemy of freedom, but quite capable of doing great damage to same due to his strong appeal to so many Americans.

In his quest for power, this man misses no opportunity to court the basest enemies of freedom and yet, because nearly everyone else is blinded by the false "liberal vs. conservative" dichotomy, he enjoys a reputation as a "moderate". This makes him possibly the most dangerous candidate in the running so far. [bold added]

As it turns out, my estimate of his dangerousness will have sounded low once you read and consider Phil Gramm's pro-McCain editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Each excerpt below is bulleted, followed by my comments, [bracketed and in bold].

• His conservatism is not the result of a studied philosophy, but of common sense and personal observation. [McCain is not an ideologue -- as if people who do not profess an ideology are not still influenced by ideology. We can thank generations of anti-American intellectuals for making so many people so reflexively suspicious of explicit ideology that the lack thereof is so often seen as a credential.]
• John McCain understands instinctively that just as "in war, there is no substitute for victory, in peace, there is no substitute for growth." He believes that "the strength of our economy promotes freedom not just at home but in every distant corner of our planet. End growth in America and the lights start to go out all over the world." [This much is true, and yet McCain proposes massive environmental regulation of the economy. I guess "instinct" isn't all it's cracked up to be.]
• For Sen. McCain, salvaging the social safety net and saving the economy means making the hard choices now to right the current system for those already in it, and building a new system for future workers based on real investments, not empty promises. [Notice (again) that what passes for fiscal conservatism these days is making the welfare state "work".]
• Who else has shown any ability to reach across the party divide and build a bipartisan consensus? Who else could lead worried Americans and shame a reluctant Congress into action? Who else would stay on course with political flak exploding all around him, and his political life hanging in the balance? The easy answer is--no one but John McCain. [Given his other positions, this is what really scares me about him!]
• Who would be more effective than John McCain in using American military power in its highest and best use -- the deterrence of adversaries? [Ummm. I'll take a wild stab: John Lewis. What better "deterrence" of an enemy is there than his total defeat?]

Even if, as Gramm implied it were true that John McCain would actually wage a war against the Islamofascists, his sorry track record on freedom of speech would make him unacceptable.

When he was still in public office, Phil Gramm was famous for applying the "Dickie Flatt Test" when evaluating various federal measures. Unfortunately, he fails to realize that he is not applying this test consistently when he evaluates Senator John McCain. Certainly, Dickie Flatt needs lower taxation and protection from foreign threats, but how will "saving" social security accomplish the former or anything less than a ruthless military campaign with proper objectives accomplish the latter? And what good will either do if his ability to make a living is ruined by a panic-driven Green economic agenda -- and his ability to say something about it compromised by such measures as "campaign finance reform"?

A basic requirement of Dickie Flatt's life (and all our lives for that matter) is freedom -- freedom from being threatened, robbed, or harmed by others. It is only freedom that the government is meant (or able) to provide. Thus, the only way for any politician to really pass this test is for him to hold a consistent committment to individual rights. On that score, John McCain fails the "Dickie Flatt Test" miserably.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Removed one bullet. Corrected a typo.

Quick Roundup 153

John McCain: Candidate from Hell

So far, I have not seen anyone I could actually support throw his hat into the ring for the 2008 Presidential election, but one candidate is certainly distancing himself from the pack as the one candidate I could not vote for under any remotely likely circumstance: John McCain.

McCain's assault against freedom of speech and property rights -- known by the euphemism of "McCain-Feingold" -- had already made him unacceptable, but he seems hell-bent on driving home his unsuitability for high office.

Just on the heels of pandering to global warming enthusiasts (and I mean this term in the old British pejorative sense), he has decided also to pander to the anti-abortionists:

McCain told a crowd of about 800 people packed into a restaurant in the northern part of the state that he opposes the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

"I do not support Roe vs. Wade. It should be overturned," he said. The Arizona senator also vowed that as president he would appoint judges "that strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench."

It is one thing to question the legal soundness of the Roe vs. Wade decision, but it is quite another to do so in front of a crowd of religious conservatives. I think it is safe to assume that, as far as McCain is concerned, women do not have a right to abortion, that he considers Roe vs. Wade to be an example of "legislation from the bench", and he will attempt to "rectify" the current state of affairs through any judiciary appointments he has a chance to make.

In his quest for power, this man misses no opportunity to court the basest enemies of freedom and yet, because nearly everyone else is blinded by the false "liberal vs. conservative" dichotomy, he enjoys a reputation as a "moderate". This makes him possibly the most dangerous candidate in the running so far.

John Lewis to Make Two Appearances!

John Lewis, whom I have not yet had the opportunity to hear in person, will be lecturing on "'No Substitute for Victory': The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism" at two locations in the near future: The University of Michigan on February 20 and George Mason University on February 28. He will begin each lecture at 7:30 p.m. Follow the links for more details.

Review Outdoor Monuments, Win a Prize

In an effort to promote her new book, Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide, Dianne Durante is holding a contest for individuals who post reviews at Amazon.com.

The best [inexpensive promotional] methods seem to be on the web and by word of mouth. For starters, I'm offering rewards to writers of what I judge to be the 10 best Amazon reviews to appear by the end of March 2007.

Winners can choose either a 13 x 13" black tote bag with an actual-size image of OMOM's cover (I have 5 of these), or an 8 x 10" B&W print of your favorite image from the book. To enter the contest, upload your review to Amazon and email a copy to me at forgottendeli@earthlink.net.

I am particularly interested in reviews that would make OMOM appealing to niche markets. If you're a history buff and you find the "About the Subject" sections particularly interesting, say that. If you're a fan of Ayn Rand and the discussions of esthetics interest you, go with that. If you're an artist, art teacher, or art student and think the book would be valuable for colleagues, say so.

Follow the link to learn more.

Blogroll Addition

Via Noodle Food, I have learned of a blog that will be very helpful in keeping up with the battle for freedom from religion in America: The Wall of Separation, the blog of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I have also added their main site to the leftmost column of my links page. From there comes the following interesting story:

Can the government force inmates to become evangelical Christians as the price of receiving rehabilitation, better treatment while in prison and the prospect of earlier release?

Can taxpayers be forced to support a prison ministry that indoctrinates inmates in one religious tradition and attacks other faiths as false?

What if to make matters worse the sectarian program has no proof of success in its performance?

Those questions are at the heart of an important court hearing before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Arguments in Americans United v. Prison Fellowship Ministries will take place Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007, at 9 a.m. at the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse in St. Louis, Mo.

...

"No American should be pressured by the government to conform to any particular religious viewpoint," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "Inmates should have access to effective rehabilitation programs that prepare them for life outside prison, no matter what religion they subscribe to."

Continued Lynn, "This case has major implications for the Bush 'faith-based' initiative. Programs that are pervaded with religion should not get public funds."

Although I disagree with the notion that the purpose of prison is rehabilitation, I am still glad to see that such an organization is keeping its eye on such brazen attempts to inject religion into government.

The Blogfather Returns

Well, he's not really my blogfather, but he indirectly gave me the idea to begin blogging in the first place, so he is probably the closest thing this blogger has to a "blogfather"....

At any rate, my good friend Raymund, who writes science fiction, has decided to get his priorities straight and return to blogging -- with a little help from his friends. I think that between Samantha Ling, Curtis Weeks, and myself, we will come up with an embarrassing-enough topic for him to blog about should he miss a week that he will become a fairly regular blogger.

Smack talk aside, welcome back, Raymund!

-- CAV

The Looming Showdown with Iran

I have recently commented very disparagingly on the Bush Administration's dealings with North Korea regarding its quest for nuclear weaponry, but not so much lately on its recent diplomatic moves in the Middle East. No matter. Caroline Glick does a far better job than I could have, tying the two together and considering as far as possible the implications of both. Her summary:

Whether the US arrives at its showdown with Iran from a position of weakness or strength, willingly or unwillingly, there is no doubt that the confrontation is approaching. And the difference between initiating the confrontation and allowing Iran to initiate it with a nuclear first strike is not a trivial question. It will make a difference of millions of lives. The question of the hour is therefore whether the little time left before the war is being used wisely.

And here is the great failure. By sending a message of weakness now, in order to purchase maneuvering time that may not be obtained [This is the most generous interpretation I can imagine for our recent diplomatic activity. --ed], the US this week has accelerated rather than distanced the moment of truth while doing nothing to build support or increase its chances of triumph when the inevitable occurs. [my bold]

The whole thing is a must-read, of course. And then, if you've the stomach for it, you can hop on over to FrontPage Magazine for a good article about our "ally", Pakistan by Janet Levy.

Musharraf has done little to curb extremism in Pakistan and his actions have been a direct threat to U.S. anti-terrorist efforts. Under Pakistan’s watchful eye, Islamists continue to operate openly throughout Pakistan and export terrorism to Afghanistan. Can we really still afford to count on Pakistan as an ally? It is time for President Bush to seriously ask Pakistan, "Are you with us or with the terrorists?"

This is all terrible news, but it is worth taking note of now, for our Congress is in the process of taking advantage of America's proper contempt for Bush's "war effort" to push not for our proper defense, but for an anti-war agenda. Those of us in favor of fighting Islamofascism must recognize that this is not really fighting a war -- so we can make the case for the real thing by contrast.

-- CAV

Updates

2-19-07: The New York Times reports that al Qaeda is well on its way towards reestablishing itself from new bases in Pakistan.

[E]xperts questioned the seriousness of Pakistan’s commitment. They argued that elements of Pakistan's military still supported the Taliban and saw them as a valuable proxy to counter the rising influence of India, Pakistan's regional rival.

...

Pakistani officials say that they are doing their best to gain control of the area and that military efforts to pacify it have failed, but that more reconstruction aid is needed. [bold added]

Doing their best, eh? Sure they are.

But the following takes the cake: "State Department officials say increased American pressure could undermine President Musharraf's military-led government." Yeah. And?

Flattery vs. Self-Esteem

Via Arts and Letters Daily is an article by Po Bronson that makes quite a few excellent points about how confusion about the nature of self-esteem is leading many parents and educators to work against the cognitive and psychological development of children despite their best intentions. How? By giving them empty praise for their "intelligence" rather than earned praise for hard work.

It is worth noting that the way most people use the terms "intelligent" and "smart" implies innate ability, which is not under one's control, while the amount of effort one puts in to a problem is well within his control. In addition, effort can improve one's intellect through use and one's (genuine) self-esteem by providing repeated experiences of conquering difficult problems.

Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles -- puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, "You must be smart at this." Other students were praised for their effort: "You must have worked really hard."

Why just a single line of praise? "We wanted to see how sensitive children were," Dweck explained. "We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect."

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they'd learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck's team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The "smart" kids took the cop-out.

Why did this happen? "When we praise children for their intelligence," Dweck wrote in her study summary, "we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don't risk making mistakes." And that's what the fifth-graders had done: They'd chosen to look smart and avoid the risk of being embarrassed.

...

Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students' "shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions." [bold added]

The article is invaluable for making arguments along these lines, but it does suffer from the widespread confusion about the term "self-esteem". For example, Bronson specifically (and rightly) blames the pervasive notion that a child's self-esteem can be bolstered by false praise for these problems, but sounds at points like he is in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water: "Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves [Do they really? --ed], debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem."

Nevertheless, the article does more than once make the connection between effort and the kind of increased self-confidence indicative of high (genuine) self-esteem: "Jumping in with praise is like jumping in too soon with the answer to a homework problem -- it robs [one's child] of the chance to make the [conclusion that he is smart] himself."

At this point, two other related articles are worth bringing up.

First is Edwin Locke's article in The Objective Standard on "The Educational, Psychological, and Philosophical Assault on Self-Esteem", which discusses further how the educational establishment has been undercutting genuine self-esteem by pushing the false, second-hand variety described by Bronson. Especially valuable in this context is this paragraph, which cuts through the fog and makes Bronson's article, as good as it is, even more intelligible.

Self-esteem is recognized at some level, even by those who fail to understand its actual nature, as a critical psychological need. It is generally viewed as "feeling good about yourself." This is superficially true: Self-esteem is a positive subconscious estimate of oneself. More accurately, however, self-esteem is the conviction that one is fundamentally worthy of success and capable of dealing with life's challenges. Self-esteem is not a causeless feeling or appraisal. It has to be earned by means of specific actions, especially mental actions, but most people have never been taught what these actions consist of. Consider the field of education. [bold added]

Viewed in this light, it is clear that any attempt to grant a child "self-esteem" by such measures as the repeated incantation of "You're smart," will fail -- while teaching a child how to earn the real thing, by encouraging him to try harder, will at least have the strong possibility of success.

Second, this article reminds me of another from about five years ago by Mark Goldblatt of the Fashion Institute of Technology, which brings up another dimension of the problem caused by our educators' fetish for pseudo-self-esteem.

[U]nlike in the past, ignorance is no longer tempered with humility. Rather, after years of psychotherapy disguised as pedagogy, ignorance is now buoyed by self-esteem -- which, in turn, makes students more resistant to remediation since they don't believe there's a problem. This resistance, indeed, is part and parcel of a wholly misplaced intellectual confidence that is the most serious obstacle to their higher education. For the last two decades, I've taught freshman courses at CUNY and SUNY colleges in the city; the majority of my students have been products of the city's public schools. I am saddened, therefore, to report that more and more of them are arriving in my classes with the impression that their opinions, regardless of their acquaintance with a particular subject, are instantly valid -- indeed, as valid as anyone's. Pertinent knowledge, to them, is not required to render judgment. [bold added]

In other words, if praise is divorced from a child's effort of focusing on reality by teaching him from early on that social approval is more important than hard work, then that child's ability to evaluate how effective his mind really is -- or whether what he thinks corresponds to reality -- will become severely impaired through disuse. Furthermore, children who are not confident enough to spend time studying difficult problems in order to form their own opinions will opt for the easy way out -- praise for parroting whatever indoctrination they receive. They will appear to be confident, but that will only be because they are now oriented to the task of earning praise, at which they will have learned to excel by the point they get to Goldblatt. And as for doing anything that requires mental effort, why should they? What they did before was always good enough.

It is encouraging that the concept of "self-esteem" is being examined critically today, but confusion about the concept risks lowering the value of much of this work. The goal of education is to help children become rational, efficacious adults. The emotional component of this goal is, in fact, self-esteem, which will be an effect of a good education. By knowing the true nature of self-esteem (rather than dismissing it completely because it is so widely misunderstood), we understand better the errors of current theories of education and can more quickly correct them.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Chavez does something useful ...

... completely by accident, of course. He has gotten some Cuban physicians off of Cuba and into a location from which escape is easier.

Recall awhile back that Cuba and Venezuela were teaming up to export Marxism throughout Latin America by giving out operations to the needy. How? Hugo Chavez would prop up Fidel Castro's regime with "free" oil while Cuba would supply the slave labor for Chavez's propaganda campaign. In some cases, patients were flown in to Cuba, where they'd be bused to hospitals while the Cubans waited for inferior public transit or simply gave up and walked. This comes from an old report in the Chicago Tribune.

Some Cubans express resentment at the resources being poured into Mision Milagro, complaining that foreigners get better medical treatment than they do. Other Cubans seethe as they watch foreign patients driven to and from hospitals in new Chinese luxury buses while they wait for hours for scarce public transportation.

"I was standing in the blazing sun, and three of these Chinese buses with patients passed with an ambulance behind it," said one Havana resident. "I thought these buses were for us."

Despite the complaints, Castro announced that Cuba is equipping and staffing hospitals throughout the island to sharply increase the number of eye operations.

But in other cases, Cuban medical personnel were being sent abroad. In at least one of these cases, the "medical personnel" seem to have been sent merely to destabilize the host country, so I was initially a little skeptical when I first saw the headline. Wouldn't Cuba keep its better medical personnel well-guarded?

Indeed, Cuba would. It is the doctors posted in Cuba's ally, Venezuela, who are beginning to leave in droves! From the Houston Chronicle:

In his quest to reach the United States, Ariel Perez slipped away from Cuban informants, evaded Venezuelan border guards and kept his distance from Colombian guerrillas.

But Perez, a Cuban physician who fled to Colombia from Venezuela last year, faces one final hurdle: U.S. bureaucrats.

That's because Perez and dozens of other Cuban defectors who have fled from Venezuela have been waiting for months for permission from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota to emigrate to the land of their dreams.

"I want to be free," said Perez, 36, who lives in a slum in the Colombian capital with two other Cuban defectors. "But I don't know how long it will take."

Dispatched by Fidel Castro's government for humanitarian work [sic] in exchange for oil and other badly needed supplies, a small but growing number of Cuban medical personnel are using their foreign postings as stepping stones to the U.S.

...

About 360 doctors, dentists and physical therapists have applied under the new Cuban Medical Professional Parole program. About 160 have been accepted, while most other cases are pending, said Ana Carbonell, chief of staff for Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a longtime advocate for Cuban exiles. [bold added]

The article in the Houston Chronicle notes that some claim concern for the poor as a rationale for complaining about the Bush administration's encouragement of the defections.

But some critics contend that, in its drive to embarrass the Castro government, the Bush administration is sabotaging health programs in poorer countries such as Bolivia, Pakistan and Venezuela, which have accepted the Cuban doctors.

"This is an evil and mean-spirited effort to undermine health services for the poor," said the Rev. Lucius Walker, executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, a human rights group that opposes U.S. policy towards Cuba and organizes humanitarian aid convoys there.

In Venezuela, about 15,000 Cuban health workers staff 8,000 clinics located in the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods of Caracas and other cities, where local doctors traditionally refused to go. In exchange, Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil producer, provides energy-starved Cuba with 93,000 barrels of low-cost oil per day, worth nearly $2 billion annually.

Left out of all this is why Cuba is "energy-starved" in the first place.

Were such critics genuinely concerned for the poor, perhaps they would demand that Bush do more to overthrow regimes such as Fidel Castro's and do something to topple that of Hugo Chavez, who is beginning to starve his own people.

-- CAV