Heartland on VanDamme

Via HBL, I have learned that the VanDamme Academy has been written up in a very positive article (alternate URL below) in School Reform News, a publication of the Heartland Institute.

The VanDamme Academy, a K-8 school in Laguna Hills, California, has an unusual way of giving students a better foundation of knowledge.

Founder Lisa VanDamme said the students learn incrementally, not moving forward in concepts until they've mastered the one at hand. Moreover, teachers encourage them to make connections within and between the subjects, and between school and life.

"[We're] teaching in a very deliberate, planned, incremental order that provides for real understanding on the part of the child," VanDamme said. "They're starting on the small, simple steps and building on it, so at each new stage, they thoroughly grasp the material."

Using a carefully planned curriculum, teachers help students build core knowledge and hone skills necessary for their future success, VanDamme said.

VanDamme developed her teaching method when she began as a homeschool teacher to an exceptionally gifted child about 11 years ago. She drew on the experience of highly educated friends and the educational philosophy of Ayn Rand to put together her curriculum.

...


VanDamme's curriculum advances students without putting them in the traditional K-8 grade classes, letting them progress in subjects as quickly as they learn them and constantly challenging each student, she said.

"A student's motivation is completely killed if he's not challenged to the level of his capacity," VanDamme said.

Of the 25 students who have graduated from the six-year-old academy since 2005, one-third had made their way partially through calculus before entering ninth grade.

"Nobody's pushing them or requiring them to do that," VanDamme noted. "These were kids who were chomping at the bit to accelerate in math, and we certainly gave them the opportunity to do that."

Other students are just as successful: One seventh-grader recently scored a perfect 800 on the writing portion of the SAT. VanDamme's first student, now in his early 20s, is in his fifth year of graduate studies in physics at Stanford University. [bold added]

Read the whole thing, and since the Heartland Institute's web site seems to be partially down this morning, here's an alternate URL.

It is very good to hear in such concrete terms how successful Lisa VanDamme has been as an educator, and encouraging that her methods are finally getting some major publicity.

-- CAV

Too Green, and not Gold Enough

Steve Forbes should have called for a gold standard and shouldn't have plugged a green book, but he does at least mention gold and point the finger at the source of the blame for inflation:

The most potent, constructive medicine would be for the Bush Administration to stop its Jimmy Carter-like weakening of the dollar. A feeble dollar means inflation -- witness what's happened to commodity prices over the last four years, the most prominent being oil, which has almost quadrupled in price. This ain't a case of supply and demand. Four years ago an ounce of gold would buy you roughly 12 barrels of oil; an ounce today would get you roughly 10 barrels -- that's hardly a 300% real price increase. A weak dollar also brings about economic distortions, such as the (now disastrous) subprime mortgage orgy. President Bush should announce that we will defend the dollar and make it stronger. The Fed should announce that it will let the federal funds interest rate float, at the same time removing some of the excess money it created in 2004--05.

The bottom line: No strong economy has a weak currency. [bold added]

Read the whole thing.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 296

Apt

I didn't read the whole thing, but the following description of Hillary Clinton from an endorsement by a faction of the Kennedy Clan made me laugh:

The loftiest poetry will not solve these issues. We need a president willing to engage in a fistfight to safeguard and restore our national virtues. [bold added]

While I disagree that wholesale government violations of individual rights will solve all our problems, I do appreciate the forthright analogy. It so perfectly fits both the methods and personality of Mrs. Clinton that one wonders for a moment whether the endorsement is real!

One Neck, One Yoke

Just as I was beginning to see the possible merits of supporting Rudy Giuliani, his foolhardy gamble of sitting out the primaries until Florida did him in and left us with the John McCain -- perhaps the most dangerous politician in America -- as the Republican front-runner.

On the bright side, this seems to simplify the voting strategy for this November: Take a deep breath, hold your nose, and vote for the Democrat for President and the Republicans for Congress. (But see Myrhaf's Take below.) McCain is so dangerous because he is regarded favorably by the worst elements from each party as well as by so many from the somnolent "middle" that he will sit there and work with impunity to destroy America in plain sight of everyone. As I noted some time ago when it seemed that McCain might head up a "Unity '08" ticket:

How would the election of this co-sponsor of McCain-Feingold (i.e., censorship disguised as political "reform"), follower of the Church of Global Warming, and fan of National Service (to name just a few concrete vices) be anything but a disaster, no matter which ticket he headed up?

Now, ironically, we have to hope that Mike Bloomberg joins the fray and damages the Republicans more than the Democrats or, preferably, that Obama wins the Democratic nomination and charms the nation long enough to win office. Somehow, though, I suspect that McCain's win has also taken the wind out of the sails of Unity '08.

Myrhaf's Take

Myrhaf raises some other points about the McCain victory that are worth considering and which call my initial strategic assessment into question. He sees McCain as trouncing the Democrats ("Imagine Perot's 19% added to whatever Bush got in '92.") as well as the following possible silver lining:

A McCain nomination might be good for America for two reasons. First, people will better see that the Republican Party is a party of big government and welfare state. Classical liberals and other supporters of free markets and individual liberty will better see that neither party is for them. Second, if an economic crisis hits the next president, be he Democrat or Republican, it will be a little harder to blame it on capitalism.

Hmmm. Perhaps the best course is to concede the presidency to McCain and vote straight-ticket Democrat....

Books that Make You Drool

Coreyo points to an interesting use of Facebook data: Correlating a college's SAT scores with the books favored by its student body. With the usual disclaimer that correlation does not equal causation, it is interesting in a very smug way to me to note the relative positions of Atlas Shrugged and the Bible. (Click on image for larger size.)


Oddly enough, the (Holy) Bible pops up twice (at the upper left and upper center), with students listing it as "The Holy Bible" having a lower range of SAT scores.

-- CAV

Too Good to Be True?

Editor's Note: I have just returned to Houston from being out of town. I have a backlog of comments and my "Comcastic" ISP didn't exactly help me get to them this morning. My apologies for taking a little longer to get to them.

***

There is a story in today's Houston Chronicle that caused me to drop my jaw for a moment. A local race-baiter, Quanell X, has apparently seen the errors of his ways (at least with respect to the Holocaust) and wants to make amends.

Reflecting on some belligerent remarks he had made about Jews just before the Million Man March in 1995, Quanell X sounds like a man jolted to the core by the revelation that he has been grossly, tragically mistaken about something very important through his entire adult life.

"I apologize to every Jewish (Holocaust) survivor that may have heard anything I have ever said," Quanell said at the end of his tour, which culminated with his placing a stone at an outside memorial, a Jewish custom at a gravesite. "How could I say anything in a vile, malicious or repugnant manner to anyone who has been in one of these camps? I should have never threatened like that.

"I seek the forgiveness of every survivor who has heard the words I've said," he continued. "I did not say them in the proper manner to make the point I was trying to get across. I can see and understand how they might be utterly paranoid (of) a person such as myself."

Michael Goldberg, the chair-elect of the museum's board of directors, welcomed Quanell[ X]'s visit despite initial concerns that he might be using the museum as a backdrop for a different agenda.

"I think the apology and emotions I heard today were ones that fall within the scope of this museum," Goldberg said. "Quanell said he understood that I could be taking some risk by having him come here. My view is that the message of this museum is to turn hate into hope. The chance of sharing the message of the museum was too great not to take the risk." [bold added]

And if this doesn't remind one of Boris Yeltsin's "supermarket epiphany," the following will.

He said the change began about six years ago when he came face to face with racism within the Muslim community. After helping to organize a pro-Palestinian protest at the Israeli consulate in Houston, he discovered that some Palestinian protest leaders were not happy that an African-American Muslim would play such a visible role. The source of their discomfort was the color of his skin.

"It was almost like somebody had taken two electrical currents and stuck them to me and touched me. It shook me," he said. "I grew up believing that racism did not exist among Muslims. ... I grew up believing that whenever I saw a Muslim, he would see me as his brother ... no matter where he was from or what racial background he came from, or what race or group of people he belonged to."

That led him first to depression and disillusionment, then to a period of education and enlightenment. He said he found out that racism has existed in the Muslim world since its earliest days, and that Muslims played a role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. [bold added]

Quanell X remains Moslem and sympathetic to religious terrorism as far as I know, and has, as recently as late 2006 continued to engage in racial demagoguery, so if this really is a change -- and not simply an attempt to grab the moral high ground by grandstanding -- it is only the very beginning of his journey to enlightenment.

Today's civil rights movement should be furthering the goal of individual rights, not striving to pit racial collectives against each other in pressure group warfare or actual fighting. Even if Quanell X is genuinely contrite, the concept of individual rights is complex, its foundations nontrivial, and the requirements for the protection of individual rights remain at odds with everything I know of that this man has said until recently and has done in his public life. The cause of freedom, of individual rights, can be harmed even more by an incompetent ally than by an overt enemy. I hope Quannell X is not just sincere, but diligent.

And I will be paying attention.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 295

Changes for Two Objectivist Mississippians

When I started blogging over three years ago, I was very new to blogging and had recently finished a period of my life in which I had been fairly isolated from the Objectivist movement. For all I knew, I was the first or only Objectivist blogger, but I quickly learned otherwise. And then for awhile I thought I held the distinction of being the only Objectivist blogger with a Southern background -- until I encountered The Charlotte Capitalist.

As it would turn out, I wasn't even the only Objectivist blogger from Mississippi -- at least for awhile. Citing an increasingly busy schedule, Allen, who also hails from the Magnolia State and blogged at Allen's Image Adjustment, emailed me yesterday that he will be taking his blog down at least for the foreseeable future.

Having become busier myself lately, I can sympathize. I didn't get to stop by there often enough, but I enjoyed it when I did and I liked knowing that there was someone else from back home out there doing the same thing. I wish Allen luck and look forward to meeting him some time when I'm over there to see my family.

And this Objectivist Southerner's own very busy period goes on. I've been glad to keep up a near-daily posting schedule despite more work in the lab and my wife's heavy travel schedule. She's been interviewing for medical residencies as part of a process called "matching".

After her interviews, she will make a ranked list of programs she has visited and then we'll have to wait for a month until the results of a nationwide "match" are announced. All the lists generated by newly-minted M.D.s like herself will be compared with how the programs rank their interviewees and then we'll know where we will live for the next few years. So in March I will probably learn that I have to leave Houston, which has been my favorite place to live, and my home for the past thirteen years. The randomness of the process is inconvenient, to put it mildly.

In any event, odds are that Mrs. Van Horn's travel schedule will affect me enough next Monday that I will be unable to post. In case it does and I don't get to post this weekend, I'll see you Tuesday!

Objectivist Roundup

Rational Jenn has been doing a good job with the weekly Objectivist Blogging Carnival. See for yourself at its latest installment.

One thing I have noticed is that the carnival submission form leaves a space for comments, which most of those who submitted have used. I have noticed that it is useful to me as a writer to formulate a one-line summary of whatever I submit each week.

And this is on top of the fact that these summaries are a good way to hunt for interesting posts by other bloggers as the carnival gets larger each week.

Whose Money Will Make a Bigger Difference?

Kendall and Galileo both discuss Bill Gates' recent public confession of ignorance about capitalism that took the form of a call for "Creative Capitalism" at the recent World Economic Forum. Galileo sums up his analysis as follows:

What Bill Gates doesn't get is that wealth is only created through the productive efforts of businessmen. Businessmen and everyone who benefits from their products -- i.e., all of us -- need capitalism, the system based on the recognition of the right to property and its root, a man's right to his own life. Bill Gates just doesn't get it, and the world is poorer as a result. [bold added]

And Kendall's final remarks show the result of this misunderstanding:

No, Mr. Gates, instead of calling capitalism a partial solution, and calling for a new kind of capitalism based on altruistic sentiments, you should be calling for the establishment of capitalism in the first place, where none exists. [bold added]

So Gates' ignorance about what capitalism is results in his condemnation of the results of various degrees of tyranny and his calls to "fix" something that isn't just not broken, but hasn't really been tried!

This is disappointing, but there is one bright side to it. Not to discount the problem's Gates' credibility as a successful businessman will lend to his attack on capitalism, but .... Who hasn't already heard some variant of this nonsense at least fifty times already? More on that in a moment....

Fortunately, there is also some good news on top of that. Mike N reports that at least one businessman out there understands what capitalism is and is putting his money where his mouth is:

The Charleston Daily Mail reports that BB&T will donate $1 million to Marshall University.

In the war of ideas, altruists currently hold a near-monopoly on wealth and "mind-share". But egoists have a huge advantage over altruists in one key respect: Their money will always be far more effective at spreading their ideas. Altruists, to the extent that they match deed with word, will send their money down the rat-hole of what Stella recently called "misguided generosity". Their money will essentially evaporate while a far greater proportion of ours gets the word out that there is a viable alternative to self-sacrifice.

And to the extent that altruists do spend money on the work of spreading ideas, that market is pretty much saturated with altruism already. Who hasn't heard a million times already that they should immolate themselves? Whose ideas are going to stand out as unusual -- and therefore will provoke closer examination? And whose ideas will stand up to such closer scrutiny?

I don't know how to go about answering this question, but it is pleasant to contemplate: "How much more does each dollar spent to further egoism do than each spent to further altruism?"

Monica on Animal "Rights"

Monica has been sparring with animal "rights" activists over at her blog and has some interesting thoughts after and about having done so.

Animal rights activists don’t actually care about animal welfare or even the existence of domestic animals.

This was a bit of a shocker for me, I admit. Doubt it? Check out the following quotes, which are sourced here and here.

I'm warning you, this section is looong!

Oh, and some of these quotes are from authors (Peter Singer and Gary Francione) that Anonymous thinks are great role models (indicated as part of his moral lecture, which I didn’t publish). [bold added]

She also discusses at length on something we've batted around a little here: The value of answering even some irrational comments.

Two further notes of my own: As Monica demonstrates, there is value in the form of bettering one's own understanding in engaging opponents in intellectual debate. Notice that she has learned the sordid truth about the "concern" animal "rights" activists actually hold for animal welfare. I likewise made the following connection explicit as a result of comments here:

Animal rights activists ... [also] do not have the interests of a certain kind of animals -- human beings -- in mind at all, and most certainly don't act in this rational animal's interests.

This integration certainly won't change the mind of the most irrational advocates of this position, but it will help to win the minds of those who are confused about the matter, but are receptive to argument. All you have to do at least call the animal "rights" position into question is to point out some conflict between the animal "rights" position and man's welfare, and help someone recall that man is also an animal.

Oh, there's one more thing. I congratulate Monica on her recent dog food score at Wal-Mart!

-- CAV

Humanitarian Warfare

Two news stories regarding recent events in the Gaza Strip and commented upon by The Wall Street Journal illustrate how the Arab world is using the moral code of the West as a weapon in its conflict with Israel.

Apparently, it is easy to play up a power outage to make Israel look bad -- by using candles in broad daylight -- when the news media are in the habit of presenting Israel as the aggressor. Only a few of the journalists noticed the ruse:

"They had closed the curtains in the rooms to create the impression that Hamas leaders were also suffering as a result of the power stoppage," one journalist told The Jerusalem Post. "It was obvious that the whole thing was staged."

Another journalist said he and his colleagues were told to wait for a few minutes before entering the chamber of the Palestinian Legislative Council so that each legislator would have time to light his candle. He said that when he saw that the curtains had been closed to prevent the light from entering, he realized that Hamas was trying to manipulate the media for political gain.

Hamas obviously has a low estimate of the capability for critical thinking of most journalists. Unfortunately, they are mostly correct.

Some in the media, being extremely altruistic, will knowingly and happily go along with such charades. In addition, the extreme altruism of some of the rest will cause them not to exercise their critical faculties. They will be so eager for any evidence that Israel is imposing hardship on the Palestinians that they will lap, up such stunts. It is as if the tent is really a building, and there is not alternative to artificial light within. In a sense, they will see what they want to see.

The Palestinians know this and intend to use this militarily. And the rest of the Arab world is in league with them, as noted by The Wall Street Journal (which also pointed to the account above). The Journal points to several stories that indicate that the Arab world is perfectly capable of caring for the Palestinians and that the swarming over the wall even suggests a solution for the conflict with the Palestinians: Resorption of these territories into neighboring Arab states.

But, notes the Journal:

This is of a piece with Arab dictators' attitude toward the Palestinians more generally, which is that it is best to keep them in "refugee camps" so that they may continue to serve as a tool to cudgel Israel--and to draw attention away from the Arab dictators' own misrule.

I think they're correct. All of this behavior is indeed "of a piece". It is a deliberate attempt to use the West's altruist moral code against it, by creating humanitarian crises, and either blaming the West for them or asking for its help to alleviate them, whichever best serves the goals of the moment. There is psychological warfare and then there is this use of the enemy's moral code as a weapon. Perhaps we should call it "humanitarian warfare".

Read the whole thing (Start by searching "Potemkin".)

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Dropped initial paragraph leading in with the Gaza Wall and made other editorial changes. As I had said, in part, "the existence of a wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was news" to me. Apparently, this shouldn't have been. Thanks (cough), Noumenal Self!

Slow Roundup 3

This was was already a long day five minutes after I got out of bed....

1. There's this really, really dark blue that occasionally pops up in my wife's wardrobe. I've called it "woman's blue" ever since she asked me to bring her blue slacks to her from her closet. All I could find was what looked like a pair of black slacks, but when I told her this, she assured me that those were the right slacks. So I compared them to a black sock and confirmed that the pants really were blue. That color, I am sure, exists for the sole purpose of toying with men, whose unaided vision cannot tell the two colors apart. But I've cracked the code! Bwahahah!

2. When I was about high school age, my Dad and I found John Madden's color commentary of professional football games quite amusing. "Add fourteen points to that and see what you get," once got a good laugh out of the Old Man.

3. And around that same time, I had some friends over to play games on our new Atari. (Yes. I'm that old. Shut up, kid!) One of them was called "Yar's Revenge." As soon as Dad heard that, he laughed and said that the name sounded like a social disease.

4. Recently, my wife and I were traveling in Mexico with her family. In certain areas, we would be incessantly pestered, sometimes even during meals, by street vendors selling mostly the same assortment of junk. I started calling them "human pop-up ads".

5. On part of that trip, we were in Cabo San Lucas for a few hours. Here's my short description: "A bunch of American restaurants grafted onto a desolate shoreline and frequented by Ernest Hemingway wannabes who can't afford to live in Key West." Remind me not to seek employment writing travel brochures.

6. One place I really enjoyed was Puerto Vallarta, whose shoreline is adorned with an assortment of interesting, and sometimes quite whimsical sculpture. One of them I can describe only as a statue of Cthulhu! In fact, it popped up as my first Google search result of "Puerto Vallarta statues", which is nice since I haven't had time to go through our pictures yet.

7. I recently overheard someone make an interesting comment on a news item. He recalled, incorrectly as I learned later when I tried to find a news report, that San Francisco had banned bottled water to eliminate the environmental impact of the plastic bottles. He opposed the ban on not for being a gross violation of individual rights, but because it was inconsistent. He held that the city should have banned all drinks in plastic bottles or none. I found it morbidly interesting that someone obviously not a huge fan of the welfare state nevertheless was not appalled at the very idea of the government banning plastic containers.

8. I find it mildly annoying when people say things like "Please RSVP." The "SVP" already means "Please."

9. And don't make me watch a Windows machine boot. "Built on NT Technology", a startup screen proclaims. Having been in the submarine force, I still tend to mentally pronounce each word in many abbreviations, so the Microsoft splash screen reads, "Built on New Technology Technology" to me. Come to think of it, perhaps I should be feeling a sort of grim satisfaction when I see that....

10. I name the following my typo of the week: "givernment".

-- CAV

Pragmatism vs. Your Freedom and Time

I seem to be taking issue with Glenn Reynolds a lot lately -- and linking to The Ayn Rand Lexicon quite a lot, as well....

What has me shaking my head over at Instapundit this morning is the following post:

READER TOM SARTIN WRITES:

Somehow, the following observation from Robert Heinlein seems quite apropos.

"If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."

"If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires."

The more things change... [minor edits]

I'm not wild about it, but don't have huge problems with the idea of voting against specific measures when in doubt -- if your implicit premises are that (a) the government should be only in the business of protecting individual rights and that (b) most new measures proposed today will curtail that protection.

Regarding candidates, that bit of advice very quickly goes out the window. For example, I don't want socialized medicine or theocracy. Whom do I vote against in an Obama-Huckabee election? I see capitalism much more likely taking the blame for the inevitable disaster if Huckabee enacts socialized medicine than if Obama does.

So I vote for Obama, but I'm not really voting against socialized medicine because I can't (unless I also regard it as more likely to be blocked by Republicans in Congress under Obama). And, as I have mentioned before, I did not vote at all for President in 2000. So both "voting against" and voting at all are questionable rules of thumb.

It is really with the last paragraph I take issue. Again, as cracker-barrel wisdom, it has some surface plausibility since most political activists these days are waging a foolish and all-out (but often, well-meaning) war against freedom. But notice two things about the quote.

First, it supposedly requires an "enormous amount of time" to decide how to vote in an informed manner. Second, why must one necessarily seek advice on how not to vote from a "well-meaning fool". Why not solicit advice from some wise soul who has carefully considered the options available in a given election? This cynical quote makes it sound as if attempting to analyze politics by means of rational principles is a futile waste of time and, as such, beneath contempt.

While it is not necessarily easy to decide how to vote in today's elections, this situation is a result of cultural trends in our society at large and it is both abnormal for and dangerous to a free society. As I have argued before, the massive government involvement in our daily lives we see today -- a direct result of the dominance of altruism and pragmatism in the culture -- both over-complicates the decision process and reduces the importance of one's vote.

What is worse is that this needless complication functions much like the appeals to "science" by global warming hysterics in the sense that it distracts everyone from the only real political issue at hand, which is: "How can I vote in such a way as to best insure the protection of my individual rights?"

In other words, ordinary voters, already suspicious of principles due to the cultural penetrance of Pragmatism, are confronted by a mountain of minutiae each election, and advocates of increasingly loony and dangerous political crusades as examples of principled people. The temptation is well-nigh irresistible to throw one's hands up and vote in the cynical way prescribed by Heinlein, if at all.

This is too bad, for if there is one way to preserve freedom from "well-meaning fools", as well as to save time in evaluating mountains of data (often by deciding whether a given mountain is worth considering at all), it is by recourse to principles of political philosophy.

Heinlein has it half-right that figuring out how to vote requires an "enormous" amount of time. It does take time, it is true, to master the principles on which our nation was founded. However, once one does this, these principles greatly simplify how one approaches any subsequent election, even in today's context of massive government intrusion. Anyone who thinks that each election requires enormous amounts of study before one can vote intelligently does not understand the cognitive role of principles.

Ayn Rand very nicely sums up the time- and life-saving value of principles as follows:

A principle is "a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend." Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one's long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.

The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.

To make it more grotesque, that haggling is accompanied by an aura of hysterical self-righteousness, in the form of belligerent assertions that one must compromise with anybody on anything (except on the tenet that one must compromise) and by panicky appeals to "practicality."

But there is nothing as impractical as a so-called "practical" man. His view of practicality can best be illustrated as follows: if you want to drive from New York to Los Angeles, it is "impractical" and "idealistic" to consult a map and to select the best way to get there; you will get there much faster if you just start out driving at random, turning (or cutting) any corner, taking any road in any direction, following nothing but the mood and the weather of the moment.

The fact is, of course, that by this method you will never get there at all. But while most people do recognize this fact in regard to the course of a journey, they are not so perceptive in regard to the course of their life and of their country. ["The Anatomy of Compromise," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 144, bold added]

There may indeed be a certain smug satisfaction one can feel for a moment after considering Heinlein's quote and sharing his contempt for a body politic riddled with "well-meaning fools". However, that satisfaction will quickly disappear when one considers that without principles of some kind, one cannot even tell who the fools are! Are those who would have the government ration fuel for the whole economy in the name of capping carbon dioxide emissions fools? Or are those who doubt whether global warming is happening? Or those who hold, as I do, that the government should not impose fuel rationing at all, regardless of what the science eventually says?

And as if that is not enough, consider that Americans have scorned politicians almost since the inception of the Republic. Heinlein's advice sounds like it could have come from straight from the mouth of Mark Twain or any other of a number of cynical literary figures who hated politics. Many of us have functioned on that level for generations. And yet, we are steadily losing our freedom with each election. Obviously, this approach isn't working.

So many of us are so busy feeling smug about leaving things up to well-meaning fools that we are suffering the consequences. I counsel that we take Heinlein's advice exactly one more time, and only just long enough to regard him as a well-meaning fool. I advise voting in the exact opposite manner as he: Learn about the principles on which freedom depends, vote in accordance with them and, just as crucially, help get these better ideas into the political mainstream.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 294

Dalton on Bush Bulbs

(Or: Mr. President, I've got your legacy right here.)

Andrew Dalton, considering Bush Bulbs, has unearthed one of those nuggets of truth The Onion stumbles upon from time to time.

And in the process of discussing the fact that the President signed into law the banning of Thomas Edison's most famous invention, Andrew has reminded me of a news article I scanned over the weekend to the effect that Bush is starting to think about his legacy as President.

President Herbert Hoover, a "Progressive" Republican whose statist policies helped initiate the Great Depression and thus permitted the left to unjustly attack capitalism, was remembered by the term "Hooverville".

As I see it, Bush should be remembered by the term "Bush Bulb" -- unless, perhaps, he acts to repeal that foolish piece of legislation. This is not his biggest blunder, but it best symbolizes his betrayal of the principles that made this nation great.

You can help secure President Bush's just desserts -- I mean, his legacy -- by doing whatever you can think of to inject the term "Bush Bulb" into the vernacular.

And Speaking of Bush Bulbs and Hoovervilles, ...

Kendall J adds his $0.02 to a Steve Forbes article on the weak dollar policies of the Man Who Banned the Light Bulb.

Fittingly enough, Forbes digresses, relating a story about what Bush Bulbs and worthless money will mean to many Americans:

Here's a harbinger of the crisis to come from an item in Investor's Business Daily: "According to an article in the Apr. 12, 2007 issue of the Ellsworth [Maine] American, [Brandy] Bridges was installing [a Bush Bulb] in her daughter's bedroom when it dropped on the floor and shattered. Luckily, Brandy knew CFLs contained mercury and called the store where she bought hers for advice. She was advised to call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. DEP showed up and found that mercury levels in her daughter's room were six times the state's 'safe' level. The DEP specialist gave her a 'low-ball' estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room." [bold added]

Had Al Gore or John Kerry been backing this legislation, perhaps the Republicans in Congress might have stopped it.

Thanks to his party affiliation, Bush has proven to be worse than an amalgam of the two.

Misguided Generosity

Stella over at ReasonPharm has some interesting thoughts about charity directed at the third-world countries of Africa:

Yesterday, I was speaking to a woman who frequently travels to Africa for her job, which is related to HIV/AIDS. She spoke of a problem of what she called "misplaced generosity" -- that philanthropic organizations, anxious to do good in Africa, send over sophisticated equipment for testing and treatment, but the equipment ends up unused in basements because clinics lack electricity or other resources required to use that equipment. What Africa really needs, she implied, is donations of more basic needs: water purification, food, anti-HIV medicines. I submit that even these gifts are misguided in their generosity. [bold added]

Stella agrees, but thinks her interlocutor isn't going far enough. I agree with Stella and would add that foreign aid of the sort that is now most common often even contributes to Africa's continued impoverishment.

The topic reminds me of an excellent analogy by an Objectivist acquaintance of mine from around the time that the tsunami struck Indonesia. Considering the choice between contributing to the relief of the tsunami victims or donating money for the spread of more rational ideas, he opted to fight the more destructive catastrophe: the "intellectual tsunami", as he called it, that has devastated the culture of America.

The Name of the Rose

Martin Lindeskog cites a blurb about the movie that was indirectly responsible for my introduction to Ayn Rand. I haven't seen it in ages, so perhaps it will go to the head of my Netflix queue....

Islamist Entanglement Update

Scott Powell will be starting the next course in his A First History for Adults series later in February than he had previously planned, reducing its price, and offering new payment plans. Check his blog for details. (HT: Objectivism Online)

Two More Roundups

Rational Jenn hosts the latest Objectivist roundup at her blog and Bo has a big roundup of submariner bloggers over a geezer's corner.

In answer to Bo's question: You'll rip the fabric of space-time only if two roundups point to each other. Whew!

-- CAV

"Indeed" Indeed.

Glenn Reynolds expresses his hearty agreement with a William Kristol editiorial that attacks conservative (and presumably all non-leftist) commentators for their justifiable disillusionment with this year's Republican field as follows:

INDEED: "You fight an election with the politicians you have."

Aside from its appropriateness to the holiday, I find the following excerpt from "Talk about Political Party" written in 1842 by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child to be a good launching point for a reply:

A.But you advise people not to vote for pro-slavery candidates, and not to join the liberty party; if this isn't non-resistance in politics, I don't know what is.

B. The difficulty in your mind arises, I think, from want of faith in the efficiency of moral influence. You cannot see that you act on politics at all, unless you join the caucus, and assist in electioneering for certain individuals; whereas you may, in point of fact, refuse co-operation, and thereby exert a tenfold influence on the destiny of parties. In Massachusetts, for instance, before the formation of a distinct abolition political party, both parties were afraid of the abolitionists; both wanted their votes; and therefore members of both parties in the legislature were disposed to grant their requests. All, who take note of such things, can remember how the legislature seemed to be abolitionized, as it were, by miracle. "The anti-slavery folks are coming strong this session," said a member to a leading democrat; "they want a hearing on five or six subjects at least." "Give 'em all they ask?" replied the leader; "we can't afford to offend them." When a similar remark was made to a whig leader, the same session, his answer was, "Concede everything; it wont do to throw them into the arms of the democrats." Now [that] there is a third party in Massachusetts, the two great parties have much less motive to please the abolitionists. Last year, the legislature of that State seemed to have gone back on anti-slavery, as fast as it once went forward. In Vermont, the system of refusing co-operation produced the effect of inducing both whigs and democrats to put up an abolition candidate, in order to secure the abolition votes; neither party was willing to give its opponent the advantage that might be gained by pleasing this troublesome class. Had we never turned aside from this plan, I believe the political influence of anti-slavery would have been an hundred fold greater than it now is. [Antislavery Political Writings, 1833-1860: A Reader, edited by C. Bradley Thompson, pp. 99-100, bold added]

Child goes on to elaborate more on how the formation of an anti-slavery political party actually hindered the cause of the abolitionists and how it did so, stating at one point that, "Moral influence dies under party action," and noting that on top of moral principles being vitiated by political maneuvering within a party, the party itself ends up depriving its cause of allies.

[B]y what superior magic does the "liberty party" expect to keep its allies more closely rallied around her, in time of tempting emergency?Will the two-thirds abolitionized democrat, who has joined them to defeat a whig, stand by them when his vote is greatly needed to secure a triumph to his own party, at the polls? Will the half-abolitionized whig, who has been drawn into their ranks, pass safe though the fire of a similar temptaion? I trow not. (102)

How does this bear on the problem of a Republican field which is wholly unacceptable to the advocate of individual rights? In two ways.

First, those who favor individual rights and are able to see that the Libertarian party has already lost whatever better influence it might have had -- and so ally themselves with the Republicans -- are doing worse than making the mistake of joining the Libertarian Party. They are allowing themselves to see their values compromised by antithetical religious values when they are not being completely taken for granted and ignored by the Republican Party. And the Democrats write them off altogether. (The same diminution of political influence, incidentally, happens to blacks, because they bloc-vote for Democrats.)

Second, note that Child is speaking of advancing her goal, the abolition of slavery, precisely through "the politicians she has", as Kristol might put it. The genius of founding a nation of "laws, and not men" lies in the truth that the more constrained by the law our public officials are, the less able they are to victimize the people through their moral flaws and personal weaknesses. Similarly, the genius of not pledging one's support to a politician whose goals are at major odds with your own by joining his party, is that it makes possible a politics of "principles, and not men", as it were, when the "men" aren't principled. This is because most politicians by nature value power, which they know they need your vote to obtain. The moment you pledge your support to the man, you have lost whatever measure of power you once had to cause him to act to further goals in accordance with your principles.

Where would we be today if, instead of principled abolitionists like Lydia Maria Child, we had the likes of William Kristol telling everyone to pick a party, accept a candidate, and shut up their nit-picking about slavery already?

-- CAV

The Tyranny of Confusion

A trend I have commented on here recently is the misuse of scientific arguments by proponents of certain political movements to distract people from the political issues at hand. I have considered this point mostly in relation to global warming hysteria, but just yesterday, a couple of animal rights activists reminded me, by accident, of the constant hectoring from their camp to the effect that a vegetarian diet is better than the normal, omnivorous human diet. Even if such claims were true, they would have no bearing on the question of whether animals have rights, which belongs to political philosophy, or whether it we really ought to consume meat, which is a moral question.

My commentary on this trend so far has been mainly in the vein of the following advice from Ayn Rand's arch-villain, Ellsworth Toohey: "Don't bother to examine a folly -- ask yourself only what it accomplishes." In the case of global warming hysteria, those who push for such measures as government fuel rationing (so-called carbon emission caps), can, for example, more easily avoid questions about the propriety of doing so by involving their opponents in an endless debate over whether scientific evidence supports man-made carbon dioxide as a mechanism for global warming.

So far, so good. But might we be premature to stop our inquiry at what global warming hysterics or animal "rights" advocates hope to gain with a blizzard of scientific (or scientific-sounding) arguments? A fascinating article I encountered in Spiked! (via Arts and Letters Daily) this morning suggests that the answer to that question is "Yes."

Frank Furedi writes:

[W]hatever misgivings people have about science, its authority is unrivalled in the current period. The formidable influence of scientific authority can be seen in the way that environmentalists now rely on science to back up their arguments. Not long ago, in the 1970s and 80s, leading environmentalists insisted that science was undemocratic, that it was responsible for many of the problems facing the planet. Now, in public at least, their hostility towards science has given way to their embrace and endorsement of science. Today, the environmental lobby depends on the legitimation provided by scientific evidence and expertise. In their public performances, environmentalists frequently use the science in a dogmatic fashion. "The scientists have spoken", says one British-based campaign group, in an updated version of the religious phrase: "This is the Word of the Lord." "This is what the science says we must do", many greens claim, before adding that the debate about global warming is "finished". This week, David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, caused a stink by criticising extreme green "Luddites" who are "hurting" the environmentalist cause. Yet when science is politicised, as it has been under the likes of King, who once claimed that "the science shows" that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, then it can quite quickly and inexorably be converted into dogma, superstition and prejudice. It is the broader politicisation of science that nurtures today's dogmatic green outlook.

Today, religion and political ideologies no longer inspire significant sections of the public. Politicians find it difficult to justify their work and outlook in the vocabulary of morality. In the Anglo-American world, officials now promote policies on the grounds that they are "evidence based" rather than because they are "right" or "good". In policymaking circles, the language of "right" and "wrong" has been displaced by the phrase: "The research shows..." [Americanized punctuation, removed footnotes, added emphasis]

Furedi is correct to note that science is being used to lend authority to certain moral and political beliefs. Our society, running on the fumes of the Enlightenment, still no longer takes religion seriously enough for it to serve as an inspiration or even a justification for radical policy changes. There remains a great respect for science as a means of reaching objective truth through the exercise of reason. And yet, thanks to the influence of modern philosophy, there are precious few other areas of human endeavor for which most people regard certainty as attainable. So science, as a sort of rump of the Enlightenment, ends up being used to bless off a conclusion as rational!

This is a very good observation, and Furedi is mostly correct in his further argument that the moralization and politicization of science endangers its objectivity. Two reservations I have about the piece are (1) that Furedi's initial example is far from a clear-cut case of using science as a moral authority and (2) that the term ("skeptical") he uses to describe the fearless inquiry of science implies that even science itself cannot yield certainty whether he intends it or not.

In so far as what bearing Furedi's observation has on taking Toohey's advice, it is this. Global warming snow job artists and their ilk are dishonest to be sure, but it is astounding how easily they are getting away with not arguing for why we should enact their political agenda. There must be a cause for this, and this cause must be addressed before political debate will become rational and constructive again.

That cause, as I have suggested, is that there is rampant, massive confusion about the fundamental philosophical ideas on which our advanced civilization depends. Neither science nor those who would misuse it have the power to establish tyranny, but the deep confusion sown by evil philosophers such as Immanuel Kant can. The purpose of his folly was to make many others possible.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 293

Honesty in Astrology

You don't see this every day, so take a peek while you can!

We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue. [bold added]

I guess they finally got it right with that one sentence! (HT: Hannes Hacker, who got this from Paul Hsieh)

Oliver Sacks' Latest

My favorite popular science author is Oliver Sacks, and Adrian Hester tells me that he has recently come out with the book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. My hopper's already overflowing, but anything by Sacks is guaranteed to be interesting, and just plain fun to read.

For regular readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with Sacks, I offered the following introduction some time ago:

[The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a] book of clinical tales from the frontiers of neurology was my introduction to neuroscience and to one of my favorite authors. A friend recommended it to me because Sacks often would explain the neurological deficits of his patients with philosophical analogies. Sacks does a masterful job in these explorations of showing what an amazing thing the human mind really is, while not letting us forget that his patients are human beings.

Sacks is a writer's writer. If you love good writing, you'll really enjoy his prose. And if a book about neurology sounds too dry or depressing for you, have no fear. His personal journals and books on botany are excellent reads. His Island of the Colour-Blind is the best of these and, is, I think, where the breadth of his intellect shines best.

I can't wait to read Musicophilia, but I'll have to anyway! Drat!

Miss Manners on Protests

I somehow doubt that the kind of people her questioner describes will take heed of Judith Martin's very good advice, but those of us who have more to offer to the public debate than to threaten it with faith and force would do well to consider what she has to say:

Dear Miss Manners: At the risk of sounding political, and that is the furthest thing I wish to do -- is protest mutually exclusive from etiquette? This dilemma has come up many times during the past few years, and it has caused some heated discussions with my friends.

My position, I could be very wrong, is that I don't mind protesting. Sometimes, I truly do not like the manner in which people choose to protest. For instance, with large graphic pictures and swearing; however, living in a free society, I've learned to accept this.

What I do have trouble with, and this is where my friends and I disagree, is how some protesters engage with the public. For example, giving children graphic pamphlets, telling children they have bad or abusive parents, calling individuals names, commenting on people's apparel, barring people from entering a facility and grabbing at people. I've seen all of these.

My friends say there is no room for etiquette in protest. I think when dealing with people in public one should at least try not to be rude to them. Who is correct?

Gentle Reader: Of course protest, like every other human activity, requires etiquette. Have your friends never heard of civil disobedience?

The saddest thing about using rude tactics is that they damage the causes for which they are used. Rather than the targets thinking that they are being shown a way in which the world would be improved, they focus on the immediate way in which they are being mistreated. These people may claim to want to make the world better, their victims conclude, but are actively making it worse.

Miss Manners would think it obvious that in order to persuade people about an issue of justice they had not considered, you must open their minds to your arguments. People who are humiliated shut down and turn defensive.

But when they see orderly picket lines or sit-ins, or hear speeches or read leaflets and articles by people who seem to be well-intentioned and reasonable, they just might stop to think. [bold aside from salutations added]

I have discussed the need for politeness in intellectual discourse in the past and mostly agree with this, although it is worth bearing in mind that ultimately, the merits of a cause can only be discovered by rational evaluation.

Having said that, I would, in addition, consider what Ayn Rand has said about those who resort to physical violence as a matter of course:

The only power of a mob, as against an individual, is greater muscular strength -- i.e., plain, brute physical force. The attempt to solve social problems by means of physical force is what a civilized society is established to prevent. The advocates of mass civil disobedience admit that their purpose is intimidation. A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes -- the physical intimidation of some men or groups by others -- loses its moral right to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow. [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 256, bold added]

Miss Manners is correct that physically violent protesters only damage their own cause, but this is true only to the extent that their cause has rational merit and this fact will deter them from being violent consistently only in the context of a fully free society. To the extent that a society tolerates physical violence, it runs the risk of its worst elements doing away with rational debate as a means of settling disputes.

Not only are the tactics discussed by Judith Martin rude, but trespassing, assault, and battery by protesters should be prevented or punished by the government, as such acts violate individual rights. Freedom of speech does not imply that others must provide a forum for ideas they disagree with or that those who disagree with a protester lack rights altogether.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Credited GeekPress for astrology link.

Obama: Correct by Accident

Barack Obama threatens, if elected, to introduce confusion about the meaning of the term "individual rights" to the highest level of the government of the freest nation on earth:

Democrat Barack Obama says he won't just be a president for the American people, but the animals too.

"What about animal rights?" a woman shouted out during the candidate's town hall meeting outside Las Vegas Wednesday after he discussed issues that relate more to humans, like war, health care and the economy.

Obama responded that he cares about animal rights very much, "not only because I have a 9-year-old and 6-year-old who want a dog." He said he sponsored a bill to prevent horse slaughter in the Illinois state Senate and has been repeatedly endorsed by the Humane Society.

"I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other," he said. "And it's very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals." [bold added]

Consider that last sentence in bold in light of the following episode in Zimbawe not too long ago:

Hungry Zimbabweans threatened to kill and eat a giraffe after it wandered towards the outskirts of the capital Harare, it has emerged.

Scores of people rushed to the scene after the adult giraffe entered Seke district from surrounding farmland. Police said several wanted to butcher the animal "for the pot", according to the state-owned Herald newspaper.

"We have to guard the animal," said one officer. "We have to remain here until it is taken to a safe place."

The incident comes as wild game increasingly falls victim to President Robert Mugabe's policies, with impoverished Zimbabweans turning to any possible source of meat. Poaching is reportedly rising rapidly, with two elephants recently killed in Hurungwe. [bold added]

When, as I summed it up before, "[s]tarving human beings are being forbidden at gunpoint to eat animals," the true meaning of Barack Obama's words becomes apparent.

While it is true that wanton cruelty to animals does reflect a poverty of spirit and can indicate psychological problems, to claim that animals have rights on a par with human beings is quite another thing. In fact, it is to claim that man has no rights.

"[H]ow we treat ... animals reflects how we treat each other."

Indeed it does. Just look at Zimbabwe, Mr. Obama.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 292

Fake Tsunami?

Not too long ago, I commented on the Obama candidacy and a Christopher Hitchens column that declared the Illinois senator to be the "current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool" -- only to see him badly underperform all the predictions I saw to finish behind Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire.

Over at American Thinker, Charles Sykes has an interesting take on why this happened:

A central tenet of modern liberalism, after all, is the unshakeable [sic] conviction that white American [sic] is deeply and irredeemably racist. For three decades, America's white liberals have invested in the belief that American [sic] is so incapable of racial fairness that society needs a panoply of laws, preferences, quotas, set-asides, and remedial programs to ensure that black people are treated fairly.

...

It follows that many race-holding liberals will be among the last to believe that America will ever elect an African-American as president.

White liberals face this cognitive dissonance: if they decide that America is ready for a black president and back Obama they would also be forced to surrender or at least modify decades of convictions about American bias.

The euphemism for this is "electability," and it is one of the reasons why the race and gender cards are being played so aggressively among post-New Hampshire Democrats.

The spectacular failure of polling in New Hampshire may well be the first hint of how deeply the divide will affect the coming primaries. Notably, the polls for the Republican race were on target; but the Democratic polls drastically overstated Obama's support. Despite the initial wagon-circling denials of the media, the phenomenon is not new. In the past, other African American candidates -- Doug Wilder in Virginia; David Dinkins in New York, and Tom Bradley in Los Angeles - have done better in polls than at the ballot box, raising the possibility that white voters who wanted to look racially virtuous told pollsters they were backing Obama, but then actually voted for the white woman on the ballot. [bold added]

I think Sykes is on to something here, and it should be interesting to compare polls and primary results over the next few contests.

After all, if leftists are nervous about investigating the biological basis for intelligence because they see such as a threat to their egalitarian agenda, why would they greet evidence that such an agenda is no longer "necessary" with open arms or, worse yet, help create it?

Checking in on News Hounds So You Don't Have to

En route to something else recently, I encountered a smear of Fox News Business Contributor Jonathan Hoenig, who commented some time ago on our nation's (and Israel's) war policy. In addition to this, the news clip shows him taking a dishonest question from Alan Colmes that implied that the failure of oil prices to drop after Iraq was an indictment of the premise of going to war. Having already blasted our prosecution of the war, Hoenig correctly indicates that leftist policies at home are doing their share to keep fuel prices high.

News Hounds' take? To call Hoenig's response a "non-sequitor" [sic] and slam him because his opinion does not toe the line of that of the majority!

Hoenig's MIddle [sic] East strategy does not reflect the opinion of the majority of Americans. According to a CNN poll today, 39 percent think Israel should continue its military action "until Hezbollah can no longer launch attacks" (not exactly "levelling them with no mercy," as Hoenig wants) while 43 percent say Israel should agree to a cease-fire as soon as possible. But that viewpoint has yet to be expressed by a guest on Hannity & Colmes.

The last time I checked, the truth was not a matter of majority vote.

News Hounds' motto is, "We watch FOX so you don't have to." Have to what?

Think independently, from what I can tell.

The State vs. Saving Lives or Energy

David Veksler, commenting on Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's campaign against CVS opening private clinics has the perfect rejoinder to the mayor, who stated that, "Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong." He simply inserts another industry our lives depend on.

He also asks whether Bush Bulbs really save energy, and makes an interesting point.

-- CAV

Disparate Impact

Thomas Sowell has some interesting insights about how environmental regulations have altered the demographics in certain parts of California, including the following:

The financially ruinous powers of delay that these and other laws and institutions can impose on anyone wanting to build anything can be illustrated by a current legal case involving a developer who has for 15 years been prevented from building in the coastal California town of Half Moon Bay.

A judge recently awarded him $36 million in damages but that decision has been appealed. Anyone familiar with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals knows that anything can happen there -- including more years of delay.

Someone once said that the ability to tax is the ability to destroy. So is the ability to delay. [bold added]

Sowell sums that up very nicely, and in so doing underscores a way that massive government entanglement in the economy injures us above and beyond the financial burdens and other restrictions on our freedom that go with it. Indeed, even apart from such forced delays as application processes, any delay due to something that has to be processed by a bureaucracy (that wouldn't be in a free society) falls under this category of injury.

As valuable as this insight is, it was not the focus of Sowell's article. That was a near-miss of something that could have been a brilliant point. Sowell's main point was that left-wing environmental laws are violating left-wing "civil rights" requirements that business policies and various governmental measures not have a "disparate impact" on minorities. True enough, but he merely ends up grousing that:

[T]he same liberals who applaud that approach when it comes to businesses would be appalled if the same standard were applied to their own environmentalist restrictions that force vast numbers of blacks out of their own upscale liberal communities.

Nor do black "leaders" who are quick to cry "discrimination" and "racism" in other contexts. Apparently it all depends on whose ox is gored.

Yes. Leftists, once again, are seen to be hypocrites, but that is not the essential problem with land-use laws or other laws that interfere with the economy. The problem with such laws is that they interfere with the rights of what Ayn Rand once correctly identified as "the smallest minority": the individual.

Seen in that light, not only are "civil rights" regulations on business activity wrong, but the "lofty and pretty talk" about preserving nature and "open space" that Sowell decries may indeed be "ugly", but it is hardly "selfish".

For any alleged "benefit" anyone gains by passing a law that violates the rights of other individuals is more than offset by the precedent for his own rights to be violated later by another law. This goes just as well for minorities who "benefit" by hiring quotas as well as wealthy people who use the law to keep others from being able to build near their homes.

(I suspect that Sowell agrees that civil rights legislation affecting businesses is wrong, but I would have liked to see this connection made explicitly. Of course, if one justifies support for capitalism on altruist grounds as Sowell seems to here, this would not be a natural conclusion to reach.)

Furthermore, while some laws may indeed injure some demographic groups more than others, shouldn't our focus be more on the fact that the law is injuring anyone at all?

One day, when our public again makes such a connection as a matter of course, we will no longer be in danger of being tyrannized (equally or not), but within reach of having our individual rights protected equally under the law.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 291

Creeping Paternalism I

California, whose environmental regulations have prevented any new power plants from being built there for about twenty years, has finally learned its lesson!

Add thermostats to the list of private property the government would like to regulate as the state of California looks to require that residents install remotely monitored temperature controls in their homes next year.

Or not.

Economists and libertarians, upon learning such news, will discuss how foolish it is to use even more government interference in the economy to "solve" a problem ultimately caused by government interference in the economy and they would be right -- except that in California, the commonly accepted purpose of the government moved from "protection of individual rights" to "protection of Gaia from man" long ago.

No degree of intelligence can save a polity whose dominant philosophy places other considerations above the protection of individual rights. It is tempting to dismiss Californians as idiots, but their problem is bad philosophy, something economists and libertarians refuse to see. (HT: Michael Gold)

Creeping Paternalism II

Meanwhile, in Great Britain, anyone with his wits about him will wish that the only thing Big Brother had his eye on at the moment was his thermostat:

Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to take organs from dead patients without explicit consent.

...

But patients' groups said that they were "totally opposed" to Mr Brown's plan, saying that it would take away patients' rights over their own bodies. [bold added]

This has been going on in other countries (e.g., Austria, France, and Portugal) for some time, and some have even floated the idea of doing the same thing in the United States. My reaction upon hearing about this for the first time bears repeating:

American defaults could "just" be flipped around? That's my body, asshole, and possibly my life you're talking about like it's a damned toggle switch! Whether I part myself out is up to me. The "difference" between the United States and "parts of Europe" is not so much that "the defaults" are different, but why they are different: In the United States, the government is designed to protect individual rights by default, not infringe upon them. The argument against the government applying "libertarian paternalism" in cases like this, and in getting it away from more benign instances like the one I cited above, is that the government should respect individual rights.

As Mike N put it recently, "[T]o surrender any responsibility for our own survival is actually a surrender of our freedom and those to whom we surrender that freedom will necessarily control that part of our lives."

Anyone who, at the same time he demands cradle-to-grave care from the government and feels violated by having Big Brother operating his thermostat or yanking organs from his lifeless (?) body should check his premises. To such a person, I would offer the following hint: It is correct to feel violated.

Dim Bulbs at the New York Times

In an article with the unintentionally ironic title, "Any Other Bright Ideas?" Julie Scelfo of the New York Times discusses how lousy the light from a selection of Bush Bulbs tested by the Grey Lady's staff turned out to be.

One idea that was never so much as brought up in passing was the most obvious one to me: Calling for a repeal of the law that is going to make Edison Bulbs illegal in a few years.

I guess the freedom to illuminate one's home as one pleases doesn't really mean that much to the staff of the Times.

Good New, Bad News

As a certain self-described "secular conservative" might put it, the "good news" is that Rudy Giuliani was endorsed some time ago by Pat Robertson.

[T]he religious right is preparing itself to settle for a kind of bare minimum from the Republican presidential candidate. It is preparing itself to subordinate its religious agenda to a secular agenda. I don't mean that Republicans in general, or religious voters in particular, will become atheists or drop their religious beliefs, but rather that they will accept that their political preferences are--and should be--driven primarily by the secular concerns of war and taxes.

I have one word to describe this development (at best): hudna.

But setting that aside for the moment, the bad news is that among evangelicals, hypocrites like Robertson are a dying breed.

Even if Huckabee does not win the Presidency in 2008 (and I do not believe he has quite enough support to do so), his candidacy will have seeded the ground for a future Christian president much like Huckabee, but who is even more explicit and consistent in his opposition to capitalism and individual rights due to his Christian philosophy. And that is the real danger that Huck's Army poses today.

Or perhaps, rather than just "bad news", we should color that as a "silver lining". The sooner the opposition to capitalism and individual rights of the religious right becomes apparent, the sooner it can be opposed more easily as inimical to these values by those of us who hold them.

The Story of the iPhone

Reader Dismuke pointed me to an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how Steve Jobs made the iPhone happen:

It may appear that the carriers' nightmares have been realized, that the iPhone has given all the power to consumers, developers, and manufacturers, while turning wireless networks into dumb pipes. But by fostering more innovation, carriers' networks could get more valuable, not less. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and thus on networks, racking up bigger bills and generating more revenue for everyone. According to Paul Roth, AT&T's president of marketing, the carrier is exploring new products and services -- like mobile banking -- that take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. "We're thinking about the market differently," Roth says. In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that. [bold added]

I don't own an iPhone, but one of the great things about such innovations is that they end up benefiting even non-customers.

Goin' Back to New Orleans

For Christmas, I got a two-CD set of classics by Dr. John called Dr. John: The Definitive Pop Collection and have really enjoyed it. Here's a YouTube video of one of the songs.

And here is his official web site.

-- CAV

The Internet through the Crystal Ball

The below video, which I encountered at Snopes.com, is a remarkably good projection from the mid-1960's of certain aspects of how computers would eventually be used on a daily basis in America.

Regarding the general accuracy of the predictions, the urban legend site states that:

[A]lthough the technological concepts expressed in the video may be familiar to us, the specific forms used to realize them are somewhat different than their common modern implementations. [For example, t]he bills and tax forms the husband works with are scanned images of paper forms rather than electronic forms. [my bold]

One thing not mentioned at Snopes pops up at the tail end of the clip, which names an Orwellian-sounding "communal service agency" -- Was I supposed to capitalize that? -- as being in charge of the whole network.

One thing these prognosticators sound like they completely missed -- just like all the science fiction programming that confidently projected us all as socialists by now -- was that it would be capitalism that would bring the potential of computing to fruition and that increased government involvement in the day-to-day running of the Internet looms as a very serious threat to everyone who wants to take full advantage of this spectacularly useful means of communication.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added time at which the video was made.

Quick Roundup 290

Support Yaron Brook!

Chances are, you've already encountered Yaron Brook's excellent article against socialized medicine in Forbes Magazine through Noodlefood, but if you haven't, you should take a look at it and, more importantly, consider leaving a comment in his support.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a "right" to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a "right" to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as our founding fathers conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but freedoms of action. [bold added]

Appallingly, a majority of the commenters oppose Mr. Brook.

Consider what this means in light of the comment in bold above. Most of these commenters support the enslavement of physicians. This can potentially affect your health later on and, because it could set the precedent for members of other professions to be enslaved once enough politicians think their services are needed for "the common good", socialized medicine represents a direct threat to the freedom of everyone.

Politicians who read or hear about the reaction to this article -- as well as the editors of Forbes and other magazines -- need to know that there is sympathy for pro-freedom viewpoints.

Self-Reliance

Mike N has been writing about self-reliance lately and makes the following observation.

[T]o surrender any responsibility for our own survival is actually a surrender of our freedom and those to whom we surrender that freedom will necessarily control that part of our lives.

Indeed. And in support of his point, he points to a rather disturbing article about parents who are alarmed about the fact that "their children in school are being screened for mental illnesses, some, without their (parent's) consent".

Galileo on "Bush Bulbs"

I may have coined the phrase, but Galileo does it justice. He has actually tried them!

They do not work in dimmer fixtures, which I recently installed throughout my apartment.

They do not turn on quickly.

Their spiral shape is ugly.

Their light is cold and disturbing, reminding me of a sterile office. This is not the feeling I want when I am in my home.

They are extremely expensive.

Their light flickers.

It causes headaches in some people.

The bottom line is that I don't want them.

I tried them once, way before legislation was passed to make them obligatory. That is when I discovered most of these unpleasant characteristics. I am not alone in my opinion, as evidenced by their paltry market share.

And all this builds up to a very fitting conclusion.

I bet "none of the above" isn't a result.

Bothenook points to a quiz, "Select a Candidate 2008", that beautifully concretizes what's wrong with the political milieu today, not to mention public opinion polls. One need go no further than the first question!

Iraq: What is your opinion on the war in Iraq?

• Decentralize Iraq by dividing it into regions of separate governments.
• Draw down the U.S. troops and decentralize Iraq by dividing it into regions of separate governments.
• I favor immediate and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops.
• There should be a timetable for the removal of U.S. troops.
• We are going to be in Iraq for a long time, as a support force for the Iraqi government and forces.
• U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes for Iraqi forces to take over.

Importance: Not Important Very Important [This is a four-point scale on the quiz. --ed]

I don't see "Use Iraq as a base for annihilating Iran, Saudia Arabia, or both -- or leave", as one of the choices. The closest approximation to a correct action would be the first choice, but that is not entirely accurate (and the usual reasons people give for withdrawal would make me look very dovish when in fact I am much more hawkish than any of the candidates).

And if I take the quiz anyway, do I truthfully say that this issue is "very important" -- or do I try to minimize the impact of this question's failure to include the right option by saying it is "not important"?

And finally, no matter which candidate this spits out, I know that it will be someone who does not agree with me that taxation and the welfare state are morally wrong and should be abolished, and that he will see our military options in the current war as ignominious retreat in the face of Islamic barbarism or, even worse, the continued sacrifice of American wealth and lives to the brutes who populate the Middle East.

The philosophical ideas that presently have the greatest currency in our culture wrongly circumscribe the terms of the political debate and consistently produce unacceptable candidates for public office.

You can't vote your way out of such a mess. You have to work so that the public will eventually make it possible to begin digging itself out -- by spreading better philosophical ideas. This means working to understand these ideas, arguing for them, and supporting those who do.

And no, I don't know who the quiz spit out for me because there is really no way for me to take it. It is just like confronting me with a math exam full of questions like:

2 + 2 =

• 5
• 4.01
• 3.995
• 22
• blue

Importance: Not Important Very Important

Even if you answered all of the questions, what would this quiz tell you about your ability to perform calculations? Zero.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected link to Brook article.