Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm heading out of town tomorrow afternoon, and have to present at a meeting that morning. This comes on top of several opportunities that seem to have fallen into my lap all at once. (Is it just me, or are opportunities pack animals?)

I was going to break for Thanksgiving this year, anyway, and something's gotta give, so I'm taking an extra day off from blogging.

I'll be back Monday, if not this weekend. In the meantime, I recommend what is now an old favorite of mine, Craig Biddle's "Don't Say Grace, Say Justice". Also, based on his Thanksgiving post last year, I have high hopes for something good over at Scott Powell's blog, Powell History Recommends, but it's still early yet. (In the meantime, he has some nice Columbus Day Week posts that I am pretty sure I never got around to mentioning.)

I wanted to close with a Thanksgiving quiz, but the only one I could find wasn't really ... to my taste. But I like the meme I found over at Rational Jenn's blog, so I'll do Six Random Things instead!

1. When I was a kid, I used to enjoy drawing fictitious maps. I once found a web site by someone else who also did this, still had some of his old maps, and had scanned and posted some of them to the Internet. No luck finding them today, though.
2. Except for a brief period of playing Atari -- yes, I am that old -- I never really got that interested in arcade-type computer games.
3. I played soccer for quite a while before finally scoring my first goal. When I did, I scored by sliding left-footed into a pass across the mouth of our opponent's goal. (I am right-footed.) Later on in the same game, I scored again on an almost identical play.
4. I have taken quizzes similar to this one in the past, but with three, four, five (twice), seven, and eight random facts (or sets of answers to questions) instead. Thanks for cluing me in to the number "six", Jenn!
   
5. Thanks to this blog, I got to meet Paul Hsieh and then Jim May and his fiancee for sociable pints when they made their respective recent visits to Houston.
   
6. I'm no sweet tooth, so when I recommend a dessert, you really should listen: "Ice Cream, Sorbet, and Treats" (and just go with the three ice cream flavors) . My wife, who does have a sweet tooth, will follow my advice the next time we go to Legal Seafood!
   

Well, that's a wrap. Happy Thanksgiving again!

-- CAV

Where will this come from?

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, is, at $700 billion, the largest such outlay in history by the Federal government, but it is hardly the full dollar cost of the current financial crisis. Also passed in 2008 were the $30 billion Bear Stearns, the $150 billion American International Group, and the $200 billion Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailouts. This is nearly $1 trillion in bailouts for 2008 alone. In addition, the Federal Reserve may have already lent (as of last Friday) another $2 trillion on an emergency basis to prop up the economy, over half of that in the seven weeks following a relaxation of collateral standards on September 14.

And, by now, we should all know that "loan" is all but a government code-word for "present-day wealth transfer to the unproductive, to be paid for by future productivity on the part of other members of society". Via Matt Drudge, there is news this morning that the Democrats are mulling an additional $700 billion "stimulus" package and the Fed "pledges" -- our words are becoming as inflated as our currency eventually will be -- have topped $7.4 trillion!

So, using the financial crisis as an excuse, the federal government has definitely saddled us with about $1 trillion, may soon definitely saddle us with another $700 billion, and there is (for the moment) a $7.4 trillion ceiling on any loans made by the Fed that turn out to be bad.

The United States is home to roughly 300 million people. Every $1 trillion is thus about $3,000 for every man, woman, child, and infant alive today. About half are working age. (For the sake of argument, we'll pretend that all are privately-employed and all people at this age actually work.) The government can raise this money only by means of force, which is to say, by taxation, inflation, or otherwise confiscating private property.

If you work, you have thus already taken out a loan (in the form of "bailout" packages) for about $6,000 to hand over to complete strangers -- well, not complete strangers: you do know that they're spendthrifts -- and you may be on the hook for as much as another $48,000 (in "pledges", as of today), courtesy of Uncle Sam.

You didn't want to take out a loan or can't afford to? Tough nuts. The government does not care about what you think, except possibly at election time. Your loan is just a small part of the price anyone who has ever felt entitled to government favors or supported government welfare of any kind has accepted (knowingly or not) and is forcing on those of us who do not.

This is precisely the opposite of what the government should be doing.

The time to start working to end this sorry state of affairs is now. My recommendation is to support those who are working long-term to improve our choices at the ballot box by making better bosses of the people who choose our elected officials.

The notion that we exist to serve others and that, therefore the government ought to use us to insulate others from their mistakes or irresponsibility is a philosophical error, and cannot be corrected unless more people become aware of better philosophical ideas and how to apply them. Only then will there be enough voters to cause politicians to take seriously the idea that they should be protecting us from thieves rather than joining them.

-- CAV

The Wisdom of the Crowd

I know I'm late getting to this, but after seeing several different blogs point to this video, it finally dawned on me that it must be pretty good.

It is.

This is coming from someone who tends not to watch video clips since you can't skim.

Observe in only ten minutes how Peter Schiff stood his ground, often in the face of open ridicule, on a series of national television appearances as he accurately predicted the collapse of the Housing Bubble.

His arguments are solid. If any of the idiots who pooh-poohed his contention that market fundamentals were lacking had had any sense, they would have been unnerved by his calm, certain demeanor -- and then checked their premises at the first opportunity.

Plus, the video is funny. Schiff -- with some help from a thing commonly known as "reality" -- has made complete asses out of the whole lot of them.

I think I'll follow Mike N's lead by making a list of Schiff's opponents for future investment reference. It is worth noting that the Dow, which hit something like 7,500 yesterday, was about 13,000 during at least one interview on the clip, and one economist was predicting that it would hit 16,000 within the year.

My thanks to all who recommended this video. You have dispensed justice and investment advice at the same time! Who says morality isn't practical?

-- CAV

PS: Kendall J posts more on "The Continuing Collapse" over at The Crucible and Column.

Updates

Today: Corrected an error and added a PS.

Quick Roundup 380

Internet "Fairness" without the "Doctrine"

Reader Dismuke sent in a couple of interesting items yesterday. Regarding the first, he comments:

I have been wondering how the Left will eventually try to find a way to impose a de facto form of censorship on the Internet. Turns out that South Korea is already blazing the path for that in the name of stopping cyber-bullying.

This he follows with an excerpt from a posting at The Far Eastern Economic Review:

The proposed legislation 1) requires real-name identification system for all who post comments online; 2) mandates portals to delete "malicious entries" within 24 hours of receiving complaints; 3) requires sites with more than 100,000 visitors, rather than the current 300,000, to verify user identities. Violators -- both providers and consumers -- can face jail time and/or substantive monetary fines. And the national police has been deployed to "hunt, arrest, and punish" individuals who upload falsities and pernicious rumors.

I agree that a proposal like this is very likely down the pike, but the prevention of "bullying" as an excuse here seems unlikely, and a more likely excuse, the prevention of "hate speech" would probably draw too much fire.

So how will the Democrats try to excuse and disguise this power-grab? "Transparency". Such a possibility caused a small stir about a year and a half ago, although one prominent conservative commentator dismissed the notion as "hysteria".

What is "transparency"? It is the claim that forcing people to identify themselves will shame them into civility, in the name of improving the public debate. This is a form of the "hate speech" excuse, except that we are supposed to be distracted by the desire for improved public political debate. Here's an excerpt from the article I blogged. It was written by Tom Grubisch of The Washington Post:

If Web sites required posters to use their real names, while giving the shield of pseudonymity when it's merited, spirited online debate would continue unimpeded. It might even be enhanced by attracting contributors who are turned off today by name calling and worse. Except for the hate-mongers, who wouldn't want that? [bold added]

There's a sample at the end of the kind of "argument" we can expect. (I'd take name-calling over that any day.) The operative method of this scheme is force. And there are so many ways it would be open to abuse that it is mind-boggling to contemplate.

Let's take him up, for the sake of argument, that exceptions would be granted for whistle-blowers. To be able to post anonymously, for example, you'd have to convince a potential political opponent to his satisfaction that using your real name would be dangerous to yourself. Oops! Too late. You have to do that to get a pseudonym first! And if you aren't granted a pseudonym, you get to decide whether to risk getting the rest of your story out or face recriminations when only the civil servant you had to approach has the full story.

Read the whole post. It's quite good, if I say so myself.

Oh. One thing on the FEER article: It protests at one point that "no government can really control cyberspace". That's not how to argue against such measures because it cedes the moral ground, which is ours. Government censorship is wrong because it violates individual rights.

Furthermore, the government needn't "control cyberspace" with an iron fist, anyway. All that needs to be done to stifle freedom of speech is to terrify most dissenters and make examples of the rest. Would-be censors know this, and such an argument risks causing complacency among everyone else.

Obama's Turn as "Dealer"

Dismuke also pointed me to this article, which I'd seen a few times, but never read. It describes in gory detail the problems Obama faces in any attempt to implement a "New New Deal".

Mr. Obama must be looking around and beginning to suspect he will be pouring his political capital, along with considerable taxpayer capital, down bottomless holes for the next four years. He won't be building a legacy as the new FDR, but cleaning up after the last one.

That's the best we can hope for, and probably unrealistic. Obama thinks that socialism is good, and too many people think that it will work "this time", thanks to pragmatism.

This does remind me of a novel I once heard of, about someone who rose to the top of a totalitarian dictatorship, but was somehow intellectually honest and realized how unworkable it all was, and began to reform it. If this rings a bell to anyone, please let me know!

If Obama made a similar journey, or even had something like Boris Yeltsin's supermarket epiphany, I would be very pleasantly surprised. And relieved. And, considering whom he surrounds himself with, concerned.

Pragmatism and Disillusionment

Mike N makes a very perceptive comment on one of the myriad ways pragmatism -- failing to think in terms of principles -- is getting in the way of the fight for individual rights.

One has to wonder how many other perceptive men like Mr. Hoekstra will continue to be disillusioned by the repeated failures of their party, simply because they aren't thinking in terms of principles.This is a shame.

I recall that shortly after the repeal of the "Fairness" Doctrine, a very common thing I'd hear about on talk radio was the fact that many people had felt isolated, as if they were the only ones who disagreed with the way the left ran everything.

Having talk radio and other alternative media has helped on that psychological level, and having facts easily accessible also helps in the battle for freedom, as Glenn Reynolds has indicated in his An Army of Davids. But without principles, this will all be for naught. Facts alone cannot lead to meaningful change without principles to guide their application, and positive emotions will be overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness since principles ultimately make one's mind effective, by guiding its thinking, and hence one's actions.

Jay Walking

Brian Phillips, in an excellent post favoring the privatization of education, alludes to a recurring feature on Jay Leno, "Jay Walking".

I followed the link and had to post this segment, which I dedicate to the "self-esteem" mongers of the modern educational establishment and their pragmatic enabler, John Dewey.

-- CAV

The Chavez Difference

Thanks to a combination of his own policies and plummeting oil prices, Hugo Chavez is facing setbacks to his plans to export socialism abroad, as well a popular discontent at home. As I noted yesterday regarding China, but perhaps to an even greater degree, the people have come to expect the government to bring them prosperity. This lack of self-reliance will result in just another dictator unless a major cultural change occurs among the public there. A real revolution will not occur until the people demand a government that will leave them alone to pursue their own prosperity.

Several passages about the article stand out. (The whole thing is worth reading for its sneak peak into Venezuela.)

First, the anti-oligarchy -- read anti-capitalist -- rhetoric el loco rode to power is wearing thin:

The area around the Caracas Country Club used to sit on thick foundations of old money, but no longer. These days many of the old members cannot afford their subscriptions.

The club no longer tries to shame them into doing so, as it once did, by pinning their names up on public display - there are simply too many defaulters.

Meanwhile the Chavistas, as the president's fans are known, buy so many Hummers that the vehicles have their own assembly plant in Venezuela.

Petro-money has seen sales of Rolexes rise sevenfold and clubs like Sawu, where the new elite pour Johnnie Walker Blue - that elixir of the ultra rich - into their Coca-Colas, flourish.

The fact that the institutions of privilege have merely changed hands increasingly angers ordinary people who were promised everything and have been given very little.

...

Chavez has long railed against the Venezuelan ''oligarchy", clans he claims used to rule the country and control its wealth. But among the poor, incidents such as "Suitcasegate" are prompting accusations that the Chavistas have become an oligarchy themselves.

The article fails to report one substantive change Chavez has wrought. In capitalism, which Venezuela has never tried, the newly wealthy would generally be the most productive and money would have little to do with political power due to separation of economy and state.

The old order, a far cry from such a state, still had the merit of being closer to this ideal in certain industries, such as oil. But now, with political flunkies occupying many key positions, such vital industries are being run into the ground by actual oligarchies -- of incompetents. The economy is substantially worse off than it was before, regardless of how the pouring of Johnnie Walker Blue seems to fool the media into thinking otherwise. Even for a "natural resource" such as oil, some minimal level of competence and conscientiousness is required to obtain it and make it usable.

In short, Chavez, who started out by equating wealthy captains of industry with sows at the government trough, has now installed real oligarchies. The people of Venezuela will pay for this in that the industrial infrastructure will have largely transformed into a government bureaucracy. But that's really just salt in the wound of their having lost their freedom long ago.

Second, I am reminded of a couple of points I have made about Chavez at various times. Of his "selling" of socialism to people not yet enjoying its "largesse", I once said:

It is worth noting to whom the great benefits of socialism are being touted: Those naive souls imported into Cuba [at Venezuela's expense] for the "free" [eye] operations. Anyone already under Castro's thumb is left to deal with shortages even though the Cuban economy is said to be improving at a 9% per annum clip. Ironically, [reporter] Gary Marx mentions blackouts. In one sense, then, while the Cuban government is restoring site to foreigners, it is blinding its own citizens! Or perhaps if Marx were a better spinmeister reporter, he'd say something like, "the almost-daily restoration of sight to the customers of the state power company also fits neatly into Castro's agenda".

The people of Venezuela are now wondering about this loudly. The rest of Latin America should take note.

Meanwhile, their president sends millions overseas to help like-minded socialist regimes in Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Cuba. Workers are now protesting: "How come he has money for them and not for us?"

And then, Chavez is acting even more frequently like the non-powerful person I once said he was: "Faced with crucial poll defeats, Chavez is showing the strain. As the elections near, he is lashing out in a manner more commonly associated with the continent's [other] dictators."

If Chavez melts down, and that's a big "if" since Iran, China and Russia will doubtless prop him up if they possibly can while the United States whistles and keeps kicking a can down the road, it may at least be entertaining in the short term.

-- CAV

Mad in China

Via RealClear Politics comes an interesting New Republic article on the effects of the current financial crisis on China. Among them, the discontent I have noted before is spreading to the more affluent, urban areas.

Things could get very ugly there.

Beijing can afford a $580 billion stimulus package because it has nearly $2 trillion in reserves. But for all its cash, China's actions may not be enough. Aredux of Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen crackdown is not a good option: Two decades ago, the number of educated protestors was far smaller, and China had less interest in protecting its global reputation. At the same time, China has granted enough freedoms that average Chinese now demand wages, fair housing, and other rights. So, unless Beijing can get its economy going again, they are likely to face the first sustained wave of protests in decades. Thus far, China has kept the labor protests separate from one another, preventing them from developing a common theme or a common leader. But if China's downturn turns into an outright recession, the country could face its first serious threat to the regime. [link dropped, bold added]

It's too bad for many reasons that, "this nominally communist country now [only] seems more capitalist than Wall Street"[bold added].

The people here have come to expect the fruits of capitalism (e.g., high wages and a good standard of living) while remaining ignorant of the nature of capitalism. True, they may blame the government when things turn sour, but this will likely be for the wrong reasons. Anyone who expects a government to be able to turn things around by any means other than simply protecting individual rights will be repeatedly disappointed.

A blind rebellion is unlikely to result in China ending up free. Worse, capitalism will get the blame for the uneven and unsustainable growth pattern that has resulted from foolhardy attempts at central planning on both sides of the Pacific.

-- CAV

Global Shenanigans

I should have seen this coming, but somehow didn't: My schedule's gettin' squeezed like a zit on prom night. Or something like that. Possible light blogging through the end of the week as I switch back in to Houston mode....

***

Reader Dismuke alerted me yesterday to an interesting story that I bet I wouldn't have otherwise heard of: A particularly glaring example of scientific incompetence or outright fraud has cropped up yet again in the laboratory of a major contributor of climatological data that allegedly supports claims that human activity is causing the earth's climate to warm.

Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record....

But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that ... GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. [Translation: We want even more grant money. --ed] This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.) [bold added]

Somehow, I don't expect to be hearing Heidi "Lysenko" Cullen calling for any type of censure against James Hansen any time soon -- or for a formal retraction of her claims that privately-funded climate research is inherently biased. (And see the interesting quote by James Spann at that last link.)

Having brought this up, it really serves more to alert us of the possible unfolding of a cautionary tale about the hazard of politicization of science that comes with the territory of government funding. The global warming debate, as I have said here many times, continues being engaged in the wrong way:

This is what happens when everyone in a "debate" is actually in full agreement on the essential issue, yet refuses to discuss it, instead electing to prattle incessantly about something entirely tangential. In the misnamed "global warming" debate, both sides agree that the government ought to "do something" about climate change. This fundamental premise is almost never questioned or even named.

But laymen all over the place are arguing themselves blue in the face over whether climate change is occurring and, if so, how. Unfortunately, this second debate would remain (properly) confined to scientists if more people understood the proper role of government, namely the protection of individual rights. Not setting the Earth's thermostat.

Not to downplay the sloppy (at best) science here, but the real debate is the one that still isn't happening.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Quick Roundup 379

Paul Hsieh in the Denver Post

Paul Hsieh's excellent editorial on "How the GOP Lost My Vote" (via Noodle Food) was recently published in the Denver Post.

[T]he government's role is to protect each person's right to practice his or her religion as a private matter and to forbid them from forcibly imposing their particular views on others. And this is precisely why I find the Republican Party's embrace of the Religious Right so dangerous.

If a woman chooses not to have an abortion for reasons of personal faith, then I completely respect her right to do so. But she cannot impose her particular religious views on others. Other women must have the same right to decide that deeply personal issue for themselves.

And he hasn't even touched the sprint towards socialism we have witnessed during the Bush administration, which would be bad enough alone!

Having said that, he indirectly does cover it: The Republican's "compassionate conservatism" is really just the misuse of the state to force everyone to practice the Christian "virtue" of charity.

Two Good Editorials on Greenspan

Harry Binswanger noted yesterday the publication of two good editorials on Alan Greenspan that appeared in smaller newspapers. One appears in Montana's Big Sky Business Journal and is by someone I've never read before, Evelyn Pyburn. She opens her article this way:

Anyone who has ever read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, both of which are novels by Ayn Rand, knows that the most dangerous traitor of all is the compromiser. Quite ironically as a former Ayn-Rander, Alan Greenspan proved Rand’s point most dramatically before Congress, last week.

The other one appears in the Grand Junction Free Press, and is by Linn and Ari Armstrong.

Objectivist Roundup

Blogging while I travel is a very hasty affair, and I frequently forget to contribute to roundups as a result. So this week, I am not in the roundup, which is posted over at Rule of Reason.

It's not about her.

Stephen Bourque isn't just alive and kicking. He's blogging, too, and has a good post on why mentioning Ayn Rand every fifth word isn't exactly the best way to raise the level of an intellectual discussion:

With this in mind, I would not wish to grant my intellectual foes a favor by contributing, however inadvertently, to the idea that Objectivists are followers of a "gospel according to Rand." When I argue points with friends and colleagues, I do not frame my statements in the form, "Well, Ayn Rand said..." or, "As an Objectivist, I believe that..." Why should this convince anybody? Listeners (or readers) who disagree with Ayn Rand to begin with will not be convinced by merely repeating her position on matters, and those who are unfamiliar with her work should not take her - or anyone else's - word for it. Anyone who is worth arguing with should care only about facts and their connections to principles. Mentioning Ayn Rand every few sentences would do more harm than good.

His focus is on intellectual activism, but he takes LB's essay, also worth a read, on the personal importance of the philosophy as his point of departure. And watch out for an interesting identification there regarding a common saying. I was lucky enough to have had my teach me that very distinction when I was very young. And no, Dad was not an Objectivist and, I am sure, had never heard of Ayn Rand at that age.

-- CAV

Activism in Line

Burgess Laughlin will enjoy the pun, I hope.

As I noted in the comments recently, I am back in Boston for a few days for job hunting. Towards that end, I attended a job fair yesterday, which is to say that I spent a fair amount of time standing in line. Sadly, catching up on Scott Powell's current history course during those waits was out of the question in that context: Ear buds and an iPod strike me as poor fashion accessories when one wants to project a focused, professional image.

So, aside from the brief information-gathering interviews at the end of each line, that time was mostly a wash. But in one of the really long lines, a fellow attendee struck up a conversation with me, which was pleasant enough until politics came up.

I made the mistake of mentioning that I was attempting to transition from academia to industry.

"Most of the people I know are trying to move into academia because the economy is so bad," he noted.

"That might be a mistake. We've been cranking out PhD's in bioscience for the past twenty years. They can't all stay in academia. They can't double the NIH budget every few years indefinitely."

"Oh, the new President's priorities are different."

"I don't think that will matter. There simply isn't enough money to do that." This is simple math. Just input any number into a calculator and multiply it by two over and over again. It quickly becomes ridiculous.

The other guy says something vague (via HBL) about how Obama is going to do a better job with the economy than Bush. Either that or he just asserted it.

"I don't think either one has any idea how to improve the economy."

Something very negative about tax cuts. And how the Republicans have been running things until about two years ago and now we have huge deficits.

"The Republicans got elected on the premise of making the welfare state smaller. All they did was cut taxes. Otherwise, they acted just like Democrats, and so they deserved to lose."

As soon as I drew the similarity between the GOP and the Dems, he says, "Why do I keep hearing that?"

The other guy starts getting progressively upset from this point. In the back-and-forth, either I didn't make the essential similarity between the two sides clear enough, he couldn't grasp it, or he refused to believe it. In trying to make the point, I realize that the guy, probably 10-15 years older than I am, ought to remember the Carter years, so I try that tack.

(I can understand denial on this guy's part. If the Republicans were this bad and so are the Democrats, then we're in a deep, steamy, smelly pile of Greenspan. We are.)

"If we don't cut back on spending, the alternative to a budget deficit is high taxes and inflation just like we had under Carter -- heck, we're probably already going to get inflation as it is." (Actually, we already have it.)

"I'm tired of Republican people," he sneered at me, "telling me we need lower taxes. The top one percent get all the benefits, and the rest of us get nothing." If I read this guy correctly, he buys class warfare lock, stock, and barrel, and sees himself as a "little guy". If so, I hope on that last point that this guy is not typical: A nation of "little guys" is a nation ripe for a dictatorship.

"I am not a Republican."

He was in the middle of saying something angry at me, but as I was at the head of the line, it was my turn, thankfully, to leave, smile, and introduce myself to a recruiter.

Well, when I first learned I would be moving to Boston, people told me I'd have lots of free blogging fodder. They were right.

The next few years will be a time of peril, politically and economically. For myself, intellectually, it will be a chance to figure out how to pitch pro-reason, pro-individual rights arguments to blue-staters. This will be an important thing to be able to do because of the huge populations of the blue states.

I am not sure exactly where this guy was coming from. My gut says he's compartmentalized and not open to rational debate about politics, but we discussed politics for only a short time, so I might be wrong. In any event, it is clear that the Republicans have done a great deal of damage to the credibility of capitalism simply because of their refusal to make good on their promise to at least reduce the size of the welfare state, which must eventually be abolished.

If I am ever lucky enough in the future to find a political candidate I can support, I will never do so without making it very clear (for starters) that I do not belong to his party.

-- CAV

PS: Regarding pro-capitalists having our work cut out for us, Burgess Laughlin considers some aspects of that very question in another post.

Why We Need Principles

Matt Drudge links to a story detailing what I regard as my worst nightmare: A government that has decided to actively violate freedom of speech. No excerpt can do this justice, but here's a taste.

An internet blogger and a writer who disguised an attack on Burma's dictator in the form of a love poem were among dozens of activists sentenced to draconian jail terms as the junta ordered a fresh crackdown on dissidents.

Nay Myo Kyaw, 28, who wrote blogs under the name Nay Phone Latt, was sentenced to 20 years and 6 months in jail by a court in Rangoon. The poet, Saw Wai, received a two-year sentence for an eight-line Valentine's Day verse published in a popular magazine.

Aung Thein, the lawyer for the men, was given four months in prison on Monday for contempt of court during his defence.

...


Mr Saw Wai’s poem, entitled 14th February, was ostensibly a Valentine's Day verse published in January last year in a weekly magazine. "You have to be in love truly, madly, deeply and then you can call it real love," it read. "Millions of those who know how to love, Laugh and clap those gold-gilded hands."

The first word of each line, however, spelt out a message about the leader of the country's military government: "Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe". Mr Saw Wai was charged with harming "public tranquillity". [bold added]

That is just the sort of thing I could imagine doing (and have done, but not in a political vein). I suspect that the "alternative" being immorally forced on Saw Wai by his government is: "Your life or your life!" That's what being silent or -- worse, being told to write only what one knows to be ugly and wrong -- is for someone who loves to write. And, now that I think of it, that is the ultimate, though not always so stark, choice any tyranny puts to us, and which gives meaning to the motto, "Live free or die."

But that's not what got me going. What really got my attention was the following foolishness from the reader comments by one James Beckton of Airstrip One:

Socialism has nothing to do with Burma's situation. The country is run as selfish regime. China supplies regime expertise and equipment while all the big powers including China extract raw materials and profit. The population are treated as a disposable nuisance. Just the same as Congo and Zimbabwe.

First of all, given that freedom of speech can and does greatly accelerate the discovery of the truth, which man must have to survive and flourish, to call a regime that suppresses freedom of speech "selfish" borders on the patently absurd. This is not to say that it is unimportant to defend the virtue of selfishness whenever possible, for its opposite, altruism, is what is used to justify socialism and dictatorship, including the poet's very sentence! The rulers of China, Burma, Congo, and Zimbabwe are anything but "selfish".

No, what got my attention was that asinine statement that socialism has "nothing to do with this". Socialism is a political system in which the government owns the means of production (i.e., it fails to recognize the property rights of its citizens to the point of perpetually violating them). As such, it is a species of tyranny and it is one step down the road to Rangoon. (Yes. I know, it's "Yangon" now. And it's no longer the capital. And I bet quite a few Burmese would take colonial status over this any day. So let's do talk about keeping up to date.)

The very idea that a government that violates individual rights in one area (property) will not eventually also do so in another (speech) is folly. In such a case, either the principle that man has rights is unknown or it is already being flouted, and sooner or later, some lowly prole -- I mean, individual human being -- will inconvenience the government by exercising what rights haven't yet been trampled.

I have often spoken of a "dictator fantasy" in which people like this apologist for socialism (or Obama's more fanatical supporters) seem to think that the despot they want in power will rule as he, personally, sees fit. This is clear evidence of a lack of principled thought, and the proliferation of people with this fantasy is a direct result of the prevalence of the philosophical approach of pragmatism.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 378

Energy "Independence" vs. Personal Independence

In addition to the faddish pursuit of alternative energy in the name of "energy independence" being a mis-allocation of capital and poor substitute (alternate link) for national self-assertion on the international stage, it will lower our standard of living. Brian Phillips puts this last fact very well when commenting on a particularly daft assertion by business columnist Loren Steffy of the Houston Chronicle:

In the case of foreign oil we must give up the value of driving a larger vehicle, or reduce our driving, or curtail our energy consumption in other ways. We must surrender these values -- which are chosen voluntarily -- in the name of achieving energy independence. We will achieve energy independence, we are told, by restricting individual independence, that is, reducing or eliminating the choices available to individuals. And eliminating individual independence is the real goal of the apostles of sacrifice. This is the change that Obama proposes. [bold added]

He also has recently posted a nice analysis of a recent proposal to force mobile food vendors to carry radio identification tags on their vehicles.

First in Line to Taste the Leather?

The big question now that Obama has been elected to the Presidency is: Which answer to the "Human Rorschach Test" will show up for the job? I'm hoping for "empty suit", but fear "incipient dictator". Charles Krauthammer, on the other hand, seems to want "incipient dictator"!

With [Obama] we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.

Of course, Obama hasn't even taken office yet, so maybe this just another individual test result! Either that, or the boot-licking has already begun.

This raises an important point. The question of which Obama is really be a two-parter: (1) How far to the left will he govern. (2) How competently will he implement his agenda?

The Print Edition of TIA Daily

Last month, Myrhaf posted a hilarious parody of TIA Daily, to which I used to subscribe.

Today, for the second time in two or three days, I received an issue TIA via post. I hadn't received one of those for so long that I'd forgotten I had a subscription at all, much less that there were remaining issues!

"They will know we are Christians by our love." (Part IV)

It's a good thing these monks have devoted their lives to the study of religion, which we all know is the only thing standing between us and barbarism!

The church in Jerusalem's Old City, one of the most revered sites in Christianity, is home to six different Christian sects who frequently fight over the rights to maintain and worship in different sections of its hallowed halls.

This time, the fight followed an Armenian procession marking the fourth-century discovery of a cross believed to have been used in Jesus's crucifixion.

Greek Orthodox monks had apparently wanted to post a monk inside the Edicule, a structure built on what is believed to be Jesus's tomb, and blocked the procession when the Armenian clergymen refused.

Riot police broke up the fight and arrested a bearded Armenian monk and a Greek Orthodox monk bleeding from a gash on his forehead. [bold added]

Oh! Did I neglect to mention that religion imparts "perspective" and the right priorities, too? Sorry!

-- CAV

Binswanger on Greenspan

Rather swamped at the moment as I mentioned I might be last Monday....

In the meantime, I highly recommend Harry Binswanger's latest over at Capitalism Magazine, in which he takes a look at reactions to Alan Greenspan's recent testimony blaming Ayn Rand's ideas for the current economic crisis, and then sets the record straight in impressive fashion:

So the meaning, which certainly has been seized on by the commentators, is: Greenspan belatedly realized how foolish he has been to believe in Ayn Rand's philosophy. The ideology of freedom, as taught by Ayn Rand to Greenspan, is what caused the current financial catastrophe.

What makes this especially revolting, is that the real destroyer of the economy is Greenspan, through his inflation-generating last years at the Fed.

Notably, Greenspan's betrayal was not sudden. His testimony was neither a bolt from the blue nor was the betrayal different in substance from his actions over the past two decades. I'll give Binswanger the last word here: "[B]y 1970--almost 40 years ago--I and a couple of other Objectivists in that circle already realized that Greenspan was compromising on her philosophy. Little did we know how far his anti-Rand journey would take him."

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 377

Mankiw on the Youth Vote

Greg Mankiw's conjecture on why the youth vote was so heavily Democratic:

I am not enough of a political scientist to be sure, but recent conversations I have had with some Harvard undergrads have led me to a conjecture: It was largely noneconomic issues. These particular students told me they preferred the lower tax, more limited government, freer trade views of McCain, but they were voting for Obama on the basis of foreign policy and especially social issues like abortion. The choice of a social conservative like Palin as veep really turned them off McCain. [bold added]

Or, as Paul Hsieh recently informed the GOP -- who asked -- awhile back:

The Republican Party must promote the strict separation of church and state. I used to support the Republican Party because I believe in individual rights, free markets, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms.

However, the Republican Party alliance with the religious right on "social issues" like abortion and gay marriage has turned off many former supporters such as myself.

The proper function of the government is to protect individual rights, as philosopher Ayn Rand notes:

"Man's Rights"

"The Nature of Government"

The government should not force one group's religious views on everyone. Hence, I no longer have a home in any political party. To paraphrase a quote from Ronald Reagan, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me." [bold added, raw URLs converted into hyperlinks]

I agree.

As the GOP begins soul-searching after its well-earned thrashing, activism like this can potentially have a big effect, and it will become particularly important as Barack Obama maintains and perhaps expands the foothold for theocracy that Bush introduced in the form of "faith-based" government initiatives.

In any event, although the Congressional Dems will not be able to keep themselves from overreaching, it is somewhat reassuring that even Froma Harrop doesn't see a leftist mandate in the electoral tea leaves (although her idea of center is farther to the left than mine).

Objectivist Roundup

C. August has posted it over at Titanic Deck Chairs.

He also beat me to posting the above hilarious video from The Onion on Obama supporters, but it's so good I want it here, anyway. I like the fact that it makes fun of his supporters for exactly the same reason I did yesterday!

China Issues First Order to Obama

Notice the why and the what:

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and a top UN official urged industrialised nations Friday to alter their lifestyles and investment modes as part of efforts to tackle global warming.

"The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life," Wen was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Developed nations should also help developing countries respond to climate change, Wen said at the opening of a two-day international meeting on global warming in Beijing.

The gathering in Beijing, which is being attended by representatives from 76 nations, is focusing on the development and transfer of technology that can help tackle climate change ahead of next month's talks on creating a new global treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. [bold added]

Translation: "Don't forget to pass the goodies before you turn out the lights!"

An Email ...

... to forward to that relative in your life who can't resist sending schmaltzy emails to everyone he can think of!

In 1986, Peter Davies from Newfoundland was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Memorial University . On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee, inspected the elephant’s foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Toronto Zoo with his teen-aged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

I'd get ready to forward one of the schmaltzy ones, but change the payload before sending. (HT: Mom)

-- CAV

An Army of Gadflies

Finally, this last, protracted, and almost meaningless presidential election is over!

Or so you hoped.

Unfortunately, the enemies of liberty never sleep, be they supremely animated by hatred of the individual, or animated corpses under the control of those who are.

Those enemies of the individual pursuit of happiness who marched in lockstep under the banner of "Change" to elect Barack Obama to the Presidency are not done yet. They remain organized and awaiting orders from their smiling master, and that master plans to use them.

A powerful new lobbying force is coming to town: Barack Obama's triumphant army of 3.1 million Internet-linked donors and volunteers.

In a mass e-mail thanking them, written moments before his Grant Park victory speech, Obama put them on notice. "We have a lot to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next," he wrote.

Many are eager. "I'm going to be sitting at the phone, asking, 'What do you want me to do next? I'm ready,' " said volunteer Courtney Hood, 37, a mother of three from Owings, Md.

...

Joe Trippi, the Internet politics guru whose computer geeks made Howard Dean a contender in 2004 and who went on to design Obama's socially networked campaign machine, offers a provocative and educated guess.

Trippi predicted that Obama would use his forces, first and foremost, to intimidate congressional foes of his agenda, rally his allies and forge "one of the most powerful presidencies in American history." [bold added]

Read the whole thing. The best we can hope for is that Trippi is merely projecting his own masturbatory fantasy of power-lust onto the man he foolishly hopes will rule according to his own daydreams. But I doubt it.

If Obama is as bad as he could be, he has a tactical head-start any aspiring dictator would envy: An army of second-handers without business of their own worth minding, and looking to fill the void of meaninglessness in their own lives by fighting for an altruistic cause, is already ready and willing to do his bidding.

Who knew that one day, every annoying neighbor you ever had, every jackass who ever yelled at you at work for putting a soda can in the trash (where, by the way, it belongs), and every yokel communist who ever started spamming you with left-wing "news" links would one day be harnessed like this? This is clever, amusing in a way, and chilling all at once.

Gadflies of the world, unite!

And normal people, read this. Know thy enemy. For he will be in your face soon.

-- CAV

PS: I suppose that this means we could nickname our community-organizing new President "Lord of the Gadflies".

Updates

Today: Added a PS.

The Next Two Years

Fred Barnes of The Wall Street Journal explains why he sees a much larger lurch to the left under President Obama than there was under either Carter or Clinton. We will now get to see whether he is right:

A sharp lurch to the left and enactment of a liberal agenda, or major parts of it, are all but inevitable. The centrist limits in earlier eras of Democratic control are gone. In the short run, Democrats may be constrained by the weak economy and a large budget deficit. Tax hikes and massive spending programs, except those billed as job creation, may have to be delayed.

But much of their agenda -- the "card check" proposal to end secret ballots in union elections, the Fairness Doctrine to stifle conservative talk radio, liberal judicial nominees, trade restrictions, retreat from Iraq, talks with Iran -- doesn't require spending. And after 14 years of Republican control of Congress, the presidency, or both, Democrats are impatient. They want to move quickly.

Democrats had large majorities when Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 (61-38 in the Senate, 292-143 in the House) and when Bill Clinton took office in 1993 (56-44, 258-176). So why are their prospects for legislative success so much better now?

The most significant change is in the ideological makeup of the Democratic majorities. In the Carter and Clinton eras, there were dozens of moderate and conservative Democrats in Congress, a disproportionate number of them committee chairs. Now the Democratic majorities in both houses are composed almost uniformly of liberals. [links and bold added]

Left unaddressed is whether the public will tolerate this agenda once it has been put into place and its effects have been felt. Part of such resistance, which would manifest during the mid-term congressional elections, will inhere in how -- damnably to Obama -- selfish Americans still are. But part could have been aided by the Republicans not having behaved so much like Democrats themselves to have screwed up the economy badly as it is. What will there be to provide contrast to the results of the policies of certain failure about to be enacted by the Democrats?

The Republicans lost this election in large part because they did not stand up for the principle of individual rights, resulting in there being no substantive difference in theory or practice between themselves and the Democrats. Furthermore, since we have a good start on a Democrat economy already, stand by for the Democrats to blame anything bad on the Republicans, and for the contrast in economic conditions between now and a couple of years hence not to be as great as it ought. Conceivably, the Republicans have already lost the mid-terms.

Furthermore, as the hypocritical, less-consistent altruists in this election, they lost the moral high ground to the Democrats. Let me be the first to state that I want an alternative: Proudly selfish politicians who understand that rational self-interest is what made America great.

Republicans, there's your path to recovery.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected typos.

I like this guy!

On the eve of the likely ascent of the Obamassiah to the Presidency, it is worth taking a look back in American history to a man who sounds like his total opposite, from his understanding of the value of freedom to his love for America, Samuel Adams.

The following comes from a book review of a biography of the patriot in The Wall Street Journal that I found on a brief visit yesterday to RealClear Politics:

On March 5, 1770, a lone British private guarding the customs house found himself taunted by unruly Bostonians. Several British soldiers came to protect him. The crowd grew larger and started pelting the soldiers with snowballs. One of the soldiers was knocked down, and, as he came up, fired into the crowd. In the confusion, other shots were fired and, by the time the smoke cleared, 11 colonists were shot, five of them fatally.

For Samuel Adams the incident demonstrated the tyranny of British rule, and, as importantly, provided an opportunity to galvanize support for the revolutionary cause. The facts surrounding the incident are still in dispute, but, writes Mr. Stoll, "what is certain is that Adams pressed immediately and aggressively to wring every possible bit of political advantage from the bloodshed." He started by giving it a name: the Boston Massacre. [bold added]

And, much later:

If Mr. Stoll's biography lacks the narrative power of books on other Founders, such as David McCullough's "John Adams," the reason may be that the paper trail left by Samuel Adams is frustratingly short. He destroyed much of his correspondence during the revolutionary years, fearful that it could fall into the wrong hands. Some of the letters that remain end with the words "burn this." This Adams wasn't playing for the history books. He was trying to plot a revolution. Mr. Stoll makes a convincing case that Samuel Adams is not just the most underrated of the Founders but also one of the most admirable, down-to-earth and principled (he worked to abolish slavery). [bold added]

Read it all! If you're like me, you'll seriously consider buying the book.

Contrast Adams's somewhat obscure, but heroic life to that of the egomaniac: two autobiographies, his track record as a career politician (and very little else), and the grave threat to individual rights he will surely represent.

Sadly, this contrast cannot be used to raise a successful call to oppose Obama by voting today, for his strongest electoral opponent, John McCain, is very much the same in so far as what he wishes to do to America; and at least Obama will prove an easier target for intellectual opposition should he take office. Like the British of Sam Adams' day, and unlike McCain, he is manifestly anti-American and dangerous.

After this election it will be up to the common citizen, once again, to fight for his freedom no matter who wins. At least Obama is an open enemy.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 376

Light Blogging Possible

I have a very full plate this week. If I skip blogging entirely now and then, that's why.

Blogroll Updates

Fans of Brian Phillips will now find his blog listed as Live Oaks, its new name, rather than as Houston Property Rights.

I have also added three new blogs: Ping-Ponging towards Fascism; Quent Cordair Fine Art, Director's Corner; and Wealth is not the Problem. The first was the most recent host of the weekly Objectivist Roundup. The other two I found via The Aesthetic Capitalist in the post, "Requesting Recommendations for Goodness" and its comments. Note that due to space limitations, the first two are listed as "Ping-Ponging" and "Cordair Director's Corner".

New Mailing List

My site statistics indicate that a few of my readers might be interested in joining Dinesh Pillay's new list, "IndianObjectivists":

IndianObjectivists is a private mailing list for Objectivists either based in India or with an interest in Indian society. Its purpose is to facilitate ideas for activism & also for promoting the philosophy of Objectivism in India

And don't forget that Diana Hsieh also runs three Objectivist lists.

Experimental Blog Feature

For some time, I've been toying around with the idea of hosting the occasional open thread, but have been reluctant to do so: Readership here is small enough that I doubt that a post up for just a few days would attract sufficient "critical mass" for a good discussion without some blog post to kick things off.

On the other hand, I frequently get good news tips from off-topic comments and reader email. Sometimes I can use the news tips, and sometimes not. Now, even if I don't actually blog a news tip, it will still appear somewhere, and that "somewhere" will be a place where other readers can expect to find it.

So I am going to try a sort of semi-permanent comment thread. Each month, I'll start a new open thread and link it to the blog template at the upper right as, "Bulletin Board". And I plan to daisy-chain the individual open thread posts so that one can navigate from one to the next.

Good Reading on Economics

Over the weekend, I found a couple of very informative posts on the financial crisis over at Andrew Medworth's blog. In his more recent post, he comments on George Reisman's essay on the financial crisis. In an earlier post, he discusses the financial crisis, and draws heavily from Gene Callahan's Economics for Real People, which, he notes, is available online.

His posts are both excellent, but one passage reminded me of an amusing restaurant sign from my home state of Mississippi.

As Adam Smith aptly put it in The Wealth of Nations in the 18th century, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Without greed and selfishness -- by which I mean action taken in an individual’s own rational long-term self-interest -- we would all starve to death very quickly.

The rural restaurant sign at the right sums this up very memorably!

Oh? You want the online book? I left it at Andy's, so you'll have to go there to pick it up. And that's just the one useful link I mentioned.

-- CAV

November '08 Open Thread

Have you a news tip, an interesting random thought, or something you'd like to bounce around?

If so, feel free to leave a comment here!

-- CAV

"Slave Master"

The below very good video of a live performance of "Slave Master" by reggae legend Gregory Isaacs I dedicate in advance to our next President, whoever that turns out to be.

"What I require" from a political office holder is the one thing neither Obama nor McCain seems willing to promise, if either has ever heard of it: Freedom, specifically the protection of my individual rights.

Disclaimer for literal-minded, would-be censors: While I have no plans to start setting things on fire any time soon, I do vow unstinting intellectual opposition to whichever fool gets elected next Tuesday.

-- CAV