Quick Roundup 428

House Votes to Criminalize Opinion

Through this blog entry linked at The Houston Chronicle, I learned that the House was considering HR 1913, a "hate crime" bill. The writer at The Black Shards Chronicle makes an argument against the very concept very much like one I made a few years ago in The Undercurrent. As I said then:

Punishing someone for his beliefs in addition to his actual crime is, in fact, exactly the opposite of what the government should be doing. For example, if someone gets ten years for a crime and has two more added on because he is "guilty" of a "hate crime," he's being jailed two years for his ideas by the government.

As of this morning, the bill has passed. I am not sure whether WorldNetDaily is correct that a minister can now be prosecuted under this bill, "should their teachings be linked to any subsequent offense," but it certainly paves the way for it. (Proper laws -- against actual incitement -- are already on the books, just as they are for assault, rape, and murder.)

Also, as I noted then, the conservative movement is hardly opposing this latest assault on freedom:

A 2007 Hart Research poll shows large majorities of every major subgroup of the American electorate -- including such traditionally conservative groups as Republican men and evangelical Christians -- expressing support for strengthening hate crimes laws.

The headline? "Log Cabin Republicans applauds passage of hate crimes prevention."

Playboy Interviews Ayn Rand

Jeff Scialabba of the Ayn Rand Institute reports that, "Playboy has posted its dynamite 1964 interview with Ayn Rand."

Objectivist Roundups

Last week, Rational Jenn hosted. This week, it will be is at Stephen Bourque's blog, One Reality.

Drat! Gotta make that submission deadline next time!

Additional note to self: Watch this video. Leonard Nimoy and hobbits! How can I lose? My wife will probably like it, too.

Handouts against Handouts!

Paul Hsieh notes that printouts of the PDF version of "Health Care is Not a Right" would make excellent handouts to have on hand for the next round of Tea Party protests and tells you how to get the PDF.

Altruism vs. Beauty -- and Courtesy

Jennifer Snow writes a very thought-provoking post, taking the oft-alleged "objectification" of women as her point of departure:

But saying that a woman who clearly has put in quite a lot of effort is "ugly"? To me, this is frankly disturbing. The ramifications of a statement like that are incredible, particularly when it is made in front of another woman as a sort of compliment, which is how I hear this most often. Even if I ascribe the best of intent to the man making the statement--he is saying this particular woman is not his type--it implies an ugly comparative standard. He is saying to the other woman present that she should be pleased because he is elevating HER appearance above that of this other, idolized woman. I'm sorry, but no rational person wants to be valued only because they're BETTER THAN someone else. They want to be valued because they are good by an objective standard. [bold added]

Read the whole thing.

-- CAV

Government Schooling to Fail Again

I was at the airport looking for a newspaper when I saw the headlines about GM's nationalization "deal." I immediately muttered something like, "I'll never buy anything from GM again."

Not that I was planning to do so, anyway.

Myrhaf and Billy Beck have already discussed the matter, with Beck specifically catching another blogger framing the event in a way I have seen before, but in another context. (More on that momentarily.)

After quoting TigerHawk referring to the government takeover as an "experiment," Beck weighs in:

I understand the man's sense of humor and its well-earned reputation 'sphere-wide. I would point out that this could only be considered an "experiment" in the style of fourth-grade baking soda and vinegar volcanoes in custard dishes. In other words, all grown-ups know what's going to happen here. The fact that it's unprecedented doesn't mean that it can't be seen coming... [bold added]

This is very succinctly put, although with the reign of confusion that permeates much conservative discourse, I am almost as loathe to speak of "grown-ups" as I am to call this foolishness an "experiment."

Regarding the GM "experiment," TigerHawk notes that its "lessons" will be applicable to the subject of socialized medicine. A commenter -- assuming, perhaps rhetorically, that evidence actually matters to advocates of socialized medicine -- notes that this "test" is happening too late in the game. Be that as it may, TigerHawk has a point: This maneuver will fail for the same reason that any government takeover of medicine will fail.

That's all fair and good, but this analogy very closely resembles a mistake I see time and time again by conservatives and libertarians: Treating public policy debates as if they exist outside the realm of ideology.

One prime example of this I saw awhile back when Arnold Kling proposed what I could only call, "Libertarian medical experiments," proposing in all seriousness that "four or five diverse states adopt" socialized medicine on an experimental basis for some sort of standardized comparison to other states a few years down the line.

Just a few issues: Whose standards would be used? Will four or five other states get government completely out of medicine as a control? The latter never comes up. Most important, by what right can people be compelled to participate? That also never comes up. If Arnold Kling can dislike socialized medicine, and yet end up proposing its liberty-crushing and life-threatening adoption in several states, it is precisely because he foolishly sees freedom as uncontroversial and in no need of an intellectual or moral defense. This attitude is reflected in his willingness to treat individual human beings as laboratory animals.

Another example comes from a favorite columnist of mine, Thomas Sowell, who makes this same error across the board when he speaks of "adolescent intellectuals." As I said then:

[Sowell's] error is a common one, in which he treats an implicitly rational, reality-oriented philosophical outlook as a given, rather than as an implicit example of just another possible ideology. My last would doubtless strike many, probably including Sowell himself, as moral relativism at first blush, but it is not. For if the rational, "adult" ideology that Sowell implicitly favors can be judged as an ideology, so must all other ideologies be examined under the cold light of reason, and compared against the facts of reality, which include the requirements for man's survival.

It is easy, but wrong, to hold all intellectuals in such disdain, for to do so is to cede the deadly premise that so many of them have that a rational philosophy is not worthy of consideration in the marketplace of ideas, that ideology is somehow the one realm of human endeavor that is exempt from reason. Indeed, it allows them to go on pretending this is the case. Worse, it allows them to continue their attack against rational morality openly and unashamedly, while doing real damage to our civilization. [bold added]

It is fine, but not enough, to liken the GM "experiment" to a middle school demo whose results are pre-ordained, but the comparison should go further than that. It's as if we're in a classroom with a sadistic instructor who knows that dropping water into concentrated acid will cause it to spatter -- or that elemental sodium dropped into a beaker of water can cause a glass-shattering explosion-- and yet he forces the whole class to perform these experiments again and again.

If your child were in such a school, you would withdraw him immediately, and would have no doubt that the "instructor" was a moral monster. And yet our public has no such qualms about government officials who play similar games with our freedom, our finances, and our lives.

This analogy partially breaks down when you remember that, we, the public, are both parent and child. Nevertheless, if you go just a bit further, and ask why so many "parents" are still willing to send their kids to such a "school", you will begin to see why -- if you don't already -- the battle for freedom is a moral one, and why massive cultural change must precede any lasting or significant political change.

Any parent who would permit his child to suffer such "instruction" would have to be very ignorant at best or in agreement that the such a method of instruction is acceptable. Unfortuanately, we who disagree with such parents live in the same republic, and can currently be compelled to live with many of their foolish choices. The only solution is to work to help as many of the mistaken partents see what is wrong, and to win allies in the fight to sack the sadists in charge.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 427

Amit Ghate on Civic Responsibility

His focus on debate is an excellent concretization not only of what is wrong with the libertarian approach to political change, but of what is right with the approach of the Objectivist movement:

Citizens today, particularly the young, are told that their greatest civic responsibility is to vote. I think this is ridiculous -- the most important responsibility is to educate oneself and then add one's voice to the debate. One way to do this is to pick a topic of particular personal interest, learn about it, and then participate in the early legislative policy debates (which are normally open to public commentary). In this way, instead of simply casting a vote for the limited choices others have saddled you with, you get to shape the choices that millions or even hundreds of millions will vote on.

And how does one form a basis for these policy positions? By first educating oneself about a proper political philosophy, which will also enable one, in turn, to participate in the broader political and cultural debate.

And one more thing. Always fight, but do stop to admire the flowers from time to time. If you are not fighting for something, you are doing something terribly wrong.

And speaking of enjoying your values, ...

Here's a Book to Get

I enjoyed reading this post over at Live Oaks about 101 Nights of Grrreat Romance.

Live Oaks, by the way, is now one year old.

"Details Kill" Update

Not too long ago, I noted that Tom Daschle, architect of Barack Obama's attack on freedom in the medical sector, is an enemy of open debate about "health care 'reform'" and wants to slow down the development of new medical technology.

Daschle's attitude on debate seems to be the rule rather than the exception in his party these days. Diana Hsieh notes that Congress wants to pass socialized medicine without debate -- and Glenn Reynolds notes that Barack Obama has all but completely reneged on a campaign promise to, "put [new bills] online for five days, review, and make them open to the public" before signing them into law.

If the Democrats are as "reality-based" as they are so wont to claim, why not allow plenty of debate, along with the inevitable tidal wave of public support the merit of their plans would bring?

Oh. Daschle already answered that one, I guess.

The Democrats' only concession to reality is to admit in this way that their proposals are wholly without objective merit, and, incidentally, that they are more worried about details killing their power grabs than the saving the lives of their constituents.

Jeff Britting Schools Tobias Wolff

Darren Cauthon recounts a panel discussion I think I would have enjoyed:

When it was his turn to speak about Ayn Rand's character in "Old School" by Tobias Wolff, he nailed it. Britting started by stating that Wolff's presentation of Ayn Rand was a "total distortion," among other words, and then went on in detail to explain who she was, the themes of her four fiction books, and a little bit of her philosophy. Near the end of his presentation he compared Wolff's "character that shares Ayn Rand's name" with the actual Ayn Rand and showed a few specific cases where the two are polar opposites. He also asked the audience to not take his presentation or Wolff's presentation of Ayn Rand on faith by reading Rand's books for themselves.

Ayn Rand's opponents are, increasingly, in a lose-lose situation: Distort Rand and invite comparisons with what she actually said. Ignore Rand and look like you live under a rock.

An Edison Day Quote

From The Kindredist:

Nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. -- Thomas Edison

More at the above link.

Better late than never!

A Pesky "Collection" Problem: Solved!

I haven't blogged on personal productivity in a long time, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it.

One problem I never completely solved to my satisfaction was how I could make note collection at all times as easy as possible. For various reasons, I did not want a PDA, but that meant I ended up using either my calendar or scraps of paper in my shirt pocket for on-the-fly note-taking. This has been one area I was never quite satisfied with regarding my implementation of David Allen's techniques.

Until Sunday morning, that is. Stopping by Life Hack, I found a thread about Moleskine hacks that intrigued me and, specifically, the following snarky comment by Catherine Cantieri, a productivity blogger I had not encountered before. (She might enjoy this humorous take on Moleskines.)

I hope this doesn't get me kicked out of the creative-kids klatch, but I just don't get Moleskines. I carry around a Levenger Pocket Briefcase and that seems to meet all my needs. Am I missing something? Could Moleskines change my life? [link added]

I took a look at the Levinger's web site (linked above) and, knowing they have a store in the mall nearby, decided to take a look. There turned out to be a small version with business-sized note cards that fits into my shirt pocket without leaving a huge bulge. It's a nice-looking, three-compartment business card holder that also holds a card on its outside for note-taking and comes with a small pen held along its bottom side. Levinger's sells ink refills for these tiny pens. (Who needs an expensive PDA just to jot down a quick note?)

My wife offered to buy me one, but I was not quite sure -- until remembered that I still didn't have a nice business card holder. That sealed the deal for me, because I had a job hunting/networking event to attend Monday night.

At that event, I got to give the Pocket Briefcase a test run, taking notes a couple of times and using it to keep track of business cards. I am quite happy with it, and now no longer feel "naked" on those occasions when I can't take my calendar along with me.

With that, it's off to the skies again, this time for one of my last Boston to Houston commutes. We will move the bulk of our belongings up here in a few weeks and, possibly, myself, although I may have to stay in Houston for another month or two for writing and experiments.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added missing link to Live Oaks post on book.

Altruism vs. Reality

As E.J. Dionne points out, the "first 100 of the 1,461 days" of the Obama term are over, meaning that if it were two weeks long, we're just about through its first Monday. So how are all his magical-thinking supporters doing? Not so hot, if this article is any indication:

[A]s Obama nears the 100-day milestone of his presidency, [Greenwood City Councilwoman Edith] Childs suffers from constant exhaustion. In a conservative Southern state that bolstered Obama's candidacy by supporting him early in the Democratic primaries, she awakens at 2:30 a.m. with stress headaches and remains awake mulling all that's befallen Greenwood since Obama's swearing-in.

On Day 4 of his presidency, the Solutia textile plant laid off 101 workers. On Day 23, the food bank set a record for meals served. On Day 50, the hospital fired 200 employees and warned of further job cuts. On Day 71, the school superintendent called a staff meeting and told his principals: "We're losing 10 percent of our budget. That means some of us won't have jobs next year, and the rest should expect job changes and pay cuts." On Day 78, the town's newly elected Democratic mayor, whose campaign was inspired partly by his admiration for Obama, summarized Greenwood's accelerating fragility. "This is crippling us, and there's no sign of it turning around," Welborn Adams said.

On Day 88, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that South Carolina had set a record for its highest unemployment rate in state history, at 11.4 percent. Greenwood's unemployment is 13 percent -- more than twice what it was when Childs first started chanting.

"We have a lot of people who live in cold houses, with no jobs and no food," Childs says.

Over the weekend, I said half-jokingly that Obama had to somehow, "make sure his constituency keeps believing [he can create an Office of Fabulous Salaries] while also not noticing that he hasn't yet gotten around to magically making all of us fabulously wealthy."

This article shows that he needn't even do this much. Childs, who pays constituents' bills with her city council checks -- Is this even legal? -- is feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, but is nowhere near withdrawing her mistaken support of Barack Obama or questioning the creed of self-sacrifice that is causing her to wallow in the problems of so many other people. On happening by a Tea Party protest, her reaction was dismissive: "Let them have their tea party. They're just looking for somebody to blame. My ears are full."

It is, of course, a waste of time for opponents of Barack Obama to attempt to address those who, like Childs, will steadfastly refuse to hear us. But it is worth remembering that if we are to defeat Obama and his fellow statists any time soon, it will take our sustained effort versus the widespread ignorance and entrenched mental indolence of a significant portion of the populace.

No matter how arbitrary the edicts of King Barack the Mild, or how obviously detrimental they are to the hard-working and the self-reliant, do not think that the suffering they will cause will carry the day. We can reach many of the merely ignorant through rational persuasion, but the committed altruists will not stop working against us, and the saturation of the culture with their morality will offset their flagging enthusiasm, even if it can't get whipped up long enough for another election.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 426

Feds to Take over Banks?

Dick Morris says that a stock conversion move by the Obama Administration will result in the government nationalizing all the major banks in America. (Obama wants to the government's majority shares to have voting rights.) Morris elaborates a little later, saying, "That's called socialism." He's not completely right, and it is a little late to become alarmed since the government needn't legally own everything to be calling the shots -- i.e., acting as central "planner." (Just read later on in the same piece.) What we have now is closer to fascism -- government control of the economy with only a pretense of private ownership of property.

Nonetheless, two things interest me about this move. First, as Morris points out, this would cement Obama's control over the financial sector from a political and legal perspective. What I think he misses is an additional ideological motive. This is also a chance to chip away at a fundamental aspect of American culture: Private ownership of property.

Second, the role of our "alternative" in the last election is not to be ignored. At best, any federal intervention in this crisis would have been extremely dangerous, and some Republicans did at least seem to realize this on some level. John McCain, however, was not one of them.

When the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) intervention was first outlined by the Bush administration, it did not call for any transfer of stock, of any sort, to the government. The Democrats demanded, as a price for their support, that the taxpayers "get something back" for the money they were lending to the banks. House Republicans, wise to what was going on, rejected the administration’s proposal and sought, instead, to provide insurance to banks, rather than outright cash. Their plan would, of course, not involve any transfer of stock. But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) undercut his own party's conservatives and went along with the Democratic plan, ensuring its passage. [bold added]

During his campaign, McCain repeatedly admitted being clueless about economics and suspicious of "greed". The idea that he would not be nationalizing the banks on McCain's watch strikes me as preposterous.

Perez Hilton's Impropriety

Yesterday, I started my post by noting that several things in Wednesday's paper struck me as worthy of comment. One of these things was a very short AP piece on a dust-up between Perez Hilton, an openly gay entertainment commentator, and a contestant in the Miss USA beauty pageant, that may have cost her the crown. (The Houston Chronicle has the very annoying habit of not posting the entire contents of its print edition on line, and I cannot find this anywhere else. It was titled, "Beauty queen, Hilton spar," and it concerned an appearance of the contestant on the Today show.)

While I disagree with Carrie Prejean's opposition to gay marriage, I must note that she has been treated very unfairly by Hilton and the news media. Hilton, who apparently solicited her opinion on gay marriage during the contest, slammed her for not, "[leaving] her politics and her religion out because Miss USA represents all Americans."

So what was she supposed to do, lie? Whatever one thinks of Miss Prejean's views, to demand that she leave her personal opinions out when formulating an answer to a question that is philosophical in nature is to take a stand against freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. This is reprehensible.

Furthermore, it is also foolish. If Perez Hilton were genuinely concerned with government protection of individual rights, including those of homosexuals, he would be loathe to make such a stand. How, after all, did homosexuality go from unmentionable to much more socially acceptable, except because people were free to discuss it, as unpopular as it was?

Oh, and then we have this...

Speaking of illiberal modern leftists, we have Janeane Garofalo spouting nonsense about the recent Tea Party protests being "racism". Both Bill Brown and Harry Binswanger have already pointed to the video.

Staring about 3:10 into the clip at New Clarion, Garofalo starts spouting a bunch of pseudoscientic claptrap about defective limbic systems in the brains of conservatives -- and "Stockholm syndrome" among the non-white-males at the protests, just to account for the fact that the crowds were not, in fact all-white. Or all-male. Or all- racist. Or mainly racist. Or significantly racist. Or angry.


One further comment is in order here. For all her posturing as an enlightened foe of judging others on the basis of skin color, it might be helpful to recall what racism actually is when considering Garofalo's remarks:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Is Garofalo claiming that the mental disorder she alleges is inherited? If so, she is guilty of the same sin as the most virulent racists. If not, she is still guilty of determinism, and thus still has no room to make moral stands on anything. In any case, she is making things up as she goes along, demonstrating that she is hardly qualified to speak on behalf of ... of anything.

This video is useless in political discourse, but valuable as a cultural diagnostic. It is an indication of the political bankruptcy of the left, as well as its insularity. The most striking thing about the entire segment was the fact that it was an almost textbook example of psychological projection -- from Garofalo attributing racist/deterministic attitudes to her intellectual opponents to her notion that Fox News is only an echo chamber (!), and failing to engage all demographics.

Sickening and fascinating all at once.

A Brown Student's "Discovery"

A doctrinaire leftist from Brown University decided to brave the wilds of a fundamentalist college campus for a semester to write a book about it, and was surprised to discover that many of the students there live close to normal lives. At least, his encounter with the phenomenon of compartmentalization -- common among people (including leftists) whose professed beliefs would make life impossible if fully practiced -- is what I take Glenn Reynolds' use of the term "discovery" to refer to.

(I note in passing that I experienced the same feeling in reverse upon finding decent barbecue sauce at a grocer in Boston yesterday. If you could approximate the flitting emotion with words, it would be something like, "I didn't know people still ate meat or burned charcoal up here!" Yeah. And I bet they babble about global warming and serve tofu burgers at their cookouts up here, too.)

Also noteworthy about the piece is that his experience made him more religious. I attribute this in part to the hypocrisy of Liberty University's students making religion seem less noxious than it really is, and in part to the fact that leftism offers nothing of positive value, philosophically, to people of about Kevin Roose's age, many of whom are looking precisely for philosophical guidance on how to lead their lives.

And speaking of tofu, ...

... leftists, stereotypes, and low humor: Given how free-spirited hippie chicks are reputed to be, I would replace "other than" with "in addition to" in this hilarious news clip.

-- CAV

Apuzzo on Fingerprinting

Yesterday's Houston Chronicle seemed chock full of thought-provoking items as I read it on the first leg of my flight. One of them was this AP piece by Matt Apuzzo, which purports to be about the effectiveness of torture, but clearly is intended to leave the reader with the impression that it is ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique, and should be scrapped.

In short: Slam someone up against the wall, keep him awake for days, lock him naked in a cell and slap his face enough, and he will probably say something. That doesn't necessarily make it true.

The confessions of torture victims aren't always true?!? Who says there aren't bloodhounds in the media anymore?

Later on, Matthew "Sherlock" Apuzzo notes that:

The British claimed that tough interrogation of Irish Republican Army suspects thwarted dozens of terrorist attacks, Rejali said, but evidence later proved the intelligence was often useless.

This follows shortly after an instance -- treated as if it were some freak exception -- of useful intelligence gathered by CIA waterboarding and leads to the article's conclusion (at least in yesterday's print edition of the Chronicle) that:

"The correct answer for a bureaucrat is always to torture, even if you know it doesn't work," Rejali said. "Nobody wants to be the guy who could have done something and then didn't do it."

Apuzzo follows Darius Rejali's lead -- Rejali is a "Reed College political scientist who studies torture" -- from this to the conclusion that torture "doesn't work" in a few short paragraphs, so that to read this article, one would think that intelligence gatherers are all sadistic idiots who take torture victims at their word, and that sometimes they'll hit he jackpot, but "often," not. But this is not the case. Anything gathered from a tortured prisoner must be weighed against other evidence.

Furthermore, slamming torturers as mindless bureaucrats is disingenuous. Just remember that detectives aren't always successful at lifting fingerprints at the scene of a crime (and that often, these won't be prints from the criminal), then replace "torture" with "fingerprint" in the above excerpt, and you'll see what I mean.

Hell, one could re-write this entire piece easily enough around the term "fingerprinting" to make that technique sound like it ought to be relegated to the same dustbin that palmistry has been and human sacrifice ought to be. Criminalists don't just lift the first fingerprint they can get and run with the assumption that they'll catch a crook. They integrate what it and other prints from the crime scene say with all the other evidence, even if that means simply recording them for future reference days, weeks, years, or even decades later. The same holds true for intelligence gatherers. Torture "works" in the same way that fingerprinting does, but usually with one difference.

That difference, of course, is that torture involves the forcible restraint and threat of another human being with harm, while fingerprinting may sometimes involve forcibly extracting the compliance of a criminal suspect with a request for his prints. In each case, our government, whose sole proper purpose -- is Barack Obama paying attention? -- is the protection of individual rights, must go out of its way to ensure that its use of force serves only that end. That is why a court order is required before the police can get someone's fingerprints, and that is why we are debating whether the government ought to torture prisoners of war at all.

And speaking of war, the Bush Administration muddied this debate in two ways: (1) by failing to declare war, and, more importantly, (2) by failing to note that its proper purpose is the protection of the rights of its citizens, which, in foreign policy terms means, protecting America's interests. We are at war -- remember? -- with an enemy that has no compunction about slaughtering us at least until we kowtow to Allah. We aren't torturing gratuitously and when (and whom) our government could employ torture would be well-defined were we officially at war.

But these are the kinds of concerns someone genuinely concerned with individual rights and proper government would voice, not someone for whom a major priority is to ban torture, and that's what makes this whole piece interesting. Apuzzo never goes right out and says, "Torture is always wrong, and the government of a civilized country should never employ it," or even, "We must be exceedingly careful about how our government uses torture during wartime." (And, incidentally, a piece about whether it is effective would have at least touched on how torture confessions are used as evidence.)

No. Like today's craven conservatives, who tout their conception of capitalism as practical (but think it evil), he avoids making a moral argument altogether and appeals to "practicality." Apuzzo thinks torture is wrong, but fears that it might be effective. He hopes to cash in on America's collective lobotomization by pragmatism and appeal to readers too concrete-bound to consider just what it would mean (or take) for torture to "work" (or for what purpose), and too long-convinced that morality has nothing to do with life to care about why he might be so opposed to our nation acting to protect itself.

On the flip side, he probably also senses that few will attempt to make a moral defense of torture anyway. For those of us who are paying attention and care, this is a big problem. If torture is assumed to be amoral at best, what of taking lives? A nation at war must sometimes do that, too.

Will the ineffectiveness of Bush's "'War' on Terror" next be taken as an argument against us even raising a hand the next time we are attacked? It is bad enough when no one will morally defend what is right and practical, but when the whole standard of practicality is set to some magical, Platonic ideal of "works at once, completely and independently of all other means, and every single time," our goose is cooked.

Definitions of terms like "war"; moral problems, like whether a nation ought to torture prisoners of war; and even keeping a full context regarding questions one is not intimately familiar with, are not just academic classroom exercises. They clearly have life-and-death implications, and are practical matters of the highest order, self-congratulatory pragmatists to the contrary be damned.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 425

Happy (Life on This) Earth Day!

Well, I won't be firing up the barbecue this time around, but I will be doing my share of exploiting the earth today. I will celebrate by contributing to the atmosphere over 556 pounds of glorious carbon dioxide fuel exhaust -- I converted the figure from kilograms in honor of the British, who started the Industrial Revolution -- by means of a flight to Boston to see my beautiful wife.

The Exploitation Game: A Contest With Two Divisions

How will you celebrate the Industrial Revolution today?

Leave a comment and, if you want a shot at bragging rights, cite the "carbon footprint" of a single, fuel-consuming activity in Imperial units only in the comments below. The largest number wins, but if I get enough responses, I may also award a Most Creative (read: upsetting to socialist Luddites) way of burning carbon-based fuel. For that category, any amount of carbon dioxide added to the air over and above your own respiration will do. I will be sole arbiter, but I will also bar myself from competing in that category.

Remember, man survives by altering the environment to suit his needs. This means that any payment of "offset" indulgences, support for Barack Obama's -- or any other -- "cap-and-trade" fuel rationing scheme, or, worst of all, sign of remorse at doing what you have to do to live as a human being will be considered grounds for disqualification. Also note that for a shot at bragging rights, your comment must be posted by midnight tonight, as determined by the automatically-generated time stamp.

Comments are moderated, so I ask for patience while I do my part (above) to celebrate this day. In the meantime, take solace in the knowledge that the more comments I have to go through upon my return to the Internet, the more carbon dioxide the resulting brain activity will cause me to generate. Bwahahaha!

As of now, the number to beat is 556 pounds. The technique, jet flight, although it is known to bother some socialists, is surely easier to beat, although, per the above rules, it isn't an entry yet. Someone else will have to fly. And enter the contest.

Let the First Annual Exploitation Games begin!

Edison Hour Update

Speaking of events related to man's distinctive means of survival, Stephen Bourque reports that Earth Hour does not go over well in nations where people remember what it's really like not to have copious amounts of power at one's disposal, thanks to electricity:

[W]hile I was in Malaysia, I was astonished to see a similar protest [of Earth Hour to my own] described in the opinion pages of a local newspaper. The title of the piece was "Earth Hour is a total farce," and it was written by a Malaysian native, Mohd Peter Davis[.]

Read the whole thing. It includes quotes from the piece.

Welcome back to the blogosphere, Stephen!

Mmm! Pistachios!

My wife loves 'em, and now she (and you) can find out whether any still sitting around the house after the FDA recall are actually safe to eat.

Saturn

When I was a kid, my Dad bought me a telescope one Christmas, and I had it outside one night to take a look. My middle brother, who has always had ridiculously good vision, asked me whether you could tell any planets by sight. (I was just going to look at the moon, and had no idea whether any planets were visible then, or where they might be.)

At some point, I mentioned that Saturn is yellow. So he looks around for a couple of minutes and asks me to see whether this speck of light he found I thought might be yellow was Saturn. I felt skeptical, but obliged him anyway. Yes! It was Saturn, rings and all!

But I don't think his vision is this good...

Word of the Day

Ambiguidate. (It sure is nice not to have to figure things like that out any more!)

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 5:00 A.M. on April 22, 2009.

American, Free Thyself

Via Fresh Bilge is a link to a piece at The American Thinker whose interesting, science-fictionish premise is that the Chinese, in dire economic straits around the time of the 2012 American elections, have decided to throw their influence behind defeating President Obama.

America, their largest trading partner, has become a lousy customer thanks to four years of increasing government "planning" of its economy. The Chinese, needing American prosperity, are contemplating a bold move in the next election, such as recruiting "a pro China billionaire to set up a group called Move Him Out Now ... to defeat Obama."

That is an interesting premise up to a point, but to the reader with a deep appreciation for capitalism, unbelievability quickly overwhelms:

China's future needs really, really depend on a nice capitalist return on their investment because with the one child policy, their population in future generations getting smaller .In fact, because of the preference for boys, there are already 35 million more men than women, so tens of millions Chinese men are unlikely to be even able to reproduce and have ONE child. He's screaming that if Obama's destruction of the U.S. economy keeps up much longer China will be in terrible trouble and the Party and its leaders want to stop this shift to socialism in the United States as fast as they can." [link dropped]

Let's grant that China's ruling elite would be so compartmentalized that it would work to grow a foreign market with greater freedom, while failing to grow the vastly larger domestic one right under its nose by the same means. That goes hand in hand with any government trying to steer an economy in the first place. We see similarly muddled thinking all the time in America, anyway.

But: Our future Chinese saviors still have a One Child Policy and belong to the Communist Party? We can call the Party a historical anachronism for the sake of argument, because it's the first of these that really bothers me.

(It's at this point that I'll lose most conservatives, because so many of the ones who are not openly hostile to the idea that capitalism is moral, still fail to realize that it is much more than a utilitarian, purely economic arrangement. Furthermore, I am sure that some will chide me with words to the effect of, "That article isn't about capitalism." Actually, if you really are interested in propserity, it is. Oh, well.)

Capitalism, as Ayn Rand said in her seminal work, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "... is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights..." [bold added] A "free market" where the actors are forced to act against their better judgment is not capitalism and will not produce prosperity for long. A slave market is not capitalism. The President firing the CEO of General Motors is not capitalism. China having a One Child Policy is also not capitalism, recent loosening up of government controls to the contrary. In each case, the government is violating individual rights, preventing individuals from acting on their own best judgment.

Since all economic decisions in a capitalist society are made by individuals on their own behalf, all government infringements on individual freedom ultimately do affect the economy (just as all economic interventions diminish freedom) -- no matter how much some conservatives wish to pretend that the moral and the practical are two separate realms. Furthermore, each such intervention both sets the precedent for others later on and, by distorting the economy, provides a convenient excuse later on for more of the same.

So, while it is conceivable that China might work to topple Barack Obama in 2012, it seems unlikely to me for the same reason I doubt China will be substantially freer under its present regime. Recent poor choices notwithstanding -- Obama is just the latest -- most Americans still understand freedom better than the Chinese leadership and personally stand to benefit from it far more than these fictional saviors anyway.

I find the prospect of persuading my countrymen to rediscover freedom much more intriguing and hopeful than fantasizing about the tactical choices facing the ruling clique of a country that has hardly begun to taste freedom.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Corrected a typo. (2) Inserted a missing word.

Too Late, Mr. President

President Obama returns to Washington after a weekend of cavorting in Trinidad with the likes of Hugo Chavez and, I am sure, having to pinch himself more than once during Daniel Ortega's fifty-minute harangue just to make sure he hadn't actually dozed off during a sermon by Jeremiah Wright.

And what's he going to do after thus "representing" American interests abroad? He's going to save us money!

On Monday, Obama will gather his full Cabinet together for the first time as president and challenge it to cut a total of $100 million in the next 90 days, two senior administration officials said.

$100 million? After his near-trillion dollar stimulus bill and his multi-trillion dollar budget? A trillion is a thousand billion, and a billion is ten times the amount of savings Obama is trumpeting. $100 million is thus 1/10,000th of every trillion he just added to the budget. This is like lighting a cigar with a $100 dollar bill, and then bragging about picking up the nice, shiny penny he just spotted on the sidewalk.

Or, more precisely, when one recalls the nature of government as an agent of physical force, it's like Obama walked up to you, took a $100 bill at gunpoint, used it to light his cigar, and then promised you the nice, shiny penny he just picked up -- after it fell, unbeknownst to you, from a hole in your pocket. You would find this not only unjust, but insulting to your intelligence, would you not?

So why does Obama think he can get away with it?

I propose looking no further than his conservative "opposition", best exemplified by the self-proclaimed "pork busters," who, as I have said before, "[focus] on petty theft and [turn] a blind eye to grand larceny." So long as even his opposition regards spending on welfare state programs as legitimate -- as long as it's not "wasteful" -- Obama will have all the moral cover he needs to crow about being, as the Heritage Foundation might put it, "efficient."

The fact remains that Barack Obama is still a thief, and any welfare state "benefit" one might receive from the government is redistributed loot. Until more people stand up to the practice of the state stealing money, massive government theft will improperly be regarded as above question, and Barack Obama will get away with his pretense of responsibility. It's high time to end charades like this -- and the massive theft they try to cover -- by recalling the proper purpose of government and loudly insisting at every election on that instead.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 424

Tea Party Updates

There is too much commentary on the tea party protests for me to attempt a roundup, and that's even if I confine myself strictly to activity by Objectivist bloggers, which I see as a very encouraging sign.

I also got sidelined from joining the protests myself, thanks to several obligations that fell on or immediately around tax day. These included my first encounter with Massachusetts Form 1 -- why am I not surprised that the state chose that number for its income tax form? So instead of joining friends to protest in Houston, where I am most of the time these days, I wasting energy on such questions as whether it was indeed okay for my wife and me to file jointly at the federal level, but separately at the state level. Believe me: I was there in spirit!

So I'll content myself with a sort of uber-roundup, pointing to selected commentary and other roundups. Certainly, feel welcome to mention your own story or commentary here in the comments, but you should also visit at least one of the roundup posts below and do the same if you do.

Briefly, Diana Hsieh plans a roundup later today at Noodle Food and C. August has already posted one at Titanic Deck Chairs. Both are soliciting comments and links. The photo at right, taken by a television station in Houston, I obtained from a link at Noodle Food, and I am pretty sure I know who it is! (Pertinent to the issue brought up by the sign is an excellent short post by Amit Ghate on the impropriety of the whole question of, "How would you run the economy.")

Speaking of Houston, Brian Phillips spearheaded participation by local Objectivists, and, in a post about "Tea Parties and Coalitions," has some pertinent commentary about where the protests might go, and why:

While many pundits have predicted that the Tea Party movement will duplicate the Republican Revolution of 1994, I am doubtful. First, that revolution was electorally successful because it had a clearly stated set of principles. Second, when that revolution abandoned those principles it fell apart and ultimately gave control of Congress back to the Democrats.

They say that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I'd prefer that we learn from one era of our history -- the American Revolution -- and repeat that by declaring an intransigent devotion to the principle of individual rights. If the Tea Party movement does that, it just might realize its potential and launch the revolution that is truly needed -- a moral revolution.

This is a long-term view, and contrasts sharply with the libertarian view, put forth in a recent column by Glenn Reynolds -- who makes the grave mistake of forgetting about principles and falls into the consequent folly of supporting the idea of a new political party. That didn't work for the fledgling abolitionist movement back in the mid 1800's, and it won't work for advocates of individual rights today.

And what of the short term? I have my disagreements with the source he cites, but Myrhaf notes that the protests do get the word out to politicians that a significant portion of the population is unhappy with Obama's economic policies. Galileo further offers that this is a chance to make a moral stand against the monstrous injustice of this administration and Congress. This was Galileo's first protest.

Doug Reich and Brad Harper each note the predictable -- if very disappointing -- "news" "coverage" typical of the leftist media establishment. Reich pretty much says all that needs to be said about this: "The news that the news doesn't take the news seriously is not news."

I'll end by embedding video shot by Harry Binswanger of part of a speech at the New York protest by someone he called "one of the better speakers."

If you know who this is, let me know directly or in the comments, and I'll pass the information along, if you don't subscribe to HBList.

All Hat and No Cattle

I'd like to thank Myrhaf for saying exactly what needed to be said about Texas Governor Rick Perry's opportunistic and irresponsible recent babbling about secession:

States should not think of separating from a free country. I know that the federal government is expanding like some monster in a bad 1950’s science fiction movie, but America still has free speech, free elections and a (hampered) free market with a system of prices for making economic calculations. The task before us at the moment is to use our free speech to move America in the right direction.

...

Is Governor Perry prepared to go to the mattresses, as they say in The Godfather? ... Are Texans ready to go to war with the USA?

If he is not ready for all that, then the Governor is all hat and no cattle, as a Texan might put it. Rick Perry should shut up.

This is not just irresponsible. It is a confession of intellectual impotence. If Perry had any clue what a great value freedom is, he would realize that he should at least try to offer it to the rest of his countrymen before writing them off or choosing to "go down fighting". But, appearances to the contrary, he really did neither: His proposal is so patently absurd that we can safely conclude that he never even thought that far.

Rand in Court

Amit Ghate points to an ARC blog posting by Thomas Bowden on a legal first:

For the first time in American legal history, a judge has explicitly endorsed important principles of Ayn Rand’s political theory in a published appellate opinion.

Read the whole thing.

Objectivist Roundup

Stop by Tito's Blog for the latest collection. I count something like seventeen posts, but I've trained as a mathematician, so you should stop by to make sure I'm right!

Round. Up.

Following a link from GeekPress yesterday, I became interested in seeing a chef toss pizza dough and learned that there are competitions in the art. Here's a video of a champion, who juggles two crusts at one point.

-- CAV

Updates

2-15-10: Added a hypertext anchor.

China Rediscovers Gold

I am speaking metaphorically, so far, but China, which owns much of our national debt, has been buying lots of copper lately, according to the Telegraph:

John Reade, metals chief at UBS, said Beijing may have a made strategic decision to stockpile metal as an alternative to foreign bonds. "We're very surprised by Chinese demand. They are buying much more copper than they will need this year. If this is strategic, there may be no effective limit on the purchases as China's pockets are deep."

Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank governor, piqued the interest of metal buffs last month by calling for a world currency modelled on the "Bancor", floated by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944.

...

One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," he said. [bold added]

None of this is really news, but what really killed me was what I read later on.

The beauty of recycling China's surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth's crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China's industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis. [bold added]

The logic leading up to this, culminating in the mention of the ease of storage for metals reminded me of past, wiser words from none other than Alan Greenspan, who would later betray those very words as one of the chief architects of the financial crisis.

What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. Where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible.

And yet, China has not chosen gold, nor has it announced a metal standard for its currency, but I have commented on why a government would stop short of this already, and using the older, self-lobotomized Greenspan as a source, to boot.

Perhaps the grandest irony in all of this is that what we will likely see in response to this story is that readers -- and pundits of all stripes -- will be transfixed in awe at the cleverness of the Chinese, rather than considering their own situation and concluding that their own best interests would be served best by real, metal-backed money. Why not call for our own government to do what the Chinese ought to be doing, but aren't? This concrete-bound perspective, limited as it is by the failure to draw principled conclusions from this lesson, is a direct result of pragmatism, the intellectual plague of our age.

If there is one good thing about this financial crisis, it is that it is exposing the inherent broken-ness of fiat money almost as thoroughly as any comparative set of photographs of East and West Berlin could show the dismal failure of socialism two decades ago. That is well and good, but if the lesson is to stick better than the one about socialism, which China has backed off from in recent years and the United States is preparing to try whole hog, more people are going to have to start thinking in terms of principles. We are not off to a very good start at all here in the West, so far.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added a short clarification.

Quick Roundup 423

More Inspiration from Britain

A couple of years ago, when I noted an inspiring performance by Paul Potts on the series, Britain's Got Talent, the post touched off a wide-ranging thread on virtuosity, courage, and opera (including how best to share it as a value).

I can't embed the clip this time, but Sandy Szwarc does a very good job of summarizing what you can expect if you follow the link. (Embedding of the video has been disabled.)

She was fat and working class, laughed at as a glutton and shown eating backstage. The stage was set to dehumanize her and make her the joke of the show. Everyone was cynical and against her.

Her dream was to be a professional singer, she said, but she had never been given the chance before. She said she wanted to be like Elaine Paige. Everyone laughed.

The first note was all it took...

My thanks go to reader HL for the tip.

A Virtual Interview with Brian Phillips

Dissatisfied with the field of real candidates running for mayor in Houston, fellow blogger Brian Phillips started a virtual candidacy for mayor a while back.

Now, with this interview, he has also donned the hat of "virtual journalist!"

His subsequent discussion of current Mayor Bill White's abuse of nuisance laws to shut down sexually-oriented businesses also reminds me of an earlier post of his in which I learned of a legal concept I had never heard of before: "coming to the nuisance."

Equally important, the concept of "coming to the nuisance" must also be recognized. If for example, I own a hog farm, you cannot complain about the odor if you later build a home next door. My prior use gives me the right to continue to use my property as I have. In this case, you "came to the nuisance"--that is, the "nuisance" existed and you took actions that subjected you to it. In such situations, the guiding principle is "first come, first served".

As poorly-protected as individual rights are today, I was a little surprised at first that such matters had already been considered and solved long ago.

But the real surprise is, of course, how much our culture has forgotten -- leading to advocates of individual rights like myself not knowing about such things! Brian Phillips' blog is, for this very reason, a must-read on the subject of property rights.

Ayn Rand as "Prophet"

Amit Ghate gets a column on that very subject posted at Pajamas Media. Take a look at it if you haven't done so already.

Fifty-two years after its first publication, her novel Atlas Shrugged is once again topping best-seller lists. As businesses are "bailed out" and quasi-nationalized; as one regulation leads inexorably to the next; and as the productive and innocent are increasingly burdened with the sins and failures of the guilty -- many people recognize the haunting resemblance to the world depicted in Atlas. Some now characterize Rand as a "prophet." Others, as seen on placards at "tea parties" nationwide, simply observe: "Rand was Right." But that she was right is, in some respects, less important than why she was right. [bold added]

You can also file this under, "things that have needed to be said for quite a while about the 'tea party' protests."

"States' Rights" Revisited

Doug Reich sees yesterday's resolution by Texas Governor Rick Perry as a good sign:

In light of all that we know and although this may land me on the federal government's watch list, the entire purpose and function of the federal government needs to be revisited. If it is indeed necessary to have a federation of the states, the U.S. Constitution is in dire need of amendments to once again properly affirm and delimit the power of the federal government which has now clearly, egregiously, and dangerously overstepped the limited role for which it was intended by the Founders and by any rational standard of individual freedom.

Hopefully, with the action taken by Texas, a general movement towards reassessing the function of the federal government vis-a-vis the states will begin.

I don't want today's politicians "amending" the Constitution. (I'd be happy if they properly understood and enforced the one we already have.) Nevertheless, I echo Reich's hope that this be a sign of a less-trusting attitude towards the government on the part of the body politic.

I am perhaps more cautiously optimistic, however.

The anti-tyranny premise behind the idea of "states' rights" has long struck me as well-intentioned, but the notion itself problematic because it can distract attention away from the real problem, which is that our officials have long forgotten the only legitimate rights there are: individual rights.

[W]hen [certain] groups wrap their minds around the idea that a perverted concept of states' rights gives them leverage to thwart the legitimate function of the federal government, they run with it -- as [E.J.] Dionne has. And while he may or may not realize that his new enthusiasm for states' rights will play into the hands of paleoconservatives, it will.

For example, many religious conservatives (perhaps including Governor Perry) hope to reinvigorate the concept of states rights in order to realize bans on abortion at the state level, violating the individual rights of women of childbearing age.

Reich has helped me better appreciate states' rights as part of the design of our federal government to get in its own way when it ventures down the path towards tyranny. Still, our culture will have to change or the original purpose of such measures will continue to be forgotten, only to be replaced by new tools for politicians to achieve greater power over our lives.

There is ultimately no substitute for cultural change. Checks and balances can only buy us time to achieve it.

-- CAV

An Emergency of Ethics

Over at MDOD, a medical blog I occasionally visit, are two morbidly interesting snapshots of what the altruistic ideal of sacrifice, as forcibly implemented by the state, has been doing to medicine. Specifically, each of these shows what is happening at emergency departments across the nation thanks to EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act), an unfunded congressional mandate that makes it "illegal for a hospital to refuse care in an emergency setting, regardless of [a patient's] ability to pay."

In the first such snapshot, 911Doc solicits from his readers the "worst example of ER or EMS abuse that you have personally witnessed." As of now, not counting the example he used to kick off the thread, there are twenty-eight comments, some detailing more than one example. Since these are personal accounts, no one has listed the news story I recently encountered in which nine "people ... racked up 2,678 emergency room visits in Central Texas, costing hospitals, taxpayers and others $3 million." Here's a survey:

• An astounding number or patients come in specifically for non-emergency reasons, including: pregnancy tests ("I didn't trust the home pregnancy test, and I know that yours are better."), MRI (in order to sue an employer for disability), medical "paperwork" (in order to sue a contractor her landlord had hired to do work on her home), prescriptions for narcotics or other unnecessary drugs, and even transportation (e.g., "to visit her friend who lives a block away from [the] hospital," and "he had a drag show to get to").
• Some patients are not sick at all, but only believe they are. In one case, emergency personnel had the pleasure of explaining to a female patient that she had described the symptoms of a perfectly normal occurrence. It was an orgasm. Another patient had a mysterious burning sensation in his throat -- after consuming an entire jar of hot sauce. Still another found herself alarmed to be menstruating -- after she had stopped taking the pill. One patient explained during triage that he was still hungry after six bowls of cereal. At least he was caught at triage. Some locales, notably Detroit, do not triage at all, meaning that such "cases" sometimes delay treatment for real, urgent emergencies.
• Some patients, if they are to be believed, suddenly go from gross neglect of one condition or another to blind panic. One patient came in for severe pain -- fifteen years after an automobile accident. Many simply skip the long-term neglect and panic immediately. Complaints included pink-eye (transport was by ambulance), low-grade fever (without taking anything for it before seeking medical advice), a paper cut, sore throat, insomnia, and cold symptoms.
• Some patients are actually sick, and some urgently need medical attention, but this is due to their own negligence, such as failing to heed earlier medical advice. Not surprisingly, such patients are often also found to be suffering from other medical conditions when being examined and have to be treated for those as well.

Such visits waste the time of emergency department personnel and money (often stolen from third parties by the government) intended for medical care. Also, they often directly endanger the lives of people with real medical emergencies.

The only thing more astounding than the above list is the fact that the one simple thing that could end practically all of it is not even on the political radar. That would be, of course, bringing freedom back to medicine. Specifically, if patients had to pay for their own medical care, they might think once or twice before taking an expensive ambulance ride to a hospital or occupying the emergency room.

The next post shows just how far away from bringing freedom back to medicine we are, politically. The same author explains that, "every time a reasonable solution to the crisis has been tried it has been found to be illegal by a court of law OR has brought such an outcry from victim groups." Even the nominal fee of five dollars for emergency transport and treatment has been shot down.

911Doc's angle in this second post is interesting, too. He notes that in the face of being constantly taken advantage of and never being able to even begin to change things for the better, many emergency medical personnel experience burnout within a decade of starting their jobs. He ends on an ominous note: "[I]f a bunch of us ER docs quit, and the specialty is already underserved across the country, it wont matter much if you are riding the ambulance in with an intracranial hemorrhage or a broken toe, you will not receive care."

The consequences of continuing to treat one man's need as a moral claim on the property, time, and effort of another are clear, and yet our current political trends are not to begin to stop doing so, or even to reconsider whether any of this is a good idea, but to do even more of this. Why?

911Doc partially answers his own question when he notes whose voices are heard -- the alleged spokesmen of "victims" -- and by the kinds of objections he raises to all of this. The "victims" appear to be in the right because the dominant morality in America is altruism, and all he seems able to do is raise practical objections.

There is nothing wrong with a physician profiting from his own work just like anyone else. In fact, it is just that he be paid and it is good that his own efforts promote his own life when he trades with you to promote yours. Until more people start to question the idea that a person's need (real or imagined) is an entitlement to what others own, there will be no political resistance to socialized medicine, no matter how lousy it turns out to be. Patients will fail to see that it is in their own best interest that physicians be free to name the terms for their services and the physicians themselves will, as we see here, feel morally disarmed, overwhelmed, and, rightly, taken advantage of.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 422

Collaboration and Compromise

Adam Reed sounds a note of caution regarding some of the opposition Barack Obama's economic policies have been drawing since he took office:

If you want to work against the culture of self-sacrifice, and for the Human's individual human right to pursue his own happiness on Earth, then, and especially in contexts where you find yourself on the same side of the barricade with people of mixed premises who on other issues advocate for evil, the advocate of individual rights must make sure that his own basic principles are clearly and openly defined. The alternative, of hiding principles in the name of collaboration, amounts in the long-term to philosophical and practical suicide. And to those who "cited" the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand wrote: if you venture to cite Ayn Rand, at least try first to grasp what she actually said.

I have only one thing to add: Welcome back to the blogosphere, Dr. Reed!

Objectivist Blog Directory

I am flattered to see that this blog is listed on a top twenty list of Objectivist blogs compiled by Daniel of The Nearby Pen.

A Bleg

In considering some interesting questions regarding the relationship (and the difference) between philosophy and the special sciences, I have been trying to locate a quote.

I think it is probably from Ayn Rand, but it could well have been from someone like Leonard Peikoff or Harry Binswanger. It was a sort of application of the following quote to the special sciences, although it emphasized a different perspective:

Philosophy would not tell you, for instance, whether you are in New York City or in Zanzibar (though it would give you the means to find out). (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 2)

But the quote went something more like, "There is no 'Objectivist Psychology' ..."

If this rings a bell, please leave a comment or contact me directly.

OS on a Stick

Over about the past year, it has been my habit to visit Life Hack and Life Hacker about once a week, and I have gradually accumulated a nice set of useful tips. Most notably, I have become much better able to carry my work around with me. This has come in very handy during my bouncing around between Houston and Boston over the past few months.

First, I learned how to carry my office around wherever I go. This entailed normally working off my pen drive, and installing a suite of stand-alone applications that would enable me to use any Windows computer relatively easily.

Now, the folks at Life Hacker have a top six list of mini operating systems that can run off pen drives:

Why restrict yourself to merely carrying around your data on a thumb drive? Take your entire operating system on your flash drive with the excellent portable operating systems you'll find inside this week's Hive Five.

Between PortableApps and MobaXVT, I do just fine when I have to use someone else's computer, but I like the fact that all of these options go beyond the usual "Live CD" types of toolkits by being "able to retain settings and preferences between sessions."

Desperado

And speaking of my visits to Boston, I learned quite by accident Saturday that every time I go out in public up there, I am breaking the law! (Search Term: "Boston", HT)

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) One minor correction. (2) Added image.

The Dip of the Iceberg

Yesterday, I noted with dismay the fact that Barack Obama kowtowed to a barbarian king and then had a minor functionary lie about it. Today, I find that Charles Krauthammer has painstakingly cataloged the damage Obama has done (so far) on his overseas tour. Here are highlights:

• After vowing to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, Obama responded to North Korea's missile launch by calling for a "strong international response." What he got was, in Krauthammer's words, was, thanks to China and Russia, "not even ... a U.N. statement that dared express 'concern,' let alone condemnation."
• "The very next day, [Obama's] defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the 'realism' Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy."
• "Obama seems not even to understand that [renewed disarmament] talks are a gift to the Russians for whom a return to anachronistic Reagan-era START talks is a return to the glory of U.S.-Soviet summitry."
• "Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world."
• "He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing."
• "From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea."
• "And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?"

Obama isn't just style, he's substance, and I clearly don't mean that as a compliment.

Whether Obama is deliberately trying to sabotage our nation as an unadmitted leftist radical or his mind is completely addled by his self-sacrificial ideals -- or both -- is immaterial. He will sell us out as a matter of principle, and it is this principle -- that self-sacrifice is noble -- that we Americans must renounce, once and for all.

In the meantime, we have a columnist at home chiding Obama for bowing -- but conceding the false premise that the Saudis "own" the oil he chalks up as an impetus for the bow. Much of that is actually our oil, which makes the bow even worse. This "king" has no business being in charge of anything but a bunch of half-starved, superstitious nomads.

Before our body politic will stop electing Bushes and Obamas, it will have to re-learn the proper purpose of government, which will require it to better grasp the actual meaning of the term, "individual rights" as well as accept their moral basis in selfishness. In other words, we Americans will not have a Commander-in-Chief until we begin to stand up for ourselves consistently, as a matter of principle, and on the grounds that our lives are sacrosanct.

At the moment, this looks like an uphill battle, with many showing a slippery grasp of the message in Atlas Shrugged, the book which best expounds these prinicples and demonstrates their goodness and efficacy.

But the word is out, and the battle is on.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 421

Bow, Scrape, Lie

Myrhaf and LB have already commented on the shameful impropriety of the President of the United States bowing before a king -- of an Islamic theocracy no less -- and both show pictures. But have you seen the video?

Sacrilege occurs around the fifty second mark, and be sure to pause it at 0:55 for a moment to observe the dangling left hand of our the Dhimmi-in-Chief.

Now, read the following:

"It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

I hope the Arab media -- some of whom saw this for what it was -- demand a clarification or an apology. As much as it would pain me to hear whatever he says, America needs to hear Obama being pinned down on this.

Not only is "Peter Keating" too good a nickname for Barack Obama, so is "Gus Webb."

In the meantime:

A stand-off was continuing in the Indian Ocean on Thursday after the crew of a US-flagged container ship regained control of their ship from pirates but saw their captain left adrift with the attackers in a lifeboat.

One of our countrymen is already living through the consequences of our having the royal eunuch of a foreign potentate as head of state.

Despite this, do not be fooled by anyone who would maintain that things would be substantially better under McCain. The pirates -- and North Korea, and Iran, and Russia, and China, and Saudi Arabia -- were all left unchallenged or even aided under Bush.

At least, this time, our "leader" is not disguising his policies of appeasement as strength or patriotism.

Definitions and Context

Hee, hee!

"Age 'Discrimination'"

Over at Voices for Reason, Tom Bowden discusses a lawsuit that, even with idiotic "age discrimination" rules on the books, sounds like it ought to have been thrown out. He excerpts the following testimony:

Q. So you stayed at Merrifield. What were your duties at Merrifield?
A. None.
Q. None? Did you work while you were out there?
A. No.
Q. What did you do all day?
A. Occupied an office.

Read the whole thing.

Three Cheers!

I echo Diana's sentiments: Congratulations to Ari Armstrong on his recently winning the "Modern-Day Sam Adams Award."

Objectivist Carnival

If I remember correctly, C. August will be hosting this week's Objectivist Roundup some time today or tomorrow. In the meantime, he recommends Thomas Sowell's latest "Random Thoughts" and warns that Earth Day looms.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Supplied missing hyperlink. (HT: Jennifer Snow)