A One Man Army

A recent news report brought to my attention the wartime heroics of Van T. Barfoot as recounted in his Medal of Honor citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty on 23 May 1944, near Carano, Italy. With his platoon heavily engaged during an assault against forces well entrenched on commanding ground, 2d Lt. Barfoot (then Tech. Sgt.) moved off alone upon the enemy left flank. He crawled to the proximity of 1 machinegun nest and made a direct hit on it with a hand grenade, killing 2 and wounding 3 Germans. He continued along the German defense line to another machinegun emplacement, and with his tommygun killed 2 and captured 3 soldiers. Members of another enemy machinegun crew then abandoned their position and gave themselves up to Sgt. Barfoot. Leaving the prisoners for his support squad to pick up, he proceeded to mop up positions in the immediate area, capturing more prisoners and bringing his total count to 17. Later that day, after he had reorganized his men and consolidated the newly captured ground, the enemy launched a fierce armored counterattack directly at his platoon positions. Securing a bazooka, Sgt. Barfoot took up an exposed position directly in front of 3 advancing Mark VI tanks. From a distance of 75 yards his first shot destroyed the track of the leading tank, effectively disabling it, while the other 2 changed direction toward the flank. As the crew of the disabled tank dismounted, Sgt. Barfoot killed 3 of them with his tommygun. He continued onward into enemy terrain and destroyed a recently abandoned German fieldpiece with a demolition charge placed in the breech. While returning to his platoon position, Sgt. Barfoot, though greatly fatigued by his Herculean efforts, assisted 2 of his seriously wounded men 1,700 yards to a position of safety. Sgt. Barfoot's extraordinary heroism, demonstration of magnificent valor, and aggressive determination in the face of pointblank fire are a perpetual inspiration to his fellow soldiers.

Barfoot made national news due to a dispute over a flagpole on his property that violated his homeowners' association's aesthetic standards. While I am presently unclear on the details of the dispute, it appears that the homeowners' association backed down under political pressure, including from Virginia's Senator Warner. Depending on the exact nature of the dispute, the fact that a Senator either chose to bully a homeowners' association about a contract agreed to by Barfoot or that such intervention was necessary for some other reason bodes ill for the freedom that he fought so valliantly for.

An email circulating in conservative circles states of the story that, "WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE!" This is true only in the sense that such bravery is necessary to defend freedom. It is not sufficient, however. Without a polity that generally appreciates individual rights, we can lose that freedom without a shot being fired.

Let us honor men like Barfoot by working to thoroughly understand the nature of individual rights, and never backing down in defense of same. I want Barfoot to be able to fly his flag, but not at the cost of becoming a nation of men, and not laws.

-- CAV

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The Fire

Editor's Note: I'll be enjoying the company of my family in a remote location next week. I may have limited or no Internet access, so posting, comment moderation, and responses to email may be slow to nonexistent.

It may seem strange to derive bloggy inspiration from an apartment fire, but that's what's on my mind this morning and I'm due to catch a flight later in the day, so that's what I'll write about now.

Last Sunday, my wife and I started our morning with the following emotional mini-roller coaster: the fire alarm for our building goes off, capping a string of annoying false alarms over the previous week; we quickly discover that said alarm is not a false one; and, within an hour, we experienced the great relief that our unit was unaffected by the blaze, to the extent that we more or less had a pretty normal day afterwards.

By coincidence, I had been doing lots of thinking about the subject of induction for a course that weekend, and the problem posed by the false alarms happens to be related to several aspects of a rather complex induction (completely unrelated to the course material) that I have been pondering off and on for quite some time.

False positives -- for which early car theft alarms were notorious -- and false negatives are two different types of statistical error that have to be minimized for things like automated detection systems. In the case of a false negative, if your building catches fire while you're asleep and the alarm fails to go off, you could easily die.

On the other hand, false positives are not categorically better than having no alarm at all. If the alarm goes off all the time for no good reason, you end up wasting lots of time checking for fires or becoming complaisant about the alarm. If the alarm happens to coincide with a fire, the latter could be deadly. If not, the former can seriously undermine your quality of life, especially if, for example, you are on a tight schedule and need your time for better things than tracking down nonexistent fires. Ditto for the (head-splitting) alarm itself if it frequently goes off during the wee hours.

No matter how well-designed an alarm system is, the fact remains that it will produce both kinds of errors. The fact is, its output (or lack thereof) really represents only a single piece of evidence from reality that must be rationally evaluated by those it is meant to aid. Our apartment, fortunately, has a window facing the only part of our building readily accessible to fire engines. That fact made evaluating last Sunday's alarm as a likely true positive very easy for me: I heard much more machinery noise than usual under our window after the alarm went off, and upon looking outside, saw something I had never seen before: the ladder passing directly over our window. I didn't even have to leave my apartment to discover that we should ... leave our apartment. Had we been in the other side of the building, noise, the smell of smoke, heat, or any number of other things might have provided the same information or obviated the need for an alarm altogether.

I see parallels between such automated cognitive aids as alarms and animal instincts: Both function automatically, but since there is no such thing as an automatic means of knowledge past the perceptual level, neither has the advantages of a volitional, conceptual consciousness, which allows for error-checking in the form of the consideration of all evidence, which includes questioning whether one's premises are in error.

And in the sense that premises aid cognition, although the analogy is far from perfect (It fails, for example, with certain very basic types of premises, and it also does not adequately cover refinements of essentially correct principles made possible by new knowledge.), I see a parallel between one's premises and a sort of built-in, sophisticated alarm system that one can fine-tune or even completely rebuild from scratch. The key elements in deciding whether to do this are (1) to be on the alert for times that one's premises might be wrong, and (2) to carefully prioritize and weigh all the evidence one has at his disposal.

This is an interesting line of thought, but, alas, more mundane things need my attention, so that preliminary bit of mental chewing will have to be it for now.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 535

Obama Glimpses Self, Lashes Out

In the face of a heckler Tuesday night, Barack Obama demonstrated a very thin skin by dropping everything to make a direct response:

"I hate to say this, but ... if he wants to demonstrate, buy a ticket to a guy who doesn't support his point of view, and then you can yell as much as you want there," Obama said. Williams' group interrupted another Obama speech earlier this year, in Los Angeles.

Obama told Williams to "read the newspapers." "He said do it faster," the president said. "It's like, come on, man, I'm dealing with Congress here. It takes a little bit of time."

Notice Obama, consistent with his usual antipathy for freedom of speech -- and yet also understandably (for the moment) annoyed about being interrupted -- reacting by counseling the heckler ... to interrupt a speaker who disagrees with him instead.

And notice his plea that working with Congress is difficult -- as if the jobs of the physicians and CEOs he constantly orders around aren't, such that his kibitzing is actually hard work or will handle their jobs better than anything they they might come up with.

This heckler got to him, possibly twice. Why?

Perhaps, for a moment, Barack Obama was made to look into a mirror, psychologically speaking, while off-guard. And perhaps, seeing himself as he actually is for an instant, rather than as he pretends to himself to be, he didn't like what he saw.

Very interesting. Too bad the President's opponents are so busy running away from the very principles they need to oppose him effectively that they will squander the opportunity such a weak opponent presents.

But then, the fact that this guy is President in the first place speaks volumes about them.

I will note that, aside from my psychological speculation, Obama's response demonstrates a fundamental failure to grasp the role of communication in a free society that we have seen before.

I, Also

LB reminds me that I've been missing out on Objectivist Roundups lately. She links to the last three.

Stephen Green Fumbles at the Goal Line

I started out pleasantly surprised to hear "Vodkapundit" make the following point regarding "states rights: "Individuals have rights; governments have powers."

Unfortunately, his implication that the state giveth rights, and the state taketh them away is no way to defend individual rights, which the state can only violate, fail to protect, or recognize and protect.

The below is an excerpt from a George Will column that Green expresses agreement with:

The simple fact is that in 1964, we, as a nation, repealed one widely-exercised right -- the right of private property owners to serve on public accommodations whom they want -- and replaced it with another right, that is the right of the entire American public to use public accommodations.

In the end, Green does more harm than good, conceding as he does the moral and political premises of those who would have the government violate our inalienable rights.

New Mexico Sits Out

Sylvia Bokor calls for the head of her state's Attorney General in the Albuquerque Journal:

The petitions were presented to the attorney general during the May 12 meeting. Then the case against the health care law was made: It violates individual rights. It forces Americans to buy a product. It violates the First, Fourth and Tenth amendments. It is replete with "mandates" that increase near-total control of American lives. It interferes in the relationship between doctor and patient. It will cause a decrease in medical practitioners, research, innovation and quality of medical service.

In response, the attorney general stated that other than the anger of New Mexicans against the health care law, he was not sure why the petition committee was asking him to file suit; he did not know what the petition committee wanted; he did not know why they had asked for this meeting.Bokor calls for Gary King to be replaced.

This is the first time I have found myself able to agree with the word, "replace" in the context of the recent passage of ObamaCare.

Goalkeeper Scores

I'm eagerly anticipating the start of the 2010 World Cup in June and have been following the American and English national teams as they prepare for the first round.

In the course of catching up on news for the American side, I came across the above amusing video of its former goalkeeper, Brad Friedel, scoring a late-game equalizer during a professional match.

-- CAV

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Prevention -- of What?

Over at Spiked is an article following up on the recent, massive disruptions of air travel in Europe commonly blamed on the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull but, in fact, caused by central planners basing their decisions on worst-case scenarios instead of rational risk assessment.

This particular article answers a major question I still had after most flights resumed, namely whether an initial ban for a few days was not unreasonable. Apparently, even this was not the case.

While it's right to ask why it took so long to assess the density of the ash cloud over the UK (apparently the Met Office's aeroplane was being repainted at the time), it might seem a bit unfair to accuse the UK's air travel authorities of not knowing what was a safe density before the density threshold was established. I say "might," because it seems that plenty of people have long had a pretty accurate idea of what density of volcanic ash was a danger to aircraft engines and what was not. In the words of Roy Strasser of American weather forecasters WSI, "experience shows it's only when ash is visible that it's concentrated enough to be a hazard to aviation." Or if you like your visibility measurable, you'd be able to see the ash at approximately 2,000 micrograms of ash per cubic metre -- that is, half the official threshold. [minor format edits]

Said official threshold, by the way, is forty times the actual amount of ash in the skies during the ban. Furthermore, not only were the levels of ash safe for aviation already known before this disaster, airlines and even their regulatory authorities elsewhere already had established practices in place to account for such hazards.

... US aviation authorities, when dealing with volcanic ash clouds in the past, have tended to ignore the International Civil Aviation Authority guidelines and allow airline companies to make the decision themselves on whether to fly based on satellite maps showing visible ash cloud; ...

Writer Tim Black also revisits another precautionary disaster alluded to in the earlier piece by Frank Furedi, the swine flu "pandemic."

Precautionary thinking, like its close cousin in moral "evaluation," cynicism, is naive, irrational, and anti-life. As with the computer ash-dispersal models in the Eyjafjallajokull air traffic shutdown, government bureaucrats will often hide behind the skirt of "science" even though they are, in fact, guilty of an anti-scientific refusal to consider the full range of available evidence when making their decisions -- which they can then force others to act upon. This wreaks havoc on the lives of millions of people worldwide and causes science to look like a bullhorn for Chicken Little, rather than the useful tool for advancing human welfare that it actually is.

Thus the precautionary principle -- by marrying Pascal's Wager with government force -- not only prevents millions from exercising their own best judgment in living their lives, it increasingly makes science look foolish by association. In short, the only thing the precautionary principle actually prevents is man living a life proper to man.

-- CAV

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The "New Sedition Act?"

House Democrats have tentatively scheduled for a floor vote this week a measure that a conservative blogger is calling the "New Sedition Act." The aim of the bill is to, "counter the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision," which struck down key elements of McCain-Feingold, a fact that was not lost on an unhappy Barack Obama:

The measure would require new disclaimers on all TV ads funded by corporations, essentially forcing CEOs to endorse the ads, just as politicians currently do. There are several other regulations that raise free speech concerns, including disclosing the names of donors in TV ads and restricting political ads from companies that are partially owned by foreign businesses or receive taxpayer funds. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called it a "massive incumbent protection program."

In addition, Erick Erickson of Red State sees a direct threat to bloggers (HT: Dismuke) in the language of the bill:

... In current federal campaign regulations, "public communication" is defined to explicitly exclude internet communications. This keeps exchanges amongst citizens on blogs like RedState from coming under the onerous and prohibitive campaign speech regulations of the federal government.

BUT -- in the DISCLOSE Act, where the bill addresses what would be covered by a host of the bill's new federal campaign regulations, the term "communication" is used. Not "public communication," but "communication." This means, internet communications are not protected.

Here's the exact language from one section of the bill: "a publicly distributed or disseminated communication that refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office and is publicly distributed or publicly disseminated during such period." And there are other problematic uses of "communication" throughout the bill.

Plus, the media exemption in the bill does NOT include "web site" or "any internet or electronic publication" -- terms added to federal campaign regulations in 2006 to protect blogs.

This is no accident. These are not drafting errors -- as they appear too often throughout the bill to be an "Ooops." [minor format edits]

I am not a legal professional, but this sounds plausible to me. I would be curious to hear from anyone with legal training or legislative experience who happens by.

Interestingly, a very brief bit about the bill at the web site of a media outlet in one of Obama's hometown papers dismisses the bill as "DOA."

Nice try, congressmen. But you still don't get it. The Disclose Act, your latest stab at campaign finance rules, repeats many of the mistakes that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected in January when it tossed out federal limits on corporate spending for political advocacy.

I presume that the Tribune means that, if passed, the bill will be stuck down. Left unmentioned is the fact that Citizens United was a 5-4 decision. How might that change, if Congress passes this and the new law gets a hearing before the Supreme Court? I doubt that, if confirmed Supreme Court nominee (and Solicitor General for the Citizens United case) Elena Kagan would vote against it, based on the following:

In an unconventional line of argument, Kagan seemed prepared to grant that non-profits like Citizens United, which produced the critical Clinton documentary, were not subject to the restrictions of 2002's McCain-Feingold bill, so long as restrictions for for-profit corporations remained in place.

In response to the suggestion by Chief Justice John Roberts as to whether she -- and by extension the government -- had decided to strategically "give up" the particulars of the case to preserve the broader impact of McCain-Feingold, Kagan responded:

"If you are asking me, Mr. Chief Justice, as to whether the government has a position as to the way it loses, if it has to lose, the answer is yes."

Should Obama have an opportunity to replace a "yes" vote on the Supreme Court before such a hearing, it looks to me like we could end up having something worse than McCain-Feingold foisted on us thanks to this bill, even if Kagan were to recuse herself (although I am not sure she would necessarily have to do so).

I, for one am hardly comfortable calling this travesty DOA.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 534

Palin Warns Us about Herself

Sarah Palin showed that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between herself and Barack Obama over the weekend by the way she criticized the President's response to the Gulf oil spill:

Right-wing darling Sarah Palin accused US President Barack Obama on Sunday of leading a lax response to the Gulf of Mexico spill because he is too close to the big oil companies.

The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, who champions off-shore drilling, criticized the media for not drawing the link between Obama and big oil and said if this spill had happened under former Republican president George W. Bush the scrutiny would have been far tougher.

With the way Republicans often fall all over themselves to prove that they aren't "soft" on destroying capitalism, that last sentence may be true, but that doesn't make it a good thing.

One wonders whether Palin would have been happier had Obama simply nationalized BP and started issuing orders. Worse, her remarks, in the context of today's confused political debate, amount to a call for government regulation of campaign finance, which is one of the last things we need.

Pragmatism in Business

Our printer, an HP 2605, recently needed new black toner according to its status readout. Even after I replaced the toner cartridge, however, the printer still wrongly indicated such a need. Apparently, this is a feature of the HP business model, and not a bug:

How to use ALL of the toner in your HP Laserjet 2605 or 2600

1. On the printer itself, hit the big green checkmark button to access the menu.
2. Select System Setup -> Print Quality -> Replace Supplies.
3. There is likely an asterisk (*) beside "Stop at out".
4. Hit the > arrow once, and the display should read "Override out".
5. Press the checkmark to confirm that (the asterisk should now be beside "Override out").
6. Back out of the menu. The LCD should now display "Override in use", meaning, you can now continue printing for as long as you actually have toner in the cartridges (and beyond, probably).

In a better day, a company like HP would not bet a quick buck against its reputation or the good will of its customers.

Principle-Blind?

Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul has been under fire lately for objecting to the public accommodations portion of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I am no fan of Paul's, but many of these attacks strike me as unjust. For example:

It matters not what's in Paul's heart. It's what he carries in his head -- that racial discrimination in public accommodations should be legal -- that puts him firmly in the company of those who would humiliate and marginalize Americans, not because they can't pay or are disorderly but simply because of the color of their skin. That's no intellectual exercise to me. [minor edits]

Not only is Colbert King's unspoken assumption -- that, contrary to historical precedent, people won't change racist attitudes for the better except at gunpoint -- insulting, he is forgetting that, as Ayn Rand once put it, the smallest minority is the individual. So long as he does not cause harm to others, an individual has the right to use his property as he sees fit, regardless of whether King or I would approve of how he does so.

Despite the fact that I find Colbert King's remarks offensive, immoral, and impractical, I shall, however, defend his individual right to say such things to my dying breath. The day we forcibly prevent this man -- or any other -- from blathering is the day that the we also endanger the introduction of better ideas to the public and the spirited debate of their merits.

Bigots who won't serve blacks and advocates of the illegitimate use of government force are just two examples of the price we sometimes have to pay for government protection of individual rights. Fortunately, when individual rights are consistently protected by the government, the damage such people can do is limited to themselves.

Interesting Back Bay Fact

I live near Boston's Prudential Center, about which I recently learned the following:

The complex has direct indoor connections to two MBTA stops, Prudential and Back Bay ... [which] is a stop on the Orange Line and is accessible to the complex via the Copley Place mall... Back Bay is also served by Amtrak, including the Acela high-speed train. This means it is possible to travel from the observation lounge in the Pru to the top of the MetLife Building in New York City without going outdoors (by walking through the mall to Back Bay Station, hopping on Amtrak to Penn Station in New York, and taking the subway to Grand Central Terminal).

I now want to fit this in the next time I have occasion to go to New York.

-- CAV

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Mallet Meets Puddle

Note: The following debate summary was written with the aid of the notes I took during the event I describe. Any inaccuracies in the positions taken by the speakers or of the events they discussed are my own.

Yesterday evening, I attended the Ford Hall Forum debate, "Lessons from the Financial Crisis: More Government or Less?" between Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute and Peter Kadzis, editor of the Boston Phoenix. This event was smaller than other Ford Hall Forum events I have attended in the past, and took place in a moot court room at Suffolk University Law School. Attendance was good, but the size of the venue limited the audience to a little over one hundred people.

Kadzis opened the debate with his argument, which almost instantly revealed his dominant approach to ideas to be pragmatism. Rambling at first, Kadzis discussed the necessity of "regulations," by which he vaguely meant not just the laws and rules of central planning that were under debate, but also customs, legitimate laws, and even rules set by parents for their children.

Kadzis argued that he government had been deregulating from the early 1980s all the way through the presidency of George W. Bush, whom he said was pro-business. Subsequently, he painted an impressionistic picture of an economy collapsing for want of regulation. The case of Bernie Madoff, the "re-swindling" of the European Union by Goldman Sachs, and the "9/12" collapse of Lehman Brothers (My notes say in 1982.) all showed that Wall Street has become almost as "powerful" as a nation-state -- an intolerable situation that he claimed must be countered by more government regulation. He emphasized his point by saying that 9/12 was far more significant than 9/11.

Brook began staking his position by noting that he agrees with Kadzis that we face an era that could be marked by a deep, worldwide depression and the rise of dictatorships. However, he disagreed about the cause, which is that our government has been increasingly regulating the economy for decades, including during the period Kadzis claimed saw a rollback of state regulation of the economy. This regulation, Brook would argue, precipitated the crisis.

Acknowledging the role of FDR, but skipping to the post-9/11 credit expansion by the Federal Reserve for the sake of brevity, Brook noted the role of the Fed and other government agencies in incentivizing improvident borrowing by individuals and financial institutions alike throughout the economy. Taking the housing bubble as an example, he further noted the role of other government policies in fostering malinvestment.

The above problems were compounded by other regulations. The "too big to fail" doctrine, in place since the 1980s, encouraged complacency among the major players. The three major credit rating agencies, creatures of the regulatory state to begin with, gave absurdly high bond ratings under political pressure. (My notes may be bad here: This point may have come only during rebuttals.) Furthermore, from Bush's passage of Sarbanes-Oxley to Eliot Spitzer's legal assault on Wall Street (which "destroyed its business model"), our economy, already deranged by regulation, ended up being regulated even more tightly as time went on.

In addition to showing how central planning harms the economy, Brook noted failures by the government to perform its legitimate function: Among all the events discussed to that point, the one thing the government should have done -- stop the swindling Madoff -- it didn't do, overwhelmed as it was by its fruitless attempts to micromanage the economy.

Brook ended by (1) countering Kadzis's loose definition of "regulation," drawing a sharp distinction between central planning and the proper scope of government; (2) summarizing how regulation at every level of the economy has led to this crisis; and (3) noting that regulations have, paradoxically, led to whatever political power Wall Street might have by incentivizing it to try to influence the central planners. Brook ended with a call for a systematic rolling-back of government regulation of the economy.

I will only highlight the rebuttals and the question-and-answer period.

The title of this post comes from Kadzis's frequently claiming to agree with one point or another Brook made, only to hedge that with some variant of the theory-practice dichotomy (e.g., regulation is good for Wall Street, but less so the farther one gets towards the periphery of the economy; or the economy is too "complex" not to be regulated; or (his pole star) events like the BP oil rig blowout in the Gulf show that you can't allow a completely free market). Kadzis did make one very good point about contemporary moral standards having fallen greatly. Nevertheless, Brook capitalized on this, too, by noting the government's role -- via all-encompassing regulations -- in encouraging the "dumbing-down" of American society and a lackadaisical approach to many of the things government now purports to look after.

Because Kadzis's lack of principles left him on the defensive and made him too disorganized to counterattack, Brook was able to take advantage of his own rebuttal time to further flesh out certain points from his original argument. For example, he pointed out how central planning puts the fate of the economy into too few hands, and that past events have shown the dire consequences of panic on the part of these master regulators. Most notably, Brook was able to tie our public's sheep-like trust in regulators to altruism: Many trust regulators because they aren't "in it for themselves" and we have been taught to regard self-interest with suspicion even as we act on such a basis every day. (e.g., We don't go to the mall in order to "stimulate the economy.")

The Q&A was pretty good, with two questions standing out particularly as indicators of how the debate went.

The first of these was an earnest Russian man directing his question to the pro-regulatory Kadzis: He asked what role government regulation played in the greatest ecological disaster in history, the Chernobyl reactor accident. This brought the house down, but Kadzis managed to miss or evade the point anyway when he countered that Russia was a "rogue state."

The second such question came from an angry leftist who asked Kadzis how the editor of the Phoenix could lack fire in such a debate. Kadzis, true to pragmatist form, said that this was a highly theoretical debate, and that nothing would come of it anyway. After Kadzis's reply, Brook memorably answered, "I fully intend to make a difference."

Over drinks with friends after the debate, I expressed some disappointment that the pro-capitalist share of the audience made it seem a little like Brook was preaching to the choir, but that impression is incorrect on two counts. First, I understand that the debate will eventually air on Ford Hall Forum Television. Second, it certainly did me good to see Brook's confidence and clarity, and I am sure I am not alone there.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

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Quick Roundup 533

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

My contribution appears below, as well as within a small collection at Principles in Practice.

Congressional Indirection

I love beer, so why am I not excited about this bit of news?

House Resolution 1297, sponsored by Rep. Betsy Markey, supports "the goals and ideals of American Craft Beer Week."

"We've got quite a number of microbreweries and entrepreneurs that are creating jobs, and we wanted to celebrate that this is a craft," Markey told POLITICO.

If Congress really wanted to celebrate this craft and see this industry flourish, it would free beer, rather than just talk about what a great thing the state has under its boot.

Disgusting

For anyone who foolishly thinks that his individual affairs are too insignificant to attract the destructive attention of a dictator, Hugo Chavez recently demonstrated the contrary.

You will note that his depredations are hardly limited to the property of Chavez's political foe, although that would be bad enough.

One taking stood out, however -- a 370-acre ranch in Yaracuy state that grows oranges and coffee and raises cattle with 38 shareholding farm workers. The scenic property on an otherwise desolate stretch of highway is owned by Diego Arria, Venezuela's former president of the U.N. Security Council. It's been in his family since 1852.

...

Chavez's red-shirts finally acted over the weekend, opening the farm to "the masses" in a show of class warfare. Chavista leaders from the National Institute of Lands headed first to Arria's living quarters, rolling over his bed, pawing through his wife's clothing and desecrating a chapel dedicated to the Arrias' late daughter.

For their big photo spectacular, they hauled in 300 or 400 children to swim in Arria's swimming pool, ride the ranch horses and tour the main house -- encouraging the kids to take "souvenirs." Chavez said it was all proof he was "socializing happiness."

So now, El Loco is stealing back yard swimming pools and "inviting" children to trespass and commit petty theft. The article is illustrated with a snapshot of red-shirted thugs overseeing a swimming "party." What a ball!

Gaia Speaks

Ted Turner on the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

"I'm not a real religious person, but I'm somewhat religious. And I'm just wondering if God is telling us he doesn't want us to drill offshore," he said. "And right before that we had that coal mine disaster in West Virginia where we lost 29 miners," as well as repeated mining disasters -- "seems like there's one over there every week" -- in China.

It's too easy to write Ted Turner off as a religious freak, or to identify this rubbish as an example of confirmation bias and then move on, but it's more profitable to think for a moment about what Turner is doing here.

Certainly, these events illustrate the hazards of exploiting the earth's mineral wealth. But what would you do if you wanted to make it seem like it is impossible to do this safely? You'd focus on what can go wrong and drop the larger context, which includes the fact that mining and oil exploration can and do occur safely far, far more often than not: Daily, in fact, to the point that most of us take such things for granted, if we think about them at all.

By the nature of news coverage, which focuses on the exceptional (else, it wouldn't be news), Ted Turner looks to many like he has the facts on his side. He doesn't, though, because he is interpreting them incorrectly.

(Tangentially related is an interesting article at Slate on the "junk shots" that might stop the leak, including why they include golf balls.)

iPad or Kindle

If you're considering such a choice, and you want to read around bedtime, here's some food for thought:

"Potentially, yes, if you're using [the iPad or a laptop] close to bedtime ... that light can be sufficiently stimulating to the brain to make it more awake and delay your ability to sleep," said Phyllis Zee, a neuroscience professor at Northwestern University and director of the school's Center for Sleep & Circadian Biology.

"And I think more importantly, it could also be sufficient to affect your circadian rhythm. This is the clock in your brain that determines when you sleep and when you wake up." [link dropped]

That, and the iPad doesn't fare too well in broad daylight, either.

As Seen at Slate

The following comes from a recurring feature called Friend or Foe:

My Husband and I Live With a Slob! How to get rid of a messy, drunken roommate without ruining the friendship. By Lucinda Rosenfeld | May 18, 2010

I reacted to the story by laughing and saying, "Too late!"

Amusing and True Infographic

Via Ask the Headhunter, where a commenter, responding to the question of whether cover letters are useful for on-line job applications, notes:

The right answer to the question depends on the audience. Here's a funny illustration of that. The details are specific to programmers but the overall point is true in any field. [minor edits]

The top part of the diagram is titled, "How the HR department reads your resume," while the bottom is, "How a programmer reads your resume."

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edits.

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Because It's Important

This hastily-rendered image is my contribution to "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Now that I think of it, this drawing essentializes the issue at stake rather nicely, if I say so myself.

I not only refuse to obey Islamic demands that I not so much as draw Mohammed (or say that something I have drawn is Mohammed), I also understand that accepting such terms is to submit to an undeserved death sentence.

Why? Because freedom of speech is a sacred right. And it is sacred not because someone says it is sacred, but because the ability to put one's thoughts into words is necessary on every level for a life proper to man. To forbid freedom of speech is not only to damn man, but to ultimately to make his life impossible.

-- CAV

P.S. This image also appears at Principles in Practice.

Updates

Today: (1) Changed "everyone" to "everybody." (2) Added P.S. with link to Principles in Practice.

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November Surprise?

Scott Swett, writing at The American Thinker, asks the following question:

[D]espite the looming prospect of electoral dismemberment in November, the Democrats continue pushing a radical agenda: piling up debt and creating new entitlements, with crushing tax increases inevitably to follow. Why the evident lack of concern? [link dropped]

Perhaps they really believe their own propaganda -- that Americans will like what we're getting once we see what it's like. Perhaps they hope that the changes they are making will permanently alter the political landscape in such a way that, as Mark Steyn once put it will, "make limited government all but impossible." Perhaps, as Swett, argues, "they intend to cheat." Perhaps the answer is, "all of the above."

Amid numerous examples of such cheating, Swett ominously notes the following:

A PowerPoint presentation available at ElectionCenter.org describes new election legislation proposed by congressional Democrats. They intend to nationalize voter registration and force the states to eliminate voter ID checks, provide absentee ballots to all voters, register voters on Election Day, and permit felons (who overwhelmingly support Democrats) to vote. Each of these measures would create new opportunities for fraud. [links dropped]

Perhaps some of the many links he provides within his article discuss this issue, but Swett does not explicitly mention another possible mechanism: tampering with electronic votes. But then again, does he really have to?

Consider all this the cloud to the silver lining of what Matt Drudge called Barack Obama's "0-4" electoral record this morning upon Arlen Specter's primary loss. This record will serve as "evidence" that there is nothing going on in the event that the Democrats feel like they can get away with voter fraud on a massive scale and actually attempt it.

-- CAV

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A Humanist against Euthanasia

Over at Spiked is an interesting, secular argument against legalized euthanasia, which, although I disagree with it, is worth looking at for several reasons. The article is a transcript of a speech by Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill, who declares himself to be an atheist.

I would essentialize O'Neill's two major points as follows. Legalized euthanasia would be: (1) bad for the dying because it would depersonalize a very important, private decision; and (2) bad for the living because it cheapens the value of human life. Although I find each point understandable, I think both are ultimately wrong.

Inviting the reader to imagine himself or a loved one facing an "assisted suicide tribunal," or "faceless bureaucrats," or an army of "box-ticking, death-sanctioning lawyers," in the midst of such psychological stress (and, often, weakness or pain), O'Neil claims that legalization makes the mistake of "formali[zing] what for centuries has been an informal, humane practice," and would thus, ultimately, "replace love with law."

First, I am not a medical or legal professional, but I don't see how legalizing assisted suicide would necessarily make it impossible to take the traditional course O'Neill speaks of, if that's what the patient and his family would prefer, and would not mind risking. Second, while I appreciate his concern that such legal provisions might be implemented callously, such provisions are the means by which any question of intent, by the ill or anyone around him, can be put to rest. It doesn't take much imagination at all to conceive of a situation in which an "assisted suicide" is actually a murder or an (actual) assisted suicide is falsely believed to be one.

Were I extremely sick to the point that I wanted to die, it would be a small price to pay even to sit before a tribunal in order to get the peace of mind that would come from knowing that (1) I could end my suffering and (2) my family and caretakers would not become murder suspects upon my demise. (This assumes, of course, that such a tribunal were a merely legal apparatus, and not actually a thinly-disguised means for the state to ration medical care. Read on.)

Second, I think O'Neill's heart is in the right place when he voices the concern that assisted suicide somehow cheapens human life. However, he concedes the very premise that does the cheapening -- that we don't own our own lives -- when he opposes assisted suicide. Voicing opposition to collectivism, however briefly, would be the proper tack.

Quite often today the campaign for the right to die goes hand-in-hand with the idea that there are too many people -- especially old people -- and that society can't cope with them.

...

The fact remains, however, that only a minority of people in pain choose to end their lives; the majority think life is worth living.

Worth living? To whom? One aspect of end-of-life medical care that state control of medicine has caused lots of us not to think about enough is its expense. (And a consequence is that we do have lots of people with expensive illnesses being cared for at others' expense.) If I haven't gotten insurance or otherwise seen to it that I have ample funds to cover catastrophic medical expenses, I have no right to anything but whatever charity anyone is willing to give. Conversely, catastrophic medical care is not properly the burden of "society." Most people will -- wrongly -- find this last sentence callous, but if my care is not a burden of society, neither is my decision its business. Individualism, often damned by altruists for being uncompassionate, thus proves more humane than altruism because our personal boundaries are not breached by "society" at very private times. More important, if "society" doesn't control access to medical care, there will be far less call for the state to end the lives of the ill for the sake of rationing, but in the name of "compassion."

Only an individualistic society can properly respect or protect the right of a severely ill patient to make a rational decision, based on his own priorities and resources, about whether to end his own life with the help of a medical professional. Assisted suicide may in fact be championed for the wrong reasons by people who do not truly value human life. Nevertheless, the solution is not to disavow the very idea of assisted suicide. Instead, it is to champion respect for the life of individual human beings from cradle to grave. And that requires advocating respect for individual rights, which means, in this context, getting the government out of the business of paying for medical care and getting it to start properly recognizing and protecting the right of every man to end his own life on his own terms.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 532

Fox to Keep Watch from Hen-House Window

Barack Obama has just signed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act:

Specifically, the measure calls upon the Secretary of State to greatly expand its examination of the status of freedom of the press worldwide in the State Department's Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The legislation requires the State Department to identify countries in which there were violations of press freedom; determine whether the government authorities of those countries participate in, facilitate, or condone the violations; and report the actions such governments have taken to preserve the safety and independence of the media and ensure the prosecution of individuals who attack or murder journalists.

Barack Obama. An international champion of freedom of speech? Can we say, "Fable of the Alms Bag?"

Our own faults are buried in the rear pouch. The front pouch is reserved for the faults of others.

Obviously, my head is spinning from all the irony.

Still Spinning

As if Barack Obama's pose as a defender of freedom of speech weren't enough, rising Republican star Marco Rubio threw in the following:

Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio told an anti-gay marriage group Saturday the country is relying too much on the government, in part because of a breakdown of family and faith values over the last 50 years.

"You know what the fastest growing religion in America is? Statism. The growing reliance on government," Rubio said. "Every time a problem emerges, increasingly the reaction in American society is 'Well what can government do about it?'"

What part of the government dictating how consenting adults may or may not enter into contracts with one another (so long as no one is harmed) isn't statism, Mr. Rubio? And don't give me any malarkey about gay marriage adding to the tax burden of spousal benefits. We shouldn't be relying on the government at all for those, anyway.

And finally, outside of relying on the government for protection of individual rights, to depend on the government at all is to depend on it too much.

At least Barack Obama doesn't claim to be against statism.

Defending the South

Via Glenn Reynolds comes an interesting defense of the south in The Guardian from an immigrant who (gasp!) lived there and (gasp again!) lived to tell about it.

While recently rubbing elbows with fellow liberals from the east and west coasts, I felt that their disdain for the lives of the south was palpable. This led to my quest: to understand why mouths drip with condescension for the south, and particularly its people.

Obviously, not being a leftist, I disagree with much in the article -- and a major weakness in this author's defense of the south is that the Democratic Party was, in fact, the political home of white racism until very recently. It can be counterproductive to argue against a stereotype if one appears to be ignoring whatever basis in fact it might have.

That said, while not everyone up here is prejudiced against southerners, such prejudice is both common and open. Author Seema Jilani's observations gel with my own, as well as with those of foreign classmates from my graduate school days in Houston, who now live here, too.

For example, I have noticed over the past year that such ignorant comments as, "some hick from Texas," are rather commonplace in casual conversation, and that southern stereotypes (e.g., imitations of southern accents) often serve as a source of cheap laughs for the comedically challenged.

As a nun I knew and liked in elementary school might have told her first-graders on their first day, had she taught mixed classes of northerners and southerners, rather than of whites and blacks: "There are good southerners and there are bad southerners. There are good northerners and there are bad northerners."

On balance, and to be fair, I have liked most of the people I have met up here, and my slight, but noticeable accent has more often been a marketing tool than a jerk detector. Nevertheless, I did appreciate the sentiment of that piece.

I am not an ignorant rube, and I will not play the part by letting bigotry sour me on everyone else around me. I always have, and always will judge others by their words, however accented, and their deeds.

One More Thing

The beginning line of that last piece reminds me...

A fellow Houstonian said of my crawfish etouffee at a recent party -- and I quote -- "He nailed it!"

Fellow gastronomes, take note!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Minor edits. (2) Rephrased a sentence.

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The Godfather

Try listening to some James Brown without catching yourself starting to move, or at least wanting to. I dare you!

And when you're done with that, you might enjoy, as a change of pace, this performance of "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" by the Godfather of Soul and Luciano Pavarotti. Yes. The very thought sounded weird to me, too, at first, but it works really well.

Obviously from the above, I listened to some James Brown earlier in the week and really enjoyed it. As I often do in such circumstances, I decided to learn more, and encountered the following interesting fact about the man also known as "The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business:"

Brown also had a practice of directing, correcting and assessing fines on members of his band who broke his rules, such as wearing unshined shoes, dancing out of sync or showing up late on stage. During some of his concert performances, Brown danced in front of his band with his back to the audience as he slid across the floor, flashing hand signals and splaying his pulsating fingers to the beat of the music. Although audiences thought Brown's dance routine was part of his act, this practice was actually his way of pointing to the offending member of his troupe who played or sang the wrong note or committed some other infraction. Brown used his splayed fingers and hand signals to alert the offending person of the fine that person must pay to him for breaking his rules. [minor edits]

I don't think I spotted that in the above clip, but I'll keep an eye out for it from now on, and I'll get a good chuckle if I see it.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 531

Placebos in the News

The Boston Globe recently ran an interesting article on a subject I have touched on before: the burgeoning interest in understanding and making use of the placebo effect.

A recent study by Harvard's Kaptchuk suggests the importance of ritual and the doctor-patient relationship. A 2008 paper published in the British Medical Journal described experiments conducted on patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Two groups underwent sham acupuncture, while a third remained on a waiting list. The patients receiving the sham treatment were divided into two subgroups, one of which was treated in a friendly, empathetic way and another with whom the doctors were businesslike. None of the three groups had received "real" treatment, yet they reported sharply different results. After three weeks, 28 percent of patients on the waiting list reported "adequate relief," compared with 44 percent in the group treated impersonally, and fully 62 percent in the group with caring doctors. This last figure is comparable to rates of improvement from a drug now commonly taken for the illness, without the drug's potentially severe side effects. [minor format edits]

This is intriguing, but what exactly is going on will doubtless be very hard to ferret out, even setting aside the fact that, "placebos appear to affect symptoms rather than underlying diseases--although sometimes, as in the case of ... irritable bowel syndrome, there's no meaningful distinction between the two."

The War on Poverty Initiative

Manny Lopez of the Detroit News hits the nail on the head:

It's not hard to believe that when given the option of working or not for roughly the same paycheck, some people are going to choose the sofa instead of the shovel.

Call it an intended [sic] consequence of expanded social welfare.

That's exactly what's happening in Michigan to some landscape businesses, whose owners and managers say they're seeing an increasing number of people forgo work that pays an average of $12 an hour for government benefits that pay about the same.

"We're just getting people coming in, filling out paperwork, hoping they won't get hired," Richard Angell, director of B&L Landscaping in Oak Park, told The Detroit News.

Lopez slams the minimum wage later in the same article for putting teenagers out of work and depriving entrepreneurs of inexpensive labor.

Rising Star?

First, there was Florida's Marco Rubio. Now, we have Republicans saying things like, "look out, Barack Obama!" about gubernatorial hopeful Scott Walker of Wisconsin:

Making political hay out of the lunch that he packs for himself, Walker has branded his events around the state as part of a "Brown Bag Movement" that has three tenets: (1) "don't spend more than you have"; (2) "smaller government is better government"; and (3) "people create jobs, not government."

The issues page of his campaign site lacked theocratic tendencies on my once-through, but Walker does seem to confuse small government with proper government. For example, he seems to accept without question certain improper government roles, like maintaining roads. That, and he buys into the notion of "pork," which I have noted before is a distraction from a much bigger, and more fundamental problem.

In short, I see yet another "welfare state lite" Republican, who might be worthy of an "any port in a storm" sort of vote, but who is not principled enough to cause substantive change for the better. Also, it bothers me that Jeb Bush seem to like him a lot, and that Newt "Deal" Gingrich has his ear.

That said, this guy is the best I've seen of those touted as rising stars among the Republicans in the past couple of years. Granted, I'm saying this with scant information.

And it's not saying much anyway.

Look-Alikes

Wow!

-- CAV

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Christian Rope-a-Dope

Via Arts and Letters Daily is a very interesting article by David Hart, author of Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, in which we see the un-seriousness of the so-called New Atheists play into the hands of a Christian apologist.

With them having apparently spent their meager force, Hart can thereby profit from a tack similar to one I once discussed Dinesh D'Souza taking, and of which I asked:

If D'Souza is so confident in the reasonableness of his views, why not aim higher than a lightweight such as Dawkins? Perhaps it is because, as I have discussed here recently, D'Souza's own position can, by its nature, look rational only with a clown like Dawkins as an opponent.

Like D'Souza, Hart sees the New Atheists for the cream puffs that they are, but his attack is more interesting because of the way the intellectual weaknesses of the New Atheists play into his rhetorical approach, which depends heavily on two things: (1) the philosophical, cultural, and historical importance of religion as a precursor to philosophy; and (2) complexity worship.

Taking his recent reading of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists as his point of departure, Hart makes the following complaint, whose truth would come as no great surprise to me:

The only points at which the New Atheists seem to invite any serious intellectual engagement are those at which they try to demonstrate that all the traditional metaphysical arguments for the reality of God fail. At least, this should be their most powerful line of critique, and no doubt would be if any of them could demonstrate a respectable understanding of those traditional metaphysical arguments, as well as an ability to refute them. Curiously enough, however, not even the trained philosophers among them seem able to do this. And this is, as far as I can tell, as much a result of indolence as of philosophical ineptitude. The insouciance with which, for instance, Daniel Dennett tends to approach such matters is so torpid as to verge on the reptilian. He scarcely bothers even to get the traditional "theistic" arguments right, and the few ripostes he ventures are often the ones most easily discredited.

This criticism, if true, is scathing, and such a deficiency would be inexcusable in such a book. However, this is not what really interests me about the positive argument of Hart's article, which, in part, is something like, "The New Atheists don't really engage Christianity in a serious manner."

This point Hart drives home through a lengthy comparison of the work of Christopher Hitchens and Friedrich Nietzsche. This he does -- despite, revealingly, regarding Hitchens as "the most egregiously slapdash of the New Atheists" -- because he finds doing so necessary in order "to take proper measure of ... [the] intellectual depth" of New Atheism. Hart then -- if we take his reading and evaluation of Hitchens's God Is Not Good at face value -- torches Hitchens on the levels of his philosophic case against there being a God, the accuracy of his historical claims as well as their applicability as indictments of the cultural influence of religion, and the lack of moral force of his arguments.

It is particularly the last point above that Hart hammers home with his consideration of Nietsche:

Because he understood the nature of what had happened when Christianity entered history with the annunciation of the death of God on the cross, and the elevation of a Jewish peasant above all gods, Nietzsche understood also that the passing of Christian faith permits no return to pagan naivete, and he knew that this monstrous inversion of values created within us a conscience that the older order could never have incubated. He understood also that the death of God beyond us is the death of the human as such within us. If we are, after all, nothing but the fortuitous effects of physical causes, then the will is bound to no rational measure but itself, and who can imagine what sort of world will spring up from so unprecedented and so vertiginously uncertain a vision of reality?

This is, as I once called it, is an example of the "Gordian Knot" of religion. For most people, religion serves in the stead of a proper philosophy to sustain a desire to understand and achieve the good and to venerate the holy, but these are fatally mis-integrated onto an arbitrary foundation. At the end of that post, I noted that:

In the current cultural debate over religion, the new atheists err in throwing out the baby with the bathwater when they dismiss or show contempt for certain legitimate emotions and concepts that are traditionally associated with religion. But too often, when [they] realize this mistake ..., they ... assume that there is no secular basis for the good things religion is an attempt to do. In doing so, such intellectuals permit our highest aspirations to remain hostage to those who would have us destroy our minds and our lives with blind faith.

Or, to put it another way (and, in the process to mimic one of Hart's criticisms of Hitchens), Hart's underlying enthymeme is as follows:

Major Premise: [omitted]

Minor Premise: Even Nietzsche, who outguns all the New Atheists, felt he needed to replace religion with "a new and truly worldly mythos powerful enough to replace the old and discredited mythos of the Christian revolution."

Conclusion: You can't have morality or grandeur without faith.

It is this mistake, the idea that there is no morality or reverence without religion, that Hart seems to understand as the spiritual flip-side to the intellectual weakness exhibited by the New Atheists. And yet, it is in this sense that it is vitally important to have more than a nodding acquaintance with religion.

However, in another sense, religion is hardly important at all, and that is, ironically, in the sense that the question of whether there is a God is neither especially difficult to answer nor philosophically of great importance. One needn't be both a theologian and a historian to consider the question of God's existence on a philosophical level. Thus, I reject Hart's implicit demand that we read the Gospels to understand just what we're talking about when asking the question, not to mention the moving target that is his concept of a God, and which is designed to exempt it from rational discussion:

As a rule, the New Atheists’ concept of God is simply that of some very immense and powerful being among other beings, who serves as the first cause of all other things only in the sense that he is prior to and larger than all other causes. That is, the New Atheists are concerned with the sort of God believed in by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Deists. Dawkins, for instance, even cites with approval the old village atheist's cavil that omniscience and omnipotence are incompatible because a God who infallibly foresaw the future would be impotent to change it--as though Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and so forth understood God simply as some temporal being of interminable duration who knows things as we do, as external objects of cognition, mediated to him under the conditions of space and time.

Like religion itself, Hart's defense thereof combines food with poison, and, fascinatingly, focuses on a passel of patsies, while ignoring that greatest modern critic of religion, Ayn Rand. One wonders whether (and, if so, how) his latest book treats her.

-- CAV

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Two on Greece

"Anything above the level of a savage's precarious, hand-to-mouth existence requires savings. Savings buy time." -- Ayn Rand

Either of these will make you queasy, but both are worth full reads.

First, Bill Frezza, writing for RealClear Markets, takes a look at Athens, and then draws an unflattering cultural comparison between Turkey and Greece (and, by implication, the United States as well), which he left just before the fiscal crisis rioting broke out.

The spectacle of government workers, cranky retirees, militant unionists, and mad dog socialists locked arm in arm protesting reality is a sight we'd better get used to. The Germans may think they can staunch the panic with a mere hundred billion because Greece's feeble economy is so small. But the same fatal flaw that gives democratic majorities everywhere the power to vote themselves a comfy retirement now infects a greater part of the developed world. It's only a matter of time before a demographic tsunami swallows us all.

Frezza makes an interesting cultural observation by contrast just a bit later:

The Turks we met reminded me of what Americans used to be - a nation on the hustle. The Greeks? Take a good hard look at the donkey boys, Pinocchio, because that's what we are becoming. You can't imagine how hard this is for a Greek American like myself to say, raised to believe that our ancestors single handedly invented Western civilization.

Frezza doesn't seem to grasp the role of altruism in shaping modern Greek culture (not to mention giving rise to the welfare state), but anyone with an inkling of such a connection will be able to connect the dots easily enough.

Second, we have the very ugly, looming economic consequences that attempting to defy reality will inevitably bring, courtesy of Peter Schiff (HT: Doug Reich). His comparison, though, is between Greece and the United States. Particularly interesting is how efficiently injustice towards the prudent can meted out by central planning through inflation:

The main reason the Greeks are protesting in the streets is that they do not want their benefits reduced or taxes raised to repay foreign creditors. But despite the likely domestic popularity of a drachma-printing policy, would it really get the Greeks off the hook? They would stiff their creditors by repaying them in currency of diminished value. But the same result could be achieved through an honest debt restructuring, which would involve "haircuts" for all creditors. In a restructuring, the pain falls most squarely on those who foolishly lent money to a "subprime" borrower.

But with inflation it's not just foreign creditors who would suffer. Every Greek citizen who has savings in drachma would suffer. Every Greek citizen who works for wages would suffer. Sure nominal benefits are preserved and taxes are not raised, but real purchasing power is destroyed. If the cost of living goes up, the reduction in the value of government benefits is just as real.

This kind of pain, Schiff warns, may be just around the corner for us.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 530

Questions and Tips

After seeing FormSpring on a few blogs I follow, I've decided to experiment with it here as both a sort of permanent open thread/post idea generator and as a convenient way of collecting news tips that aren't really on-topic.

My FormSpring account is linked at the upper right as "Questions and Tips," while there remains a link below it for others who would prefer to email me. Depending on how things go with this, I may either shift entirely to FormSpring for people interested in contacting me or drop it altogether.

Eight Years, Three Philosophers, Quadrupel Goodness

Thanks to Martin Lindeskog, who knows how to celebrate his eight years of blogging in style, I am now "beer hunting" for the chance to taste Three Philosophers Beer, a Quadrupel. The web site of its Cooperstown, New York-based brewer, Ommegang, quotes from a review in the Anchorage Press:

An exciting new addition to the Ommegang lineup is Three Philosophers, a blend of Belgian dark strong ale and Lindeman's Kriek (a classic cherry lambic directly from Belgium). On the bottleneck, it says "Strength in Union," signaling the beer's portent and possibilities. It produces a wine-like ruby fill in the goblet and a nose of malt, dark fruits, vanilla and sweet cherries... But there's more - coffee, currants, brandied raisins, chocolate and sour notes - all blending nicely across the palate. Careful aging is this beer's friend, and I think it will definitely make this example better still.

I can't wait to try this one!

Cameron's Dilemma

I like Niall Ferguson's summary of the choices confronting Tory David Cameron after his party won only a plurality in the recent British elections. The following sums up the philosophical reason the Brits have the first hung parliament in decades:

The dire state of the economy all but guaranteed a Labour defeat but it was not sufficient to give David Cameron's Conservatives a majority. The fundamental skew of the electoral map against the Tories denied it to them, just as serious students of the subject had predicted months ago. Changes in demography and population density; the growth of small parties; the extinction of the Conservative vote in Scotland; and the post-Thatcher critical mass of people who fear Tory cuts -- these factors together always made it unlikely that Mr Cameron would win this election outright. [minor edits, links dropped, emphasis added]

The above also has a very, very familiar ring to it, especially on this side of the Atlantic.

So long as people dislike the consequences of central planning, but neither see them as such nor oppose central planning on moral grounds, they will not deliver a mandate to get rid of it.

Controls Breed and Perpetuate Controls

I hold that potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's sexual orientation -- she was rumored to be a lesbian, but is actually straight, if I recall correctly -- is both nobody's business but her own and completely irrelevant with respect to whether she ought to sit on the Supreme Court. That said, I wonder whether that controversy is distracting too many from looking at her judicial philosophy, and I see it, coming from the left as it does, as somewhat suspicious for that reason.

A link from Instapundit took me to this Pajamas Media piece by Cynthia Yockey, about said controversy. There, I found a couple of interesting observations. First, the idea that we are all state property fuels demonization of homosexuals.

So the main reason that lesbians and gays are demonized applies through the full range of the political spectrum: Our sexual union does not produce children who would be useful for the purpose of building the power and wealth of other people. This is anathema to totalitarians of every description bent on nation building. They cannot tolerate a single shirker in the baby-making department. So they devise rules -- divinely inspired, of course -- that do everything possible to validate only sex to produce children.

And second, we have an example of controls perpetuating controls for the same ilk, but for a different reason:

Various religions have figured out how to get millions in government money to finance their operations through enterprises nominally for the purpose of charity or doing good to vulnerable populations -- such as adoption agencies, hospitals, nursing homes, and so on. However, since they generally want to continue to refuse services to lesbians and gays, or to hire us -- which they totally would be allowed to do with impunity if they were not taking government money or using government property -- equality for lesbians and gays represents both the end of their sweet, sweet gravy train and unflattering publicity about the routes the gravy train took and the tons of cash it delivered.

Conversely, consistent government protection of property rights would remove one of the many strong motivations for various religions to impede full individual rights for homosexuals.

Heh!

On the bright side, at least his kids aren't being second-handers!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected spelling of brewery and sex of parent in cartoon.

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Ten years ago last month, ...

... I was watching The Mummy, that masterpiece of romantic cinema, with my grad school movie buddy, whom you now know as Mrs. Van Horn, at her apartment.

Under its spell, we began making out. Romance quickly became love and we were engaged before the end of the year. Ten years is a long time, but it seems to have gone by really fast. In some ways, it seems like we have always been together, and yet it still feels brand new, if that makes any sense.

Probably the best and most important thing about my relationship with Mrs. Van Horn is that we are friends. From the time we met as members of a mutual friend's wedding party in 1998, I liked her and I was struck by her beauty. I got her number from our friend and we went out once, but I almost immediately lost her to a rival. Some time after that wound down, though, our friend suggested she contact me as someone who might be good to hang out with sometimes. So I heard from her and we'd occasionally go out together.

One of those times, we talked on her porch until something like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Being about as clumsy with women as I can be dexterous with the pen, I asked her if she was interested in more. She said she wasn't, but that she still wanted to be friends. That f-word told me that we were going nowhere romantically, so I decided I wouldn't pursue her. I told her that being friends was fine, but that if she ever changed her mind, she would have to make the first move.

So we were movie buddies. We became shopping buddies, too, when I wanted to buy clothes and realized that I could stand to have a woman's perspective on my purchases. We took dance classes together, because she liked dancing and I wanted to meet people. She noticed herself becoming jealous whenever it was time to swap partners. She eventually had me over for that movie and ensnared me.

My in-laws tell me that it seems like everyone knew she liked me before she did from the way she'd talk about me. Close, but no cigar. I didn't see it coming, either, when I innocently sat down to watch The Mummy that Friday night.

To this day I don't think we've ever watched that whole movie straight through.

Thanks for ten wonderful years, sweetie!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Minor edits. (2) Showed post to wife, who, after getting a good laugh at my expense, helpfully reminded me that we were engaged before the year was out. We got married the following year. Tip: Don't get married too close to New Year's or you'll always screw up the year you got married!

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Quick Roundup 529

That's a Good Idea

Via HBL, an editorial that makes a good argument for replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens with an atheist:

[Non-believers] would still be underrepresented with just one justice. But those of us who refuse to subscribe to any religious hocus-pocus would be happy to take what we can get in a country where seemingly no politician, from either party, can resist the temptation of ending a speech with the empty phrase "God bless America."

...

Having an atheist justice, however, would not primarily be a matter of identity politics and some sort of equal representation. Rather, a nonbeliever justice would be a mighty blow in favor of the secular principles of "reason and freedom" of which Jefferson spoke.

Yes. Marc Cooper said, "hocus-pocus!" He also said "bunk," and yet I'd classify the overall tone of the article as firm, but friendly.

That said, the drawback is that atheism is not a positive position, but since I doubt that Barack Obama will throw his pal Jim Wallis under the bus any time soon, we'll let that slide. Cooper did a great job of getting the idea of church-state separation back into the air.

This article also gives us our...

Quote of the Day

"[T]he day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." -- Thomas Jefferson

Taking the Wind out of their Sails Turbines

The way to fight environmentalism is, of course, to challenge its fundamental premise of altruism. But in case you ever need to back yourself up with some hard data on what the fantasy of "green energy" can cost, Power Hungry, by Robert Bryce sounds like it will provide it.

Reviewer Trevor Butterworth provides a sample:

Look at Texas, Mr. Bryce says: It ranks sixth in the world in total wind-power production capacity, and it has been hailed as a model for renewable energy and green jobs by Republicans and Democrats alike. And yet, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the state's electricity grid, just "8.7 percent of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period." The wind may blow in Texas, but, sadly, it doesn't blow much when it is most needed -- in summer. The net result is that just 1% of the state's reliable energy needs comes from wind.

In other words, if T. Boone Pickens has his way, he won't just be pickin' our pockets. He'll be puttin' out our lights.

He who sits on his laurels, ...

... lands on his keister.

-- CAV

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What Ma Says ...

... vs. What She Does

Two articles illustrating just how dangerous a failure to grasp fundamentals among the public can be have come to my attention this morning.

First, fellow Objectivist blogger Brian Phillips, who is fond of calling Houston's new leftist mayor "Ma Parker," makes the following observation regarding a letter she and some other officials sent to the chairmen of United and Continental. The two airlines may merge and Ma Parker obviously would like the new company headquartered in Houston, where Continental currently is:

I agree that Houston is generally more pro-business than other cities. However, Ma and the gang at city hall are just playing cheerleader--they are telling the chairmen one thing while telling the citizens of Houston something entirely different. While pleading for jobs they present Houston as a utopia for businesses; while begging for electoral support and appeasing constituents they bash local businesses.

Agreed, but I'd carry the metaphor even further. Which of these audiences can change the very playing field? The constituents, by virtue of the ballot box. In that sense, Ma Parker is also a coach.

It's as if Houston were a huge football team that's on a roll and about to score. Coach Parker's trying to convince the quarterback to run the ball in across the goal line. The problem is, some of his teammates have dug a huge pit in the end zone and camouflaged it. Parker knows about the pit and plans to dig it even deeper at halftime. She knows how to get her team motivated and feeling good about doing that, too. She has them thinking that the pit will help them score.

Sure, Ma might get the quarterback to increase the score on this play, but what good would it really do Houston to injure its quarterback? And, assuming he survives the next play, what about next time, if, amid the deafening roar, he runs straight into an even deeper pit?

The world is full of cheerleader-coaches like Ma Parker. Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop is another. Here's how she gets the boys to work those shovels just a little bit faster. This time, she's hoping to get the team to dig a new pit, in the form of land-use regulations:

The best news, though, is that despite the city's reputation for being "ugly, flat, polluted and hot," the great majority of metro residents really like the town, ...

...

Houston doesn't offer fine beaches, mountains or clean air, but it does boast a friendly, open and entrepreneurial spirit. Can Houston build an urban environment in which nomadic information workers will choose to live in the 21st century? Sure. But the bigger question is: Does Houston want to?

Actually, this makes me think of a far better metaphor: Froma Harrop is like a popular, but insecure prom queen giving dating advice to a friend who is plain and flat-chested, but has a great personality. The guy her friend likes already sees something there and will probably come around in time, but Froma tells her to get a boob job, dye her hair blond, and start acting a lot more outgoing and superficial, like all the other popular girls.

The problem is, if the "ugly, flat" girl goes through with it, she'll lose her man in the long haul, because topography is a lot less important than what she has to offer over everyone else. I know, because I fell for her once, even though Houston was "ugly, flat, polluted, and hot," and a part of me will always want her back.

When people do not think in terms of essentials, they lack confidence because they do not understand what success really takes. This insecurity is what makes them fall prey to package deals of self-defeating "solutions" and the (incompatible) results they truly want. What Houston really needs is to keep doing what has made it successful (and do more of it, more consistently), and for more players on the team to learn something about the nature of capitalism. I'm glad to see Brian Phillips working on that.

Bone-crushing pits in the end-zone hurt quarterbacks, banality scares the good ones away, and central planning in whatever form will kill Houston's golden goose.

-- CAV

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