Prospects for Liberty

Happy Fourth

2007-07-05T01:26:00.001-04:00

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without, and convulsions within.

Site News

2007-06-14T10:27:00.001-04:00

After a long absence, the site is back online. Posts will be forthcoming.

Site News

2007-05-02T23:43:00.001-04:00

There won't be any updates here for a while. End of term papers and final exams are fast approaching.

Update

2007-04-28T21:51:00.000-04:00

Original article from my most recent post can be found here

Hat Tip: Financial Sense

Don't Believe the Hype

2007-04-27T12:21:00.000-04:00

Recent news on the economy is exuberant. The Dow, we are told, is reaching record highs, economic growth is unbelievable, we are skyrocketing. Don't believe it. It is true that this is the case, when the Dow is measured in dollars and euros. However, the dow, as measured in gold, silver, copper, industrial metals, crude oil, food, and stuff, is crashing. What does all this mean?

It means that the mad prophets of gold were proved correct. The US' fiat currency, not tied to any hard material whatsoever but instead simply set arbitrarily by the Federal Reserve, has become totally divorced from reality. The forces behind the economy have become almost entirely those of malinvestment, engineered by the puppeteers in the central bank. Expect a painful bust to follow this boom. Here is some data:

Site News

2007-04-27T12:06:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Final exams and end of term papers are keeping me away from the blog. More should be up soon.

Quote of the Day

2007-04-23T11:37:00.000-04:00

"Saying people go on school shootings because they play video games is like saying people steal money because they use Quicken." -- A friend of mine.

Picture of the Week: Holocaust Remembrance

2007-04-16T23:25:00.000-04:00

Traffic stops for two minutes in Tel Aviv, Israel, on April 16th, 2007. This is done in remembrance of the Holocaust.

Why its okay for South Park, and not for Don Imus

2007-04-16T11:32:00.000-04:00

Recently, Don Imus was canned both from his radio show on CBS Radio and his televised simulcast on MSNBC. The motivation for this was that, when announcing a female college basketball game, he referred to the girls who played for Rutgers University as “nappy headed hoes”. The media uproar was epic in scale. Imus apologized to Al Sharpton on his radio show, apologized to the basketball team, apologized to just about anyone he could find who would listen. Clearly, it was no use. He was fired in short order and without ceremony. Over the course of this incident, many have begun to wonder: Why Imus? Certainly shows like South Park and films such as Borat get away with far, far, worse material, of both racial and non-racial types without censure.

The Catholic League of America protested an episode of South Park that featured a statue of the Virgin Mary shitting blood on Pope Benedict’s face. Nobody cared. The Catholic League was widely perceived as whining, not demanding social justice, and South Park produced another episode this season mocking them. The Anti-Defamation league was all over Mel Gibson for his anti-semitic drunken rant some months ago, but an event from the film Borat, the “Running of the Jews” received barely any major media attention. Is there any rhyme or reason to this? Are advocacy groups just picking victims at random and ruining their careers for kicks? I do not believe this is the case
It is my view that the difference between, on one hand, a South Park and a Borat, or a Don Imus and/or Mel Gibson on the other, goes as follows: Shows like South Park have raised their bigotry to such a level that it is an art form. No sane human being could seriously entertain the notion that South Park or Borat are to be taken seriously. Besides the fact that these people are all fictional characters, they also engage in majestic feats of bigotry that a mere mortal can only dream about. It then, becomes clear: The reason we love this stuff is because it makes no bones about its hatred, it makes clear that its content is meant not to mock those who are bigoted against, but the bigots themselves. Finally, when it is called out, it refuses to apologize. South Park’s normal reaction to outside criticism is to create an episode that truly annihilates the critic in question is the most horrifying possible ways. Don Imus, by contrast, clearly wants to be taken as a serious commentator. While he is also a comedian, he has made his career out of being taken seriously when he advances a view. His show has become a regular pit stop for politicians and presidential candidates, and a venue for some of the most popular talk on the issues of our day that currently exists in American media. So when Don Imus says something, Don Imus is usually gong to be taken seriously. For that reason, a racist statement made by him is not something that is simply laughed off, the way the antics of Eric Cartman or Borat are. Imus presents himself as a serious person, and serious people get taken seriously. He should have realized that that is a two way street before he opened his stupid honky mouth.

Patriot Predictions

2007-04-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

The NE Patriots schedule was released for the 2007-08 season today. Here are my predictions:

Week 1 - Sunday September 9th, Patriots vs. JETS: A good start to the season. The Jets will have improved their offense from last season with the addition of Thomas Jones, which should take some of that pressure off of Chad Pennington and the NY passing game. But I think Brady and the rest of the pats open the season with a bang, and show off their shiny new passing game. Pats win.

Week 2 - Sunday September 16th, PATRIOTS vs. Chargers: This is a game that can go either way. But the Patriots are better than they were last year, and the Chargers are as good as they were at best. They have a whole new coaching staff, and I think the Patriots repeat their win over the Chargers in last season's divisional playoff round.

Week 3 - Sunday, September 23rd, PATRIOTS vs. Bills: The Bills? Come now. Patriots win, of course, but the game will be a close one, as NE will have just returned from a tough game against San Diego.

Week 4 - Monday, October 1st, Patriots vs. BENGALS: This game won't be a tough one. The Cincinnati defense is mundane at best, and while they have a strong offense, I believe the much improved Patriots D will handle the situation. Patriots win in a fairly close lone.

Week 5 - Sunday, October 7th, PATRIOTS vs. Browns: Haha. Right. The Browns.

Week 6 - Sunday, October 14th, Patriots vs. COWBOYS: The Cowboys are a top tier team in the NFC. They are not going to beat what will be 2007's best AFC team. Patriots win in a game that holds some surprises.

Week 7 - Sunday, October 21st, Patriots vs. DOLPHINS: Miami gives New England its first defeat of the season. There is absolutely no reason this should be the case. However, Miami always finds a way to beat NE in its house. Always.

Week 8 - Sunday, October 28th, PATRIOTS vs. Redskins: The Redskins defense last season was an absolute joke, and the passing game on offense is non-existent. Their running game in Portis is pretty good, but he received a shoulder injury in the off season and will face a formidable defense in New England. I think the Pats win this one pretty easily.

Week 9 - Sunday, November 4th, Patriots vs. COLTS: I cannot see the Patriots doing anything but winning this game BIG. They are a team much improved from last season, and with a bitter taste in its mouth from 2006's AFC Championship Game defeat. Bellichick and Brady are going to do absolutely everything necessary to carry this game home.

Week 10 - BYE

Week 11 - Sunday, November 10th, Patriots vs. BILLS: Patriots are coming out of bye week, Bills still have no quarterback. Patriots carry this one home easy.

Week 12 -Sunday, November 25th, PATRIOTS vs. Eagles: The Eagles offense is almost entirely one dimensional: Hand the ball to Brian Westbrook every chance you get. The Patriots have no problem shutting down such obvious strategies, and the Eagles offense fails. Donte' Stallworth has a big game, motivated by facing his former team. Patriots in in an easy one.

Week 13 - Monday, December 3rd, Patriots vs. RAVENS: Adalius Thomas is motivated this week like Donte' Stallworth was the one before. In the Ravens, the Pats face one of the NFL's most truly mediocre offenses, and manage to win this one without a whole lot of trouble.

Week 14 - Sunday, December 9th, PATRIOTS vs. Steelers: Steelers are having a poor season with a new head coach and new defensive scheme. Ben Roethlisberger continues to be the NFL's most overrated QB, and the Steelers continue to lose games.

Week 15 - Sunday, December 16th, PATRIOTS vs. Jets: This late in the season, nothing is going to stop the Pats. Especially not once the Mangini factor is thrown in. I have little doubt that Belichick has had just about enough of all the speculation about his disciple from last season. Jets get creamed.

Week 16 - Sunday, December 23rd, PATRIOTS vs. Dolphins: Its December, its Foxboro, the Pats are superior to the Dolphins in every conceivable way. You do the math.

Week 17 - Sunday, December 29th, Patriots vs. GIANTS: This is an away game that absolutely does not matter, right on the eve of...New Year's Eve. Patriots couldn't care less, New York picks up the win.

Regular Season Record: 14-2. Pats go into the playoffs having secured home field advantage.

The P.I.G to Capitalism

2007-04-09T17:39:00.000-04:00

Bob Murphy's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism is a hit. In fact it has reached #109 on Amazon currently. Go buy your own copy, and help push it higher!

Dice-K heals sixty years of suffering.

2007-04-06T22:43:00.000-04:00

By now we are all aware of the myriad war crimes committed by the Japanese Empire during the Second World War. The Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the huge sex slave industry that flourished in the Emperor's Military. Not to mention the generally cold and ruthless way which that most tyrannical of regimes went about treating both its prisoners and the inhabitants of the lands it occupied. For a long time since, Japan has born that guilt to some degree, as have all the nations which fought on the wrong side of history in history's bloodiest war. Is there anything that can absolve the Japanese state, and the Japanese people, of guilt for these terrible crimes? Yes, yes there is. And he is named Dice-K.

Most Red Sox fans are enthusiastic about him, and for good reason. However, not enthusiastic enough, in my opinion. In his opening game against the Royals this past week, Dice threw 108 pitches in seven innings, giving up a paltry one run and striking out ten batters, as the Sox marched to a 4-1 victory. Our enemies were laid out before us, and we heard the lamentations of their women. Especially when contrasted with the sad and sick performances thrown up by the rest of the Sox pitching staff so far in this young season, it is clear that number 18 has done more, much more, in fact, than enough to redeem Japan for its terrible, terrible, crimes. As a matter of fact, I suggest we follow the Japanese government's recent lead, and remove them from our history lessons altogether. Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is obviously a wise man with the gift of foresight.

Now, some students may be incredulous. What about the historically brutal way in which the Koreans were treated by Japan's imperial war machine? Well, to that I say this: Byung-Hyun Kim. He had his chance to solidify Korean greatness. And what did he do? He screwed us in the playoffs, thats what. And now the US-South Korean alliance is at a historic low point, and we are continuously on the edge of war with the North. What a shocker. Nobody could have predicted it. Nobody, that is, except for Byung-Hyun Kim. If North Korea should ever actually acquire a nuclear weapon, I think its safe to say that he ought be held personally responsible. His terrible pitching has brought humanity one step closer to extinction.

As for any Germans reading this, don't get your hopes up. You'll need to deliver at least another World Series before we even think about the holocaust.

Picture of the Week: Good Friday

2007-04-06T16:33:00.000-04:00

Filipino Catholics crucify themselves, in remembrance of the death of our Lord on Good Friday.

The Ethics of Robin Hood

2007-03-31T15:39:00.000-04:00

The story of Robin Hood is a good one. Robin of Locksley, a disenfranchised noble, “steals” wealth from those who have, themselves, robbed it (the government) from the productive elements of society (private individuals pursuing their own self--interest), and returns it to those who actually created that wealth through their labor. Rare is it to find a more libertarian, or pro-capitalist hero than the original Robin Hood. He recognizes not just that taxation is undesirable from a utilitarian standpoint, but that it is profoundly immoral, and is in no particular way different from common robbery. As such, he takes proper action in attacking the aggressors of the state, taking from them their stolen property, and returning it to its proper owners.

However, in recent years, the story has changed. Instead of taking wealth from thieves and returning it to its owners, Robin Hood “robbed the rich” and “gave to the poor” as if this was somehow an acceptable thing to do. The fact of the matter is, the original Robin Hood did not actually steal. That was the entire point of the story, he was simply taking what had been stolen and returning it to those who produced it. It is not thievery to take what has been unjustly acquired. However, the moral implications of the idea that “Stealing from the rich to give to the poor” is an acceptable, even an admirable action, are deeply disturbing. The first notion it introduces is that the rights of man are tied to his financial standing. If this is the case, than the villains of the story of Robin Hood, Prince John and the Sheriff are Nottingham, are fundamentally no different from its heroes. Both believe, simply in reverse orders, that the level of wealth which a person has acquired effects the amount of legal and moral rights which they are to be afforded. In order to justify these actions on the part of our “hero”, we must also believe, fundamentally, that the suffering, or the “need’ of some men is, as Ayn Rand would say, “a mortgage on the lives of others”. This ethic of slavery, for that is what it is when the fruits of some men’s labor are taken from them by force, to be attributed to the ends of others, if truly and fully accepted, will sound the death knell of the west. What has always made the west great, what has given it cause to rise above the huddled masses of the impoverished east, is the belief that man belongs to himself, and that, as such, his dreams are his to achieve, if he may find the means. This belief gave birth to capitalism, which is the greatest social achievement of western civilization (not democracy, which is, taken on its own and without a capitalist, individualistic ethic, no less tyrannical than despotism) or, indeed, of any human society.

This ideal, of man as an end in himself, free to pursue his own self-interest and his own happiness without being ruled by others, found its zenith in the founding of the United States of America. It is now at its greatest nadir since the Dark Ages which immediately followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The shifting ethic of Robin Hood betrays a larger, and far more worrying trend. If we continue to follow the moral monstrosity of collectivized ethics, we will find ourselves just as impoverished as those in the third world, in spirit first, and, eventually, in body.

The Top 5 Teams in the NFL?

2007-03-27T21:56:00.000-04:00

According to Joe Theismann's column on EPSN, the Top 5 run NFL franchises today are as follows.

1.) New England Patriots

2.) Denver Broncos

3.) Dallas Cowboys

4.) Indianapolis Colts

5.) Baltimore Ravens

I think this list is totally ridiculous. Number one and number four are the only ones I can say I fully agree with. The Cowboys? They haven't had a consistently winning teams since Jimmy Johnson was Head Coach. Losing one man and losing everything with him is not a mark of a well run franchise. The Ravens? Why. They have a good defense, and for season after season they have done nothing to improve their mediocre as hell offense. Finally they picked up Steve McNair. Not a huge improvement really. The Colts I agree with. The Broncos? I'm not quite sure about the Broncos. Here are mine.

1.) New England Patriots

This choice is obvious. In ten years, the Kraft administration has taken the team from being the biggest joke in the NFL to five AFC Championship games, winning four of them, and four Super Bowls, winning three of them. They have done it with no huge stars, other than Tom Brady (and Corey Dillon in 2004) but instead by taking a business-first approach and building a solid team of good players on every position, who know their role and can execute it well. They also have been tough dealers, never paying too much for a player, and letting even the best ones go when they start to demand a lot of money. Despite this, they have built an NFL dynasty. An amazing achievement.

2.) Pittsburgh Steelers

Two coaches in 35 years, just now finally replacing Bill Cowher, a great coach. They have managed to avoid nearly ever having a bad season (this past year being an exception) and have remained almost constantly a consistent playoff contender.

3.) Philadelphia Eagles

Again, with a smart coach and good players, they have appeared in the playoffs time and time again, going to four NFC Championship games straight, culminating in a Super Bowl appearance in the 2004-05 season. Even this past year, having lost their star QB Donovan McNabb, they had a good enough guy at second string (Jeff Garcia) that they were able to rally and get to the Divisional Round of the playoffs, losing to the extremely hot #2 seed Saints. It is not the only big name loss the Eagles have shown they can handle (TO?). A very well run team.

4.) Indianapolis Colts

With the Dungy doctrine, this team has managed to shore up its defense and make it all the way, currently sitting as the reigning Super Bowl Champions. Meanwhile, while their O-Line leaves something to be desired, they have a stellar offense with Manning at QB. They can do anything, whether it be run the ball or throw it. But getting to the Super Bowl was not easy, and it took much longer than most would have suggested. Indy gets kudos for sticking to Dungy's plan and allowing him to do what he wanted to do with the team. It was not an easy decision, to be sure. Colts are not just packed with stars, they are a well run franchise. Would I be saying the same if they hadn't won the Super Bowl this year? I don't know, maybe not.

5.) Green Bay Packers.

I know, I know, this is an extremely controversial call. But they have, quietly, built a young, good, football team in Green Bay. They have traded away players when it was time to do so, and not taken the bait on grabbing big names that are over the hill (Corey Dillon, Randy Moss) or in other ways dangerous (Moss!). All that is holding this team back from really challenging the Bears over domination of the NFC North wears number 4. His name starts with "Brett Favre" and ends with an E.However, I cannot really blame them for not cutting the guy. He is an NFL legend, and their fan base would tear them apart. At some point, an NFL franchise is a business that needs to keep its customers happy. Nevertheless, in one or two seasons when Favre is gone, look for the Packers to be neck in neck with the Bears (last season's NFC Champs, who also went into the playoffs at the #1 conference seed with a 13-3 record) for domination of that division.

Keep track of what they are doing with your money

2007-03-27T11:11:00.000-04:00

Cool new site here that allows you to investigate and keep track of spending by the U.S. government.

Hat Tip: The American Thinker

Picture of the Week: Uhhh....

2007-03-27T00:23:00.001-04:00

A Convenient Falsehood: Al Gore and the Cult of Global Warming

2007-03-24T20:29:00.000-04:00

As of late, global warming has been all the rage. Especially here in New England, where much of our unusually warm winter was attributed by folks to "global warming" (the actual culprit was the El Nino cycle we are in). As the global warming canard goes, the phenomena is being caused by Co2 (carbon dioxide) emissions being released into the air by humans via our industrial growth, beginning in the 18th century and continuing on thereafter. Global warming even has its own big budget movie, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

The solution, then, it is argued by Gore and his allies, is to curb growth. By carbon credits, stop consuming so much, deny the third world its large scale development until technologies can be found to create "sustainable energy" and thereby "sustainable growth". How many people will unnecessarily die while we wait for that crucial development is, of course, never mentioned. The fact of the matter is that, undoubtedly, global warming is, undoubtedly, occurring. And undoubtedly, human beings are playing some role in encouraging it. But the idea, put forth by the global warming lobby, that industrialization and human economic growth is causally linked with the phenomena of climate change in a major way is truly ridiculous.

The fact of the matter is that the current warming period we are in began before the invention of cars and airplanes, and that most of the actual climate change occurred even before 1940, when industrialization was still confined and (relatively) small in scale. Some studies have even shown that Co2 emissions in nature lag behind changes in temperature by as much as 800 years. That is to say, changes in Co2 are symptoms, not causes, of global warming. Certainly there have been many fluctuations in the earth's temperature in the past that have not been caused by humans. The medieval warm period and the little ice age that followed are common knowledge. And indeed, it would not be false to suggest that the scientific consensus has been wrong before. In the 20th century, we were warned of the impending ice age, the population bomb, acid rain, and DDT poisoning, just to name a few. None turned out to have much substance. This is not because of some broad conspiracy or widespread stupidity in the scientific field. It is inherent to the nature of empiricism; if you lack all of the proper data, you can end up with conclusions that are wildly inaccurate.

We don't know for certain whether Co2 is a cause or a symptom of climate change. We don't know for certain whether industrialization is a leading cause of global warming, some would argue it is not a cause at all. We don't even know if we can reverse the effects of it by cutting back our economic development, or whether the effects will even last (that impending ice age of thirty years ago disappeared pretty quickly). What we do know is that people in the third world are dying in vast numbers because they lack access to the proper technology that would allow them to live longer, wealthier, and happier lives. We know that globalization and worldwide capitalism are, for the first time, giving them a chance to pull themselves out of the Hobbesian gutter. And we know that, if we choose now to retreat, to pull back in the face of a speculation, a possibility, they will fall right back down. The evidence ought be a lot harder and a lot more expansive than it is to convince us to to do this.

The sad fact is that (Al Gore excluded, at least I hope) much of the "global warming" movement is really just the same old Neo-Marxism, dressed up in green instead of red. And, just as before, it would send millions to their deaths in a failed attempt to achieve whatever the social justice flavor of the week is this time. We should know better than to be bamboozled again.

Live Blogging Begins

2007-03-24T17:32:00.000-04:00

It is now 5:32 PM, Eastern Time. Yes, I am late.

Let the live blog commence! here is the link, again.

I'm staring the clock at 0:00:00. The movie is 75:55 long.

00:00: Hitting play button.

00:42: I like that there is a skeleton on a horse.

03:17: The IPCC is listing dissenters, who actually went so far to resign, on its "author list" for this much touted "global warming consensus"? Surprised that that is even legal.

05:15: Leftists coming together to kill third world development? What a shocker!

07:35: I like that they used Rat Pack music.

09:52: Is there any global warming response to these fluctuations? The Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period are pretty common knowledge.

11:17: This reminds me of something. If global warming is man-made, it is possible that global warming activists may plunge us deeper into its jaws! After all, their suggested policies are nearly always anti-growth, and it is economic growth (see industrialization and post-war economic boom at this point in the video)_that brings about new technologies, often less pollutant technologies. Who knows, if we had had as heavily restricted markets as many warming advocates want now, we may still be using coal.

12:00: Temperatures during the post-war boom, and then grew during the recession? Using the logic of warming advocates, we ought increase our industrial activity to fight warming!

18:34: Al Gore feels that this issue is super cereal.

18:37: Google Video loads too slow, I'm switching to YouTube. Down for a few minutes while I wait for the movie to load there. Use this time to wait with baited breath.

20:48: We're back online. Now blogging the YouTube version of the film.

22:59: Apparently Co2 emissions actually lag behind rises in temperature? Thats pretty huge. How could it possibly be a cause, if that is the case? And not just by a bit. Temperature leads Co2 by a full eight hundred years. Every single ice core survey shows this to be the case, according to the film.

27:53: Staring to get interesting now. I am geniunly intrigued. This information regarding the relationship between Co2 and climate is new to me.

30:12: Ha Ha! How great that the ancients would understand the weather better than the moderns. I always love to see those guilty of chronological snobbery get zinged.

31:14: Interesting about the cosmic rays and the solar winds.

34:41: I think we all remember the "coming ice age". Ah, the doomsdays of yesteryear.

31:41: Technical difficulties. Internet going off and on.

37:17: We're back folks.

39:58: The global warming craze: Brought to you by unions, hippies, and Arab despots! Man, what a team!

41:24: The far left just kills me. Adopting ever more extreme positions just to be anti-establishment. What children.

43:33: If what he is saying here interests you, I recommend you check out something called public choice theory

50:56: Definitely true. If you live in New England, you remember that this past winter the fact that it was exceptionally warm was widely blamed by laypeople on "global warming". In actuality, it was El Nino.

54:21: Didn't know that about the glacier break up. Interesting though.

56:14: Malaria in the Soviet Union? Not something I would normally think of. Arctic mosquitoes would kick my ass though.

1:00:58: Classy kicks.

1:02:24: What they are doing to people in the third world is pretty disgusting.

1:08:01: Horrifying. I wonder how many people have unnecessarily died in order to satisfy these hippies.

1:12:01: Patrick Moore is absolutely right here. He seems like a pretty cool guy.

1:13:32: Quite a cool film. I thought it was a few hours well spent, watching, thinking, and writing about it. Will post my thoughts soon.

Liveblogging "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

2007-03-24T15:41:00.000-04:00

Starting at 5:30 PM Eastern today, I am going to be viewing "The Great Global Warming Swindle" on Google Video. It is available here

It can also be seen on YouTube here.

I felt like trying something new, so I will also be live blogging my viewing of the documentary. That is to say, I will post my thoughts in real time, while watching it (with helpful tags indicating how many minutes I am into the video). Should be interesting, anyways. So, if you feel like doing so, come on over here at 5:30 and watch the video with me, while reading my erudite and witty commentary on it. Or watch it whenever. In any event, see you at 5:30.

Picture of the Week: Saint Paddy's Day, in Tokyo

2007-03-18T09:22:00.000-04:00

The Question of Economic Methodology

2007-03-18T01:26:00.000-04:00

What is economics? It is, admittedly, a large question. So those who are not economists, the answer probably seems to be that economics is the study of GDPs, consumer price indices, rates of inflation, exchange, and interest, and countless other dreadfully boring subjects. To others, the textbook definition of economics is the study of how allocate limited resources towards unlimited wants and needs. I vehemently disagree with the former, and feel that it is the shameful fault of that scoundrel Keynes that anyone believes it to be so. With the second, I agree, but would phrase things differently.

With Mises, I believe that economics is the study of Human Action. What this means is that, far from being the mess of sloppy thinking and complex math that the villain Keynes (and, to a lesser extent, the partially misguided hero Friedman) helped create. Economics is the study of how humans allocate scarce resources. For that reason, it has to be couched, first and foremost, in an understanding, and a theory of human nature. With no understanding of the nature of humans, we can have no understanding of how humans will utilize the resources in question. Every curve and model and equation that Keynes was so fond of finds itself completely impotent if the data it has computed cannot be shown to be applicable to its subjects (as is usually the case with Keynesian economics).

If then, in order to understand economics we must first understand humans, it is proper to ask what we can know about them.

The first principle we know to be true is that humans act. This is something inherent to our nature, indeed, any attempt to disprove it must fail, as to do so, the critic must actually engage in argument, which is itself an action. We know then, that humans are acting creatures. They are not ferns, or trees.

Secondly, we know that humans always act towards their greatest perceived happiness. This is proven by the fact that, whenever a human takes an action, he chose that action over any other possible course of action available to him. It must, then, be the course he felt would yield to him the greatest possible happiness. This leads us to a third principle.

Humans arrange their wants and needs in an ordinal manner. While a human may engage in actions in rapid succession, he can still only engage in one action at a time (excepting, of course, for the brain's ability to keep the various parts of the body continuously and simultaneously functioning). So then we know that a human will always act towards his greatest happiness first, his second greatest happiness second, his third greatest happiness third, so on, and so on.

This tells us something important about trade. Namely, that no trade ever occurs which is not beneficial for both parties. The fact that both chose to engage in a trade is proof enough that both believed that they would be better off after the trade than before it, that what they would gain from it would bring to them greater happiness than what they would lose. The only exception to this being swindlers, who deceive people into believing that they offer something other than what they actually do in trade.

This sort of theory can (and does) go on for ages as myriad conclusions are derived from logically derived axioms about the nature of man. It is, by far, the best way to arrive at general principles of economics, because, at its core, economics is fundamentally a study of human nature. It is a humanity, and not a natural science. This theory of economics is laid out in two masterpieces by the great economist of our age, Ludwig von Mises. The first is Theory and History and it can be read here. The second is his 900 page magnum opus, Human Action. Also provided for free on the internet. I encourage you to read the first. Tackling the second is no small undertaking, but it is more than worth the while, if you feel up to it. I myself just recently received my copy of it, and am eagerly starting out on it, though I imagine it will take me some time to complete the greatest achievement of what was, quite possibly, economics' greatest master.

The Question of Anarchy

2007-03-17T13:27:00.000-04:00

The following is a transcript of a post I made regarding this question in that hallowed venue of polite and honest intellectual inquiry, an internet debate.

How are we going to get anywhere with this post? It covers so much...I don't even know where to begin.

Alright. I guess first we need to know whether anarchy is something we want before we talk about whether its some place we can get to. Its important to know where you're trying to go before you set off down the road.

The first question is one of pure philosophy. Before we can start applying any doctrines to politics we have to answer one question: Deontology or Utilitarianism?

This question, thankfully, can be answered rather quickly. Group calculation of the utilitarian sort, is impossible because of the economic calculation problem so even if one is a supporter of utilitarian ethics, one must agree that government can't identify what increases utility the the most, therefore a utilitarian government is impossible.

So if we're going to talk about a just social order, we have to place it in deontological terms. For this, we need a philosophy of property rights.

It is clear that property rights are naturally occurring. If nobody had any right to anything, men would sit around and wait to die, since nobody would have a right to utilize nature for his own benefit. Even in the purely communist society, property rights exist. All property rights are simply invested in the soviet, rather than in any individuals. Somebody then, has the right to transform nature for his benefit or the benefit of others. Who?

Well, man was born into the world, or initially appeared in the world, basically naked, with nothing but nature and the tools given him by God to survive. It seems then, to me, that all of the nature around man was virgin land, having never been appropriated, and thus in a state of no-ownership.

Man then, attains property rights by taking nature which previously had not been appropriated, and doing so. Transforming it into things which are useful to him. Doing what John Locke called mixing his labor with the land. Once he has done so then, this property has become his, and he has attained sovereignty over it. It is then the case that, since he is sovereign over his property, it cannot be moral to take it from him by force. The only moral way to transfer this sovereignty is through a mutually voluntary exchange between man and his fellow men. Any other way of taking it requires coercive aggression against the man and the looting of his property, through which he went to the trouble of laboring to transform. This barbaric, and indeed cannibalistic practice can never be considered moral. And, because of the economic calculation problem, we know that no possible end can make it moral. The utilitarian argument has been dispatched because of the impossible nature of the problem it tries to address. So then, we must treat any seizure of man's property as pure theft, regardless of the ends the thief wishes to achieve, and regardless of the special hats or badges that he may wear by which he claims to have a right to this property. All non-voluntary exchange can only be treated as petty theft in our proposed order, if we are serious about establishing a just order.

What then, about theft? Certainly it would arise.

It seems clear to me that if man coerces another, and takes from him the fruits of his labor, he has no claim over this property. It must be immediately returned to his fellow.

What if this man is gone? Perhaps he has died since this property has been stolen from him. If this is the case, it must be any identifiable heir of man who has sovereignty over this property. Still, the property must be taken from the thief and given to the heir.

And if there is no identifiable heir? Well, then, this property passes into a state of no-ownership. Those who were sovereign over it are gone, and the man who has pretended sovereignty has no valid claim, so the property then belongs to whoever comes along (other than the thief himself) and appropriates it towards some end. The thief can never make any claim over it.

This is the same if the thief's heir now controls the property, and the true owner's heir can be identified. If, however, it is the case that no heir of the original owner can be found, and an heir of the thief currently owns the property, it must be the case that this property has become the valid exchange of the thief's heir. This is because, at one point or another, the property passed into a state of no-ownership, and the thief's heir then appropriated it, becoming its valid owner.

So this is what we have established. Property can only be originally attained through original appropriation. It can only be exchanged voluntarily. It can never validly pass into the hands of a thief, but may only pass into a state of no-ownership, to be later appropriated by some other actor.

This of course, means that the only just deontological order that we may establish is one of pure laissez-faire capitalism. Any other proposed system relies upon both thievery (taxation) and the impossible attempt by utilitarians to overcome the economic calculation problem.

Before get to the latter, it is important to address the former. Is taxation thievery? Does not the social contract make taxation by the state morally valid? It does not, for three main reasons.

The first is because any contract must be based upon mutual and voluntary exchange. However, the social contract was not. Rather, it was applied to already existing states, having been assumed to have been signed at some point lost in antiquity. Of course, it never was, and no evidence of the signing of such a contract can be found. All states are born in the fires of war & conquest, and thus have no claim to have ever signed any contract with their people.

The second reason is because, if the social contract was signed in antiquity, it has become invalid since. For no contract may govern a man who did not agree to enter into it. For this reason, the social contract, if it was ever signed, became invalid as soon as the generation that signed it passed from the Earth. The social contract would have to be drawn up anew and re-signed every generation. Clearly, this is not the case.

Thirdly, for the same reason as the second, the social contract could only be valid if voluntarily signed by 100% of society. This would essentially mean that the government would lose its ability to tax, and, in fact, stop being a government altogether, being merely a firm providing goods and services for voluntary exchange. The existence of just one man in the entire society who does not adhere to the contract would make the state's authority over him invalid. For if the state believes that its rule is based off of mutually consenting contracts, it must agree that it has no right to rule a man who does not wish to contract with it.

If this is the case, then we must agree that Anarcho-Capitalism is the location which we want to reach. It is the only system which is fully consistent with the philosophy of property and of contracts that we have found to be just. It is the only system in which people may live freely, knowing that their property will not be stolen by men from the government.

But surely this is not enough? Because people can steal, certainly, even if they don't address themselves with the pomp and majesty of the state. If Anarcho-Capitalism is a philosophy of "Let justice reign, though the heavens fall!" the pertinent question becomes "Will they?"

Nobody who truly commits themselves to this motto believes that they will. In this case, they won't.

The reason is simply, because, law, order, etc, are desired goods and services. Currently, all or nearly all members of society who are specialized in defense protection services are in the employ of the state. From this, we do not conclude that they would simply disappear if the state did. Does anyone seriously believe that if the state stopped delivering mail, mail delivery would cease to exist as a service? Of course not. People would hire private firms like UPS and FedEx to deliver their mail.

We can presume, then, that the same would happen with defense protection services. Indeed, the very nature of marginal utility forces us to conclude that this is the case. Of course, we cannot rule out the existence of murderers, or of terrorists who desire to hurt their fellow men, or of shucksters who do not provide their promised services adequately.

The important point to remember is that neither can the state. What state law provides, its central service, is a promise that should you choose to wrong your fellow man, you will have to pay the costs of the state's justice. A fine, jail, whatever. Obviously depending on what crime it is that you commit. The only time the state provides the direct service of preventing crimes from being committed is in the exceedingly rare circumstance that a crime is committed in the direct and immediate presence of a police officer.

So certainly this service, the fear of consequences, could be adequately provided by a market. Indeed it would be provided more efficiently, for currently, if a man commits a crime, the state spares no expense in hunting him down. It brings the criminal to justice for his crimes regardless of costs. Of course, this will sometimes be inefficient. Because of the nature of marginal utility and of the economic calculation problem, we will never know whether it was even wise to hunt down the criminal, or if the resources invested therein could not have been better used for other ends.

Of course we have one final problem. How do we stop the providers of defense protection from being, themselves, violators of justice? Who watches the watchers?

The answer is, they are kept in line by other defense protection firms, via the market. Nobody will pay for a service they find inadequate or otherwise undesirable.

Clearly, this seems ridiculous, on face. At first glance. But it is the system that all of society already adheres to! For except for those who believe in a one-world total state, everybody believes anarchy works, to some degree. As realists love to say, the international order is anarchical. The only social orders that are respected between states are ones that are essentially voluntary in nature. It is, particularly, voluntary economic treaties that have been the most enduring. The anarchist view then, merely takes the belief that our international order essentially works, and applies to individual societies. And of course, someone who truly believed anarchy did not work would have to be puzzled anytime he saw humans living together without the immediate presence of a police officer. For if the law is not around, it must be the case that humans will immediately tear each other apart. Unless it is truly, as anarchists submit, the fear of consequences, and not the immediate presence of force, that governs men.

Of course, there would be instances of murder, of thievery, of wars of conquest and aggression, of grave injustice. The state, which ostensibly is our shield against these horrors, does not prevent them now. The anarchist society would work at least as well, and likely much better, since it would be based off of rational economic calculation, instead of irrational utilitarian groupthink.

If it is somewhere we want to go, is it somewhere it is possible to arrive at? Who knows. I strongly suspect that the answer is a regrettable no. However, the question is essentially unanswerable. Certainly the potential benefits of trying far outweigh the potential costs. Worst-case scenario, we end up right back where we started.

iRack

2007-03-17T12:28:00.000-04:00

MadTV is usually one of the worst shows on television. However, on occasion they have one sketch that is just brilliant. The iRack is one such sketch. Hilarious, and sadly accurate.

Quote of the Day

2007-03-13T21:39:00.001-04:00

"The trouble with women is, if they are married, thats the trouble, and if they aren't married, thats the trouble!" - Max Black

The Lessons of Walter Reed

2007-03-08T01:50:00.000-05:00

If you have been following the news lately, then it is likely that you have heard about the horrors that were perpetrated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Suffice to say, the care provided to injured American soldiers was less than adequate. It is a nightmarish fact that our wounded soldiers were being provided with standards of care that could only be described as ghoulish. Certainly not befitting of heroes returning from fighting the good fight against the Islamic hordes abroad, keeping them at bay, lest we find them on our shores before we can say "Allahu Akhbar" (as the Bush narrative tells it). Walter Reed teaches us a painful lesson, but one that we have been taught many times before. However, no matter how often or how painfully it is beaten into us, the vast majority staunchly refuse to accept it. This is what happens when you let the government handle healthcare.

Looking for the dream of Euro-Canadian public health, provided in government hospitals and paid for on the public dole? Well, here it is! What, not what you were expecting? This is the inevitable result of turning over something as important as the public health to the public sector.

But surely, I doth protest too much, you say. It must be that this had more to do with corrupt officials, with people who deliberately skirted their duties. It was not a systematic error, it is something that we can fix, and then avoid in the future! I agree that heads ought roll over this crime. And with a story of this high publicity, it is thankfully likely that they will. However, I also say that yes, this is systematic! This sort of thing will emerge again, given enough time, regardless of whether it ever gets such large coverage again. Why, you ask? The reason is, no price.

The price mechanism is the one, and the only, method by which data can be transmitted through the market to allow for rational economic calculation. In any instance of a public good, it is impossible to collect data on how best to invest resources, or to know where, when, how, and to what extent to invest. Only through the price mechanism in a free market can consumers effectively tell producers that information, through their decisions to purchase or hold off on certain goods and services. Ludwig von Mises showed in his Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth that, for this reason, having any kind of socialist economy was literally impossible. This does not apply only to full on state-communism, as promulgated by the Soviet Union. It applies to any and all "social programs" of egalitarian wealth redistribution.

Because public healthcare operates without a price mechanism, it operates with no ability to rationally invest resources so as to maximize welfare. For that reason, substandard care will always and everywhere be the rule, and not the exception, of government-controlled healthcare.

Let's all try to be a little more closed minded

2007-03-04T12:07:00.000-05:00

A phrase we hear too often in our society is that we should try to be “open minded”. It is something that is unique to the late 20th, and early 21st century west. If we take a position that is not “open” we will often be charged with that great crime of “Closed mindedness”. Of course, when someone calls you closed minded, usually what they mean is something like; “Why don’t you agree with me? Disagreeing with me is bad”. The idea of being open minded, is, of course, pure silliness. How can we be open minded? The only conditions under which we could achieve this feat are ones in which we have no opinion of any importance. Certainly not one that we wouldn’t be willing to drop at a moment’s notice in the spirit of “openness”. We should, I agree, approach new problems with an open mind. But as William F. Buckley Jr said, “The purpose of an open mind is to close it.” Too often what people mean when they suggest that we should be open minded is that we should keep an open mind, even after we have formulated our opinions. Such a concept is a deadly threat to any serious search for truth, and is endemic to the culturally and morally declining west that we see around us.

If we never form any strong opinions, if we never can get to the point where we are able to passionately hold a proposition to be true, then we have given up the idea that we can even know what is true. I am sure that this concept is pleasing to some of the more leftist, relativistic minds in the debate. However, I find it to be a horrifying idea.

Everything that has driven the west throughout its history, from the ancient Greeks, through the medieval Christian philosophers, and up to the Enlightenment’s various champions of liberty, is a unbending belief that truth is a real concept and that it can be attained. Is there nothing worth preserving in that western tradition? I say that preserving it is the best thing we can do for ourselves and for the preservation of our civilization. And that is one thing I am happily closed minded about.

Free Banking

2007-03-01T11:15:00.001-05:00

A cool article today from Mises.org about the inflationary nature of the central bank. As usual, the post-Keynesians have, with some enthusiasm, taken up the task of defending the state from its critics. As usual, they are wrong. I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about my views on the nature of fractional reserve banking and of free banking.

FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING:

Most people are aware of the basics of the current system of banking that we have in place. Joe Average takes his savings to Steve's Bank, and gives it to them as a deposit. They credit his account with the amount of money he has given them. They then take the majority of that money, we'll say 60% as an example, and loan it out to borrowers, charging an interest rate. If Joe should return to collect on his deposit before the bank collects on the loan, they will pay it out to him either through their takings from interest rates on other loans or from the accounts of other customers of the bank. This system is why economists say that savings and investment are so closely linked. Without savings, placed in the hands of fractional reserve banks, there could be no loans, and without loans, there could be no large scale investment.

This system does not work too badly (we'll get to that later) in the absence of a federal bank and fiat currency. However, in our current system, it is an inherently inflationary process that serves to distort the structure of production and cause what economists call the business cycle.

Suppose that there is a sudden increase in the demand for loans in our current system. Banks, of course, oblige this desire for loans. However, since the supply of money has remained the same, they react by raising interest rates. Interest rates, are, essentially, the price of borrowing money. So, of course, they obey the laws of supply and demand like any other price mechanism. However, the government has in place a price control on interest rates. It takes the form of the federal reserve, which will respond to rising interest rates through pumping money into the economy, in an attempt to keep rates at what the fed has set as its target. The result of this, is of course, inflation. Anytime the demand for loans is increased, money is simply taken out of thin air and placed into the economy by the fed!

Like any policy that refuses to let markets clear, the fed's policy of trying to control the interest rate is misguided and has ill effects. By refusing to allow interests rates to function properly, and keeping them artificially low via the creation of new money, the fed encourages malinvestment. Investors who believe that interest rates will be always be (relatively) low have much less reason to invest carefully. Why not take big risks? After all, you can always take out more loans, its not as if the price of loanable funds is liable to change just like the price of anything else in a market. Of course, eventually this malinvestment boils over, and the demand for loanable funds begins to skyrocket. Sometimes, the fed responds by bailing out banks (remember that they keep only a fraction of actual savings) through loaning them large amounts of money. The result is large scale inflation. Sometimes it chooses not to, believing it is best to stick to a tight money policy. The result is bank runs. With the federal reserve in charge, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't!

FREE BANKING:

So, clearly, this is a problem. It traps us in a constant state of boom-bust capitalism, the business cycle always nipping at our heels. Is there nothing we can do? There is an answer, however politically infeasible it seems currently. The answer is a complete end to government monopoly on the money supply. We should instead institute a system of free banking, whereby banks print and compete with their own notes.

Before we discuss this, it is important to understand the nature of money, and what it really is. Everybody knows how a primitive, barter based economy works. If I have wheat, and I want meat, I take my wheat and I find someone who A.) Has meat in the quantity I want, and B.) Wants wheat in the quantity I have. We can then trade. For obvious reasons, this gets very inconvenient very fast, especially when more complex trade enters the scenario. The result is that some good appears in the barter economy, which is widely traded enough, that it actually becomes the standard of trade itself. Everyone is confident that everyone else will be willing to accept it in trade. In the history of the west, and indeed of all advanced economies, this has near universally been gold. So let us assume that, in the absence of the dollar, gold becomes our standard of trade (though really it could be anything). Of course, just as nobody wants to lug all of their dollars around with them in cash, nobody wants to lug all of their gold around with them. That would be even more inconvenient!

So people pay to have the gold deposited in banks, and are issued receipts, in the form of bank notes, to use as trade. Now, obviously, banks are going to want to compete to have the best notes. After all, banks want to get the most deposits. The result will be that banks will try to minimize the risk a consumer takes by depositing with them of a run on the bank. This could either spell the end of fractional reserve banking altogether, and the creation of a seperate market for loanable funds independent of banks. It could also mean that fractional reserve banking will continue, but, in the absence of a price control (federal reserve) interest rates will set themselves according to the actual demand for loanable funds. It will likely be some mix of the two, with some banks engaging in fractional reserve, but using other perks to get savers to deposit with them instead of with other banks. In any event, it is the end of inflation, and it minimizes the risk of bank runs (since investors will be much less likely to malinvest if they know that interest rates might change rapidly). Fractional reserve banking with a central bank structure is the cause of the business cycle and of boom-bust capitalism. Free banking is the cure.

Recession Nightmares Coming True?

2007-02-27T15:24:00.000-05:00

The Recession that I warned about last December may have come to pass. Bad news from the stock market today all around: Dow down 3.5%, nearly 4 earlier. Durable goods, a key indicator, are throwing up horrible numbers. Worst of all, it looks like the Chinese market is shitting its pants.

Strap yourselves in, we may be taking an unhappy detour.

Update: Things are worse than I thought

"Trying to limit the declines, the New York Stock Exchange said it imposed trading curbs as of 1:03 p.m. ET, around the time the Dow slipped 200 points, CNN confirmed."

Welcome to Black Tuesday.

Hat Tip: Matt Santos

Angelina Jolie admitted into the Council on Foreign Relations

2007-02-27T01:49:00.000-05:00

I wonder what insightful articles she will have to publish in Foreign Affairs.

Close, but no Moshiach

2007-02-27T01:39:00.000-05:00

Turns out that Cameron's claim to have found the body of the Christ doesn't hold up to scholarly review

"In 1996, when the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television."

""They just want to get money for it," Kloner said."

The Slander of Pius XII

2007-02-25T13:05:00.000-05:00

The slander of Pope Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" is one of the most disgusting, false, and hard to shake myths that have been used against the Catholic Church by its enemies throughout the years. Indeed, even a Jewish Rabbi, a one David G. Dalin, has written a book discrediting it, The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pius XII rescued Jews from the Nazis>

Now, on National Review Online, the Romanian intelligence officer who was behind the whole thing, tells all. Hardly the first time the Church has been slandered by godless communists. And likely, it won't be the last>

No Rest for the Wicked

2007-02-25T02:29:00.000-05:00

I’m writing this on Sunday morning. Tomorrow, according to the press, James Cameron will announce that he has found the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. And that Jesus is still in it.

Maybe you should read that again. After all, it may be the most earth-shattering assertion since…well, since the man from Galilee first said what he said. For 2,000 years, western civilization has been defined by this single belief: That Jesus Christ was the son of god, that he died on the cross for the sins of mankind, that he rose on the third day and ascended to heaven. Everything we are as a people, as a culture, revolves around this belief. Whether any given individual is a Christian or not, he lives as the product of a Christian society, in which Christian moral teachings are held to be supreme, whether they are believed to be inherently divine or not. He is immersed in it in a way that is inescapable, so that it is part and parcel of his nature, whether he likes it or not. So, to make the understatement of the last two millennia, what Mr. Cameron has to say is hardly without consequence. While it is obviously far too early (as of the time of this writing, the official announcement has not yet even been made.) to make any judgment, much of what Cameron has to say, scientifically, seems to be spurious at best. He claims to have DNA evidence proving that the body he has found is the body of Jesus Christ. What, exactly, he is going to compare this DNA to for confirmation, he has kept us in the dark on. He says that the tombs he has found are marked with the names Jesus, Mary, and Jonas. These are, of course, some of the most common names of the region at that time, and would prove nothing on their own. And as for the claim that these are Jesus’ remains, how, exactly, those remains could have survived for the last 2,000 years seems to defy explanation. Unless the corpses have been mummified (Cameron has released no information regarding this) such a feat would be, seemingly, impossible. Indeed, the tomb that the corpses are buried in is far too elaborate to have been afforded by Jesus' family or by the early church, and the stone coffins in which the remains are enclosed are indicative of a Roman, not Jewish, tradition.

It is worth noting that Cameron’s director in this venture, Simcha Jacobovici, was also behind The Exodus Decoded, an earlier work of biblical archeology, for which the historicity is, to say the least, highly controversial. He is also a devout Jew, for whom disproving the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth is a duty of faith. However, for all involved, whether they be Christians, Jews, or otherwise, the importance is far more than one of historical curiosity. For nearly half a century now, the west has been living through, surprisingly quietly, one of its defining moments as a civilization. The culture war is more than a few spats about the legality of certain substances or behaviors. It is a conflict over whether the defining ethic of our culture in the west should be the moral teachings of the Christian faith, which have sustained us for the last two millennia, or some sort of as yet ill-defined secular philosophy of “do what thou wilt”. Don’t be surprised if the hard evidence for what Mr. Cameron and Mr. Jacobovici have to say turns out to be false. For all their talk of reverence for science and reason, there are ideologues on both sides of the aisle, and anti-Christians ideologues are no different from any other kind: Their belief in strict adherence to reason ends where their strict adherent to their own doctrine, religious or otherwise, begins.

The Menace of the Christian Left

2007-02-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

Check out this great piece from Murray N. Rothbard on the horrors of the "religious left" and its potential thread to America and the world. The man was a libertarian and an atheist, but oftentimes a friend of Christianity and of Christians.

Quote of the Day

2007-02-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

"If it's right and you don't want to do it-you don't know whats right and you're not a man." -Ayn Rand

Hat Tip: John Denmat

Prolong the Campaign

2007-02-21T18:04:00.000-05:00

The following is a guest piece from libertarian pal of mine and LRC contributor Max Raskin

Prolong the Campaign

Charley Reese makes the argument that because of the length and cost of the upcoming election, we ought to abolish primary elections. While I agree with his sentiment and disgust with televised politicking, shortening the length of this campaign and its ability to target average citizens will only end up hurting the one real shot limited government has in this country—Ron Paul. A prolonged campaign will not only increase Paul’s chances of being elected, but will give him a platform to further the cause of liberty by reaching a larger number of people.

The more we find out about our candidates, the less we like them. As a culture we are constantly looking for people to slip-up because it makes great television. The reason why this rule doesn’t apply to Paul is because the more the public finds out about him, the more they will be exposed to the arguments for limited government. I can’t imagine Paul having any non-ideological skeletons in his closet, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of person to erupt in a fit of uncontrolled, Marxist histrionics . At best, the media would be able to say, “Look, he’s a racist, he voted against giving the Congressional Medal of Honor to Rosa Parks.” Fortunately, in a longer campaign, where his airtime would only increase, he would be able to not only explain the Constitutional rationale for his decision but the fact that he offered to donate his own money to cast the medal. As economist Ludwig von Mises points out, “In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas.” The longer Paul has a platform, the greater a chance he has of effecting a real change in this country.

Reese makes the point that, “Our present system means we will have as a president the candidate with the largest satchel full of political IOUs…the candidates will be forced to spend their time begging for money rather than thinking about ways to solve the nation's problems.” There are two main problems with this argument. First, I don’t think that it would be so terrible if Comrade Hillary and the other socialist candidates had to worry about appeasing the rich. The more a politician needs money, the more they are willing to compromise, and from a limited government perspective, any compromise away from statism is not bad. These people are devoid of principles anyway. The second problem with this argument is that it doesn’t speak to the good candidates. Ron Paul already knows that to solve the nation’s problems, the government needs to adopt laissez-faire approach to both domestic and foreign issues. As a doctor, Paul understands that trying to have the federal government solve our health care crisis would be like using a shotgun to cure a cancer. And it is clear from his record that Paul will not compromise his principles for anything, least of all to appeal to various interest groups.

It is clear, then, that if we want to see a proponent of individual liberty get elected, we must accept primaries and use them to our advantage. The primary election came out of the Progressive Era, and has done much to shift our political spectrum in a completely wrong direction. So why is it a good thing? Well, the fact is that although most grassroots movements seek to take away liberty, a Paul for President campaign will do the opposite. If the primary election is the best way to channel the will of the majority, then so long as the will of the majority is correct, primaries are a good idea—the majority just usually isn’t correct.

This time, however, there is much reason for optimism. With the Internet, Paul has the ability to create a massive grassroots movement that could mobilize all sorts of people to get him elected. Because he appeals to all different kinds of voters, they each can bring something to his big tent campaign. The time to abolish the primaries would be after Paul is elected (along with the Federal Reserve and 16th Amendment). For now, let us not fall into the trap of pessimism and defeatism, and instead use the existing system to our advantage.

The Vagaries of Price Controls

2007-02-17T19:56:00.001-05:00

It comes as no surprise that, in response to skyrocketing inflation and a stagnant economy, President Hugo Chavez has Venezuela has responded with a series of sweeping price controls, threatening to arrest any who violate them and seize their businesses. After all, he is a socialist. What Mr. Chavez, and other socialists believe, is that price controls will simply stop evil corporations from raising the good of a given product higher than is “moral” or “just”. No harm, no foul, everyone gets what they want. Except those evil rich, of course.

The actual effects are much different. What price controls actually do is create a situation in which the price of a given good is below the equilibrium (it is possible that a price roof could be set above the equilibrium level for a good, but it would be irrelevant if this was the case, and have no effect on the buying or selling of that good). The sympton of this is that there are more people willing to buy the good in question than suppliers are willing to supply. The effect is age old and familiar, and is of course occurring in Venezuela right now: Shortages. Unlike in a free-price atmosphere, where some people, dealing with accurate price-data, would decide that the sum of money equal to the price of a given good was worth more to them than the good in question, government intervention keeps price data inaccurate. Markets are not allowed to clear as they do in a non-interventionist atmosphere, and we are faced with little more than a race among consumers to get to the supplier first. This policy led, in large part, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, and the all-too familiar queues for gas of that era. In Venezuela, they are creating shortages in perhaps the most necessary good of all: Food.

Besides simply creating shortages, these price controls actually unfairly benefit the wealthy, not the poor, as they are intended to. Firstly, because at the newly lower prices, wealthy consumers are much more likely to buy in great bulk, and because, should wealthy consumers be unable to satisfy their desires on price-controlled markets, they can afford to go to black markets. Rarely is this the case with the poor. Those not wealthy enough to buy in huge bulk, or access black markets for their goods, are thus left hung out to dry, their only hope to access goods (here, food) being getting there before anyone else. The nature of shortage-created queues makes this as well extremely unlikely.

Price controls are meant to punish the rich and benefit the poor, and undoubtedly that is Mr. Chavez’ intention here. What they do is punish is all, the poor more than the wealthy.

Legalizing Drugs in New Orleans

2007-02-17T18:50:00.000-05:00

Walter Block has some insightful things to say about it.

Picture of the Week: Cum Hoc ergo Propter Hoc

2007-02-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

Sadly, this chart uses logic no different from the majority of cases for man-made global warming. Yet for some reason, the world nods solemnly when Al Gore babbles.

The Dehumanizing Nature of Socialism

2007-02-14T10:34:00.000-05:00

Hey, readers. Its been a while since I last posted, but I had to talk about this horrifying clip from the popular kid's movie, The Ant Bully

Check out the clip here

I'm sure that the left coast pinko-commies behind this scene only intended to indoctrinate children into the belief that socialism was good, capitalism bad. But in their choice of ants as the platform to convey their message, they prove far too much. Socialism is exactly what this clip mistakingly shows: Profoundly dehumanizing, devoted to the destruction of the individual and of personal liberty.

Indeed, what creatures could fit the socialist dream better than ants? They have no personalities, no thoughts, aspirations or dreams of their own. Incapable of happiness, they mindlessly serve their queen, to the point of unthinkingly marching to their death. How Stalin must have envied the ant queen!

I have previously covered here that the state is, since it lacks a price mechanism, utterly incapable of making rational economic calculations. This means much more than the mundane fact that bureaucrats will forever be clumsy and inefficient. It also means that the state will always be an inherently tyrannical structure. If the state makes the impossible attempt to tax us, and calculate for us how we would like to invest our resources, (as it so often does) than we become little more than ants, working mindlessly and endlessly, forever turning over the fruits of our labor to the queen, to use as is seen fit for the "good of the hive".

We are men, and not ants. Marxians want ants, and not men. Is it any wonder that the socialist states have always been aggressive to everything that speaks of individuals and individual aspirations? Whether it be religion, free expression of idea and speech, artwork, or simply the production of goods and services to improve the material life of the individual, socialism has tried to destroy them all. It would instead prefer that we remain poor and enslaved, ants with no thought of ourselves or our own dreams, living only to ensure the good of the "whole". Which of course really means the good of the state and its rulers.

Socialism would steal much more than our material wealth. It would steal our humanity, if we let it.

Thoughts at the end of the Season

2007-02-05T03:04:00.001-05:00

Pretty good game first half, boring in the second I thought. Of course, I was rooting for the Bears, as an avid patriots fan, and an avid hater of Peyton Manning.

My thought on what we will see for teams next year:

The Bills and Dolphins will continue to go nowhere.

Chad Pennington is at core, I think, a good QB. Eric Mangini is a smart head coach and I think that the Jets are going to continue to develop into a very good team.

The Patriots are in a good position, I think, for next season. If Corey Dillon refuses to retire, Belichick should cut him. Laurence Maroney is an amazing player and more than ready to start at half back next season. Dillon was great, but is burning out fast. The Pats should use their two first round picks to get a receiver that Brady can throw too consistently and a defensive play maker. Jabar Gaffney is developing into a good receiver I think, but he is nowhere near ready to be a go to guy, and Reche Caldwell is not good enough to fill that role.

We will probably lose Asante Samuel in the off season, and Tedi Bruschi may also retire. So its obvious why we need a defensive play maker. We should use the rest of our draft picks to pick up some patches for the defense and maybe a few young offensive linemen.

If we do these things I think we will have a very good chance to win the Super Bowl next year.

The Ravens need to do something on offense. Their defense is great but offense is as mediocre as I have ever seen. I think that they will dominate their division again next season.

The Bengals...need to get some players that won't wind up in jail. I'm not sure there is anything that anyone can do to help the Browns right now.

The Steelers I am unsure about. What exactly their problem was this season is difficult to place one's finger on. I don't claim to know what they should do or where they will go.

As for the Texans...and the Jaguars, I can't see much in their future and don't know what to prescribe.

The Titans are going to continue to develop into a successful team I think. I believe they are on the right track and will soon be a contender for their division.

The Colts are seemingly a perfect team. I can think of nothing they need to do differently, if their defense plays next year like it did in this post-season. If its back up to its old tricks, then what they need to do is clear: Stop the run.

The Broncos need to do more things than I can list here to get back in the fray in a serious way.

The Chiefs need to get rid of Trent Green. Larry Johnson is a great player who they can build an offense around. Trent Green is a horrible QB, imo.

The Raiders will be pretty good next season I think, with Jamarcus Russell on QB and Randy Moss receiving. What should they do? Sit back and concentrate on rebuilding around Russell.

The Chargers are another team that really needs no changing. They were clearly the NFL's best team this season I think.

Its hard to put my finger on Dallas. They are teetering on the edge, and could either go big places or sink back into mediocrity. They need to get a competent new head coach who can work on building a successful team around Tony Romo.

The Giants...I don't see them doing anything. Tiki Barber has retired and Eli Manning is a horrible, horrible, QB. If they want to move ahead the first thing they need is a new QB, stat.

Eagles are in a pretty good position. Brian Westbrook has played very well as of late. They should continue to model their offense around him and it will be successful.

The Redskins I really don't know enough about.

Bears should get a new QB, as soon as possible.

The Lions should draft Brady Quinn I think, and then work on building a team around that high quality QB.

Green Bay needs to tell Brett Favre to hit the road. He is holding the Packers hostage.

The Vikings...should get a new team.

The Falcons can be good, if they would just build a West Coast Offense for Michael Vick instead of flipping back and forth about what they want to do.

The Panthers and the Buccaneers I know little about. The Saints don't need much changing. They are a great team and will continue to develop nicely. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they represent the NFC in the Super Bowl next year, as I thought they would this one.

The Cardinals, Rams, and 49ers need...a lot of work. Beyond that, I don't know what to say about them.

The Seattle Seahawks are a good team, they need to get their offense back firing on all cylinders again.

Predicting who will be in next year's Super Bowl the night of this one is a very good way to make a fool out of oneself. But if I really had to pick, I would say that next season would see the Saints or the Eagles facing off against a repeat Colts team.

Rebutting Russell Kirk

2007-01-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

Prolific conservative thinker Russell Kirk once wrote a polemical essay denouncing libertarianism and libertarian views, entitled Liberatarians: Chirping Sectaries.

Here, I will aim to debunk the venerable Kirk's argument, line by line.

"Any discussion of the relationships between conservatives (who now, to judge by public-opinion polls, are a majority among American citizens) and libertarians [liberals] (who, as tested by recent elections, remain a tiny though unproscribed minority) naturally commences with an inquiry into what these disparate groups hold in common. These two bodies of opinion share a detestation of collectivism. They set their faces against the totalist state and the heavy hand of bureaucracy. That much is obvious enough."

Nothing to disagree with thus far. Libertarians and Conservatives share in common an opposition to totalitarianism.

"What else do conservatives and libertarians profess in common? The answer to that question is simple: nothing. Nor will they ever. To talk of forming a league or coalition between these two is like advocating a union of ice and fire."

This may be true, depending on what you mean by "conservative" and what you mean by "libertarian". I will demonstrate below that Kirk's understanding of libertarian ideas falls painfully short.

"The ruinous failing of the ideologues who call themselves libertarians is their fanatic attachment to a simple solitary principle-that is, to the notion of personal freedom as the whole end of the civil social order, and indeed of human existence. The libertarians are oldfangled folk, in the sense that they live by certain abstractions of the nineteenth century. They carry to absurdity the doctrines of John Stuart Mill (before Mill's wife converted him to socialism, that is). To understand the mentality of the libertarians, it may be useful to remind ourselves of a little book published more than a hundred and twenty years ago: John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Arguments that were flimsy in 1859 (and were soundly refuted by James Fitzjames Stephen) have become farcical today. So permit me to digress concerning Mill's famous essay. Some books tend to form the character of their age; others to reflect it; and Mill's Liberty is of the latter order."

Charming. Of course, John Stuart Mill was not a libertarian, nor do libertarians consider him a key thinker in their movement. Mill always supported various state-run programs, such as government controlled schooling, that libertarians do not. Kirk demonstrates his severe lack of understanding of the subject matter in the opening paragraphs of his essay.

"That tract is a product of the peacefulness and optimism of Victorian England; written at the summit of what Bagehot calls the Age of Discussion, it is a voice from out the vanished past of nineteenth-century meliorism. The future, it turned out, was not to the school of Mill. As Mill himself was the last of the line of British empiricists, so his Liberty, with its foreboding remarks on the despotism of the masses, was more an epilogue to middle-class liberalism than a rallying-cry. James Mill, John Stuart Mill's austere doctrinaire father (what sour folk many of these zealots for liberty turn themselves into!) subjected his son to a rigorous course of private study. By the time he was eight years old, J. S. Mill knew nearly everything that a doctor of philosophy is supposed to know nowadays; but his intellect was untouched by the higher imagination, and for that Mill groped in vain all his life long. J.S. Mill became all head and no heart, in which character he represents Jeremy Bentham; yet in truth, it was Mill himself, rather than Bentham, who turned into defecated intellect."

As before, Kirk continues to embarrass himself, by demonstrating that he also holds the view that James Mill, who was, if anything, less of a libertarian than his non-libertarian son, was, in fact, a part of the movement he so clumsily aims to criticize.

"Mill exhibited but one failing, so far as emotions go, and that not an uncommon one—being too fond of another man's wife. F. A. Hayek has discussed this association and its consequences for Mill and his followers. Mill eventually married this dismaying blue-stocking, Harriet Taylor, the forerunner of today's feminist militant. He was devoted to her, and she to humanitarian abstractions. It was under her tutelage that he wrote On Liberty. The intellectual ancestors of today's libertarians were no very jolly crew."

“By slaying all his animal spirits,” Ruth Borchard writes of Mill, “he was utterly cut off from his instincts—instinct for life, instinctive understanding of nature, of human nature in general and of his own in particular.” It might be interesting to examine how these deficiencies in Mill characterized and vitiated the whole liberal movement in English and American thought; and how they affect the vestigial form of nineteenth-century liberalism that now styles itself “libertarianism.” But we must pass on, remarking only that this imperfect apprehension of human nature is readily discerned in the pages of Mill's essay On Liberty."

This paragraph does a good job of demonstrating Kirk's nasty, condescending, disrespectful, and generally unpleasant attitude, but does little to advance his views, other than accusing Harriet Taylor (yet another non-libertarian. Really now, Russell) of being a feminist.

"Now the younger Mill, in his essays on Coleridge and Bentham, had remarked truly that the cardinal error of Bentham was his supposition that the affairs of men may be reduced to a few simple formulas, to be applied universally and inflexibly-when actually the great mysterious incorporation of the human race is infinitely subtle and complex, not to be dominated by neat little abstractions. Yet into precisely this same pit Mill falls in his Liberty. In his introductory chapter, he declares his object to be the assertion of “one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used by physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

This seems an attractive solitary simple principle. It sufficiently defines the convictions of twentieth-century libertarians, I believe. But the trouble with it is that solitary simple principles, however tidy, really do not describe human behavior, and certainly cannot govern it."

Kirk's believe here that libertarians are devoted to the solitary creed of utilitarianism, is contradictory with his other view, that they are devoted to the solitary creed of personal liberty, recklessly and regardless of the consequences. Of course, maybe your views don't need to be consistent when you are a vaunted paleoconservative like Mr. Kirk, brilliant enough to come to conclusions based only on your feelings about things. Really, reason is for the peasants.

"James Fitzjames Stephen, a forthright man of affairs and a scholar in the law, perceived with irritation that fallacy which makes Mill's Liberty a frail reed in troubled times; and in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which Stephen published in 1873, he set upon Mill with a whip of scorpions. John Stuart Mill, in Stephen's eyes, was hopelessly naive:

To me the question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing [Stephen wrote] appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing? It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, in what cases is liberty good and in what is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer. I do not believe that the state of our knowledge is such as to enable us to enunciate any `very simple principle as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control.' We must proceed in a far more cautious way, and confine ourselves to such remarks as experience suggests about the advantages and disadvantages of compulsion and liberty respectively in particular cases."

The quote that Mr. Kirk uses to buttress his argument here reveals quite plainly that it is in fact he himself that is guilty of the utilitarianism which he accuses libertarians of, arguing that we should not be for or against liberty on principle but only in regard to the level of utility it will create for society, given the circumstances.

"In every principal premise of his argument, Stephen declared, Mill suffered from an inadequate understanding of human nature and history. All the great movements of humankind, Stephen said, have been achieved by force, not by free discussion; and if we leave force out of our calculations, very soon we will be subject to the intolerant wills of men who know no scruples about employing force against us. (So, one may remark, many twentieth-century libertarians would have had us stand defenseless before the Soviet Russians.) It is consummate folly to tolerate every variety of opinion, on every topic, out of devotion to an abstract “liberty”; for opinion soon finds its expression in action, and the fanatics whom we tolerated will not tolerate us when they have power."

Of course, who should be in charge of deciding which opinions are to be tolerated is never questioned. Of course, it would have to be in the hands of the state, thus setting up the very framework of the counter-intolerance that Mr. Kirk seeks to avoid. For once the state has been given this power to regulate opinion, it will only be a matter of time until evil men come to power to use it for evil ends.

Mr. Kirk displays the classic conservative fault: He only ever thinks one step ahead.

"The fierce current of events, in our century, has supplied the proof for Stephen's case. Was the world improved by free discussion of the Nazis' thesis that Jews ought to be treated as less than human? Just this subject was presented to the population of one of the most advanced and most thoroughly schooled nations of the modern world; and then the crew of adventurers who had contrived to win the argument proceeded to act after the fashion with which we now are dreadfully familiar. We have come to understand, to our cost, what Burke meant by a “licentious toleration.” An incessant zeal for repression is not the answer to the complex difficulties of liberty and order, either. What Stephen was saying, however, and what we recognize now, is that liberty cannot be maintained or extended by an abstract appeal to free discussion, sweet reasonableness, and solitary simple principle."

Of course, Mr. Kirk ignores that it was the Nazis, and not some omnipotent philosopher-king, who were in control of the state, and as such could decide which views should be allowed to be heard. Mr Kirk's assumption, that the state should regulate speech so that evil is not heard, is predicated on the very, very, false concept that the state is always wise and just, and therefore will only use the enormous powers that he seeks to invest in it for good.

"Since Mill, the libertarians have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Mill dreaded, and they dread today, obedience to the dictates of custom. In our time, the real danger is that custom and prescription and tradition may be overthrown utterly among usfor has not that occurred already in most of the world?-by neoterism, the lust for novelty; and that men will be no better than the flies of a summer, oblivious to the wisdom of their ancestors, and forming every opinion merely under the pressure of the fad, the foible, the passion of the hour."

Kirk points out a inherent flaw in human nature, and then proposes absolutely no possible solution, indeed does not address the question of a solution at all (many libertarians agree that the problem exists, arguing only that the state cannot solve it). This is a classic tactic of his. Point out a problem that his existed since time immemorial, and then act as if it is somehow the creation of his opponent, paying no attention to what his opponent actually has to say about the problem itself.

Needless to say, it is a flimsy one.

"It may be objected that libertarian notions extend back beyond the time of Mill. Indeed they do; and they had been refuted before Stephen wrote, as John Adams refuted them in his exchange of letters with Thomas Jefferson and with John Taylor of Caroline. The first Whig was the devil, Samuel Johnson informs us; it might be truer to say that the devil was the original libertarian. “Lo, I am proud!” The perennial libertarian, like Satan, can bear no authority temporal or spiritual. He desires to be different, in morals as in politics. In a highly tolerant society like that ofAmerica today, such defiance of authority on principle may lead to perversity on principle, for lack of anything more startling to do; there is no great gulf fixed between libertarianism and libertinism."

You know that you are truly desperate when you are reduced to equating your opponent with Satan.

"Thus the typical libertarian of our day delights in eccentricityincluding, often, sexual eccentricity (a point observed by that mordant psychologist Dr. Ernest van den Haag). Did not John Stuart Mill himself commend eccentricity as a defense against deadening democratic conformity? He rejoices, our representative libertarian, in strutting political eccentricity, as in strutting moral eccentricity. But, as Stephen commented on Mill, “Eccentricity is far more often a mark of weakness than a mark of strength. Weakness wishes, as a rule, to attract attention by trifling distinctions, and strength wishes to avoid it.”

Of course, he points to no example of any libertarian thinker who was also a sexual eccentric. He simply asks us to take him at his word.

Once again, Dr. Kirk, Mill was not a libertarian, either. Do keep up.

Amen to that. Passing from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, by 1929 we encounter a writer very unlike Mill exposing the absurdities, of affected eccentricity and of doctrinaire libertarianism: G. K. Chesterton. Gabriel Gale, the intuitive hero of Chesterton's collection of stories entitled The Poet and the Lunatics, speaks up for centricity: “Genius oughtn't to be eccentric! It ought to be the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges. People seem to think it a compliment to accuse one of being an outsider, and to talk about the eccentricities of genius. What would they think if I said I only wish to God I had the centricities of genius?”

A stirring quote, and probably an accurate one. An irrelevant one as well, since Kirk hasn't supported his original assertion about the inherently eccentric nature of libertarians.

No one ever has accused libertarians of being afflicted with the centricities of genius: for the dream of an absolute private freedom is one of those visions which issue from between the gates of ivory; and the dreadful speed with which society moves today flings the libertarians outward through centrifugal force, even to the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. The final emancipation from religion, convention, and custom; and order is annihilation-”whirled/ Beyond the, circuit of the shuddering bear/ In fractured atoms.”

As was usually the case with Kirk, none of this makes a lick of sense.

"In The Poet and the Lunatics, Chesterton offers us a parable of such licentious freedom: a story called “the Yellow Bird.” To an English country house comes Professor Ivanhov, a Russian scholar who has published The Psychology of Liberty. He is a zealot for emancipation, expansion, the elimination of limits. He begins by liberating a canary from its cage-to be torn to pieces in the forest. He proceeds to liberate the goldfish by smashing their bowl. He ends by blowing up himself and the beautiful old house where he has been a guest."

Theres that utilitarianism again. Oh wait, I seemed to be under the impression that it was the libertarians who were too utilitarian? Now they aren't utilitarian enough? Pick a side.

Of course the parable has absolutely nothing to do with any real debate. Instead, having consented that he cannot hold his own in the arena of ideas, Kirk is reduced to accusatory parables that do not reflect the truth.

"“What exactly is liberty?” inquires a spectator of this series of events-Gabriel Gale, Chesterton's mouthpiece. “First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself. In some ways the yellow bird was free in the cage. It was free to be alone. It was free to sing. In the forest its feathers would be torn to pieces and its voice choked forever. Then I began to think that being oneself, which is liberty, is itself limitation. We are limited by our brains and bodies; and if we break out, we cease to be ourselves, and, perhaps, to be anything.”

To put it succinctly, no. Liberty is the lack of physical coercion. What Chesterton is referring to is many other things, which are desirable, but which are not liberty.

"The Russian psychologist could not endure the necessary conditions of human existence; he must eliminate all limits; he could not endure the “round prison” of the overarching sky. But his alternative was annihilation for himself and his lodging; and he took that alternative. He ceased to be anything but fractured atoms. That is the ultimate freedom of the devoted libertarian. If, par impossible, American society should accept the leadership of libertarian ideologues."

Dishonestly, Kirk equates the natural limitations of our existence with the unnatural limitations of physical coercion placed on us by other humans.

I can't tell which plays a bigger role in Kirk's paper thus far: Dishonesty or Unfamiliarity with the topic on which he speaks.

".Notwithstanding, there is something to be said for the disintegrated Professor Ivanhov-relatively speaking. With reference to some remarks of mine, there writes to me Mr. Marion Montgomery, the Georgia novelist and critic: “The libertarians give me the willies. I much prefer the Russian anarchists, who at least have a deeply disturbed moral sensibility (that Dostoevsky makes good use of), to the libertarian anarchists. There is a decadent fervor amongst some of the latter which makes them an unwelcome cross for conservatism to bear.”

Just so. The representative libertarian of this decade is humorless, intolerant, self-righteous, badly schooled, and dull. At least the oldfangled Russian anarchist was bold, lively, and knew which sex he belonged to."

What moral sense the libertarians are mission, or examples of these nightmarishly sinister "representative libertarians" are not produced. Instead we must, once again, take Mr. Kirk's slanderous assertions at his word.

"But surely, surely I must be misrepresenting the breed? Don't I know self-proclaimed libertarians who are kindly old gentlemen, God-fearing, patriotic, chaste, well endowed with the goods of fortune? Yes, I do know such. They are the people who through misapprehension put up the cash for the fantastics. Such gentlemen call themselves “libertarians” merely because they believe in personal freedom, and do not understand to what extravagance they lend their names by subsidizing doctrinaire “libertarian” causes and publications. If a person describes himself as “libertarian” because he believes in an enduring moral order, the Constitution of the United States, free enterprise, and old American ways of life why, actually he is a conservative with imperfect understanding of the general terms of politics."

Kirk has already made clear that personal freedom plays no major role in his world view, with his assertion that the state must regulate speech. What Mr. Kirk does not understand is that the greatest tyrants rarely set out to be tyrants but rather are, through their boundless faith in the ability of the state to remake the world (which Kirk evidently shares with them) turned into tyrants. They take the sort of illogical and extremely dangerous leaps that Kirk takes as well. Such as going from the opinion that View X is evil to the opinion that The State must ban View X and punish anyone who expresses it. A libertarian is not what Mr. Kirk describes. Rather, a libertarian is, in many cases, simply a conservative who thinks more than one step ahead.

It is not such well-intentioned but mislabeled men whom I am holding up to obloquy here. Rather, I am exposing the pretensions of the narrow doctrinaires who have imprisoned themselves within a “libertarian” ideology as confining and as unreal as Marxism-if less persuasive than that fell delusion.

Once again, we are provided with no example of such men. Presumably John Stuart Mill would be among them, but as we already went over, he was not even actually a libertarian.

Why are these doctrinaire libertarians, with a few exceptions, such very odd people-the sort who give hearty folk like Marion Montgomery the Willies? Why do genuine conservatives feel an aversion to close association with them? (Incidentally, now and again one reads of two camps of alleged conservatives: “traditionalist conservatives and libertarian conservatives.” This is as if a newspaperman were to classify Christians as “Protestant Christians and Muslim Christians.”) Why is an alliance between conservatives and libertarians inconceivable? Why, indeed, would such articles of confederation undo whatever gains conservatives have made in this United States?

I don't know Russell, why are they so strange? Perhaps you could tell us who some of them are first. That would narrow it down a bit, yes?

"Because genuine libertarians are mad-metaphysically mad. Lunacy repels, and political lunacy especially. I do not mean that they are dangerous; they are repellent merely, like certain unfortunate inmates of “mental homes.” They do not endanger our country and our civilization, because they are few, and seem likely to become fewer. (I refer here, of course, to our homegrown American libertarians, and not to those political sects, among them the Red Brigades of Italy, which have carried libertarian notions to grander and bolder lengths.) There exists no peril that American national policy, foreign or domestic, will be in the least affected by libertarian arguments; the good old causes of Bimetallism, Single Tax, or Prohibition enjoy a better prospect of success than do the programs of libertarianism. But one does not choose as a partner even a harmless political lunatic."

Yes, those mad old libertarians, always rebelling against nature itself. They have such crazy views!

What are their views? Who are they? Kirk goes into none of this, likely because he does not know.

However finally, after his usual long winded and substance-less rhetoric, Kirk does arrive at some actual statements. I will reply in kind:

The great line of division in modern politics—as Eric Voegelin reminds us-is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; rather, it lies between all those who believe in some sort of transcendent moral order, on one side, and on the other side all those who take this ephemeral existence of ours for the be-all and end-all-to be devoted chiefly to producing and consuming. In this discrimination between the sheep and the goats, the libertarians must be classified with the goats-that is, as utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct. In effect, they are converts to Marx's dialectical materialism; so conservatives draw back from them on the first principle of all.

As we already saw, Kirk cannot decide whether libertarians are simply crass utilitarians, believing only in that which creates "the greatest good for the greatest number" or blindly devoted to principle, advancing liberty even if it means smashing the goldfish's bowl.

As we have also seen, Kirk does not have a definition for what liberty is, what a libertarian is, or, seemingly, what a utilitarian is. Accordingly, he appeals only to some terrible charicature of the libertarian, and unsurprisingly comes to the inane conclusion that to be a libertarian means to reject the concept of a transcendent moral order.

This point is extremely ineffectual, because it points the finger at libertarians for being profoundly immoral, while failing utterly to outline who they are or what they believe.

"In any society, order is the first need of all. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is tolerably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract liberty. Conservatives, knowing that “liberty inheres in some sensible object,” are aware that true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable “liberty” at the expense of order, the libertarians imperil the very freedoms they praise."

I know not where Kirk got this view from, for if he believes that John Stuart Mill was a libertarian, he certainly does not believe that libertarians reject the need for a social order.

In any event, Kirk's assertion is left unsupported. He asserts correctly that to have liberty we must have a social order. That this social order must be the state is not addressed, as if the second assertion is simply proven by the first.

"What binds society together? The libertarians reply that the cement of society (so far as they will endure any binding at all) is self-interest, closely joined to the nexus of cash payment. But the conservatives declare that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn; and that it coheres through what Aristotle called friendship and Christians call love of neighbor."

What Kirk addresses as the conservative view, is, in fact, the libertarian one. By his belief in the necessity of a coercive state Kirk has made clear that what he believes holds society together is the use of organized military force against the citizens. For clearly, he believes that society would fall apart if the agent of this coercive force, the state, were to fall away.

Libertarians believe, in contrast to this, that society is a voluntary compact, which needs no coercive and violent state to hold it together. Libertarians see society as a "community of souls" to quote Mr. Kirk. Conservatives, if they follow Mr. Kirk, see it as a community of slaves.

"Libertarians (like anarchists and Marxists) generally believe that human nature is good, though damaged by certain social institutions. Conservatives, on the contrary, hold that “in Adam's fall we sinned all”: human nature, though compounded of both good and evil, is irremediably flawed; so the perfection of society is impossible, all human beings being imperfect. Thus the libertarian pursues his illusory way to Utopia, and the conservative knows that for the path to Avernus."

That this is a belief of libertarians is left utterly unsupported. As a libertarian myself, there are few things I have more faith in than the utterly depraved nature of mankind.

"The libertarian takes the state for the great oppressor. But the conservative finds that the state is ordained of God. In Burke's phrases, “He who gave us our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed therefore the state-its connexion with the source and original archetype of all perfection.” Without the state, man's condition is poor, nasty, brutish, and short-as Augustine argued, many centuries before Hobbes. The libertarians confound the state with government. But government-as Burke continued --”is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. “Among the more important of those human wants is “a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individual, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can be done only by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue.” In short, a primary function of government is restraint; and that is anathema to libertarians, though an article of faith to conservatives."

Here Mr. Kirk is finally correct. He recognizes that the libertarian approaches the state from a rationalist and earthly perspective, while the conservative approaches it as a worshiper bowing before His God.

As such, the conservative believes, in his heart of hearts, in the essential omnipotence of the State, and therefore its moral authority to engage in violent coercion against the citizenry in order to keep them from mucking up their own lives.

Of course, if one believed, as do libertarians, that the state is run by mortal men, a mortal institution, and as subject to folly as any of us, one could never accept this view, for how could one mortal man know enough to ensure the happiness of all other mortal men, to know what they want better than they know themselves? It takes the conservative view, of the state as a divine institution with the authority of God, to believe in this hogwash.

As such, to be a Christian and to take Kirk's view towards the state is deeply heretical and shockingly blasphemous. For it is only God, and not Caesar, who wields the omnipotent authority necessary to make the kind of decisions Kirk is willing to put in the hands of the State.

"The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego; the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding. The conservative regards the libertarian as impious, in the sense of the old Roman pietas: that is, the libertarian does not venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or his country, or the immortal spark in his fellow men. The cosmos of the libertarian is an arid loveless realm, a “round prison.” “I am, and none else beside me,” says the libertarian. “We are made for cooperation, like the hands, like the feet,” replies the conservative, in the phrases of Marcus Aurelius."

Once again, Kirk places the libertarian view in the mouth of the conservative. For it is the libertarian who believes we are made for cooperation. Cooperation is an inherently non-coercive, voluntary, process. The conservative, by contract, feels that we are made for slavery to a divinely omnipotent state.

"Why multiply these profound differences? Those I have expressed already will suffice to demonstrate the utter incompatibility of the two positions. If one were to content himself simply with contrasting the beliefs of conservatives and libertarians as to the nature ofliberty, still we could arrive at no compromise. There is the liberty of the wolf, John Adams wrote to John Taylor; and there is the liberty of civilized man. The conservative will not tolerate ravening liberty; with Dostoevski, he knows that those who commence with absolute liberty will end with absolute tyranny. He maintains, rather, what Burke called “chartered rights,” developed slowly and painfully in the civil social order, sanctioned by prescription.

Yet even if libertarian and conservative can affirm nothing in common, may they not agree upon a negative? May they not take common ground against the pretensions of the modern state to omnicompetence? Certainly both bodies of opinion find that modern governments, even in such constitutional orders as the United States, seem afflicted by the libido dominandi. The primary function of government, the conservatives say, is to keep the peace: by repelling foreign enemies, by maintaining the bed of justice domestically. When government goes much beyond this end, it falls into difficulty, not being contrived for the management of the whole of life. Thus far, indeed libertarian and conservative hold something in common. But the libertarians, rashly hurrying to an opposite extreme, would deprive government of effective power to undertake the common defense or to restrain the passionate and the unjust. With the libertarians in mind, conservatives repeat Burke's aphorism: “Men of intemperate mind never can be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

So in the nature of things conservatives and libertarians can conclude no friendly pact. Conservatives have no intention of compromising with socialists; but even such an alliance, ridiculous though it would be, is more nearly conceivable than the coalition of conservatives and libertarians. The socialists at least declare the existence of some sort of moral order; the libertarians are quite bottomless.

It is of high importance, indeed, that American conservatives dissociate themselves altogether from the little sour remnant called libertarians. In a time requiring long views and self-denial, alliance with a faction founded upon doctrinaire selfishness would be absurd-and practically damaging. It is not merely that cooperation with a tiny chirping sect would be valueless politically; more, such an association would tend to discredit the conservatives, giving aid and comfort to the collective adversaries of ordered freedom. When heaven and earth have passed away, perhaps the conservative mind and the libertarian mind may be joined in synthesis-but not until then. Meanwhile, I venture to predict, the more intelligent and conscientious persons within the libertarian remnant will tend to settle for politics as the art of the possible, so shifting into the conservative camp.

"

If we are to believe Mr. Kirk's view, he is correct that libertarianism and conservatism have no common ground. He errs, however, in missing his greatest friend! For if his view of conservatism is the correct one, than it and socialism were made for each other! For both are the world-views of slavers, scrambling wildly for a moral justification for keeping their slaves in chains.

The Implications of Marginalism

2007-01-22T17:48:00.000-05:00

Reading around the internet lately, I've found a lot of people debating:

A.) Whether or not government can effectively make economic calculations

B.) How government should do so (when both parties agree that government can, in fact, do so).

So, I decided somebody needed to tell these people about marginal utility. As usual, its up to me to save the day.

In this world, we have material goods, and also services (usually based around providing some sort of material good or gain). Different people value things differently. I love hamburgers, Steve loves pizza. Steve likes pizza more than hamburgers, I like hamburgers more than pizza.

Everybody on Earth does not agree with me that hamburgers are better than pizza. There are people on Earth like Steve, who like Pizza more.

Now, let's say I have one slice of pizza, and Steve has one hamburger. We can trade, each getting what the other wants. This system is called barter. The direct exchange of goods.

But say I have pizza, and Steve has a salad. I don't want salad, I dislike it.

So, having pizza, I have to seek out someone who A.) Has a hamburger, and B.) Wants to trade a hamburger for my pizza.

This can, for obvious reasons, become inconvenient.

Thats where money comes in.

So what is money? Money is a good that everybody in society is reasonably convinced, everybody else in society will be willing to accept in trade.

Maybe I don't like salad. But I know that the large majority of the society does, and I'm convinced that I will be able to trade my salad. So I give the pizza to Steve, getting the salad in return. Then, I take my salad to man who makes hamburgers. Maybe he doesn't like salad either. But he is willing to exchange some amount of hamburgers for some amount of salad, because he knows that he can trade salad.

This is the basic function of money. It is the medium(s) in society, which have become sufficiently trade-able that they become a standard of trade. People will measure the value of some good or service in that standard. Maybe one hamburgers is priced at two salads. If this is the case, it is the case because a sufficient number of people value a hamburger more than a salad to charge two salads for one hamburger.

This is the mechanism of price. Price is the way that people express how much they value things.

I like pizza. I will exchange two salads for one pizza. But I like hamburgers more than pizza, so I'll exchange three salads for one hamburger.

The price I am willing to pay for hamburgers, that is to say, how many salads I believe one hamburger is worth, is entirely reliant on how much I, personally, value hamburgers.

I cannot say to Steve that one hamburger is worth three salads and one pizza is worth two salads. Because how many salads is a pizza is worth to Steve depends on who much Steve values pizza, relative to how much Steve values salad.

This is why any sort of central economic planning always fails, period. No individual planner can possibly know how many salads any given member(s) of society would be willing to exchange for one hamburger. Since they don't know, they cannot calculate.

Advocates of central planning often talk about calculating value through group mechanisms. But note that they are never actually doing calculations. They can't calculate because they don't have any data.

What if a man from the government came to town, and said that one hamburger would now cost no more than two salads. Any higher price (such as the price of three salads for one hamburger, which had previously prevailed) is inherently unjust and it is immoral for us to allow hamburger producers to charge the exorbitant price of three salads for one hamburger.

Okay. We have the conclusion: The price of three salads for one hamburger is unjust. The price of two salads for one hamburger is just. But how did the man from the government arrive at this conclusion? How does he know that two salads is the level at which society values hamburgers?

He doesn't. In fact, we do know what level of value is placed on hamburgers by society. Three salads. If it was any less than three salads, nobody would be buying hamburgers. They would not need to have any advanced understanding of economics, as critics of marginalism sometimes contend, nor would they need to be "New capitalist man" as those critics also sometimes contend. All any of them would need to know, would be that they, individually wanted three salads more than one hamburger.

The hamburger producer would be forced to either lower the cost of his hamburgers to the point where they sold in sufficient numbers to create a profit, or cease producing hamburgers.

Similarly, the hamburger manufacturer obviously wants to charge as high amount for his hamburgers as he can. So if society was willing to pay more than three salads for one hamburger, he would raise the price of hamburgers, until he found that his hamburgers were no longer selling.

In this way, Markest Clear

This is a rational and genuine form of calculation. Any one man knows whether or not one hamburger is worth three salads to him. He can calculate, for himself, that 1 Hamburger > 3 salads, or 1 Hamburger <>himself what the "just" price of a hamburger is. I value hamburgers more than Steve, Steve values pizza more than hamburgers. So how can there ever be an objective price for both of us? We assign value to things as individuals, and so price is always a subjective concept, and never objective. It merely is the expression of how much value any given individual assigns to any given good or service.

For this reason, government programs are always a bad idea. The architecture in the Washington, D.C. Mall is very beautiful. Does the beauty of the mall's architecture surpass the price that was paid for it?

We'll never know, because the mall was built with tax dollars. Since the exchange was made coercively rather than voluntarily we have no way of knowing whether or not the taxpayers would have rather had the beauty of the mall or any of the other myriad goods and services their money could have gone to, had they not used it to pay taxes.

Mises famously said that Socialism can't calculate.It isn't simply socialism. It is any government program ever conceived of. The reason is because of marginal utility. Value is subjective.

One another site, a friend of mine said that in his particular field (stability and non-proliferation studies) they cared more about ends than about means. This is both true and important. Government cares about benefit totally regardless of cost.

As any rational economic actor could tell you, considering benefit without any consideration of cost is irrational. Government is an irrational actor.

Revised Picks

2007-01-21T22:52:00.001-05:00

These were not good playoffs for my picks. I went 2-2 in wildcard weekend, 3-1 in the divisional round, and a whopping 0-2 in Conference Championship games.

In any event, Super Bowl?

Colts over Bears. If you saw the AFC Championship Game, then I need not explain why.

Justice and Its Implications

2007-01-15T22:59:00.000-05:00

What is justice? That is of course a central question in our society, and one which it behooves us to answer.

The way I see, it there are three main schools of thought on the nature of justice.

Justice as Retribution - This is the oldest school. It sees justice as a way of somehow returning the balance of happiness (which, presumably, was infringed upon by some aggressor) to the state it was at before, at least as much as humans can, by infliction upon the convicted retribution for his crimes. This is the view of justice held by most traditionalists as well as Orthodox Marxists (who are, because of it, actively anti-Justice).

Justice as Rehabilitation - This view holds that the criminal is sometimes just as much of a victim as those who he victimizes. A victim, that is, of a (presumably) curable condition which causes his criminality. It is the job of the state not necessarily to repay the victim, but to cure the criminal, so as to reduce the chances of further crimes by attacking their root cause. This is the view held by most modern liberals and analytical Marxists.

Justice as Deterrent - This view of justice also feels that the main purpose of justice is not to repay those who were infringed upon, but to prevent or minimize further infringement. However, those who believe in justice as a deterrent focus not on curing the criminal after he has committed the act, but in preventing him from doing it beforehand. Therefore, they advocate harsh punishments usually for their own sake. The view of justice as deterrence is popular among utilitarians.

Those are, as I see it, the three main views. They all of course, have distinct and different implications for how we should conduct the operation of justice, as a practical matter. I believe that an investigation into thes implications of justice as deterrence and rehabilitation will show that they cannot be the true expressions of justice. Furthermore, an investigation into the nature of rights and property will show that the only acceptable view of justice is justice as retribution.

Firstly, justice as rehabilitation. The reason that this cannot be an acceptable view of justice are twofold. The first is that it causes what consists of a crime to become arbitrary, and what consists on an acceptable reaction to become arbitrary.

Essential and necessary to the view of justice as rehabilitation is the view that there is no distinction between behavior which is, distinctly criminal, and behavior which is socially unacceptable to the point that we consider it a disease to be cured. This opens the floodgates. If we act on this principle, we could drag people into the courts for behavior such as homosexuality, or even politically deviant views. Whatever the government deems to be a disease to be cured becomes something to be treated by a court of law, rather than behavior which can be shown to be specifically criminal in its nature, because it actively infringed upon the rights of others.

Secondly, when someone is given justice via retribution they have certain rights. It is thought to be essentially unjust to give the convicted retribution greater than the infringement in which he engaged. No man would be sentenced to death for possession of marijuana. Secondly, he has certain rights. No man may be kept for longer than his prison sentence, for example. Having paid his debt, having had his just retribution meted out against him, he is no longer a criminal, but is once again an innocent man. However, if a man is to be cured rather than be given a sentence is not a prisoner but a patient. What must be done to him, or how long he must remain detained, is in no way connected to his crimes. Rather, it is the arbitrary will of those who are charged with "curing" him. He may be locked away forever, if is never judged by others to be cured. Because he is not, in theory, paying off any debt, he is not, in theory, capable of ridding himself of that debt through a sentence, and then returning to society. He is, in essence, without rights until he is judged cured. This opens itself to massive abuses of power by the state regarding what is considered behavior demanding of a cure, and what the standards are for deciding upon a "cure".

This, it seems to me, illustrates that justice as rehabilitation is inherently flawed.

There are also two glaring flaws in justice as deterrence.

The first is that if justice is merely a deterrent, it is not necessary the case that one must be guilty in order to be punished. Nor is it necessarily the case that the punishment ought fit the crime.

It would be possible, in theory, for the state to convince the public that each and every murder resulted in the capture of the murderer, his trial, conviction, and execution. One way the state could do this would be to, having failed to find the real culprit, instead arrest an innocent man and subject him to this. The rights of the innocent man would have been ignored, but justice would have served its purpose, in creating a deterrent for murder. Certainly people would be less inclined to murder if they believed that all murderers ended up in the electric chair!

Secondly, it is likely much harder, and less necessary, to deter murder than to deter thievery. Firstly, most murders are committed in the heat of the moment, against friends, loved ones, etc. Except for in a few cases (serial killers, other sociopaths) murderers are unlikely to be repeat offenders. Thievery however, it usually the result of calculated action, designed by the perpetrators to derive benefit, and thieves are often very likely to be repeat offenders.

So then, the state must conclude, if it believes that justice is a deterrent, that the punishment for thievery should be greater than the punishment for murder. Both because it is nearly impossible to deter the large majority of murders, because of the way in which they are committed, and because thieves are much more likely to re-commit thievery than murderers are to re-commit murder. Again, excepting for cases such as sociopaths and serial killers, which are exceedingly rare.

So then, it is only the view of justice as retribution which can protect both the rights of the criminal and the non-criminal, by ensuring that personal guilt is a necessary pre-condition for a just conviction, that the prisoner has rights which must be respected, and that only behavior which involves actual infringement by one party against the rights of another party can be considered distinctly criminal behavior, rather than simply "sick" or "unacceptable" behavior.

As such, I feel that justice as retribution is the only valid view of justice.

Picture of the Week

2007-01-15T16:16:00.000-05:00

Revised Picks

2007-01-07T20:19:00.000-05:00

Alright, I went 50% in Wildcard Weekend. Should have known better than to pick against the Colts. Cowboys...can't believe they lost. Had that game won until that freak thing on the field goal.

Revised picks:

NFC Divisional Playoffs:

Bears over Seahawks.

Rex Grossman is a fuck up. But Bears defense is still better than the Seahawks offense. Bears take this game.

Saints over Eagles

This will be a good game. But the Saints are, by far, the best team in the NFC. And of course they have my man Mr. Reggie Bush. Saints beat the Eagles pretty handily.

AFC Divisional Playoffs:

Ravens over Colts

I just can't see Peyton & friends getting through that real mean Ravens defense. The Ravens chew up the Colts offense and spit it out I think. Ravens take the game.

Patriots over Chargers

This is definitely the pick I am least confident in. I originally had the Chargers slated to defeat the Pats in this years AFC Championship game. Really the Chargers ought to win. However, the Chargers biggest strength is their running game with LaDanian Tomlinson. The Patriots defense is very good against the run, and is the NFL's best defense in the Red Zone, giving up only 1.8 yards per play. Before today's game, Shawn Merriman stated that he believed the Jets would win. I think Bellichick will use that to whip the Pats into their trademark "We don't get no respect" frenzy. Meanwhile, just from the way they played today, New England looks at the top of its game.

My Pats pull it out in a tight one against the Chargers.

Oh yea, and two words: MARTY SCHOTTENHEIMER

NFC Championship Game:

Saints over Bears

Saints are better than the Bears all around, Rex Grossman screws up every chance he gets. Drew Brees and Reggie Bush lead the Saints to Miami.

AFC Championship Game:

Patriots over Ravens

A very close matchup, another one that the Pats probably should technically lose. But betting against New England in an AFC Championship Game is a good way to make a fool out of yourself. Tom Brady and Bill Bellichick pull out that post season magic and win the game.

Super Bowl:

Patriots over Saints

The Saints are very good for the NFC, but if they were in the AFC they wouldn't even be close to getting to the Bowl. They simply aren't as good a team as the Patriots, they don't have the post season experience that the Patriots have, and Drew Brees is no Tom Brady. Patriots take home another Lombardi.

Playoff Picks

2007-01-05T00:31:00.000-05:00

It's the most wonderful time of the year. That's right, the NFL Playoffs.

Alright, my picks:

First Round:

Chiefs over Colts
Patriots over Jets
Cowboys over Seahawks
Eagles over Giants

Larry Johnson will run all over the Colts defense, even in the dome. The Jets/Pats game will be close, but they each know exactly what the other is going to do. Mano a Mano, Pats have more talent. Bellichick doesn't lose twice. Pats win this one. Cowboys will win if they play like they ought to. In a playoff atmosphere, I think that they will. Giants are struggling, Eagles are hot. Eagles win easy.

Round Two Predictions:

Chargers over Chiefs
Pats over Ravens
Cowboys over Bears
Saints over Eagles

Chiefs haven't got a prayer against LT. Ravens v. Pats is very tough to call, but I'm a Patriots fan so I'll go with the Pats. I think people underestimate how far the Pats throwing game has come. Bears are struggling, Cowboys win. Eagles are hot, not hot enough. Saints are a very good team, and they defeat the Eagles.

AFC Championship Game:

Chargers over Pats

Nobody can stop LT, not even my poor pats. Chargers win.

NFC Championship game:

Saints over Cowboys

Saints are just better. They win.

Super Bowl:

Chargers over Saints

Nobody.Can.Stop.LT. NFC continues its three-year (four, soon) SB losing streak.

The Real Soup Nazis

2007-01-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

Not just on Seinfeld anymore

A Specter is Haunting Europe

2007-01-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

It's the gospel of free markets, loosed from its chains.

So begins this encouraging article from Newsweek, published here at the website of the French libertarian group Liberte Cherie

Death of a Tyrant

2006-12-31T13:52:00.000-05:00

Invading Iraq was a mistake, and one that the United States is now paying for in blood and treasure.

But it is a small comfort to see that Saddam Hussein, a tyrant of the first order, has received his just deserts. Much, I might add, to the chagrin of the mainstream media, whose articles sound like eulogies for a fallen hero.

Well, Saddam was no hero

Picture of the Week

2006-12-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

That is all.

Ethiopian forces halfway to Mogadishu

2006-12-27T05:23:00.000-05:00

If you've been listening to the news lately, you have probably heard that Ethiopia, which is 66% Orthodox Christian, is invading Somalia, currently ruled mostly by a gaggle of Islamist militias.

Well, Ethiopian forces now say that they are halfway to Mogadishu

"MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Ethiopia said on Tuesday it was halfway to crushing Somali Islamists as its forces advanced on the religious movement's Mogadishu stronghold after a week of war in the Horn of Africa."

It's of course, always good news to hear that Islamic militants are being defeated. However, this quote seems ominous, in light of the situation in Iraq:

"Islamists countered that they were ready for a long war and any attempt to oust them would prove disastrous for their foes."

Ethiopia should learn from American mistakes. Namely, don't occupy. If Ethiopia wants to overthrow the Islamist "government" it should do so, quickly replace it with another one, and then get the hell out of dodge.

US strategists, too, have a lesson to learn from this: Direct conflict is not the only way to win the War on Terror. Shrewd use of local allies, and minimal direct application of American military force, could be the road to victory.

Fuck with Thomas Sowell

2006-12-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

at your own risk

Milton Friedman on the big screen

2006-12-26T03:11:00.000-05:00

One question that always comes up around Christmastime is, of course, "Who would be the best hollywood actor to immortalize Milton Friedman on the silver screen?"

And as anyone who has seen a holiday special knows, the answer is always the same: Joe Pesci

Hat Tip: Ben "Two Weeks" Litchman

The Kissinger Option

2006-12-26T02:46:00.000-05:00

The case for pulling out of Iraq, it seems, grows ever stronger. And from an ever widening chorus of voices, as this piece for the conservative, hawkish, pro-Bush doctrine blog, The American Thinker illustrates.

Besides it being clear that victory in Iraq is not an option for the United States, it is beginning to also become clear that a US pullout will mean a defeat for our enemies, and possibly even a strategic gain for us. As the Saudi government is now openly declaring, if the US were to leave Iraq, it would step in to support the Sunni militias the same way Tehran has done with the Shi'ites. What could be better for the United States? We swallow the bitter pill of humility, admit that it was a mistake, and remove ourselves from the conflict. We no longer incur the costs in blood and treasure of fighting a war in which victory is both undefined and unreachable. Meanwhile, our two greatest enemies, Shi'ite Islam, as represented by Iran, and Sunni Islam, as represented by Al Qaeda and its sugar daddies in Riyadh, tear each other apart for us.

This is the shrewdness of Henry Kissinger's foreign policy. Like any government program, warfare run by states has a near 100% failure rate. Clear victories in wars which are not defensive in nature are exceedingly rare. The United States, the world's largest superpower, has won no clear victory since World War II. In Korea, we fought to a stalemate, in Vietnam we were clearly defeated. We won momentarily in Desert Storm, but the very action of invading Iraq in 2003 demonstrates the failure of the 1991 war to "stabilize" the region through punishing Saddam without removing him from power. In Iraq, it seems that we are headed for another clear defeat, like the one we suffered in the Vietnam campaign.

In Vietnam, Henry Kissinger recognized a war that could not be won, and got the United States out. At the same time, he used shrewd diplomacy to turn the US' two greatest enemies of the period, Red China and the Soviet Union, against one another. While both nations were communist, Kissinger used their different theories of communism and their rivalry for status of the leader-nation in the communist empire to make them enemies of one another, for the benefit of the US, which would go on to win the Cold War without suffering another major conflict.

We can do this today as well. Saudi Arabia (and its lackey Al Qaeda) and Iran are both nations with Islamist governments. However, they are from different flavors of Islam, Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is Shi'ite. They are ethnically different, the Saudis are Arabs and the Iranians are Persians. They speak different languages, Arabic and Farsi, respectively. And they are certainly rivals for the leadership position in the Islamic community.

What keeps them from each other's throats? The presence of the United States military in Iraq, which currently takes the brunt of both of them, hit on one side by Shi'ite militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and the Saudi-linked Al Qaeda on the other.

The removal of the US military will leave them to squabble over the smoldering ruins of Iraq. Make no mistake: Iraq will be, as Vietnam was, an unmitigated defeat for the United States. But just like Vietnam, it will be just as large (if not larger) a defeat for our enemies. An internecine Islamist conflict in Iraq will give the US time to breathe and recuperate, and dash forever any dreams of a united Islamic ummah to confront the west.

The American Thinker ultimately rejects using the Kissinger option, saying that it is not worthy because there is still some hope left for democracy in Iraq. I hardly need to rebut that ridiculous assertion, but I will do so anyways.

Their argument can really be summed up with this quote:

"The United States is morally and humanely obligated to see it through --- unless the situation deteriorates so greatly that the policy cannot be sustained. We are not there yet, but we could be, by 2008."

How far, exactly, would the Thinker like the deterioration to go, before we admit our mistake? Iraq has no unified government, it has no military, no police force, no system of laws or courts that are enforceable, and it is racked by militia violence. There is absolutely no evidence that Iraq is ever going to return from this state, and much that it will not. Furthermore, if it ever does, it will certainly be far too late, and at far too high a price tag, in both blood and treasure, to ever use as an example for the rest of the Islamic world.

Warfare is a government program. As usual, the government program as failed. And again, as usual, the solution to the problem is to do away with the program all together. It's time to take the Kissinger option.

Economic Lessons of Bethlehem

2006-12-25T09:13:00.000-05:00

Lew Rockwell can be a complete goddamn loon.

But this article is great. My favorite line:

"Herod was also a liar: he told the Wise Men that he wanted to find Jesus so that he could "come and adore Him." In fact, Herod wanted to kill Him. Hence, another lesson: you can’t trust a political hack to tell the truth."

Donnell Long

2006-12-25T09:04:00.000-05:00

Is a hero

A Christmas of Suffering

2006-12-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas Eve to everybody, and a Merry Christmas tomorrow.

This evening, approx. 2,000 years ago, a child was born that would change the world forever. Jesus of Nazareth was a poor carpenter in a conquered land, ruled by the mightiest empire in human history. Not so mighty, though, that it was capable of resisting His will. Three centuries later, at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine The Great, the man who would become Emperor of Rome, first became a Christian.

Since that time, armies have marched, cities have been built, and kingdoms toppled in His name. Some of history's greatest goods and most nightmarish evils have been performed by those who did so, or claimed to do so, out of loyalty to, and love of, Him.

In the land of his birth today, The people into whom he was born are no longer conquered, but their right to exist continues to be a constant struggle. Their enemies are no less vast now than they were then. God is many things, but an undemanding master is not one of them. This is illustrated in His chosen people, who are still singled out for greater tribulations and struggles than nearly any other nation on Earth. Every Christian should defend Israel, for its existence is divinely ordained. Jesus Christ, the very physical manifestation of God-made-Man, is a Son of Israel, of the House of David. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of Christ.

But Israel is far from the only place in which a little well-time divine intervention is in order. Civil war rages in Iraq, and threatens to break out across the Middle East. In Cuba and North Korea, we are constantly reminded that communism, that greatest and most nightmarish legacy of atheism, is still reaching out, even from the grave, to crush the innocent. Just today, on the eve of the birth of the Prince of Peace, Orthodox Christian Ethiopia and now Islamist Somalia have marched to war against one another. On the home-front, New Orleans still lies in ruin, a dark monument to the failure of government to protect us. A harsh recession in the near future threatens to give the rest of the nation a far less terrible, but still bitter, reminder of the scarcity that prevails in the non-capitalist world. Even now, madmen like Kim Jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have acquired, or threaten to acquire, nuclear weapons.

In bethlehem, the very village of Christ's birth, anti-Christian discrimination has reached staggering heights in the wake of the Hamas takeover, and those members of the Church who have not already fled have poor prospects for the future.

The weeks and months ahead will be dark ones. We will need to remember that God looks down on us, and that providence has a broader plan in mind, as Mary did when she watched her son die on the cross.

For now, Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth, and Good Will towards Men.

Dennis Prager v. McGill student on sexual liberation

2006-12-22T20:31:00.000-05:00

Dennis Prager debates a young woman from McGill University on the nature of sexual preference and on sexual liberation.

Link here

Its the first item on the list, if you scroll down.

Site News

2006-12-22T19:52:00.000-05:00

Finals are over, the blog is officially back.

The Bush administration's plan to "surge" troops into Iraq for a short period is absolutely ridiculous and bound to fail. The words "government" and "short-term" should absolutely never go together. What will actually happen is that troops will be sent into Iraq, and excuses will keep coming up for why they need to stay. We are there and we are staying, or we are going to cut and run. Those are our options, "surge" is not among them.

I for one, vote cut-and-run.

Rape charges, thankfully, were dropped against the Duke lacrosse team. There was absolutely no evidence that they were guilty, and much that they were innocent.

Here are two opposing articles on the issue of whether Congressman Keith Ellison should have been allowed to make his oath of office on a Qur'an, both from conservative writes.

Mike S. Adams is for it.

Dennis Prager is against it.

I personally fully support Ellison's right to swear on the Qur'an. As a convinced Roman Catholic, I would be loathe to take an oath of office on anything other than a full canon, Church-approved, Holy Bible. I would not swear on Mr. Ellison's holy book, and he ought not have to swear on mine.

Hole in Posting

2006-12-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

Sorry about not posting as of late, its finals week here. Posting should resume on friday, once these tests are over.

Democratic Underground Loves David Duke

2006-12-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

horrifying

Quote of the Day

2006-12-14T15:46:00.000-05:00

"The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government." - Brink Lindsey

Hat Tip: Matt Santos

Libertarian Mutiny Follow-Up

2006-12-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

Another article about a possible libertarian mutiny in the Republican ranks.

Granted, those who write for Lew Rockwell have never exactly been the greatest of friends with the GOP. However, it really feels like something is brewing here.

Quote of the Day

2006-12-13T22:55:00.000-05:00

"The majority of the U.S. government is in the pocket of the world zionist conspiracy." -David Duke, world renowned douchebag

A Libertarian Mutiny?

2006-12-12T21:29:00.000-05:00

Check out this great article by Bruce Bartlett, making the case that the Libertarians may be ready to pack up camp and leave the GOP. To be honest, I am with them (though certainly not for running into the arms of the Democrats). The GOP has become a party of big government, both in your wallet and in your bedroom.

So why do libertarians vote for them?

George W. Bush did not deliver on his promise to privatize Social Security, he did not deliver on his promise to reform the U.S. Tax Code, and he expanded government more than any other U.S. president since LBJ. Moreover, he engaged in such anti-libertarian policies as attempting to push through constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, and the burning of the American flag. I am personally sickened by both, but banning either erodes liberty and as such I oppose it.

Sorry George, but tax cuts alone don't make a compelling case.

Democracy in the Muslim World?

2006-12-12T00:14:00.000-05:00

Things aren't looking so good.

Quote of the Day

2006-12-11T13:38:00.000-05:00

"Mahurin, the daughter of a German immigrant, said her father didn't expect any hand-holding when he arrived in the United States at the age of 18. And he sure didn't receive any. Once, some friends gave him a package of "chocolate" that turned out to be Ex-Lax. He was left, she said, with plenty of time to sit and ponder an important lesson: Learn English." -Metro

Hat Tip: Matt Santos

Uno Attack

2006-12-11T00:48:00.000-05:00

You might get aids

Tomb of Saint Paul Discovered

2006-12-11T00:06:00.000-05:00

The tomb of Saint Paul has been discovered beneath a church just outside the walls of Rome.

The body is decapitated, and the head is thought to rest with Saint Peter's as Saint John Lateran Church on the Celian Hill.

A beautiful picture of Saint Paul-Outside-the-Walls:

Fractional Reserve Fraud

2006-12-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

Check out this great video on the nature of money and of fractional reserve banking.

The bottom line, really, is that fractional reserve banking is fraud. It is no different than if I paid a storage company to store my physical goods, only to find out, when I came to get them back, that the company had been lending them out to other people to use, and may not even have them!

That is how fractional reserve banking works. You give the bank your money, they give it to other people, keeping only a fraction of their deposits at any given time. Most of the time, when you come to take money out of your account, they will have enough on hand to give to you. But in certain circumstances, such as a bank run, you might just be out of luck. Sorry, we gave your money away, and now we can't get it back!

Understandably, people are outraged when this occurs, and they should be. Fractional Reserve Banking is fraud. Its one among many reasons we need free banking.

Whenever an economy develops, it bases its original trade off of barter. For example, I have two fish, you have two bushels of wheat. We each want what the other has, and so we can trade.

However, there are major flaws in this system. The most prominent among them is that if I want wheat, and have fish, I actually have to find someone who has wheat, and also wants fish. Unsurprisingly, this becomes difficult.

So, in a barter economy, what occurs is that some commodity, which it is believed that nearly everybody desires, arises as the standard of trade. In frontier era America, beaver pelts were used as a standard of trade. For all intents and purposes, beaver pelts were currency.

However, for most of western history, gold and silver have been the standards of trade. In a free banking system, one would pay a fee to banks to hold gold and silver (or any other standard of trade) and in return would receive bank notes in the amount of the deposit. Undoubtedly, some banks would still use fractional reserve banking, but entering into contracts with their depositors that allowed them to do so. But they would do so via consent, instead of government-protected fraud. And they would likely have to give their depositors a negotiated kickback.

Such a system would battle inflation by subjecting currency to competition, and would be good for consumers, because it would allow them to freely negotiate interest rates for their deposits, or to simply opt out of fractional reserve, in the knowledge that they would always be able to access their deposits, and never would have to fear bank runs.

This system is better, I believe, both economically and morally.

Reason interviews Matt & Trey

2006-12-10T18:27:00.000-05:00

If you like Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of South Park fame, and you like liberty, than you will love this interview.

Jewish Rabbi Hates Christmas

2006-12-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

Some Rabbi hates christmas. Thus confirming every anti-semitic myth in history.

US Government Tars Hitler and Stalin as dictators

2006-12-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

Since the NYT apparently feel that the US government tars their beloved Castro as a dictator, In wonder if they feel the same way about US attitudes towards Hitler and Stalin. After all, Castro has a higher political incarceration rate than either

New York Times Can't Get Enough of Tyranny

2006-12-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

Today's online edition of the New York Times carried with it this article in doe-eyed praise of one of the worst tyrants in the world today. Specifically, his program of forcing medical students to go through Marxist indoctrination. To quote:

"The Latin American School of Medical Sciences, on a sprawling former naval base on the outskirts of this capital, teaches its students medicine Cuban style. That means poking at cadavers, peering into aging microscopes and discussing the revolution that brought Fidel Castro

to power 48 years ago.

Cuban-trained doctors must be able not only to diagnose an ulcer and treat hypertension but also to expound on the principles put forward by “el comandante.”

It was President Castro himself who in the late 1990s came up with the idea for this place, which gives potential doctors from throughout the Americas and Africa not just the A B C’s of medicine but also the basic philosophy behind offering good health care to the struggling mass"

Yes, I am sure that they are discussing the revolution that brought Castro to power. Somehow I get the feeling that maybe less than the full range of opinion is welcome.

This was especially amusing:

"Still, the Cuban authorities are eager to show off this school as a sign of the country’s compassion and its standing in the world. And some students cannot help responding to the sympathetic portrayal of Mr. Castro, whom the United States government tars as a dictator who suppresses his people."

Yes, the United States tars him as a dictator. Maybe the good folks over at the NYT are unfamiliar with basic English, but a ruler who seizes power in a coup, holds on to it through brute military force, and brooks no dissent, sounds like a dictator to me.

Don't worry, this parade of murder-apologetics isn't over yet!

"The education the students are receiving here extends outside the classroom.

“I’ve learned to become a minimalist,” Mr. Williams said. “I don’t necessarily need my iPod, all my gadgets and gizmos, to survive.”

There are also fewer food options. The menu can be described as rice and beans and more rice and beans. Living conditions are more rugged in other respects as well. The electricity goes out frequently. Internet access is limited. Toilet paper and soap are rationed. Sometimes the water taps are dry.

Then there is the issue of personal space.

“Being in a room with 18 girls, it teaches you patience,” said Ms. Benyard, who was used to her one-bedroom apartment back home and described her current living conditions as like a military barracks."

Well, thank God Castro institutes those socialist policies that turned the economy on its head and let to abject poverty for the Cuban people! How else would we learn not to use our iPods so much!?!

One parting gift for you:

" “Democracy is a great principle,” said Mr. Williams, who wears long dreadlocks pulled back behind his head."

Lou Dobbs

2006-12-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

Is a fucking douchebag. That is all.

Quote of the Day

2006-12-07T15:32:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posting lately, to anybody reading this. Not much in the news other than the Iraq Study Group, and I don't quite have the time to give that the length of post it deserves yet.

Which brings me to the Quote of the Day:

"“Its scheme for a new military strategy contains so many loopholes that a president could cite its language to justify doing anything (or nothing).” If the only reason for the study group was to provide political cover (and sell books) then has been a rousing success." - Fred Kaplan

Hat Tip: Matt Santos

Quote of the Day

2006-12-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

"If you love goodness and hate evil, this is a very difficult time to stay sane." -Dennis Prager

Great Article from the Washington Post

2006-12-04T15:25:00.000-05:00

On the pointlessness of raising the minimum wage.

To quote:

"Nomey Druskin, manager of the Rainbow Hair Designers at the White Flint Mall, employs six shampooers. Mostly Hispanic immigrants, they are paid at the low end of the wage scale. Druskin should be particularly interested in the Democrats' intention to raise the minimum wage when they take over Congress, right?

She's not. Druskin pays her shampooers at the North Bethesda salon a base rate of more than $8 an hour. That's higher than the federal minimum wage ($5.15), higher than Maryland's minimum wage ($6.15) and higher than what the Democrats are proposing federally ($7.25). In fact, the median hourly rate for all shampooers in the Bethesda-Gaithersburg area, according to federal statistics, is $7.48 -- above all mandated minimums.

Druskin said the shampooers at her 30-year-old salon earn what they earn -- plus tips -- for a few reasons. First and foremost, it would be inhumane to pay them less, she said, given the cost of living in the Washington region. And if she didn't pay them a decent salary, she couldn't attract good, stable help. The shampooers wouldn't smile as easily at their customers. The hair wouldn't be washed just right, and the business, which serves a high-end clientele, would suffer.

'We have to pay them enough to make them happy and for them to live happily,' Druskin said. 'It's a domino effect from the bottom up. We want the clients to be happy.'"

As the article drives home, wages are set by productivity, not by government legislation. Its really as simple as that.

Somehow, I doubt the Post intended to make the case against raising the wage so eloquently.

Finally, an Iranian weakness

2006-12-04T15:18:00.000-05:00

This post from FP Passport seems to have finally revealed a weakness in Iran. Surprisingly, that weakness comes in the form of Oil & Natural Gas.

UN Piece-keepers

2006-12-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

Looks like UN peace-keepers in Haiti and Liberia have been getting a little too friendly with the local children.

Internationalist attempts to save and civilize foreigners always work

Rumsfeld Backed Iraqi Pullback

2006-12-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

I've always been something of a fan of Rumsfeld, though I realize I'm far from in the majority on that one.

A new leaked White House memo indicates that the outgoing Secretary of Defense supported a pullback from Iraq. I agree with him.

NBA Player's Union Suing League over New Ball, Complaint Regulations

2006-12-02T18:59:00.000-05:00

The NBA player's union is suing the league on two counts of unfair labor practices. What are these practices, you ask?

The first is anger over the fact that the NBA will be introducing a new official ball. The second is over anger about the NBA's new "zero tolerance" policy towards player reactions after the whistle has been blown.

This is hardly the first time that America's player's unions have engaged in such ridiculous behavior.

Just another case of silly union litigiousness.

Obesity in Africa

2006-12-02T15:38:00.000-05:00

Heres your weird story of the weekend. A growing obesity problem, in Africa of all places.

"More than one-third of African women and a quarter of African men are estimated to be overweight, and the World Health Organization predicts that will rise to 41 percent and 30 percent respectively in the next 10 years.

"We have gone from undernutrition to overnutrition without ever having passed healthy nutrition," said Krisela Steyn, the retired director of the South African Medical Research Council's Chronic Disease and Lifestyle unit.

Although the figures are lower than in affluent countries, many experts fear that health systems already stretched by the AIDS virus, malaria and poverty-related diseases may snap under the additional burden of heart disease, strokes, cancer and diabetes, conditions linked to obesity."

Well, I don't know what to make of it.

Recession?

2006-12-02T13:09:00.000-05:00

The clamoring is getting louder and louder that America is heading for a recession. I tend to agree, judging from a look at our personal savings rate, which is, to put it lightly, less than ideal.

Heres a depressing set of facts about that.

Some argue that its going to be a soft landing. I disagree. foreseeing a slowdown, the fed didn't stop raising interest rates until August. Meanwhile, the government deficit is sitting pretty at something like 3% of GDP.

Those arguing for a soft landing, or for no recession at all, cite that corporate pre-tax profits are up 31% in the third quarter. Sounds like the last gasp of a lot of borrowing-fueled malinvestment to me.

Hold on to your seats, its gonna be a bumpy ride.

Picture of the Week: East & West United

2006-12-01T18:05:00.000-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartholomew hold hands at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul.

Calls for Iraq Pullout Grow Louder

2006-12-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

The calls for a withdrawal from Iraq are growing louder as this post from the hawkish American Thinker demonstrates.

Overall, its a good post. However, there is one point at the end I disagree with:

"Of course, in the event of such a war, the Saudis might not be able to ship any oil via the Persian Gulf, nor the Iranians either. The world economy would be hit by a mighty spasm, and if the interruption lasted very long, tens of millions or more might die in the world’s poorest countries, and the rich countries would find themselves facing a lot of economic disruption."

I doubt the Iranians would be so foolish as to try to strike at The Kingdom via the gulf. Not with five US carrier battle groups present.

We do well to remember that the Iraq War is not the same as the War on Terror, but merely represents a single strategy-end the clash of civilizations quick and early by exporting our own values into their lands.

It seems clear that this experiment has failed. But thats no reason to accept defeat just yet. In the US' two main armed conflicts of the Cold War, the Korean War and Vietnam War, we were able to achieve only a stalemate in the first, and were defeated in the second. But we would go on to become the clear winners of the struggle with communism. Winning in Iraq is not necessary to winning overall, and a temporary loss might be an investment in a long term victory.

Quotes of the Day

2006-12-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

“We have no work. We have nothing else to do, so we came to overthrow the government.”

Lebanese explaining to a reporter why he is participating in the protests.

“History gives evidence of no civilization that survived long as purely secular and without a god, that put its trust in reason alone, and believed human nature was subject to radical improvement given enough capital and learning invested in the endeavor.”

Victor Davis Hanson

Hat Tip: Matt Santos

Seat Belts Kill?

2006-12-01T09:41:00.000-05:00

Interesting piece from Time on the hidden dangers of seat belts. Namely, that people drive more recklessly when they perceive a lower risk. Thomas Sowell has been saying this for a while now, actually.

Incentives matter.

How to turn our quagmire in Iraq into our enemies'

2006-11-30T12:09:00.000-05:00

After 9/11, Iraq seemed like a perfect solution to all our woes, signed, sealed, and delivered. The terrorist threat we faced on 9/11 came from medievalist theocrats with an ideology and culture as alien as it was menacing. But all those problems could be swept away, the neoconservatives assured us, with the power of liberal democracy and American sunshine. We could transfer our own ideals into the heart of the Middle East and trigger a chain reaction that would free the region and its people, and cause them to repudiate radical Islamism and slay the Al Qaeda dragon that represents it.

Al Qaeda had, essentially, exactly the opposite vision. An invasion of Iraq would reveal once and for all the imperialist intentions of America and the west. The people of the Middle East would rise up in unison, to overthrow their western-backed rulers, and restore the caliphate. This would cause Islam to return to its former glory, and once more surpass the west, as it had done from its founding in the late Dark Ages to about the time of the Reformation and Renaissance.

Neither has come to pass, and it now seems clear that neither will. On America’s side of the war, a failure to ensure security, rebuild infrastructure, and bring about effective governance has caused both Americans and Iraqis to become disenchanted. On Al Qaeda’s overthrowing Saddam triggered the ascendance of Shi’ite Iran and violence between Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’ite factions. Violence is now more often between Muslims than against Americans, and across the Middle East, a intra-civilization-al rift has been opened. Sunni core-state Saudi Arabia would prefer to cooperate with even hated Israel before Iran, as exemplified by their condemnations of Iranian ally Hezbollah during the recent Israel-Lebanon War.

So it now seems we are at a point of extreme despair. The attempt to win the War on Terror by exporting western values and western institutions has not been a success, and Iraq seems destined for civil war. But not all is lost. Indeed, an enormous opportunity has been opened. It is often said that we cannot leave Iraq, because if we did, we would create a “safe haven” for Al Qaeda and other terrorists. Preposterous! Consider the ramifications of the US pulling out of Iraq, or retreating into friendly Kurdistan. Shi’ite-Sunni violence would increase, creating a constant drain on resources for the decidedly Sunni Al Qaeda. Such a situation achieves three strategic objectives for the US. A.) It deflects much of the terrorist threat away from us, as major terrorist groups begin to spend resources on fighting their rivals in Iraq. B.) It causes inter-Islamic strife, discouraging the Al Qaeda dream of a unified caliphate to destroy the west. C.) It would create, in southern Iraq, a humanitarian crisis for Iran, as shi’ites fled across the border to escape violence.

There are two possible costs to this plan. The first is that it would surely lead to Kurdish secession, and may provoke Turkey. The second is that it may spill over into Saudi Arabia, and threaten the royal family there. Both can be remedied. If American troops re-deploy into Kurdistan, the Turks would not dare challenge an independent, and US-friendly Kurdish state. The Saudi threat can be reasonably contained by creating an alliance of US-friendly states in the region, likely consisting of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kurdistan, (unofficially) Israel, and others, designed to hedge against any possible threat from Iran and her allies. The solution then, is clear. Pull out of Iraq’s sunni and shi’ite regions, and work with our allies to form a clear alliance against Iran. Before you know it, the quagmire will not be in Wahington’s lap, but in Al Qaeda and Teheran’s.

iTax

2006-11-29T16:25:00.000-05:00

Looks like a Dutch music industry group, SONT, is looking to impose a tax on digital music players, such as Apple's iPod, and Microsoft's Zune. The music industry is claiming that products such as the iPod and the Zune encourage piracy, and discourage consumers from purchasing music through venues such as CDs.

This sort of behavior is corporate welfare and economic protectionism as its worst. If the objective is to prevent "unfair competition" as some call it, why not make cars illegal? I'm sure they put a lot of coach-builders out of work, and I bet many of those guys had families to feed.

Its the consumer that matters, not the rest. Protectionism of this sort hurts consumers, stunts economic growth & technological advancement, and in the long run, is bad for all of us. Yes, even the CD manufacturers, and yes, even the coach-builders.

Trade Deficits: Good or Bad?

2006-11-29T16:08:00.000-05:00

Russell Roberts of George Mason University has a great article dispelling the hysteria over America's rising trade deficits.

A trade deficit is actually quite desirable, not the other way around. For each good or service America imports, that is one good or service it does not have to spend time producing on its own. Exports are, more or less, the cost that a nation pays for its imports. A smaller export-to-import ratio is really no different than lower prices on the shelves at your local store.

In our personal lives, we pursue trade deficits all the time. Grocery shopping is a great example. We WANT a large trade deficit with our supermarkets. For every essential item they provide us, we do not need to invest time, effort, and money ourselves. And certainly we do not want to see prices raised, just for the knowledge that we now have a smaller "trade deficit" with our market, and it would be more painful for that supermarket if we stopped going there.

But, as with so many other things in life, cool-headed reason goes out the window when politics gets involved.

Does Public Property Exacerbate the Problem of Environmental Damage?

2006-11-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

We hear a lot these days about the problem of environmental damage. Whether its the ozone layer, the ocean, or any other hot issue of the moment, the general message is that the environment is in trouble, capitalism and western development are the causes, and government intervention is the solution.

I don't think its so simple.

Most of us have heard the parable of the "Tragedy of the Commons", originally published in 1833 by William Foster Loyd. The story goes that, in England, there were once common areas to which the peasantry could take their herds to graze. However, after a time, the commons had become so completely destroyed by grazing that the government passed the enclosures act, allowing private firms to develop on them and paving the way for the Industrial Revolution.

This illustrates an important principle: Private property is what gives people an incentive to pay the costs of upkeep. Why would one incur that cost, if one does not have ownership over a thing? Since others will profit from your cost, should you choose to incur it, and you have no personal incentive to do so, since it will not prevent you from using this thing, there is no reason to do so.

A more modern example goes like this: Say that I own a factory which produces wingnuts, and this factory belches smoke out, all day, and all night, over a river. But who owns the river? Nobody, it is public property. And public property really means the property of nobody.

So while diplomats and dignitaries wring hands over accords and resolutions, nothing is done.

But what if somebody owned the river? Well likely they would be unhappy that I was belching smoke out over it. Certainly my actions would lower their own enjoyment of the river, but would also likely have an effect on their ability to use the river for other ends.

Any property-owner who cared would certainly sue for damages! And it is unlikely that the cost of reaching some settlement with the river-owner would be greater than the cost of a protracted legal battle with him, for my factory.

There would likely be no hole in the ozone layer if there was somebody who owned the ozone and had something to say about people ripping large holes in his property.

But nobody does. When everybody owns something, nobody owns it. And nobody takes responsibility.

Government interventionist plots being hatched up are almost universally plans to expand, not contract, the reach of public property.

Count on them to be policies to expand, not contract, the level of damage to our environment.

Welcome!

2006-11-29T14:45:00.000-05:00

This is my first post. I love to write on issues of culture, politics, philosophy, religion, and economics, and often have no particular venue for what I want to say. So, I figured a blog was a good idea. You'll be able to stop by for all my rants on the world as it is, and as I think it ought to be.

My names Ben Tansey, I'm a undergrad at Umass Dartmouth, where I double-major in Political Science and Economics. I'm a Catholic Libertarian. Weird, huh?