Being Autonomous

Ted Lieu's 'Defense' Of Free Speech

2018-12-16T13:19:00.002-08:00

As of this writing in December, 2018, Ted Lieu is the U.S. Representative for California's 33rd Congressional district.

The image below shows my response to Lieu's tweet that he would "like to regulate Fox News", but that he cannot because of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and that is, to quote Lieu again, "a good thing in the long run."

This is a confession of a sociopathic impulse, and a very weak defense of the First Amendment's protection of free speech. The implication of Lieu's comment is that he has the sensibilities to properly censor popular news organizations, but that others should not have that power, and so it is "a good thing in the long run" that even Lieu himself not be granted that
power —

https://twitter.com/MaxAutonomous/status/1073124266495827968

I received a response to my tweet via e-mail stating that Ted Lieu's tweet "is fine", because in the end Lieu did state that it is good that he cannot act on his impulse to censor others because of the First Amendment —

"... but this tweet is fine. He is saying it is a good thing we have the first amendment. Yes, his admitted urge to censor is strange, but he seems to recognize it is good that the government doing so is illegal."

The writer then used as a kind of analogous example an opponent of rent control living in a rent controlled apartment, when they would prefer that government initiations of force like rent control be illegal —

" ... That [rent control] should be illegal ... If it were illegal, I could honestly say 'I'd rent that apartment from you at a forcibly under market rate, but that is illegal. I am glad it is, because it's better in the long run.' Right?"

This seems reasonable, since as an individual citizen you cannot control what government does, and being a renter by itself is not a participation in the implementation of rent control. Provided an individual does nothing to help institute or perpetuate government coercion, they share no guilt in it.

But there is an important difference between this example and the impulse to censor speech — that someone rents in a city with an immoral rent control law, is not the same as having an impulse to implement rent control, as Lieu stated he had an impulse to implement censorship to "regulate" Fox News.

That is, there is a difference between saying that I would live in a rent controlled city, if it were the most convenient location, while still opposing rent control, and saying I would like to live in a city whose rents I could control, but I cannot because it is illegal, and I know that is ultimately a good thing in the long run.

The difference is having an impulse to do something that can only do harm, and being grateful not because you cannot act on your impulse, but because some others cannot act on theirs, versus not having the impulse at all, because you know it can only do harm.

This is exactly why I responded to Lieu the way I did — way too many people think their sociopathic tendencies have a reasonable quality and would be beneficial if only they alone could act on them, but are perhaps just not "a good thing in the long run" if all others had the chance to get the same power, and so they have some kind of enlightenment for forgoing their desire to subjugate others.

No one will ever convince me that the impulse to initiate force against others "is fine".

And, regarding their appeal, there is another critical difference between rent control and government censorship that should be highlighted — despite both being destructive policies that should be illegal.

Many people have studied rent control, and so they know the economics and the harm that it causes — hence the writer's comment that it should be illegal. This old joke from economics comes to mind: "Short of aerial bombardment, rent control is the surest way to destroy a city." No disagreement there.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/planning-transport/only-bombing-would-be-worse-than-rent-control
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/12/silicon-valley-decides-to-bomb-its-own-housing-market-...
http://archive.is/0z5zr
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/10/rethinking-rent-control/29072/
https://web.archive.org/.../https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/10/rethinking-rent-control/29072/

But what makes rent control appeal to so many people? Not much. It requires the initiation of force, and that alone is the justification for opposing it. There are also no good economic arguments to defend price controls in general, so anyone who studies price controls at all (including rent control) will learn they exacerbate problems, rather than solve them. Obviously, scarcity and poverty cannot be reduced by fixing prices. See Henry Hazlitt's 'Economics In One Lesson' for a discussion of the destructive consequences of price fixing —
https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson/#calibre_link-27

So what is at the root of the popular appeal of a destructive subsidy like rent control? Dishonesty.

People simply want something they cannot afford, and so they band together with other people who are willing to be dishonest, to attempt to use government to make other people subsidize them — while they ignore the force employed on their behalf by government, as well as the destructive consequences that follow as a result of pushing the cost of what they are using onto others.

This dishonesty is what gives rise to bizarre, nonsensical rationalizations, such as: "it's part of the social contract", or "you have to give back to society", or "<service X> is a human right", and of course, "you didn't build that". None of these simpleminded comments can withstand any scrutiny, and they are all employed in an attempt to avoid identifying the forced subsidy that lower income taxpayers receive under progressive taxation, as if others must subsidize them by right.

But at least forcing someone else to pay has that thin veneer of appeal: "cheap stuff for me is good".

But what gives Ted Lieu's impulse to censor a veneer of plausibility or respectability?

Notice that in Lieu's tweet he mentioned Fox News, and not Antifa, or some neo-Nazi group, or any other similar group actively promoting violence. This aspect of Lieu's comment is especially perversely fascinating — given the recent repeated acts of so-called 'political' violence, which are legitimately illegal, it is interesting that Ted Lieu expressed an impulse to silence a news organization he does not like. Pity Lieu's impulses are not more focused on controlling criminals who are committing actual acts of violence.

Can anyone describe even a supposed simpleminded benefit that would come from Ted Lieu's hypothetical ability to censor a popular news organization? Why not censor MSNBC, for example? Are they not just as biased as Fox News?

It would be difficult to make the case that other news organizations are not at least as biased as Fox News, but singling out one news organization as Lieu did, as if only that organization stands out as being biased above all others, is only a confession of bias. That Lieu would mention a single news organization, as if it alone deserved to be "regulated", is just another indication of his corruption.

But how could just bias, even if true (rather than calls for violence), give rise to an impulse to censor? Does Ted Lieu not see his own bias?

A craven hypocrite demanding rent control has a slight moral superiority when compared to Lieu — at least the rent control advocate demands theft for their own direct benefit, while Lieu has an openly admitted impulse to control what others can experience, as if his sensibilities about what anyone should even be permitted to think about are somehow superior. Power for the sake of power.

Whatever one comes to believe about Ted Lieu's motivations and his impulse to censor, he certainly cannot be described as attempting to get at the truth.

In that regard, consider this quote from John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty', 'Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion', regarding the critical role of considering adversaries in honestly forming one's opinions (emphasis added) —

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222998/page/n31/mode/2up

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/34901/pg34901.txt

... If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections.

... But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favor some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition, even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.

I cannot think of a reasonable way to defend what Lieu wrote, especially given his qualification that others should not have the power to censor. Ted Lieu's statement that the First Amendment preventing him from regulating Fox News is "a good thing in the long run" is a half-truth, at best. The First Amendment's restriction is not just good in the long run, even if it happens to restrict some good people along the way — it is a requirement of civilization at all times. Ted Lieu's statement regarding the First Amendment is corruption, because it implies something that is false — that Ted Lieu, or some other minority of supposed 'good people', could wield the power to censor honestly.

The point of the First Amendment is not:

"I have reasonable sensibilities, and so I would be able to censor intelligently, but many others who try to get power will not, and so censorship should be illegal."

The point of the First Amendment is this:

"No human being could wield the power to censor honestly, and so no human being should ever have that power."

Ted Lieu's sociopathic impulse is exactly what one should expect from a typical politician — that he is not more brazen about it does not justify giving him praise.

We live in a sick culture, and Lieu's polite, mealy-mouthed 'defense' of the First Amendment is just one indicator of that sad fact.

If Ted Lieu were to write founding state papers such as a U.S. Constitution, would he include anything resembling the First Amendment? What has Ted Lieu ever done to indicate that?

I have no doubt that the majority of people would accuse me of exaggerating a poor 'turn of phrase' in this criticism of Ted Lieu, if not defend Lieu's statement outright. But no one with a real understanding of the critical nature of the First Amendment, never mind adversarial challenges to one's opinions in general, would speak or write in the manner of Ted Lieu regarding the First Amendment.

If Ted Lieu's 'defense' of the First Amendment is considered 'reasonable' by the overwhelming majority, that is just one more demonstration of why much of the U.S. Constitution is ineffective at limiting government.

H.L. Mencken - "BAYARD vs LIONHEART", July 26, 1920

2018-12-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

"But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental—men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. . . .

. . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum."

— H.L. Mencken, from 'BAYARD vs LIONHEART', July 26, 1920,
taken from 'On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe', 1956, p.21

This piece from H.L. Mencken is a good reminder of the corruption entailed by democratic rule. Without strict restrictions on voters, like the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, a 'democratic' mob will not retain any semblance of freedom, and even with such restrictions, a loss of freedom is still inevitable — it just takes longer to occur. Notice that an overwhelming majority of voters have always longed to escape responsibility, and subjugate themselves to government — that the bulk of the U.S. Government's budget is transfer payments is eloquent testimony to that fact —

BAYARD vs LIONHEART

H.L. Mencken July 26, 1920

One discerns in all the current discussion of MM. Harding and Cox a certain sour dismay. It seems to be quite impossible for any wholly literate man to pump up any genuine enthusiasm for either of them. Each, of course, is praised lavishly by the professional politicians of his own party, and compared to Lincoln, Jefferson and Cleveland by the surviving hacks of the party press, but in the middle ground, among men who care less for party success than for the national dignity, there is a gone feeling in the stomach, with shooting pains down the legs. The Liberals, in particular, seem to be suffering badly. They discover that Harding is simply a third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner, and that Cox is no more than a provincial David Harum with a gift for bamboozling the boobs.

These verdicts, it seems to me, are substantially just. No one but an idiot would argue seriously that either candidate is a first-rate man, or even a creditable specimen of second-rate man. Any State in the Union, at least above the Potomac, could produce a thousand men quite as good, and many States could produce a thousand a great deal better. Harding, intellectually, seems to be merely a benign blank—a decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity perhaps comparable to the late Harrington, of Maryland. Cox is quicker of wit, but a good deal less honest. He belongs to the cunning type; there is a touch of the shyster in him. His chicaneries in the matter of prohibition, both during the convention and since, show the kink in his mind. He is willing to do anything to cadge votes, and he includes in that anything the ready sacrifices of his good faith, of the national welfare, and of the hopes and confidence of those who honestly support him. Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction. Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man of honor.

But it is one thing to yield to virtuous indignation against such individuals and quite another thing to devise any practicable scheme for booting them out of the synagogue. The weakness of those of us who take a gaudy satisfaction in our ideas, and battle for them violently, and face punishment for them willingly and even proudly, is that we forget the primary business of the man in politics, which is the snatching and safeguarding of his job. That business, it must be plain, concerns itself only occasionally with the defense and propagation of ideas, and even then it must confine itself to those that, to a reflective man, must usually appear to be insane. The first and last aim of the politician is to get votes, and the safest of all ways to get votes is to appear to the plain man to be a plain man like himself, which is to say, to appear to him to be happily free from any heretical treason to the body of accepted platitudes-to be filled to the brim with the flabby, banal, childish notions that challenge no prejudice and lay no burden of examination upon the mind.

It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful. They admire a Roosevelt for his bold stratagems and duplicities, his sacrifice of faith and principle to the main chance, his magnificent disdain of fairness and honor. But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil. When Roosevelt, losing hold upon his cunning at last, embraced the vast hodgepodge of innovations, some idiotic but some sound enough, that went by the name of Progressivism, they jumped from under him in trembling, and he came down with a thump that left him on his back until death delivered him from all hope and caring.

It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one's meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.

In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life. He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes. There is room for two sorts of them—first, the blank cartridge who has no convictions at all and is willing to accept anything to make votes, and, secondly, the mountebank who is willing to conceal and disguise what he actually believes, according as the wind blows hot or cold. Of the first sort, Harding is an excellent specimen; of the second sort, Cox.

Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy—the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental—men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. But if he is, like Harding, a numskull like the idiots he faces, or, like Cox, a pliant intellectual Jenkins, it is easy.

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

'Positive Rights' Cannot Peacefully Coexist With Human Rights

2018-12-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has paid taxes knows that tax collections are made with the threat of force. The government is not asking for volunteers.

Many people seem to believe that if they avoid naming this fact, it will cease to exist.

For example, see the responses to my tweet below —

https://twitter.com/MaxAutonomous/status/1063905909737279488

Those who wish to pretend that tax payments do not entail an initiation of force, should tell others how they can 'opt out' of paying for all the destructive things that government does, since many people would like to know how to exercise that supposed 'freedom' (I know I would). Obviously, this is not possible, which is what makes all tax collections an initiation of force — that is, if you refuse to pay (when that is even possible, as with income taxes), loss of freedom or property (i.e. prison time, or an asset seizure) is the ultimate consequence.

Notice the phrase the first responder used in the tweet above — "Or how you get to create the definition" — indicating that we can simply chose to ignore the actual relationship of a subjugated taxpayer to government, and so by 'creating a new definition', the nature of compulsory tax payments, which are made against the will of taxpayers, will no longer exist in reality. Of course, the notion of 'creating a definition' has nothing to do with the enforcement mechanism actually used to collect tax payments. The enforcement mechanism that government creates for tax collections is either acknowledged, or it is not — citizens have no ability to affect the process, or alter what it means, by 'creating new definitions'. That is, government 'creates the definition', since government defines the tax code, and the penalties that will be exacted from those taxpayers who unilaterally decide that the payment system is voluntary (i.e. not an initiation of force).

And notice how the second responder to my tweet above, chose a check on the government's power to deprive citizens of freedom, that the founders wrote in the Bill of Rights (the right to counsel to defend against a state prosecution, in the 6th Amendment), as somehow indicating government is justified in always depriving people of freedom whenever a large enough group demands that others subsidize them. This is the implication of trying to make it seem like forcing one group of taxpayers to purchase some good or service for another group (e.g. health care), is somehow consistent with an accused being legally required to have counsel during a state prosecution, at taxpayer expense.

The second responder implies that taxpayers (the state) providing an attorney at no cost to individuals being prosecuted by the state, as part of due process, is similar to forcing one group to pay for the medical care of another. A court appointed attorney is a kind of small check on state power, because that 'subsidy' provides some assistance to those who are actually being attacked by the state (since that is what a criminal prosecution is). A court appointed attorney is similar in concept to the Miranda warning, or any other element of due process, which must all be paid for by taxpayers — all such impediments on government's ability to imprison citizens make it harder for the state to railroad an accused (of course, these impediments also make it more difficult to imprison the guilty, since the process must be followed in all cases). But notice the court system itself is a 'subsidy', when viewed in this way, since if the Founders were not so suspicious of government power, they could have 'simplified' the legal process by eliminating due process and the court system entirely, in order to reduce taxpayer expense (thankfully, they did not).

But what does that have to do with forcing one group to buy another group health care — as if health care can only be some kind of state process, or that health care needs were actually created by the state, and so must be funded by taxpayers?

Must it really be explained that if you cannot afford to purchase something yourself, and if you then use a political process to create legal penalties against others if they do not make tax payments to cover your cost (i.e. welfare redistribution in general), that you have participated in initiating force against others? Again, to compare this to the 6th Amendment, notice that the Constitution does not create 'a right to counsel as needed', it grants 'a right to a defense against the state' — that is, it only applies in one set of circumstances, which the state controls, when it is explicitly trying to take away an individual's freedom.

Also notice that everything in the U.S. Constitution is intended to restrain government — even the election cycles are the forced replacement of political power at regular intervals (i.e. politicians must re-compete for their jobs whether they (or even the voters) like it or not). It is disturbing to see how few seem to understand that the Constitution, from beginning to end, expresses a deep and well justified distrust of government and politicians.

A human right can only be defined as a right to freedom of action, to gain and keep property in order to sustain one's life — that is all. You have a right to be left alone, to take action to acquire property to sustain your life, free from coercion (the only restriction being the rights of others to freedom of action), and so no legitimate human right can require action from others, except in cases of justified restitution (i.e. retaliatory force). If you have not harmed someone, you have not violated their right to freedom of action, and so you do not morally owe them anything (certainly not hours or days of your labor).

This is a kind of axiomatic concept — trying to argue against it (that is, that people can morally be forced to satisfy the supposed 'positive rights' of others, without respect to any restitution) leads to hopeless contradictions. That is, you have to argue that somehow one person has a 'higher standing' than another, based on some subjective criteria — poverty, lack of 'privilege', etc. — and so becomes 'entitled', and that those individuals you have assigned a 'lower standing' cannot morally disagree (they are not 'entitled'), and so they cannot morally fight back to protect themselves against the required initiation of force to satisfy the supposed 'positive right' that was created (e.g. free health care).

Of course, this is the lie that statists repeat over and over — if you disagree with their supposed moral hierarchy (e.g. the poor are 'entitled' to be subsidized by those more wealthy, a la Bernie Sanders, etc.), statists then define you as immoral, in an attempt to make any rebuttals to their self-contradictory position seem depraved.

In short, legitimate, moral human rights cannot exist to the extent that people accept the notion of 'positive rights', since an individual's right to freedom of action cannot peacefully coexist with the supposed 'positive right' of others to take his time and labor against his will. Supposed 'positive rights' require an immoral initiation of force, because they can only be satisfied by the time and labor of others, and therefore, the loss of freedom (i.e. a rights violation) is required by the fulfillment of such supposed 'rights'.

To the extent that so-called 'positive rights' are enforced, actual human rights must be violated, since so-called 'positive rights' can only be fulfilled by taking by force.

https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/Mans-Rights
http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/the-virtue-of-selfishness.html
http://www.aynrand.org/novels/virtue-of-selfishness

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”
A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort.
Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness — not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy.
The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property.
— Ayn Rand, from her 1963 essay 'Man's Rights', included in her book 'The Virtue Of Selfishness'

When Denying History Is Required

2018-10-28T23:40:00.001-07:00

https://sahih-bukhari.com/Pages/Bukhari_5_58.php
http://www.askourimam.com/2016/04/06/the-six-authentic-books-of-hadith/
https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Kutub_al-Sittah

The passages in the image above, describing Muhammad's marriage to a six year old girl, come from the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, one of the Kutub al-Sittah, or six major hadith books of Sunni Islam, containing acts of the prophet Muhammad.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was recently convicted by a court in Austria for violating an anti-blasphemy law. Here is an interview with Sabaditsch-Wolff regarding her background, and her conviction for stating that Muhammad was a pedophile —
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/117135/persecution-elisabeth-sabaditsch-wolff-jamie-glazov
http://archive.is/15PNJ

See the Tweets below from a "scholar" attempting to make the case that the prosecution of someone under anti-blasphemy laws, for repeating what is written in a religious text regarding Muhammad marrying a six year old girl (i.e. pedophilia), is "legally correct", given the existence of other laws which restrict free speech and prohibit denying recorded history, i.e. Holocaust denial.

Whether Muhammad actually married a six year old girl or not (or even existed at all), is not relevant. Millions of Muslims see the stories in the hadith as sacred, and they believe these books are true, just as Christians believe the Bible is true. Forcing people to remain silent about the statements in such texts is equivalent to forcing people to deny history, if only religious history. And to those who would object to describing Muhammad's marriage to a six year old girl as pedophilia, what would you call it?

And if such ancient religious texts (regardless of the religion) could be proven false (never mind criminal), then enforcing anti-blasphemy laws goes beyond denying historical fact, and becomes a defense of propaganda — the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth for a political agenda.

This defense of a blasphemy conviction is obviously contradictory, but it is no surprise that someone would make the nonsensical claim that it is "legally correct" to force people to remain silent regarding some religious text which advocates child abuse (a crime in any civilized society), since it is supposedly consistent with a law prohibiting speech that denies some period of history. A law prohibiting Holocaust denial, however misguided, is intended to prevent people from attempting to conceal a crime. And a law denying people the right to point out what are commonly considered crimes (e.g. sex with a nine year old) does the opposite — it helps to conceal a crime.

Such laws restricting free speech are invalid and contradictory, and would not exist in a society dominated by honest people. That is, such laws make expressing certain opinions a crime, and require the initiation of force. Those who deny the Holocaust, for example, deserve contempt and ridicule for attempting to whitewash history, but such ignorance or dishonesty by itself does not violate the rights of others, and so there is no reasonable way to argue that a government initiation of force is required to stop it.

No government could wield the power to control speech honestly.

So it is no surprise that government bureaucrats would contradict the intent of a law prohibiting a class of attempts to eliminate historical facts (i.e. Holocaust denial), by forcing people not to repeat damning facts about Islam, in order to whitewash Islam's history.

Denying history is required, when it fits the political agenda of the day.

https://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski/status/1056032714707603456
https://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski/status/1056032703211016192
https://twitter.com/Ayaan/status/1055984413643685889
http://archive.is/x1AP3

Memo From Rachel Mitchell Regarding Christine Ford's Allegations

2018-09-30T23:10:00.002-07:00

Shown below are images of the memorandum that Rachel Mitchell sent to Republican Senators on September 30, 2018, regarding her analysis of the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh. Notice that Mitchell writes —

"A “he said, she said” case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard."

And recall that the "preponderance-of-the-evidence" standard is the weaker standard of proof used in civil trials, versus the "beyond a reasonable doubt", or "to a moral certainty" standard that is used in criminal trials —
https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1586
https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=59

In short, there is not enough evidence to even give Christine Ford a civil judgement, never mind justifying a criminal trial against Brett Kavanaugh.

https://www.scribd.com/document/389821761/Mitchell-Memo

Here are images of the timeline Rachel Mitchell included in her memo, with the related events from July 6 to September 26, 2018. Notice that the letter which Christine Blasey Ford wrote detailing her allegations, was delivered to Senator Dianne Feinstein's office on July 30, 2018, and that Feinstein wrote a letter in reply to Ford on July 31, 2018 —

Yes, Social Media Lemmings, Women Lie, Just Like Men

2018-09-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

Here are reactions from some Twitter users to the article linked below by Megan Fox, entitled "How to 'Christine Blasey Ford-Proof' Your Son", where Fox had the temerity to write that women lie. No sane person should be shocked or surprised by this claim — any adult, who has had contact with enough people, has seen people of every race and gender lie. Lying is a fundamental human behavior — every person has lied to some degree, even if only telling 'white lies' as a kind of coping mechanism (i.e. the common phenomena of denial). Indeed, this Twitter thread is a display of dishonesty, in that the responses are derogatory, while making no attempt to actually address the content of the article. If the article is as bad as these comments imply, it should be easy to give specific examples and explanations, which is what an honest person would at least try to do when making a criticism —

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1043936130972803072
http://archive.is/AL7bT

As is usually the case, it was difficult to find an intelligent response from Twitter users to the article — the responses in that thread give the impression that these users are so blindly ignorant, or dishonest, that they actually would like others to believe that women are somehow unique, in that they never lie. Of course, it is possible that many of them did not even read the article — being completely ignorant has no tendency to give Twitter users any restraint or humility.

And note the Twitter user 'Popehat', who wrote the original tweet, is a lawyer — you would certainly think a lawyer would know better regarding the human tendency to lie. Also notice that 'Popehat' wrote that the article contains "uniformed legal opinions", but, of course, he chose not to name them. As an attorney, you would think he would want to warn people if some harmful legal advice were given, but it seems it is more appealing to Twitter users to titillate each other, than to have a useful conversation —
https://pjmedia.com/parenting/how-christine-blasey-ford-proof-your-son/
http://archive.is/5BMgv
https://pjmedia.com/columnist/megan-fox/
https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/
http://archive.is/z9GEY

Quoted below is part of the paragraph that may have offended readers the most (again, assuming many of them actually read it), where Megan Fox actually recommends not trusting women in general. Obviously, you could attack this with respect to personal relationships based on experience, where both men and women can prove that they can be equally trustworthy (and equally dishonest). But you certainly cannot attack this advice with respect to a Supreme Court nomination hearing, where much of the public is crying out for a woman with inconsistent, and decades old accusations, simply to be believed. With regard to today's culture, and especially with regard to the current Kavanaugh hearings, this is perfect advice. Recall that Anita Hill's accusations against Clarence Thomas back in 1991 were never proven, and they did not rely on accurate, decades old memories from high school, as in Ford's case (i.e. Hill's accusations were more credible) —

https://pjmedia.com/parenting/how-christine-blasey-ford-proof-your-son/
http://archive.is/5BMgv

"4. Don't trust women
Sorry to say it, but my sex offends and horrifies me. Between Stormy Daniels and Ford, women are a disgrace. Contrary to the saccharine platitude that "women don't lie," women lie all the time. They lie like crazy. The younger they are, the more they lie and scheme. It's probably the rage of hormones and insecurity that contribute to it, but most women lie and scheme. ... "

No one should be trusted by default, but no one is demanding that only men be trusted. Of course, as is often the case, the hypocrisy surrounding the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings is enormous. As if anyone would argue as they have for the Kavanaugh case, when confronted by their own accuser — "just believe my accuser, it does not matter what they remember". And I wonder if the lawyer 'Popehat' follows such advice in court, and simply trusts all women. The question answers itself.

Here is an article (linked by Fox) with horror stories regarding teenage girls who engaged in lying and harassment. Again, there is no reason to be surprised by this, since all human beings are capable of the same contemptible behaviors. Virtue is worthy of great respect precisely because it is rare, which means the majority will not achieve it — i.e. it takes more than not being a criminal to be virtuous —
https://pjmedia.com/trending/when-every-boy-is-guilty-every-girl-becomes-a-monster
http://archive.is/5Ykfx

And notice that even if you have the magical belief that women are dramatically superior to men in their level of honesty, and so you believe the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh, recall that Brett Kavanaugh has been a U.S. Circuit Judge since 2006, and involved in government since at least 2001, and so Ford somehow decided that it was acceptable for a "sexual predator" to sit as a Circuit Judge, and so did nothing all those years, while such a "sexual predator" was free to do his worst. That is, if Ford's accusations were actually true, that makes her contemptible for sitting silently while a sexual predator was free to harm other women.

But also notice that Ford has insisted that she told no one at the time. This means she did not even tell her closest friends to warn them that she had been attacked, for their own protection —
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/christine-ford-witnesses-confirm-claims/
http://archive.is/4ZYzW

And here is a bizarre comment from Ford, where she indicates that she believes it is not fair to expect her to remember the details when accusing someone of having committed a crime —

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/17/metoo-spurred-christine-blasey-ford-to-open-up-about-alleged-attack-.../
http://archive.is/OTWvn

“I’ve been trying to forget this all my life, and now I’m supposed to remember every little detail,” one of those friends, Jim Gensheimer, recalled Blasey Ford saying that summer day while watching her kids participate in a Junior Lifeguard program. “They’re going to be all over me.”

Sorry Christine, but sane, reasonable people expect you to remember what happened, if your memory is going to be treated as evidence for a crime having been committed.

For those who claim that it takes great courage to come forward, as making the accusations can ruin your life, we can look to Anita Hill as a counterexample, since Hill had several positive outcomes which were a direct result of her accusations against Clarence Thomas back in 1991, even though, again, Hill's accusations were never proven. Here is Janice Fiamengo's 'The Anita Hill School Of Success' —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVsIUR80E8c
https://twitter.com/StudioBrule/status/1043288901639651328
https://twitter.com/JaniceFiamengo

For those who are too naive to believe that women, just like men, will often lie when it suits them, see —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/08/lying-about-hillary-clintons-lies.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/07/mediamatters-hillary-clintons-shill.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/emmett-till-lynching-carolyn-bryant-donham.html
http://archive.is/4va6E

http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/08/rolling-stones-false-rape-story-will-end-in-the-magazines-demise/
http://archive.is/0YZVE

https://twitter.com/SenWarren
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris
https://twitter.com/SenFeinstein
https://twitter.com/BarbaraBoxer

The Economics Of Immigration

2018-03-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

What are the economics of immigration?

Under a fair system of taxation that distributed the full cost of government over all working citizens, and a well functioning court system that efficiently enforced rule of law, immigration would be an overwhelming positive — we would want as many people as possible to share the cost of government, and to contribute to economic growth, and so we would want to encourage immigration.

But we do not have anything even remotely approaching the first two conditions. The United States has an advanced court system that functions quite well in comparison to most of the world, but it still has a glaring amount of corruption. And considering government funding and taxation, the United States, like many other countries, has an ever increasing debt load that it has no chance of paying off.

https://www.cato.org/events/qualified-immunity-supreme-courts-unlawful-assault-civil-rights-police-accountability
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-corrupt-judges-of-ninth-circuit.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/07/government-spending-tragedy-of-commons.html

There are studies that attempt to show that immigration has a significant negative cost —
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/record-135-billion-a-year-for-illegal-immigration-average-...
https://fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers

This should not surprise anyone who is even remotely familiar with the transfer payments that make up the bulk of the government budget, and the debt load that is being pushed on to future generations.

http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-trust-fund-tolls-for-thee.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/12/rare-honesty-on-social-security.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/08/george-wills-cognitive-dissonance.html

Nothing the United States government does is fully funded without adding debt, so it is clear that only those who make the largest tax payments are paying anything approaching their fair share (if not more) of the cost of government (despite all the disingenuous talk to the contrary), since the government does not tax nearly enough to cover its budget, since that would be wildly unpopular.

So you do not have to do a study to understand that United States residents at the lowest income levels (immigrant or not), pay almost none of the costs of government — you just have to understand that the United States tax system is heavily progressive, and so no one at the lower income levels pays their share of the costs of government (never mind those at the lowest levels).

All United States taxes are based on percentages (sales, property, income), to take the most from those who make and spend the most, and income taxes are paid almost exclusively by upper income earners.

http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/11/paul-krugman-defining-pandering.html

Low income earners will pay property taxes indirectly (via rental payments), but a low income earner will be forced to economize (living in the cheapest areas, with the least expensive properties), and so their indirect tax payments will be minimized as well.

Payroll taxes like OASDI (Social Security) are distributed to beneficiaries (i.e. they are one of many transfer payments made by government), and so they do not cover the cost of government — they are merely taken from one person to be given to another.

So over time, given the current tax system in the United States, a large number of immigrants at the lowest income levels must add to the tax burden of Americans at the upper income levels, or the government's debt level (or both).

The current system of taxation and benefit payments in the United States is not sustainable, so even if immigration could be magically halted completely, it would not make the present condition sound — and adding more uneducated low income earners certainly does not help that condition.

Immigration is not an unqualified economic positive — there are many factors at play, and many people discussing this as an economic positive under current conditions, are assuming preconditions that are obviously false. Unless perhaps the United States government could steal the OASDI payments that were made using fraudulent Social Security numbers (sarcasm) —

http://reason.com/reasontv/2018/02/14/best-arguments-against-immigration
https://web.archive.org/web/20180315110030/http://reason.com/reasontv/2018/02/14/best-arguments-against-immigration

And of course, it is no surprise that politicians pander by supporting supposed 'immigration reform', because in this way they can attempt to conceal their vote buying as a supposed defense of human rights, while they ignore the rights of taxpayers.

The article from 'reason.com' quoted in part above is especially ironic in this regard, since the articles published there tend to be very critical of government irresponsibility, and the government's unwillingness to address the entitlement crisis —
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/08/uncle-sam-continues-to-stick-his-head-in
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/08/ivanka-and-conservatives-want-to-raid-so
https://web.archive.org/web/http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/08/uncle-sam-continues-to-stick-his-head-in
https://web.archive.org/web/http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/08/ivanka-and-conservatives-want-to-raid-so

So why do so many politicians want more open borders, and does anyone think that will encourage such politicians to become more responsible? That is, politicians gain and keep office by promising credulous voters things that they cannot have, and such politicians do not support open immigration because of its supposed economic benefits.

https://www.minds.com/media/816517462740099072

Here is an excerpt from the article 'Immigration Lies and Hypocrisy' by the economist Walter Williams —

http://walterewilliams.com/immigration-lies-and-hypocrisy/
https://twitter.com/WE_Williams/status/958342920767262721
http://archive.is/Nccde

And then there is the process of societal breakdown that can occur as a result of a large number of immigrants from more primitive cultures, and especially from those that follow strict religious doctrines like Islam, which urge followers to kill apostates (see the UK, France, Germany, Sweden).

http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-likely-murder-of-asia-bibi.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/01/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-islamic-hate-speech.html
https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal
https://www.nytimes.com/...-attacks-on-women-in-cologne-were-unprecedented-germany-says.html
http://archive.is/RV5EK
https://www.nytimes.com/.../swedish-police-investigate-over-40-reports-of-rape-and-groping-at-2-music-festivals.html
http://archive.is/gpckR

https://twitter.com/ralnick/status/974764533695750145

The Moral Confusion Of Julia Ebner

2017-05-08T00:37:00.003-07:00

As of this writing, Julia Ebner is a Senior Researcher at Quilliam Global —

https://www.quilliaminternational.com/about/staff/julia-ebner/
https://archive.is/g6EZz

Quilliam Global is supposedly "the world’s first counter-extremism organisation" (emphasis added) —

https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Quilliam_(think_tank)
https://www.quilliaminternational.com/about/
https://archive.is/08fhI

Notice that the name 'Quilliam' comes from Abdullah Quilliam, a British convert to Islam, who argued for a global 'Caliphate' —
https://www.google.com/search?q=Abdullah+Quilliam

But notice that a 'Caliphate' is an Islamic theocracy, and is therefore a form of religious extremism, since it requires religious oppression —
https://www.britannica.com/place/Caliphate
https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/caliphate
https://www.google.com/search?q=caliphate

So it is no surprise that a 'Senior Researcher' at an organization named for a follower of Islam, would make no attempt to criticize Islam. For example, notice the absurd moral confusion from Julia Ebner in the quote below, and apply her thinking to WW II, as just one other example of extremist world views (the quote begins at about 5:20 in the video) —

https://youtu.be/GtZQsReyUiA?t=321

"... they are also consistent with the other extreme's world view. Islamist extremists tell us the West is at war with Islam. While the far-right tells us that Islam is at war with the West. Well, they're perfectly complementary. If we go back to our 'Star Wars' example, whether you are on the 'light' or on the 'dark' side of 'the force' doesn't really change the story. The only thing that does is the perspective. The same is true for far-right and Islamist extremists — they are in the same movie, reinforcing the same story. And thus helping each other as story tellers. ..."

Notice that "the dark side", using Ebner's reference to the 'Star Wars' movies, was synonymous with "the empire" and evil — that is, "the dark side" in Ebner's reference, is completely consistent with statism and tyranny, where an evil regime thought nothing of destroying entire planets as an exercise in coercing rebel leaders (like Princess Leia) —

https://youtu.be/lAAXorA4pg8

But that one side was fighting to enforce tyranny and create destruction, while the other was fighting for freedom, did not "really change the story" for Julia Ebner — it is just a story about a fight between two groups of extremists.

And notice that Julia Ebner was using her 'Star Wars' reference as a denigrating example of a cultural phenomena — that is, that people too readily respond to oversimplified world views, that eliminate confusing details, to create simple black and white assessments of world events (the image below appears at 3:30 in Ebner's TEDx video) —

https://youtu.be/GtZQsReyUiA?t=210

"... In an increasingly complex world, black and white narratives, that eliminate all confusing gray zones can be comforting. We all love binary world views. Just think about the most successful movies in history. 'Star Wars', you have the light and the dark side of the force. It's simple. I even understood the narrative at the age of 6 and thought it was great. ..."

Julia Ebner claims to have understood the "simple" 'Star Wars' narrative at the age of 6, yet she still is not able to keep the dramatic differences between the two sides straight, and that their goals, methods, and practices, completely contradict one another — as opposed to being "complementary". That is the whole point. That is, self-defense is not complementary with aggression — self-defense is a response to aggression to restore freedom, whereas aggression is the initiation of force to end freedom (whether from a petty criminal or a state). The conflict in movies like 'Star Wars' is extreme to make it simple for the audience to take sides. This does not mean the conflict is simple, or that people have a "binary world view" — it means that any sane person can easily tell who the bad guys are — despite that Julia Ebner still seems to be having trouble with this.

Now apply Julia Ebner's thinking to WW II — since the Allies would have told us that they were at war with the Axis powers, while the Axis powers would have told us that they were at war with the Allies, they represent two extremist groups "in the same movie". So according to Julia Ebner's perverse logic regarding "storytelling", the Allied and Axis powers (most especially Nazism under Hitler's Germany), would be "complementary", "reinforcing the same story, and thus helping each other as story tellers." Should this make sense to any sane person?

And Notice that the definition of 'complementary' is:

"combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize the qualities of each other or another."

So can any sane person explain how Islamist "extremists" (with their support for religious theocracy under Sharia Law), and Western "extremists" (with their support for secularism, free speech, and free elections), enhance the qualities of one another?

Obviously, this is completely absurd — any religious theocracy (never mind Islam and its violent Sharia Law (e.g. death to apostates)) is completely antithetical to the Western value of freedom (especially religious freedom). There is no reasonable way anyone could argue that the conflicts over such contradictory world views are somehow "complementary", as Julia Ebner has attempted to do. But following Ebner, anyone who points out these obvious conflicts and contradictions, between the West and Islam, or the Allied and Axis powers, or the "light" and "dark" sides of "the force" in 'Star Wars', and takes sides against aggression, is a "far-right extremist". And per Ebner, these "extremists" are all "... reinforcing the same story ... they're perfectly complementary" — the stories do not conflict.

As if all this were not enough, notice that Julia Ebner suggests a moral equivalence between Donald Trump and the militant Sunni terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi —

https://youtu.be/GtZQsReyUiA?t=474

"... So yes, maybe after all it wouldn't be so absurd to see Trump and al-Baghdadi celebrate their triumphs together. ..."

Does Julia Ebner honestly believe that Donald Trump would like to establish some kind of Christian dictatorship, that is somehow equivalent with the Islamic theocracy that Al-Baghdadi would like to establish? Or is Julia Ebner simply lying?

And does Julia Ebner think that such asinine hyperbole would embolden those like Trump and his supporters, or somehow make them go away? Such irony — in a talk that is supposedly about "extremist" groups feeding off one another, the speaker casually drops extreme statements comparing the head of state of a free country, to a militant terrorist who wishes to establish a religious theocracy. It is no surprise that someone like Julia Ebner would be too blind to see her own role in what she calls "extremism".

So much for being a "Senior Researcher" at an organization which is supposedly aimed at "counter-extremism". Julia Ebner's work is best described by the phrase 'advocacy research' — research attempting to promote a political agenda, rather than the truth —
https://www.google.com/search?q=advocacy+research

Liberal Dishonesty

2017-03-12T23:25:00.001-07:00

Discussing government with co-workers recently, I commented that the often heard complaint that America 'is divided' is a kind of absurdity, given that so many view government as a kind of father figure that should be distributing economic benefits and special privileges.

Given that view, disagreement and a fight over who is going to be forced by government to give what to whom follows by necessity — so it makes no sense to complain about 'divisions' when you demand that government use one person for the sake of another.

One so-called 'liberal' minded co-worker looked at me quizzically, as if I had said something that was obviously false — but other than that, he did not respond to my point. It was as if he believed that if someone did not agree with his chosen distribution of other people's labor, there was no point in even discussing it — never mind if there were any justification for an initiation of force from government to begin with.

There is a kind of dishonest denial here — it is as if many would throw a match into a large bucket of gasoline, and then complain about the ensuing explosion. If you do not desire an inevitable outcome from a particular action that you engage in, it makes no sense to complain about that outcome, as if you did not participate in producing it.

If you do not like the divisions created by government from the exploitation of one individual for the sake of another, then you should stop supporting government policies that pit people against one another. That is, you should be fighting to minimize government power, as well as attempting to educate people regarding their dishonest sense of entitlement to a particular quality of life — as if even bare subsistence is not a product of human labor, and so can trivially be provided without initiating force against others, and thereby violating their rights.

Here is a tweet which provides a good summation of the liberal mindset. It supposedly contains a quote from John F. Kennedy, but for the purposes of this discussion who said it is not relevant — only that such statements resonate with many so-called liberal minded people —

https://twitter.com/PIWillia/status/840964106777694212
https://archive.is/PZuWQ

Notice that the tweet above, and the quote it contains, are perfect examples of moral preening — that is, posturing to create the impression in the minds of others of a caring, thoughtful person.

If you really care about the welfare of other people, like, say, their housing, for example, then you take action to facilitate the production of affordable housing, or you contribute to charities that take action in that regard. You might contribute to, or volunteer for the 'Habitat For Humanity', as just one example —
http://www.habitat.org/volunteer/near-you/find-your-local-habitat

That is, you actually do something yourself to improve the welfare of others — you do not just tell others that you care, because obviously that accomplishes nothing with regard to improving anyone's welfare — other than make you feel superior to others (and it is baffling why it would even do that).

And then you might tell others about your work with that charity (tweeting or otherwise), or the value of contributing, and how that charity actually helps real people. That is, you show your concern for real action, and actual impacts, rather than attempting to create an impression in the minds of others that you care.

And certainly, you never try to use the political process to create an initiation of force from government to achieve your supposed goals regarding helping others, since that stands in direct contradiction to the supposed concern for 'the welfare of the people — their civil rights, and their civil liberties', as stated in the tweet above.

Of course, that is the liberal lie — the primary goal of a majority of liberals is to initiate force against others, in order to make a public display of their supposed caring — that is, to engage in moral preening. The actual outcomes created by such attacks on individual rights and liberties are not a concern for the typical liberal — the public pretense of displaying their morals is what is key.

As demonstrated by the content of the tweet shown above, the goal is to posture to others as to what 'I am ...', and not to succeed at any actual achievement. As the old saying goes: 'Actions speak louder than words.' And it should be obvious why — nothing is easier than talking, but following through with action can take a great deal of time and effort — but only action proves an intention.

And when liberal action is aimed primarily at initiating force against others, to make them pay, what intention does it prove?
A concern for the welfare of others does not come to mind.

David Brooks In His Echo Chamber

2017-02-18T23:58:00.001-08:00

In a previous post I gave some examples of absurd and cowardly reporting regarding the recent riots in Berkeley, California —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-craven-journalist.html

To further illustrate the same pattern, here is an opinion piece by 'The New York Times' columnist David Brooks —

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/opinion/what-a-failed-trump-administration-looks-like.htm
https://archive.is/G52uU

This is the main question that comes to my mind when I read opinion pieces like these:

Who does the author think is being fooled?

This is an opinion piece, so it is not expected to contain only a description of facts — but notice that Brooks does not provide a single fact to support his sweeping denunciations. Brooks wrote his opinion piece in what is essentially code to credulous readers of 'The New York Times'. If you are an ardent Democrat, and you are eager to dismiss the corruption of the likes of Hillary Clinton, then such writing resonates with you emotionally, but that is all. Here is more on Hillary Clinton's corruption, in case you had forgotten —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/07/mediamatters-hillary-clintons-shill.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/08/lying-about-hillary-clintons-lies.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/09/paul-krugman-and-hillary-clinton-birds.html

That is, if you are honestly trying to understand anything regarding Trump's administration, what Brooks wrote is completely unconvincing, and so it is pointless — no one who does not already despise Trump — or has any critical thinking skills — will be swayed by it.

Consider Brooks's first paragraph —

https://archive.is/G52uU

I still have trouble seeing how the Trump administration survives a full term. Judging by his Thursday press conference, President Trump’s mental state is like a train that long ago left freewheeling and iconoclastic, has raced through indulgent, chaotic and unnerving, and is now careening past unhinged, unmoored and unglued.

What is Brooks communicating here apart from contempt? There is a comedic aspect to this kind of adjective laden writing — it is as if the author is attempting to fool the reader into believing that the lack of substance is somehow sophisticated.

And how about this —

https://archive.is/G52uU

There are no longer moral arbiters in Congress like Howard Baker and Sam Ervin to lead a resignation or impeachment process. There is no longer a single media establishment that shapes how the country sees the president. This is no longer a country in which everybody experiences the same reality.

Brooks drops a mention of impeachment without even a suggestion regarding any possible grounds for impeachment — Brooks just expects readers to fill in the blanks. Even if readers believe that Trump should be impeached, after only about one month in office, why would Brooks simply assume anyone would agree with his opinion regarding the justification? The point is not whether you believe Trump should be impeached or not — the point is, why would a writer simply assume that readers would understand his reasoning regarding the supposed grounds for impeachment?

Of course, I am being ridiculous. Again, this is code. There is no need to substantiate anything inside of an echo chamber — Brooks is just throwing agreement at dull ignorant readers who want to delude themselves that they stand on principle, despite their complete inability to articulate or defend any principles. That readers have no idea regarding the details of what Brooks is actually talking about is critical — Brooks and his readers just want to share their hatred.

And the last two sentences in the paragraph from Brooks quoted above are so transparently ridiculous they are laughable. There is no doubt that Brooks longs for a society where all individuals are as credulous as his admiring readers, so he and his colleagues could have them all 'experience the same reality' — we should be thankful that Brooks is completely open in his view of the proper role of media in society. It is a pity that David Brooks will not struggle to understand the significance and difficulty of actually understanding reality, before he anoints a 'a single media establishment' with 'shaping how the country sees' anything.

And the paragraphs from Brooks quoted below deserve to be repeated — notice how Brooks almost seems to relish a lack of rule of law in government, and that corrupt government employees will do whatever they want, regardless of the law (never mind their employment agreement) —

https://archive.is/G52uU

The likelihood is this: We’re going to have an administration that has morally and politically collapsed, without actually going away.

What does that look like?

First, it means an administration that is passive, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. To get anything done, a president depends on the vast machinery of the U.S. government. But Trump doesn’t mesh with that machinery. He is personality-based while it is rule-based. Furthermore, he’s declared war on it. And when you declare war on the establishment, it declares war on you.

The Civil Service has a thousand ways to ignore or sit on any presidential order. The court system has given itself carte blanche to overturn any Trump initiative, even on the flimsiest legal grounds. The intelligence community has only just begun to undermine this president.

President Trump can push all the pretty buttons on the command deck of the Starship Enterprise, but don’t expect anything to actually happen, because they are not attached.

Is that clear? Part of this assessment from David Brooks of 'a Failed Trump Administration' is that government employees are corrupt at all levels, and freely ignore the law.

And to David Brooks, this is a denunciation of Trump.

Now I cannot tell who is more corrupt — David Brooks, or the lawless government he is describing.

The Craven Journalist

2017-02-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

Reading the major newspapers today has become almost exclusively an exercise in studying cowardice and illogic. And despite contributing to massive ignorance, irresponsible and incompetent journalists posture as if they are some kind of social benefactor. Of course, craven journalists will never take responsibility for contributing to social problems.

For example, consider the dishonest and completely absurd language here in a piece by Dave Weigel of 'The Washington Post'. Weigel would like his readers to believe that 'anarchists' (i.e. those who favor complete freedom of action, and no government), are rioting to stop people from hearing a talk —

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/02/03/milo-yiannopoulos-is-returning-to-white-house-briefing.../
https://archive.is/Fx4NR

...
The Leslie Jones incident was rocket fuel for Yiannopoulos's image. He toured college campuses ahead of the 2016 election, live-streaming each speech. Several speeches were canceled by security concerns; the ones that went forward often carried a whiff of danger, as students walked though metal detectors to enter and Yiannopoulos sometimes theatrically ripped off a bulletproof vest onstage.

But the situation in Berkeley, where anarchists using “black bloc” tactics turned a mass protest into a violent conflagration — with made-for-TV images of garbage fires — has been an even bigger boon to Yiannopoulos. On Thursday night, his trip to D.C. began with a friendly interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a show that has ridden anger at left-wing activism into best-in-class prime time ratings.

There was no discussion of what the peaceful protesters in Berkeley had objected to — namely, Yiannopoulos's kick off of a campaign against “sanctuary campuses.” According to a promotional Breitbart story that ran before the event, Yiannopoulos was set to “call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies,” and the ex-radical David Horowitz would keep up the campaign on other campuses.
...

According to a professional journalist, the rioters are 'anarchists', as opposed to supporters of statist government policies, and extensive government control of the lives of individuals — such as, what can be said to whom, and when.

And notice the denigrating dismissal of the 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' show in the quote above — according to Weigel, the show's appeal comes from "anger at left wing activism", and has nothing to do with providing any useful content to viewers. Perhaps the 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' show is bad, or perhaps it has ridden to "best-in-class prime time ratings", as Weigel put it, because it provides a refutation of incompetent journalists like Dave Weigel — whatever the reason, you will not learn what it is from the likes of Dave Weigel.

And, of course, you will certainly not get an acknowledgement from Dave Weigel of the possibility that the content he provides is much worse than that provided by the 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' show — however bad that show may be.

It is also fascinating that many seem to believe, including Dave Weigel, that public universities that are largely funded with tax dollars, should be 'sanctuaries' for violating immigration law — Weigel's description implies that any criticism of violating immigration law is somehow grounds for a protest.

Now consider this definition of 'anarchism' from 'Merriam-Webster' —

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchism

Definition of anarchism

1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
2: the advocacy or practice of anarchistic principles

If you believe Weigel, 'anarchists' now oppose freedom of speech and freedom of association.

It is so odd that all of the supposed 'anarchists' at the Berkeley protest forgot that anarchism is based on the belief that all forms of governmental authority are harmful, and that all human interaction should be voluntary. The notion that any individuals who actually held those beliefs would violently protest a talk is absurd on its face.

It is polite to call Weigel's description here pathetic. Who does he think he is going to fool? Will any honest readers with any familiarity with left leaning protesters believe that violence was not their intention? Protesters who are constantly attempting to silence those they disagree with, while also crying out for government to give them something at the expense of others?

As opposed to those 'anarchists' Weigel is so confused about, who want everyone to be able to freely associate without any government control.

Also notice that the supposed subject of the Berkeley riots — the journalist Milo Yiannopoulos — is a British national, and so has nothing to do with U.S. Government policy. You could not make this up — there could not be a more absurd target for a protest regarding law or government policy in one country, than a foreign national from another, who is a journalist.

And notice Weigel's use of the phrase 'mass protest', as if the intention of these so-called 'protesters' was not to provoke violence — that is why they cover their faces Dave, so they can commit crimes while avoiding being identified, so they can escape penalty. Of course, a journalist like Weigel would like readers to believe that a small group of rioters (Weigel's supposed 'anarchists') were able to take over "a mass protest" by "peaceful protesters", but how would that have been possible, if the rioters were only a trivial minority?

Here are photos from the 'East Bay Times' of that trivial minority, that supposedly took over a peaceful protest. The original captions are included in the images below to show that they contain the usual level of dishonesty, in that they repeatedly refer to the rioters as 'protesters', as if those rioting are somehow victims, and that stopping a talk is somehow a legitimate goal for a protest, never mind a riot —

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/02/01/uc-berkeley-cancels-breitbart-provocateur-milo-yiannopoulos-event/
https://archive.is/vXZIn

Rioters tear down a barricade at UC Berkeley, California, February 1, 2017.

Rioters about to tear down a barricade at UC Berkeley, California, February 1, 2017.

So-called 'peaceful protesters' surround a car at Berkeley, California, February 1, 2017, supposedly in response to Milo Yiannopoulos.

So-called 'peaceful protesters' march at Berkeley, California, February 1, 2017, supposedly in response to Milo Yiannopoulos. Notice what looks like a woman on the left carrying a baseball bat.

A rioter dancing around a fire at Berkeley, California, February 1, 2017, supposedly in response to Milo Yiannopoulos. Does it appear that the large crowd behind the fire approves or disapproves — or do they even know why they are there?

Perhaps all the protesters should be defined by their tactics and what they fight for, rather than what some of them call themselves (anarchist, or otherwise). Perhaps all the protesters are more aligned with the typical Democrat, and even a good number of Republicans — that is, those who favor government subsidies and restrictions on free speech — i.e. statism.

Perhaps those, such as journalists like Dave Weigel, who wish to pretend that violent rioters are aligned with supporters of freedom of speech and association (i.e. anarchists), do not want to acknowledge that they themselves are most aligned with what the violent rioters are actually doing — trying to put down the people that they disagree with.

That is, associating a movement that supports freedom with violent rioting is an expression of an agenda. It is an attempt to dissociate oneself from the most basic expression of one's beliefs — the pretense that your initiation of force is moral. The rioters are perfectly aligned with all of the statists among us — they just have the consistency to commit the acts of violence required by their agenda themselves.

Statism requires the initiation of force, not anarchism, so it is no surprise that many would attempt to conceal the glaring fact that the rioters are an expression of statism.

In that regard, notice what happened to Eddy Bruck, who had the courage to challenge some of the rioters for trying to silence others. Not surprisingly, Bruck was assaulted.

Eddy Bruck stated what may be the most insightful characterization of the Berkeley rioters that you will hear — good luck finding such honest assessments from most journalists —

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/02/01/uc-berkeley-cancels-breitbart-provocateur-milo-yiannopoulos-event/
https://archive.is/vXZIn

Eddy Bruck — "They are afraid of free speech, so what do they do? They want to silence it all."

Notice the absurdity of the original caption from the 'East Bay Times' — it reads as if Bruck's face just happens to bleed.

To add to the absurdity of Dave Weigel's 'Washington Post' piece, partially quoted at the top of this post, here is a quote from Weigel's blog from January 2, 2017. Notice that Dave Weigel fancies himself as dispensing some kind of wisdom to the rest of the world, and "rumbling their worldview" —

http://daveweigel.com/
https://archive.is/JDEyk

The arrogance in the quote above deserves to be emphasized —

"But 2016 was, as the documentarian Adam Curtis put it, a defeat for journalism, in which people like me were reminded how little people want to hear information that rumbles their worldview."

That is what it means to be inside the mind of Dave Weigel — he is 'rumbling those worldviews' with his dishonest euphemisms about world events, such as when people are assaulted, because they wanted to attend a talk by someone a group of rioters disagree with.

And notice that when you challenge Weigel's obvious ignorance, he wants no part of it. I re-tweeted his misrepresentation regarding what it means to be an 'anarchist', and of course, just as you would expect from a craven, agenda driven journalist from a newspaper like the 'Washington Post', he immediately blocked me. This from a journalist who fancies himself as 'rumbling worldviews' —

https://twitter.com/MaxAutonomous/status/823021137902780419

And it is no surprise that Weigel — a professional journalist at a major U.S. newspaper — is not alone in attempting to pretend that the tactics of the rioters are diametrically opposed to the political label being used to describe them.

Here is an article from the 'San Francisco Chronicle', dated February 5, 2017, entitled 'Why UC police let anarchists run wild in Berkeley' —

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Why-UC-police-let-anarchists-run-wild-in-Berkeley-10908034.php
https://archive.is/AvgFw

Here is an article from 'The New York Times', dated February 2, 2017, entitled 'Anarchists Respond to Trump’s Inauguration, by Any Means Necessary' —

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/anarchists-respond-to-trumps-inauguration-by-any-means-necessary.html
https://archive.is/NPkEp

At least the article from 'The New York Times' included a photo of a rioter painting the anarchism symbol on the wall, indicating that at least one rioter actually thinks he is supposedly fighting for an end to state power, even though the photo was taken at a protest to end freedom of speech — so obviously that rioter is either lying, or profoundly confused (not to mention the journalist that wrote the title for the article).

And this article from a local television station, 'CBS 6' in Richmond, Virginia, is even more ridiculous. Here a government employee — a female firefighter — is described as being a member of an 'anarchist group'. I guess she still has not discovered that anarchists oppose all government —

http://wtvr.com/2017/01/26/henrico-firefighter-reassigned-after-being-arrested-for-rioting-in-dc/
http://archive.is/8oubH

If you are at all interested in the truth in any of this, you will not get it from journalists at any of the major newspapers — and certainly not from someone such as Dave Weigel at 'The Washington Post'.

If someone built a large Peace sign with steel pipe, and attached it to the end of a baseball bat, and then went around clubbing people to death with it, would journalists at all the major newspapers describe that person as a 'protesting pacifist'?

Here is the story from two victims, of what intrepid journalists like Dave Weigel like to call 'anarchists'. Notice that one woman was pepper sprayed while giving an interview to a journalist — she was fortunate that she was turning away just as it happened, so the spray largely missed her eyes. But did anyone among those 'peaceful protesters', or the journalist and his crew try to stop it, or express any concern afterward? Well, of course not —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIFYTYNl7ng

And here is J.D. Tuccille, Contributing Editor at Reason, pointing out that the tactics of the rioters at Berkeley align them solidly with Nazis — as much as that label has been projected onto Milo Yiannopoulos, among others —

"It’s tough being a heroic anti-Nazi street fighter when you’re the closest thing to a Nazi around."
http://reason.com/archives/2017/02/07/thugs-indulge-their-weimar-dreams-and-be

The Women's March 2017

2017-02-04T22:54:00.001-08:00

On January 21, 2017, there was a 'Women's March on Washington' to protest the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.

Here is the 'Mission & Vision' statement for the 2017 'Women's March on Washington' —

https://archive.is/WXbcs

Notice this sentence from the 'Mission & Vision' statement shown above —

'We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.'

And this —

'We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society.'

Very well. What reasonable person who would disagree with such statements?

Here is the 'Unity Principles' statement for the 2017 'Women's March on Washington' —

https://archive.is/hXlI6

Notice this sentence from the 'Unity Principles' statement shown above —

'We believe that Women’s Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women’s Rights.'

It would have been clearer to write that there are no separate categories of rights — there are only individual rights, and which all women share with everyone else. As written in the quote above, the implication is that only women have rights — and from the behavior of many women, I do not doubt that many of them believe this.

And notice the element of confusion in this sentence —

'Women deserve to live full and healthy lives, free of all forms of violence against our bodies.'

'Living a full and healthy life' depends on a long list of factors, most of which cannot be provided by government (even with no restraints on taxation), and as such are not a legitimate subject of a protest. Obviously, health, as just one example, is primarily a product of nature — even with advanced medical care, the physiological processes of the human body are largely beyond the control of medical science (see the survival rate of pancreatic cancer, for example). And of course, 'a full life' depends primarily on one's own choices — this makes it especially telling that it would be included in a statement of protest principles, as if such individual choices are somehow to be dealt with as a matter of government policy. Even if some form of government could provide complete protection from any crime or violence, this would in no way ensure that any individuals 'lived full lives'.

And of course, again, no reasonable person would disagree with ending 'all forms of violence'. Though it is not clear why the qualifier 'against our bodies' would be added — the implication is that forms of harassment are acceptable.

But now notice the national co-chairs of the 2017 'Women's March on Washington', and that a prominent supporter of Sharia Law, Linda Sarsour, is among them —

https://www.womensmarch.com/team/
https://archive.is/h9hfs

Here are a number of tweets from Linda Sarsour from 2014 and 2016, promoting Sharia Law —

https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/483624197931806720
https://archive.is/OcW0P

https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/484513285921046529
https://archive.is/Ga2Fx

https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/534073703588700160
https://archive.is/twVRD

https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/719301817771892737
http://archive.is/w6ood

Here are two more tweets from Linda Sarsour from May, 2015, extolling a supposed virtue of Sharia Law — interest free debt. This begs the obvious question, who would be doing any lending when it only cost them to do so —

https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/598327052727615488
https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/598326262218813440
http://archive.is/Tepny
https://archive.is/bGUtO

And here is a tweet from Linda Sarsour from March, 2011, denouncing two women who are vocal critics of Islam, Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Note that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised Muslim, and suffered the customary Islamic female genital mutilation at the hands of her grandmother. Ayaan Hirsi Ali may know slightly more about the practice of Sharia Law than Linda Sarsour. I guess Linda Sarsour did not feel the need here to be restrained by the 'Unity Principles' statement of the 'Women's March on Washington', that women should be 'free of all forms of violence against our bodies' —

https://archive.is/ZdFSI

Here are replies from a Saudi Arabian woman to one of Linda Sarsour's tweets — she did not appreciate the false statements that Linda Sarsour has made regarding the supposed benefits of Sharia Law —

https://archive.is/68JAd

So much for those mission and principle statements of the 2017 'Women's March on Washington' —

'We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.'

'We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society.'

'We believe that Women’s Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women’s Rights.'

But it gets even worse.

Now notice the honorary co-chairs of the 2017 'Women's March on Washington', and that a prominent Communist, Angela Davis, is among them —

https://archive.is/TXzui

The photo below is of Angela Davis with Erich Honecker in 1972. Honecker was the Communist leader of East Germany from 1971 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Keep this quote from the profile of Angela Davis above in mind, as you ponder the picture below, showing her being friendly with a brutal dictator —

'Through her activism and scholarship over the last decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in our nation’s quest for social justice.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/women-on-fbis-most-wanted-list/3/

Also, notice that Angela Davis was the second black woman to make the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list —
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/meet-nine-women-fbi-s-10-most-wanted-list-n552631
https://archive.is/80upV

In August of 1970, Davis was a fugitive wanted on murder and kidnapping charges, as a result of acting as an accomplice in an attack on a courtroom in Marin County, California. Guns which were registered to Davis were used in the armed escape of the three murder defendants, 'The Soledad Brothers', from the Marin County courtroom. The three defendants and the case judge, Harold Haley, were killed in a shootout with police, as they were transported away from the courtroom. Davis was arrested two months later at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City, and was later acquitted by jurors of kidnapping and murder, since she was not directly involved in the attack. Angela Davis is now 'Distinguished Professor Emerita' at the University of California, Santa Cruz —
https://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/faculty/index.php?uid=aydavis
https://archive.is/WhIG

Those on the political left have a consistent pattern of defending tyranny in general — including Islam. Linda Sarsour is a perfect demonstration of the pattern — as is the 2017 'Women's March on Washington', which Linda Sarsour helped to organize.

That a noted Communist with a checkered past like Angela Davis would be featured prominently as an 'honorary co-chair' of the 2017 'Women's March on Washington' further demonstrates that point.

Here are more examples —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/06/progressive-infatuation-with-totalitarianism.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-courage-of-charlie-hebdo-the-cowardice-of-john-semley.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/garry-trudeau-charlie-hebdo-cowardly-conformity.html

If either of the ideologies that Linda Sarsour and Angela Davis promote were put into practice in the U.S., a 'Women's March' would not be possible, and they would be among the first to be imprisoned.

Methodologies Do Not Lie, But People Do

2017-01-27T18:39:00.001-08:00

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
— Joseph A. Schumpeter, 'History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954)', p. 43n

Some scientists would like you to believe that the methodology they supposedly practice has intentions, and can be trusted to have invulnerable integrity.

Science is a methodology and cannot do anything — including such things as tell the truth, or lie. Only human beings, such as scientists, can lie.

Saying 'Science does not lie' is itself a kind of lie — it is an attempt to deceive others that a process that requires the actions of human beings, can never be corrupt, when that process can only be as valid as the human beings who engage in it are honest.

Especially when monetary reward is possible, the invulnerable integrity implied by the statement 'Science does not lie' is obvious propaganda — of course, a method cannot lie, but scientists, like most other humans, can and will, when it suits them.

Supposed 'scientists' marching on Washington with such obvious propaganda is just one more reason not to trust them —

https://twitter.com/i/moments/824382457570996224
https://web.archive.org/web/20170128023006/https:/twitter.com/i/moments/824382457570996224
https://archive.is/2p47s

https://twitter.com/TimKarr/status/824302160859037696

Happily Biting A Helping Hand

2017-01-21T15:43:00.000-08:00

An associate editor at Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, posted a tweet pointing out protesters she encountered in Washington DC, who purchased goods at a business that is a product of capitalism and free markets, while simultaneously protesting capitalism. Not surprisingly, her tweets generated some controversy, confusion, and dishonesty (mainly dishonesty) —

https://twitter.com/ENBrown
https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/822535666441613317

https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/822583329849544704

The dishonesty in the responses is almost too ridiculous to be believed. One tweet in reply was that somehow one is forced to patronize capitalist businesses as a result of living under free market conditions — as if freedom compels interaction with businesses. How many people expect any other even remotely sane person to be convinced by such nonsense?

"surely you understand that fighting against capitalism doesn't change the fact that we currently must exist under capitalism" https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/822535666441613317

It is hard to believe, but one person seemed to not understand the original intention of Elizabeth's tweet — as if the hypocrisy of the supposed 'protesters' was not obvious, and the business they had patronized was not a product of what they were protesting. What is going on here? Do some people actually believe that businesses like 7-Eleven are some kind of government run, socialist enterprise — i.e. that they are not a product of a free market and capitalism? —

https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/822582930723766273

To those who honestly do not understand, perhaps part of Elizabeth Nolan Brown's original intent was to point out the very common hypocrisy among people of denouncing that which they happily use and receive a benefit from.

Notice the completely nonsensical, and even aggressively stupid reply from Michael Curry. Curry did not address the original comment that someone would patronize a nationwide business that only exists because of capitalism and free markets, while simultaneously protesting capitalism and free markets — but instead Curry implies that it is absurd to think that people should not take benefit from that which they think is harmful, as if there is no other way for them to satisfy a particular need —

Curry: "If capitalism is so bad, why do you eat food? Checkmate!"

Notice the explicit idiocy here, relative to Elizabeth Nolan Brown's original tweet — you either buy some food at a nationwide, capitalist business, or you starve.

The point is not what was being purchased, but that the mechanics of the production and distribution of the product (i.e. private property and free markets) was being denounced, and yet still patronized.

This is exactly like protesting a slaughterhouse, while simultaneously eating a steak.
This is exactly like protesting slavery, while simultaneously buying a slave at auction.

This is exactly like protesting a violation of individual rights, while simultaneously destroying the private property of individuals.

That the good was food was incidental — the same point would have applied if the protesters had been buying any number of other things — lug nuts, fertilizer, tennis balls, etc.

In an attempt to pretend that he has a point, Curry (like many others) drops the context of Elizabeth Nolan Brown's original comment — in this case, a purchase from an institution that is a product of what what was being protested.

If you fill in the details that Curry conveniently leaves out, in his attempt to sound reasonable, you see that he has no point —

If capitalism is so bad, why would you buy anything (including food) from nationwide, or even global institutions that are a product of capitalism?

In short, if capitalism is so bad, why do you happily take its benefits, when you are not compelled to do so?

And notice the absurd irony of those who claim 'we must exist under this capitalist system', when a free society (i.e. one that has free markets and is actually capitalist) is the only society under which one could actually establish a 'commune' with like minded individuals (or whatever one calls their supposed non-capitalist paradise). It cannot be done under communist dictatorships like North Korea or Cuba, for obvious reasons — completely socialist governments (i.e. governments that own the means of production), will not allow anyone to produce anything without their control.

Perhaps that is what is revealed by all of this willful blindness in the responses to Elizabeth Nolan Brown's original tweet — that many wish to force everyone else to operate under their dictates.

Many seem to have some bizarre delusion that they will be the ones controlling the initiation of force in their twisted socialist dream, and that somehow, magically, they will be able to control the power they are dreaming of, but only at the expense of everyone else.

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown replied in a tweet to a dishonest responder: "you're willfully misreading what I say. Why?"

When you prefer a lie, that is what you do.

Say Anything

2017-01-18T00:14:00.001-08:00

Many people are making the claim that they will lose their health insurance if the 'Affordable Care Act' is repealed. Not so.

What will be lost is a third-party decision maker (the U.S. Government) initiating force against one group, to provide a subsidy to another group for the purpose of purchasing health insurance. A subsidy is what would be lost, if the 'Affordable Care Act' is repealed — that is, the ability to purchase health insurance partially at someone else's expense.

But even if this were not the case, and many people were actually going to lose a health insurance plan that they had purchased without government assistance only as a result of the 'Affordable Care Act', why should anyone have even the slightest concern, given that supporters of the 'Affordable Care Act' had no concern for those who lost health insurance plans they had purchased when the 'Affordable Care Act' was originally passsed?

Why should supporters of the 'Affordable Care Act' expect such concern, when they had no such concern themselves?

http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/12/trying-to-put-slippery-worm-on-hook.html

No Great Pride Being A Veteran

2017-01-14T23:58:00.003-08:00

I served 5 years on active duty in the U.S. military. When I enlisted after graduating from high school in the early 1980's,
I was convinced that it was a good thing to do — that the U.S. deserved a strong defense, and that I would benefit from my participation.

When I enlisted I did not see myself as making some great sacrifice, nor did I think that others who did not serve should necessarily see themselves as being in the debt of military veterans — such a debt would be conditional, and would depend on when a veteran served. As an obvious example, serving during WW II would be more important than serving during peacetime (as I did).

I saw U.S. military service as at least worthy of respect, since any participation contributes to deterrence, and I assumed that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens valued freedom, and also that they understood the necessity of a well-prepared military.

For a different take on the value of military service, here is former U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in the 2005 documentary 'Why We Fight'. Karen's story is interesting because she became convinced that the U.S. military no longer serves its legitimate purpose —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVO0G2qA7n8

"I have two sons and I will allow none of my children to serve in the United States Military. If you join the military now, you are not defending the United States of America, you are helping certain policy makers pursue an imperial agenda."

In 2003 Karen Kwiatkowski retired after just over 20 years of services, over the handling of the U.S. invasion of Iraq —
http://www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
https://archive.is/eYNwT

I agree with Karen Kwiatkowski for keeping her sons out of the military.

I am very grateful that my own life was not wasted during my military service, in some asinine 'nation building' experiment, being conducted by corrupt bureaucrats sitting behind desks thousands of miles away from the war zone. I cannot think of any positive outcome that has come from any of the U.S. military actions in my lifetime (from the Vietnam War onward) — never mind an outcome that would justify having sacrificed the lives of any of the members of our military.

To those who think that such a characterization of the more recent U.S. military actions is exaggerated, and that the U.S. military still deserves enthusiastic participation, I have another reason for disagreeing that I think is even more important — the attitude and mindset of many Americans regarding the proper limits on government.

I know almost no one who supports — never mind being able to reasonably defend — the principles of limited government and a free society. Apart from a small group of friends, the overwhelming majority of people I talk to at work, or read in the media or social media, have some kind of sloppy variant of fascism that they wish to enforce. That is, a government that exercises almost complete control over private industry and has an elaborate so-called 'social welfare safety net'.

Of course, no one will refer to this as 'fascism', but apart from the same kind of homogeneous racism, today's so-called 'democratic socialists' have all the same intentions as fascists of the past — authoritarian one-party rule, control of private industry by government but without government ownership to avoid responsibility for failure, and a control of personal income that would make Karl Marx proud. Like the notion of a 'maximum wage', that has been floating around for years —
https://archive.is/FpVu
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-08/local/me-457_1_maximum-wage

This is exactly what prompted me to write a blog post denouncing Bernie Sanders as a symptom of American dishonesty —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/12/bernie-sanders-glaring-symptom-of-american-dishonesty.html

The 2016 Presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders was nothing more than a massive public display of vote buying — a corrupt political candidate promising to buy things (education, medical care, etc.) for one group of voters, with money taken from some other group of voters. The hypocrisy and dishonesty from Bernie Sanders and his followers has been brazen.

While pretending to be on the moral high ground with their supposed compassion, a simple moral justification for any of their supported policies is never given. Like a tribal chant, Bernie and his supporters just keep repeating the claim that some have a right to the labor and time of others, simply because of a need.

At one time, I worked with a couple of ardent Bernie Sanders supporters, and (to the degree that I could stand participating at all) I would try to point out the obvious problems in his positions in the political discussions I had with them — mainly the immorality of using the political process to take from one group to give to another in an attempt to pretend you are compassionate. One day, in a hallway discussion with one of these Bernie Sanders supporters, I pointed out how that not only had our company health care premiums jumped dramatically after the introduction of the 'Affordable Care Act', but that the premiums the employees now had to pay became progressive — if you made more, you had to pay more for the same coverage than a more junior employee.

This particular Bernie Sanders supporter was not comfortable discussing this — he made a comment about the amount of the penalty, as a way of dismissing it — it was as if he knew this was obviously unfair, and he just assumed that trying to pull everyone into the health care system, regardless of whether they could afford it or not, would not harm anyone. I guess it was lost on him that if one could not afford something, that something did not suddenly become affordable to them if government sold it to them — someone else was being forced to make up the difference.

This was just another expression of the dishonesty surrounding this issue, and is typical of Bernie Sanders supporters in particular, but also of supposed 'progressives' in general — none of them are willing to acknowledge that some people must be harmed to support their supposedly compassionate schemes. They hide behind such statements as 'medical care is a right'. Such language only appeals to those who want to force others to purchase what they are using — those who respect individual rights, do not respond to such emotional pleas.

For more examples of American voters who do not support freedom, consider these massively uninformed Hillary supporters, who do not understand that the question being asked was invented to highlight voter ignorance. And ironically, the typical Democrat views Trump as the danger —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiZFXkmofgI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEzCFgltYuY

Or how about these so-called 'social justice warriors' (SJWs), who aggressively attempt to make others follow their petty little dictates, as if it is painfully obvious that they have the moral high ground (these are Canadian students interacting with Professor Jordan Peterson, but there is plenty of this to go around in the U.S. as well) —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE

Do such people deserve freedom? Why? They do not defend the freedom of others.

Do Bernie Sanders and his ilk deserve freedom? Why? They do not defend the freedom of others.

If your primary life goal is to diminish the freedom of others, why should anyone be willing to fight for your freedom?

Enlist in the military to fight for petty cowards, who are constantly trying to use a political process to violate the freedoms of others? Why would anyone defend such cowardly, hypocritical, and dishonest people?

I am certainly not ashamed of my military service, but I would never do it again — mainly because I find it so difficult to find people who care about freedom.

Meryl Streep's Challenge

2017-01-10T00:36:00.000-08:00

Roman Polanski is a famous French-Polish film director. He is known for such films as 'Chinatown', which won an academy award for 'Best Original Screenplay', and 'The Pianist', for which Polanski won an Academy Award for 'Best Director' in 2003.

Polanski is also well known for having plead guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl named Samantha Jane Gailey in 1978. Polanski fled the U.S. in early 1978 to avoid sentencing for the rape charge, eventually moving to France, where he is a citizen, in order to avoid extradition to the U.S.

When Polanski won an Academy Award in 2003 for 'Best Director' for his film 'The Pianist', he did not attend the awards, since he would have been arrested upon returning to the U.S. —

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-173245/Polanskis-surprise-Oscar-win.html

Polanski's surprise Oscar win
In a stunning Oscar upset, Roman Polanski - who cannot set foot in the United States without going to jail - won the Academy Award for best director on Sunday night for his searing Holocaust drama "The Pianist."

Polanski, who fled the United States for France in 1978 as he was about to be sentenced to prison for having sex with a 13-year-old girl, won the Oscar in his third nomination as best director.

Polanski's award was accepted for him in his absence.

Polanski previously was nominated for directing the 1974 film "Chinatown" and the 1979 drama "Tess." He also received a screenwriting nomination for "Rosemary's Baby."

Many in the audience at the Kodak Theatre rose to their feet in a standing ovation, while others remained seated, including his "Chinatown" star, Jack Nicholson.

It was at Nicholson's home that Polanski later admitted to having sex with the underage girl after plying her with champagne and pills. A stone-faced Anjelica Huston, who was in another area of the house at the time, applauded.
...

Here is Polanski, as quoted from an interview conducted in Paris in 1979, from the book 'Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: And Other Excursions', by Martin Amis. At the time of this interview, Polanski had yet to realize that not everyone wants to have sex with adolescent girls, and that even if they did, it should not be considered acceptable to give in to that desire — perhaps Polanski would never realize that —

http://archive.is/FXGfF
https://www.amazon.com/Visiting-Mrs-Nabokov-Other-Excursions/dp/0679757937

...
"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!"
...

Here is Polanski's victim, Samantha Geimer (formerly Samantha Gailey), in an interview on the BBC, where she explains that having to live through the grand jury testimony regarding the rape, was worse than the rape itself. This is not too surprising, given that she saw doing a photo-shoot with Polanski as an opportunity, since he was a successful director, and she wanted to become an actress, and that Polanski drugged her to help overcome her resistance — not to mention the tendency of people to defend Polanski, and treat her as a liar. As she said when questioned about this: "Well, right, the rape was ten minutes, the grand jury testimony was all day..." —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOpG8Ujm-8

Here is Samantha Geimer's book about this experience —
https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Life-Shadow-Roman-Polanski/dp/1476716846

Here is a still image showing Meryl Streep standing to applaud Roman Polanski's award for 'Best Director' in 2003, at the 75th Academy Awards, followed by the video of the Academy Awards during that announcement (the still image is at 1:11 in the video). Recall that Polanski did not attend the awards to avoid being arrested —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnNOBj26lk

Here is Meryl Streep speaking at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards, in accepting their 'Cecil B. DeMille 2017' award, where she denounces an unnamed person for supposedly mocking a handicapped person. Of course, everyone knows the person Meryl is denouncing is Donald Trump, since this story has been repeated in the media over and over again — despite having been repeatedly shown to have been wildly exaggerated (if not completely false) —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV8tsnRFUZw

At 3:58 in the video above, Meryl Streep made this especially ironic statement —

"... when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose ..."

That sounds exactly like what Roman Polanski did to Samantha Geimer, but in a way that is far worse than mere mockery, and yet Meryl Streep has celebrated Polanski. Honest observers are now left to wonder, 'is Meryl lying, or is she just stupid?'

Meryl Streep made some challenging statements in her 2017 Golden Globe acceptance speech — will she be able to live up to any of them?

A Sam Harris Reader Praises The Ad Hominem

2017-01-02T23:55:00.017-08:00

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
— Joseph A. Schumpeter, 'History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954)', p. 43n

"In the flaring parks, in the taverns, in the hushed academies,
your murmur will applaud the wisdom of a thousand quacks.
For theirs is the kingdom."
— Kenneth Fearing, from his poem 'Conclusion'

In previous posts, I wrote about some of the problems with Sam Harris's attacks on Donald Trump — in particular, Harris's attempt to pretend that his denunciations did not amount to an ad hominem fallacy, but rather were somehow a useful comparison between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-sam-harris-fail.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/11/goodbye-sam-harris.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/12/sam-harris-left-out-tears.html

Here is a post from one of Sam Harris's readers at the 'General Discussion' forum at Sam Harris's website, describing a supposed value in the use of the ad hominem fallacy. It almost seems as if Sam Harris was channeling this reader's thoughts in his denunciations of Donald Trump, since Harris seemed to count more on the trust of his followers than on making a convincing case to those who did not already agree with him —

https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread/68551/
https://archive.is/VyQdU

Posted: 23 August 2016 11:35

I have been thinking lately about the possible value of ad-hominem argumentation. The use of ad-hominem argument is often taken to be a sign of irrationality. However, I tend to think that behaviors, institutions, etc. generally arise for a reason. Virtually everyone uses ad-hominem argument at times and I do not think the strategy would have been so universally adopted if it was irrational to adopt it.

Ad-hominem is certainly a logical fallacy so it is an example of a case where our actual behavior diverges from the rule of logic but that does not necessarily make it irrational. I think the use of ad-hominem argumentation is rational in a world where we have very limited access to information. Let’s say I want to form an opinion about the best policy to pursue in Syria. How would I go about making an informed decision about Syria?

Well, I could go to Syria myself and gather information. I could spend years interviewing the people, travelling the country, etc. but this would be extremely time consuming and there would still be information that I would not have access to (I would almost certainly not be invited to listen in on conversations between Assad and the members of his regime, for example).

I could also read books on the subject but here I run into a problem. If I travel to Syria myself I know I can trust the information I gather because I can trust my own eyes but when I am reading a book how do I know that the information I am getting is accurate? I cannot compare it to the original. When deciding what books to read (or articles) and what books to dismiss I need to make some decisions about who is trustworthy and who is not.

The same applies on a forum like this. People often make posts on a forum like this where they provide information that I have no easy way of checking for its accuracy. So, I need to make some decisions about who to trust, what information to accept, what information to treat as suspicious, and what information to dismiss entirely.

I think I probably follow lots of semi-conscious and unconscious rules when making a decision like this. If people seem very belligerent in expressing their views, or they cling intensely to one side of the political spectrum, I tend not to trust them. If someone has a subtle view that is not easily categorized I am more likely to trust them. Tone is quite important here.

However, another way I can reach a decision is: if someone who I already trust attacks the trustworthiness of someone I have not made a decision about yet (i.e. they make an ad-hominem argument). Absent any other information, this seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way to decide who to trust.

I think “logical knock-down arguments” generally fail to sway us on their own because whether an argument is “logical” or not is not the most important question we face when attempting to reach a decision about something. The most important question we face is: Can I trust the information I am getting? and the personal characteristics of the person presenting the information absolutely is relevant to that question.

This is why the best way to win an argument is not to provide some knock-down argument but to convince people that the person you are arguing with is not trustworthy (and any signs that a person gives off that they are trustworthy or untrustworthy is generally more important to me than the content of their argument). So, unless we can find another solution to this problem, (i.e. an objective way to determine what information we should trust), I think ad-hominem is here to stay, and I think it serves a necessary function.

Thoughts?

Notice the absurd contradiction in the forum post quoted above — the author of this post writes that it can be useful for one to use a distracting, flawed form of argument (i.e. a fallacy) to convince others that an opponent is untrustworthy.

Only ignorant or untrustworthy people are manipulated or swayed, never mind convinced, by fallacies. If you witnessed someone you initially trusted using any fallacy in an argument, why would you continue to trust them, and why would you expect them to be at all convincing to anyone else who had no experience with them?

Given that Sam Harris does not refrain from arguing this way, when it suits him, it should not be surprising to find this kind of perverse logic in a discussion post on Sam Harris's website. Obviously, no writer, including Harris, is responsible for the ignorance (or wisdom) of his readers. But if arguing without resorting to the use of fallacy is not one of a writer's principle concerns, then it should not be surprising that it is not a principle concern for that writer's core audience. The post quoted above is a good example of the kind of like-mindedness one finds in approving followers — indeed, being like-minded is one of the main motivators for following anyone.

Obviously, being like-minded with another, in itself, is value neutral — it is not necessarily a denigration, since the value of a belief, if any, depends on its content (like the content of the belief that fallacy is useful). And, of course, some will read bad writers as an exercise in studying illogic and destructive cultural trends (i.e. writers are often read precisely because they are bad (see my critical posts on Paul Krugman, for example)).

Also, notice the example used by the forum post author — the action to pursue in a foreign nation's civil war (i.e. Syria), which, by necessity, requires the use of forced tax collections. The author of the post makes an excellent case for why such foreign policy actions are usually a fools errand in practical terms, and have a track record of some level of failure (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), given that it can be impossible to get the information required to determine if any course of action has even a remote possibility of being helpful. People who have no access to even a substantial portion of the relevant information (which is to say, everyone not in the country and involved directly (and even most of them)) obviously have no chance of making an informed decision, and the use of fallacy from an individual that they admire (but probably should not), will not make their decision informed — it just adds another fallacy to the mix, the 'appeal to authority'.

And, again, the author of the post is making the recommendation to consider the value of distracting and irrelevant statements — that is, a personal attack (i.e. an ad hominem) that does not bear on the position under consideration, as some kind of aid in sorting it all out, to help deal with a lack of information.

The much more serious moral issue of invading a foreign country to intervene in a civil war, using the forced tax collections from citizens who have no stake in the outcome (other than the vague hope that any innocents can escape harm), is not mentioned by the author of the post . The supposed 'value' of a fallacious argument — even if you agree with that questionable premise — is a trivial absurdity by comparison.

The unstated implication of this terrible example is very telling too, since it also fits perfectly with statements Sam Harris has made, which take it for granted that the state has complete freedom to dispose of the lives and labor of its citizens.

Like this example from Sam Harris's podcast from October 26, 2016 —

https://youtu.be/bcWmpHsszbg?t=4910 (segment begins at 1:21:50)

. . .
Sam Harris: "... To take the point I just raised about the progress of technology, clearly, at a certain point, once we arrive at the actual end of human drudgery — I mean, when you have, when you have, self-driving cars, and not only is there no need for ape-driven cars, you would have to be irresponsible to let an ape drive a car, because they are so much worse at it, right? It'll be illegal to drive your own car, and it should be, because right now, 30,000 people, or 35,000 people die every year reliably, because of how bad we are at driving cars. So, at a certain point, the machines are going to steal jobs that aren't coming back, and we have to break this connection, this, this, pseudo-ethical connection between work and having a claim on your own survival in society, right? So the idea that if you don't work, you shouldn't be able to eat, which is where a lot of people, you know ironically, a lot of the people who would vote for Trump, or who will vote for Trump, are people who look across the way at, you know, their shiftless neighbor and think, if you don't work for it, you don't deserve anything. I don't want any of my tax dollars going to support your shiftless lifestyle. Well, at a certain point, I mean, it's an understandable way of thinking, but at a certain point, we will arrive in a world where, again, only if we play our cards right, we'll arrive in a world where there is so much wealth, and so much automation of boring jobs, that there will not be enough productive things to do, and we'll be left with just creative and fun things to do, and people will still have to be paid for that."

Andrew Sullivan: "No, the trouble is that not everybody is capable of being creative."

Sam Harris: "Right. So you need a universal basic income, or you need something that, you need a safety net that get's better and better and better the more wealth gets created.
. . .

Notice how Sam Harris drops the critical issue in his choice of words regarding a 'universal basic income' — that a third party decision-maker must initiate force to provide unearned income to one person at the expense of another. And who gets to decide who works and who doesn't, and how long do you think it will take for a Stalin or Pol Pot like figure to take the job of deciding, and do you think society will be more, or less productive when everyone is promised an income from someone else, even if they do not work? With an endless stream of scandals and human rights violations emanating from world governments, giving governments even more power is still the only recommendation that many people will make regarding improving the human condition.

And, of course, there is no 'pseudo-ethical connection between work and having a claim on your own survival in society'. There is a very real ethical connection between your supposed desire to help people, and your willingness to initiate force against others to do so — the ethical connection is that an initiation of force makes you immoral. The critical point is not, as Sam Harris seems to think, that the principle ethical issue regarding work is that you support yourself — that is conditional (if you are able to work, it is your responsibility). The critical point is that you do not use a political process to force others to work for you, so that if you do not, or cannot, support yourself, you must rely on charity from others for your support — that is, you must rely on the free choice of others.

Some people may 'look across the way at, their shiftless neighbor and think, if you don't work for it, you don't deserve anything', as Sam Harris put it, though it is just as likely that they think 'others do not deserve what I worked for, unless I willingly give it to them.

That is, this is a choice for the individual who worked to produce the wealth, and not those individuals who may want to steal it (it is theft, if it was not given by choice, regardless of the intent) — or, as in Sam Harris's case, the individuals who wish to engage in moral preening by pretending their demand for an initiation of force is what is helping others, rather than the productivity of those individuals whose wealth they plan to steal.

Sam Harris's statement in the quote above is the essence of why society is so divided — at least half of the people (or perhaps many more) think that they are justified in subjugating others for any goal that has even the vaguest hint of supposedly being compassionate. The mythical Trump supporter Harris denigrates is not the problem for wanting to be left alone, or perhaps for wanting to help only those who they feel deserve their help (how dare they) — the problem is all of the dishonest people who think, like Sam Harris, that the individual lives of an entire society are their play thing, and that they are free to dispose of them to satisfy their moral pretensions.

In the forum post quoted previously, the same pattern is displayed — the more important moral issue of initiating force to support an intervention in a foreign civil war is simply ignored, as if it has long since been settled and is not worth even being questioned.

Oh, but let us discuss the supposed value of our chosen authority making insulting comments as a way of making those who disagree with their position look untrustworthy. ... sigh ...

In closing, here is a portion of Ayn Rand's essay 'Collectivized Ethics' — I repeat this often, since it is so applicable to this repetitious pattern of ignoring individual rights in people's attempt to grasp at pretending they are a social benefactor --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OvL1_89QDs
http://www.aynrand.org/novels/virtue-of-selfishness

...
Since nature does not guarantee automatic security, success and survival to any human being, it is only the dictatorial presumptuousness and the moral cannibalism of the altruist-collectivist code that permits a man to suppose (or idly to daydream) that he can somehow guarantee such security to some men at the expense of others.

If a man speculates on what “society” should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men’s lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them, to set their goals or to plan the “distribution” of their efforts.

This is the psychological confession implied in such questions and in many issues of the same kind.

At best, it reveals a man’s psycho-epistemological chaos; it reveals a fallacy which may be termed “the fallacy of the frozen abstraction” and which consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs—in this case, substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.” Thus, a man may reject the theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a rational code—but, failing to integrate his ideas, he continues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism.

More often, however, that psychological confession reveals a deeper evil: it reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men’s capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.

Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the space vacated by self-esteem in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two aspects of his psychology will act reciprocally to reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes “for the good of mankind” or of “society” or of “the public” or of “future generations” —or of anything except actual human beings.

Hence the appalling recklessness with which men propose, discuss and accept “humanitarian” projects which are to be imposed by political means, that is, by force, on an unlimited number of human beings. If, according to collectivist caricatures, the greedy rich indulged in profligate material luxury, on the premise of “price no object”—then the social progress brought by today’s collectivized mentalities consists of indulging in altruistic political planning, on the premise of “human lives no object.”

The hallmark of such mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means. Out of context, such a goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not to be earned, but to be expropriated; and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means—because the means are to be human lives.

“Medicare” is an example of such a project. “Isn’t it desirable that the aged should have medical care in times of illness?” its advocates clamor. Considered out of context, the answer would be: yes, it is desirable. Who would have a reason to say no? And it is at this point that the mental processes of a collectivized brain are cut off; the rest is fog. Only the desire remains in his sight—it’s the good, isn’t it?—it’s not for myself, it’s for others, it’s for the public, for a helpless, ailing public ... The fog hides such facts as the enslavement and, therefore, the destruction of medical science, the regimentation and disintegration of all medical practice, and the sacrifice of the professional integrity, the freedom, the careers, the ambitions, the achievements, the happiness, the lives of the very men who are to provide that “desirable” goal—the doctors.

After centuries of civilization, most men—with the exception of criminals—have learned that the above mental attitude is neither practical nor moral in their private lives and may not be applied to the achievement of their private goals. There would be no controversy about the moral character of some young hoodlum who declared: “Isn’t it desirable to have a yacht, to live in a penthouse and to drink champagne?”—and stubbornly refused to consider the fact that he had robbed a bank and killed two guards to achieve that “desirable” goal.

There is no moral difference between these two examples; the number of beneficiaries does not change the nature of the action, it merely increases the number of victims. In fact, the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral superiority: he has no power to devastate an entire nation and his victims are not legally disarmed.

It is men’s views of their public or political existence that the collectivized ethics of altruism has protected from the march of civilization and has preserved as a reservoir, a wildlife sanctuary, ruled by the mores of prehistorical savagery. If men have grasped some faint glimmer of respect for individual rights in their private dealings with one another, that glimmer vanishes when they turn to public issues—and what leaps into the political arena is a caveman who can’t conceive of any reason why the tribe may not bash in the skull of any individual if it so desires.
...

We Love A Conspiracy

2016-12-20T01:19:00.001-08:00

Everyone is now aware of the claims that the Russians (i.e. the Kremlin under Valdimar Putin) supposedly attempted to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

'The Washington Post' reported on this back in June of 2016, in this story entitled 'Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump' —
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-..._story.html

And here is a later story from 'The Washington Post', dated December 9, 2016, entitled 'Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House' —
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-..._story.html

But notice this paragraph from the later story, explicitly acknowledging that a connection could not be made to the Russian government — in direct contradiction to the titles of both 'Washington Post' stories —

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-..._story.html

...
The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.
...

So it needs to be repeated — 'The Washington Post' openly acknowledges that they have nothing to prove their basic claim that the Russian government attempted to manipulate the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, but they make that assertion anyway — it is a conspiracy theory, and the 'Washington Post' just expects its readers to believe it.

Here is an article by Glenn Greenwald, dated December 10, 2016, entitled 'Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA’s Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence', where he attacks 'The Washington Post' article quoted above —

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/...leaks-to-the-washpost-about-the-cias-russia-beliefs-are-no-substitute-for-evidence/

THE WASHINGTON POST late Friday night published an explosive story that, in many ways, is classic American journalism of the worst sort: The key claims are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret.
...
Needless to say, Democrats — still eager to make sense of their election loss and to find causes for it other than themselves — immediately declared these anonymous claims about what the CIA believes to be true, and, with a somewhat sweet, religious-type faith, treated these anonymous assertions as proof of what they wanted to believe all along: that Vladimir Putin was rooting for Donald Trump to win and Hillary Clinton to lose and used nefarious means to ensure that outcome. That Democrats are now venerating unverified, anonymous CIA leaks as sacred is par for the course for them this year, but it’s also a good indication of how confused and lost U.S. political culture has become in the wake of Trump’s victory. ...

And here is an article at 'Esquire', dated October 20, 2016, entitled 'How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History'. Notice that not a single thing in this article is documented, including a claim that the Russians "even hacked satellites to cover their tracks" —
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/

Other than as an exercise in testing your credulity, that article is not worth reading, but here are just a couple of quotes to demonstrate that point —

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/
https://archive.is/SemNi

...
The most effective outlet by far, however, was WikiLeaks. Russian intelligence likely began feeding hacked documents to Julian Assange's "whistleblower" site in June 2015, after breaching Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry. A group called WikiSaudiLeaks, probably a Guccifer-like front for Fancy Bear, claimed that "WikiLeaks have been given access to some part of these documents." The so-called Saudi Cables showed princes buying influence and monitoring dissidents. They became a major news story, proving that the old methods worked even better in the twenty-first century.
...

Notice the uses of the words 'likely' and 'probably' in the quote above. Should we thank the author for his honesty in at least not pretending that he had real knowledge that what he wrote is true? It would have been more honest, if he had begun that paragraph with: "I'm going to make some stuff up here, because I want to ..."

And for one more example, consider this quote from the same 'Esquire' article —

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/
https://archive.is/SemNi

...
Using cloud services such as OneDrive was a clever but risky move—it was a little like taking the bus to make off with stolen goods from a burglary. Though the widespread use of the services by legitimate users offered a degree of cover for the hackers, data provided by Microsoft also helped America's elite digital spies identify the DNC intruders "with confidence" as Russian. It is even possible that the U. S. government has been able to identify the names and personal details of individual operators. The Russians knew they'd been caught. On July 30, an FSB press release announced that twenty government and defense organizations had been hit by high-powered spying tools.
...

I assume the link below is the FSB (i.e. the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) press release the author is talking about, but how on earth does it prove "the Russians knew they'd been caught", as the author wrote in the quote above? It took some digging to find the memo, since the author did not provide a link to it, and it is in Russian, so the author had to translate it to make use of it at all (maybe the author reads Russian, and just neglected to point that out) —
https://archive.is/sNSWu
http://www.fsb.ru/fsb/press/message/single.htm%21id%3D10437870%40fsbMessage.html
https://www.scmagazineuk.com/fsb-spotted-malware-on-20-government-org-networks/article/529964/

Here is the Google translation — for what it is worth — I cannot attest to its accuracy, since I do not read Russian. In any case, the only thing this translation of the press release indicates is what it contains — that the Russians believe they were targeted by professionals, and that the attack was similar to operations 'previously identified'. Anything else is conjecture —

FSB press release from July 30, 2016, regarding cyber espionage.

Here is a tweet from the author of the article at 'Esquire' quoted above, in response to skeptics who think that those making this accusation of a supposed 'Russian Connection' should provide proof, as opposed to their speculations —

https://twitter.com/RidT/status/810114356797210624
http://archive.vn/Sszch

Notice the tweet that the author is responding to demands that critical readers prove a negative. This is a common fallacy where one attempts to shift the burden of proof in order to avoid their own responsibility for providing evidence and proof when making an accusation. The individual making the assertion has the burden of proof, since, strictly speaking, it is impossible to prove a claim cannot be true.

How would you prove that no reindeer can fly, for example? Dropping as many reindeer as you could catch out of an airplane only proves that those you dropped could not fly — it does not prove that no reindeer can fly. In short, there is no end to the claims that must be believed, if we could only eliminate those claims that we must prove are false. Did I tell you about my aunt who lives on Pluto, and survives on Limburger cheese? Oh, I can't prove she exists, but we communicate via mental telepathy. What evidence do you have to prove my claim is false?

Thomas Rid is correct in the tweet above — "The burden of proof is inversing." It is just that he is the one who is attempting to 'inverse' it. He is responsible for proving his speculations, and no one should believe them until he has done so — readers have no obligation to prove his claims are false —
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/145/Proving-Non-Existence

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has repeatedly denied that Russia had any hand in the leaks that were damaging to the Clinton campaign. Here is Assange in an interview denying that accusation —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4
https://www.rt.com/news/365164-assange-interview-wikileaks-russia/

And here is Assange's statement regarding the 2016 U.S. Election on wikileaks.org —

https://wikileaks.org/Assange-Statement-on-the-US-Election.html
https://archive.is/Z7uTQ

Assange Statement on the US Election

8 November 2016

By Julian Assange

In recent months, WikiLeaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign’s allies, including the Obama administration, and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected US President.

On the eve of the election, it is important to restate why we have published what we have.

The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks – an organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization defends the public’s right to be informed.

This is why, irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, the real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work.

The US public has thoroughly engaged with WikiLeaks’ election related publications which number more than one hundred thousand documents. Millions of Americans have pored over the leaks and passed on their citations to each other and to us. It is an open model of journalism that gatekeepers are uncomfortable with, but which is perfectly harmonious with the First Amendment.

We publish material given to us if it is of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance and which has not been published elsewhere. When we have material that fulfills this criteria, we publish. We had information that fit our editorial criteria which related to the Sanders and Clinton campaign (DNC Leaks) and the Clinton political campaign and Foundation (Podesta Emails). No-one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election.

At the same time, we cannot publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump’s campaign, or Jill Stein’s campaign, or Gary Johnson’s campaign or any of the other candidates that fufills our stated editorial criteria. As a result of publishing Clinton’s cables and indexing her emails we are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us.

We publish as fast as our resources will allow and as fast as the public can absorb it.

That is our commitment to ourselves, to our sources, and to the public.

This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers. I spoke at the launch of the campaign for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, because her platform addresses the need to protect them. This is an issue that is close to my heart because of the Obama administration’s inhuman and degrading treatment of one of our alleged sources, Chelsea Manning. But WikiLeaks publications are not an attempt to get Jill Stein elected or to take revenge over Ms Manning’s treatment either.
Publishing is what we do. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public’s right to know.

This is after all what happened when the New York Times withheld evidence of illegal mass surveillance of the US population for a year until after the 2004 election, denying the public a critical understanding of the incumbent president George W Bush, which probably secured his reelection. The current editor of the New York Times has distanced himself from that decision and rightly so.

The US public defends free speech more passionately, but the First Amendment only truly lives through its repeated exercise. The First Amendment explicitly prevents the executive from attempting to restrict anyone’s ability to speak and publish freely. The First Amendment does not privilege old media, with its corporate advertisers and dependencies on incumbent power factions, over WikiLeaks’ model of scientific journalism or an individual’s decision to inform their friends on social media. The First Amendment unapologetically nurtures the democratization of knowledge. With the Internet, it has reached its full potential.

Yet, some weeks ago, in a tactic reminiscent of Senator McCarthy and the red scare, Wikileaks, Green Party candidate Stein, Glenn Greenwald and Clinton’s main opponent were painted with a broad, red brush. The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications—because none exists.

In the end, those who have attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them – a reason for censorship the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Only unsuccessfully do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate.
...

Those who believe that Assange has a special penchant for attacking Democrats have a short memory. It was routine for Republicans to call for his execution after the leaks regarding the Iraq war in 2010 —
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8172916/WikiLeaks-guilty-parties-should-face-death-penalty.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/

But the real problem here, is that none of this 'Russian Connection' conspiracy makes any sense.

Would the Russians really go to all this trouble to help Donald Trump? Why?

Because Hillary Clinton seemed more hawkish toward Russia than Trump in their public statements prior to the election? If this is what people believe, again, it is just more unsubstantiated speculation. And it is only barely plausible, because it is too vague to be taken seriously. Could it be true? Maybe, but no one knows, and certainly no one can prove it is true.

But even if this were true, how did the Russians supposedly help Trump? By revealing corruption within the competing political party, by releasing their private correspondence to the public. So it was revealed that the Democratic Party is corrupt, and supporters want to pretend that that corruption does not matter, because someone stole their correspondence. Oh brother. Are Republicans similarly corrupt? Maybe. But even if so, how would that absolve the Democrats?

This attempt to avoid responsibility by Democrats is just further proof of Democratic corruption. What matters is the authenticity of the damning communications that were released, and no one has disputed that.

Here is more on the absurdity of all this from Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie at reason.com —
https://reason.com/blog/2016/12/12/did-russia-really-hack-the-election
https://reason.com/blog/2016/12/12/cia-and-fbi-should-make-public-evidence

And of course, it is no surprise that Paul Krugman would run with this unsubstantiated story. Here is the 'Contra Krugman' podcast with Tom Woods and Robert Murphy, tearing apart another of Paul Krugman's asinine columns —
http://contrakrugman.com/ep-65-did-the-russians-hack-the-election/

Sam Harris Left Out The Tears

2016-12-05T00:39:00.001-08:00

In previous posts, I wrote about some of the problems with Sam Harris's attacks on Donald Trump —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-sam-harris-fail.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/11/goodbye-sam-harris-fail.html

As ridiculous as many of Trump's statements may have been, Harris repeatedly misrepresented what Trump said in order to make his criticisms of Trump seem more compelling than they actually were, never mind Harris's pretense that his denunciations entailed some kind of comparison between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Harris seems to have forgotten what he wrote previously about lying —

...
Tell enough lies, however, and the effort required to keep your audience in the dark quickly becomes unsustainable. While you might be spared a direct accusation of dishonesty, many people will conclude, for reasons that they might be unable to pinpoint, that they cannot trust you. You will begin to seem like someone who is always dancing around the facts—because you most certainly are. Many of us have known people like this. No one ever quite confronts them, but everyone begins to treat them like creatures of fiction. Such people are often quietly shunned, for reasons they probably never understand.
...
— Sam Harris, 'Lying (November 2013)'

The ridiculous melodramatic reaction from the young woman in the YouTube video below has as much substance as Sam Harris's denunciations of Trump — she just seems less reasonable because she is so emotional. But Sam Harris does not provide any more substance than she does — they both agree that a Trump presidency will lead to disaster, but fail to give any convincing reasons for this belief (and it should be trivially easy, given how obvious they seem to think it is). The most important difference in the denunciations that Harris provides of Trump, is that Harris does not become emotional and cry during the delivery of his insults —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_1xTw447no

Goodbye Sam Harris

2016-11-20T23:40:00.004-08:00

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
— Joseph A. Schumpeter, 'History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954)', p. 43n

"When analyzing fallacies, I have thought it still less advisable to mention particular names than in giving credit. To do so would have required special justice to each writer criticized, with exact quotations, account taken of the particular emphasis he places on this point or that, the qualifications he makes, his personal ambiguities, inconsistencies, and so on."
— Henry Hazlitt, 'Economics In One Lesson (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1946)', p. 11, Preface

In a previous post, I wrote about some of the problems with Sam Harris's attacks on Donald Trump —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-sam-harris-fail.html

I've offered no defense of Trump (in that post or any other) — I simply pointed out that Sam Harris's attack on Trump is an ad hominem fallacy, despite Harris's repeated denial of this obvious criticism.

In a podcast from October 26, 2016, Sam Harris complained at length regarding the numerous criticisms he has received for his attacks on Trump, even discussing the ad hominem, and why any uses of that fallacy in an argument are rightly despised.

Here is a partial transcript of that podcast, where Harris attempts to address the most common criticism he has received for his attack on Trump —

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-lesser-evil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWmpHsszbg&t=4m3s (segment begins at 4:03)

. . .
Now, this brings me to the most frequent criticism I've heard. And this is yet another example of a catchphrase of sorts, distorting people's thinking. What I've now heard more times than I can count, is some variant of the following:

'You used to be such a careful thinker, but when you talk about Trump, all you produce are ad hominems. This shows that you are arguing from pure emotion, not reason.'
Again, I've received that every conceivable way. You know, people have made videos on that point, I've got e-mails, every comment thread I've seen has got some version of this. Um, OK. The ad hominem fallacy — 'ad hominem' means 'to the man'. One commits this fallacy, when rather than address an argument, or an idea, you merely attack its source. And this technique, if we can call it that, is rightly despised. It's not a valid form of argumentation.

For instance, when Donald Trump says that 'we shouldn't let Muslims into the country, because of the risk of terrorism', it is ad hominem to say 'Donald Trump is a bigot', full stop. As though that were an adequate response to the policy argument. Whether or not he is a bigot, is irrelevant to the question of whether it's wise or necessary to attempt to keep Muslims out of the country. If you want to argue against that, as I have, you need to say things like: 'it's impractical, or it's impossible, you know many of these people come from countries in Europe, for instance, just where and how are you going to apply a religious test to people from England, and France, and Germany. Or that it's needlessly inflammatory, and will prove counterproductive. Or that you'd be keeping out the very allies you need in your fight against extremism. Or that this would violate some deeper value, like the value of helping kids who are being pulverized in a civil war, through no fault of their own.

You have to say something that deals with the claim. And so it is with any policy position, he or anyone else might articulate. And I've done that — so far as Trump has said anything concrete, and not immediately self-contradictory about what he intends to do, I have addressed those issues. But what I have mainly been talking about, is whether or not Trump should be President. And whether or not he's a bigot, is relevant to that question. Many of his qualities as a person, and certainly most of his intellectual and moral qualities, are relevant to that question.

So, when I say of Trump, that he shouldn't be President, because he's dangerously uniformed, and, even in many respects, unintelligent — and he's a pathological liar, not an ordinary liar, but a liar of a sort you'd expect to meet only in a mental hospital — and that he's a deeply unethical person, one who is actually famous for treating people terribly — and that he's an anti-intellectual, someone who has no respect for real knowledge, much less the life of the mind — someone, for instance, who could perpetrate a fraud like Trump University, and not want to kill himself out of shame — and that he's a sexual predator, not merely married to one — and, yes, that he is very likely also a bigot — and that he is above all a bully and a con man, an obvious con man, the most obvious con man I have ever seen in public life. None of this is an example of an ad hominem fallacy. I've argued that giving Donald Trump more responsibility than any person on earth, is a bad idea because of who he is, because of the bad qualities he has in spades, and because of the good ones he so obviously lacks.
. . .

That almost sounds good, until you remember that the title of Sam Harris's podcast quoted above is 'The Lesser Evil'. And in the context of demonstrating that one candidate is the worst of two, even if you can prove that one candidate is a 'pathological liar', as Harris claims regarding Trump, you must also prove the other candidate does not lie, or, at a minimum, has been less destructive in their lying — that is, you must perform a thorough comparison of the actions of the two candidates, and the outcomes those kinds of actions will most likely lead to in the future.

This is a very tall order, and both Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan fail in their attempt to do this in Harris's podcast — that is, they avoid the critical effort in their discussion, by failing to perform a comparison of the most likely outcomes based on the past actions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Harris's and Sullivan's denunciations do not contain an argument, and are useless in doing an honest and meaningful comparison of Trump and Hillary.

Denouncing a Presidential candidate, based on your subjective view of his character flaws is fine — but it is a pure ad hominem fallacy as part of an argument that his actions are worse than another's. The comparison of action is critical in demonstrating that a particular candidate is the lesser of anything — whereas Harris and Sullivan only provide a subjective denunciation and the insistence that one of the two is dramatically worse.

Andrew Sullivan is actually comical in this regard. Near the end of Harris's podcast, Harris attempts to get more detail from Sullivan on why Trump really is the greater evil, and Sullivan goes on in melodramatic and hyperbolic terms about how a Trump presidency will end U.S. democracy, while making no attempt to demonstrate any of his apocalyptic claims, and of course, a dismissal of where Obama and Hillary Clinton have behaved similarly, just as when Harris dismissed the corruption revealed by the Podesta e-mails as just 'how the sausage get's made' —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWmpHsszbg&t=54m42s (segment begins at 54:42)

. . .
Sam Harris: "... Like the Wikileaks e-mails, my reading of them thus far, is that there is really not much there that is surprising. I mean, like, how did you think the sausage was getting made, and what did you think the private communications in a campaign would look like? Right? I mean there are things there that we wish wouldn't be there, we wish people wouldn't operate this way, but there's nothing there that I've seen that is fundamentally shocking, or that tells us something we don't know, or didn't know, or that would be disqualifying to her candidacy."

Andrew Sullivan: "No, I agree. What's shocking however, is that people's private correspondence can be hacked and delivered this way. And I think the ability for politics to function at all, for government to function at all does require some lack of transparency. Any organization has to have something that's private, so that it can actually function."

Sam Harris: "But that is sort of a point in her favor. The Trump phenomenon is also a point in her favor. To go back to the comment you made a few minutes ago, that one of the things that is odious about her is that she believes you have to have a public and private conversation which are distinct, because the people can't handle the truth. There's so little appetite, or ability, for honest reasoning that people will seize upon your words, like the way she was using the phrase 'open borders' in context, as opposed to the way those words can be made to seem, and you'll never become President, or you'll never achieve the office you're seeking, because people are stupid and cynical, and the truth will be used against you, so you have to focus group everything.
. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWmpHsszbg&t=110m45s (segment begins at 1:50:45)

. . .
Sam Harris: "So just to put a fine point on this, because given all of the heinous things we have said about the Clintons, and Hillary in particular, why does it matter that she be in charge, as opposed to him? I mean when you just imagine going forward in dealing with Russia or China, or the problem of jihadism, or anything else, any other challenge we're going to face, why do you feel that there really is a difference here worth caring about? Because many people think, they're both liars, they both, you know, her husband is a rapist, he's a rapist, at the very least they're both trailing accusations of rape. There is ugliness on both sides."

Andrew Sullivan: "Because he uniquely threatens our entire political system, from within, and he uniquely threatens global stability in a way that no president, no candidate for president, has ever done in this country. Just because we haven't been here before, there is this amazing complacency about what can happen in a democracy. And if you've read history, and you see this happening, it's textbook for how democracies perish. It, it is incredibly dangerous, at a level completely outside any previous candidate for the presidency, uh, outside anything in American history, short of the 1860s."

Sam Harris: "But spell that out a little more — it's outside any precedent with respect to ... "

Andrew Sullivan: "To the basic rules of liberal democracy, the basic core constructing ideas that make us the West.

Sam Harris: "But .. I mean, it's, it's outside any precedent in terms of his disrespect for the institutions, and his complete unawareness of what's going on in the world. I mean he's an ignoramus, and a narcissistic bully, who just wants to crash through every impediment he finds, and many of those impediments are our democratic system."

Andrew Sullivan: "Yes, and we've seen for example, that this so powerful in him, that he will continue to do this even though it sabotages himself. So, a man, if he were to be president, we would be the people he would be sabotaging. Our society would be what he would be casting asunder. We would be yanked to and fro towards escalating conflict, internally and internationally in a way that we have never been before. This country would be torn apart, their would be violence in the streets.
. . .

In short, Harris's criticism of Trump is an ad hominem fallacy, because his denunciations in no way demonstrate the greater evil. With respect to the claim of a greater evil, it is absolutely irrelevant that Trump is a 'pathological liar', or any other of the negative traits Sam Harris assigns — even if all of Harris's accusations regarding Trump are absolutely true, it does nothing to show that Hillary Clinton is superior in any of the same respects.

Let's be clear — the problem here has little to do with Harris's denunciations of Trump. The problem is that Harris expects readers and listeners to accept his adjective laden invective and analogy as some kind of scientific proof.

Paraphrasing Harris: 'Trump is a pathological liar such as the type you would find in a mental hospital — Trump has no respect for real knowledge — Trump has a thought process resembling a deflating balloon running chaotically in all directions — Trump's Presidential bid is akin to a five foot obese man thinking he rightly belongs on a basketball team.', etc. Well, this is colorful language, but it reveals much more about what Sam Harris thinks is an appropriate way to critique someone, than it reveals about Donald Trump.

Notice the quote from Henry Hazlitt at the top of this blog post, regarding the special requirements to treat an individual fairly, if you wished to criticize them for repeating a particular fallacy — do you think Sam Harris has met this standard in his denunciations of Trump? As I pointed out in my previous post, Harris took no pains to represent Trump accurately — just as he did not in the quotes below, from his podcast on November 10, 2016, where he stated that Trump recommended nuclear proliferation.

For just one example, think about what it would take to prove someone is a 'pathological liar', as Harris claims of Trump — it is not enough to merely show them lying, you have to show that they lie compulsively, as a matter of habit.

In this post, I called Hillary a liar (in the title), because I'm convinced that the 13 minute video I included showing her lying, is ample proof of at least that much —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/08/lying-about-hillary-clintons-lies.html

Hillary does seem pathological to me, because she repeatedly makes false statements. But notice that I did not make the accusation that Hillary is pathological, because it is just my subjective opinion, and, even more, I know that the 13 minute video I included does not demonstrate that she is pathological — it only demonstrates that Hillary lies repeatedly. If Sam Harris provided even remotely the same evidence to justify his denunciations of Trump, I might believe him — whereas, now I just see Harris as attempting to rationalize an obvious bias.

https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/796025058422452224

Here is a Sam Harris tweet from October 16, 2016, where Sam again insists that his denunciations are not an ad hominem, because he was attempting to show that Trump is the 'greater evil'. If you think Harris made an effective comparison between Trump and Hillary, as many of his readers seem to, then you accept this claim. But again, attacks on an individual do not constitute a comparison, and a comparison is required to justify any claim of greater or lesser. Calling someone a 'pathological liar', or 'a narcissist', or 'a bully', or a whatever, etc., neither proves those accusations, nor demonstrates that the subject possesses those qualities to any greater degree than anyone else —

https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/787746752761765890

Here is a transcript of Sam Harris's podcast from November 10, 2016, entitled 'The Most Powerful Clown'. Again, it is primarily emotional invective, and reflects more on Sam Harris's character than on Trump's. I added a few comments, to point out some (but by no means all) of the falsehoods in Harris's statements, to show that if you are inclined to believe that Sam Harris does not misrepresent others when it suites him, you would be wrong —

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-most-powerful-clown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wthdOF32VKQ

The Most Powerful Clown

Sam Harris NOV 10, 2016

Well it has come to pass. President Trump. A man who many of us treated as a buffoon, and only took seriously as a threat at the eleventh hour, will be the 45th President of the United States. With a Republican Congress behind him, and with at least one vacancy, probably more, on the Supreme Court, to fill. Sooo, what went wrong? And, how bad is this?

Well, I think there are two parts to this story. The first is unambiguously depressing. And ... this is the part that has been seized on by most Liberals. But it’s only half the story, and it is this; Trump has ascended to power despite showing every sign of being dangerously unfit for it. And by exposing in himself, and in the electorate the worst that America has to offer. Racism, sexism, anti-semitism, a contempt for the most vulnerable among us, intimations of fascism, a positive love of bullying, total disdain for our democratic institutions, a willingness to make threats of political violence, just for the fun of it, a contempt for science, and a love of conspiracy theories. I mean I can run through it all again, the crazy things he said and the toxic alliances he’s made. The irony is if he had been merely half as bad, he would have seemed worse. He would have been more recognizably dangerous. There were so many awful moments, that the media couldn’t focus on them for long enough or weigh their significance. And the big things were as big as they get, right, “climate change is a hoax”, “why can’t we use our nuclear weapons?”, “maybe nuclear proliferation is a good thing?”, “let the Saudis, and the Japanese, and the South Koreans build their own nukes”, “who’s to say we should support our NATO alliances, what have they done for us?”, “Putin is a great leader”, “Maybe we should just default on our debt, cut a better deal”.
. . .

Notice that Harris misrepresents Tump's comments on nuclear proliferation. Here are links to what Trump actually said, along with a direct statement to the 'New York Times' that nuclear proliferation is the biggest problem facing the world —
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/03/29/trump-i-hate-proliferation-but-it-would-be-better-if-japan-saudi-...

Trump: "... Biggest problem, to me, in the world, is nuclear, and proliferation."

And as I pointed out in my previous post, Harris oversimplifies Trump's comment regarding debt to serve his agenda in denouncing him. Trump specifically mentioned 'buying back' debt to 'refinance' it, which is actually a very common practice (also, notice again that Harris repeatedly violates the quote from Hazlitt above in misrepresenting Trump's views) —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-sam-harris-fail.html

Back to 'The Most Powerful Clown' —

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-most-powerful-clown

. . .
Any one of those things should have ended it. But of course the little things were just as weird, and should have been just as disqualifying. I mean, we have just elected a president who has bragged about invading the dressing rooms of beauty pageant contestants so that he could see them naked, when they were effectively his employees, he ... he owned the pageant. And then he even bullied some of these young women publicly. Some on social media in the wee hours of the morning while campaigning for the presidency. And then he denied doing any of these things, when no denial was even possible. I mean we had all seen his tweets, and in response to the astonishment of the media, he looked the American people in the eye and said “No one respects women more than I do, no one”. And half the country accepted that as what, the truth? As good theatre? As sketch comedy?

There are really no words to describe how far from normal we have drifted here. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, described the situation the night of the election, in a piece entitled “An American Tragedy”. I’ll read a little of that so you get a sense of what the liberal elites were thinking at 3 AM —

"The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety."
...

"In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the “innate wisdom” and “essential decency” of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. ...

The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so—but this is surely the way fascism can begin."

I think most of that is true, unfortunately, but it’s not the whole truth. And the parts that are true, are probably not worth dwelling on at this point. I’m not sure how useful it’ll be to stay in the well of blame and despair and and to resist “normalizing” the situation but, it is true that the ‘normalizing’ seems like an act of prayer. Just consider Trump’s victory speech, which was alarming for how un-Trumpian it was. I mean it read like it was written by Van Jones on ambien. It was the most anodyne bit of fence mending. But you can feel the desperation in the media, to read into his surprisingly gracious notes. The normalcy that Remnick is talking about here. I mean, maybe we were all just wrong about him, right? Maybe he’s a nice guy after all. What are the chances of that? Is it possible that an ethical person merely pretended to be a total asshole for 18 months? It seems somehow farfetched. But what a way to make of the fact that Trump had nothing but nice things to say about Clinton. What happened to “Lock her up?” Does anyone care about the Trump who spoke on the night of the election was totally unrecognizable? Who did his supporters think they had elected? Were his supporters surprised to see him merely praise Hillary? Is it all theatre? Who is this guy? Will he attempt to do anything he promised to do? Does anyone know? Does Ivanka have any idea what her dad will do as President?
. . .

Notice that Harris's quote of David Remnick above is a kind of appeal to authority fallacy — what the 'liberal elites' were thinking? I have no idea why Harris thinks there is such a thing as a 'liberal elite', but what anyone is thinking is completely irrelevant, unless they have a compelling argument for thinking it.

It certainly is not clear why Harris would waste his listener's time by reading David Remnick's writing into his podcast, since it adds nothing that Harris had not already said — it is just more emotional invective, without substance.

Regarding the supposed 'bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I.', for example, I can only assume that this is meant to refer to the F.B.I. doing anything at all regarding Hillary Clinton — but a good case certainly cannot be made for doing nothing, since it is a trivial exercise to show that Hillary violated the law. That is, unless you do not care about a core principle of democracy, like the rule of law (as Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan at least pretended to be so concerned about elsewhere). See the details here —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/07/mediamatters-hillary-clintons-shill.html

Back to 'The Most Powerful Clown' —

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-most-powerful-clown

. . .
Now I’ve gotten a fair amount of grief from people at this point for having been wrong about the election. I’m not sure what they mean. I admit I did jinx it by posting a suitably repellent picture of Trump on Twitter early in the day and say ‘Bye bye Donald’. Of course that wasn’t a prediction, I was simply saying how nice it would be to never think about him again. Of course when I sent that tweet the polls were giving him around a 20% chance of winning. Now whether the polls were wrong or not is anyone's guess at this point — a 20% chance of winning is not nothing, right? Spend a few minutes with some dice and see how often a 20% chance comes up. It comes up quite frequently sometimes on the very first roll. So, I jinxed the election. Sorry about that. But surely it can’t have been a failure of judgement to have trusted the most reputable polls. Basically, everyone was doing that. What else was there to trust? Just the torrents of hatred I saw on social media? But the story about what happened with the polls will be interesting in the weeks and months ahead.

The truth is I always had a bad feeling about the election, and that’s why I talked about it so much on this podcast. I could tell that Hillary’s flaws as a candidate were causing people to ignore Trump’s flaws as a human being. Well, we’re about to find out how high a price we and the rest of the world will pay for that. Speaking personally I can say, I left more or less everything on the field. I know I alienated many of you in how fully I disparaged Trump. And I kept doing it even at the risk of boring those of you who actually agreed with me because I thought it was so important. I don’t honestly see how I could have done any more, and at this moment that’s actually a good feeling. I was preparing myself for this moment and I certainly know many scientists, business people and writers who can’t say the same. But who knows, the fact that they held their tongues may appear fairly prudent at this moment. We’re about to see an astonishingly vindictive man sweep to power with not many check to his power. He has threatened to go after his enemies. To jail Hillary, to sue the women who accused him of sexual assault, to change our libel laws, to go after the Washington Post. Again, this is not a normal moment in American history.

Now many people ask me whether I regret not backing Bernie Sanders. If I’m so trusting of polls, why didn’t I trust the polls that showed him to have a better chance than Clinton against Trump. Because Sanders was totally untested, he had never been subjected to opposition research the way Clinton had. We knew what the Republicans were going to say about Clinton. Who knows what they would have done to Sanders. It is true he would have drawn some of the isolationist and anti-establishment vote that went to Trump. And perhaps he would have turned out more voters than Clinton did, and it looks like that could have been decisive. It seems that Hillary got 6 millions fewer votes than Obama did in 2012, and 10 million fewer than he got in 2008. So, democrats didn’t show up and I hope all those Bernie supporters who stayed home, or voted who third-party will be paying attention over the next four years. But I share the view that the election was generally a repudiation of the left, and the political correctness in particular as much as it was just a vote for change. It was a repudiation of black and brown identity politics by white identity politics and it’s important to point out that this isn’t the same as racism. I don’t believe that the majority of the people who voted for Trump were motivated by racism. There are people who voted for Obama twice who voted for Trump. Racism cannot be the best way to explain that. This is where the prevailing analysis on the left is wrong, of the sort that I just read from David Remnick in the New Yorker.

Yes, we have just elected a man who was officially endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, so you can be sure that every white racist in the country voted for Trump, but there are millions of other decent people who have reasonable concerns about a movement like Black Lives Matter. Most of these people probably voted for Trump too. These people are not racist they were simply recoiling from charges of racism and from a toxic brand of identity politics. Much of what has been coming out of the left, not everything, but much of it, particularly about race, and about law and order, and about Islamophobia, and about terrorism, about issues that are fundamental to the security of our society, has had all the moral clarity and intellectual honesty of the OJ verdict. Which is to say none at all. I’m confident that many people don’t perceive Trump to be a dangerous conman, in the way that I do, probably voted for him out of sheer exasperation. They were sick of being called racists for not worrying about Halloween costumes on our Ivy League campuses. So millions of these people, along with real racists, told all you whinging social justice warriors at Yale and Brown to go fuck yourselves. And can you really blame them? I mean, safe-spaces, trigger warnings, new gender pronouns, getting Muslim student groups to de-platform speakers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Bill Maher. Was that the cause of your generation? That’s the trench you’re willing to die in? The question is; would a Democratic campaign that leaned even further to the left have prevailed further in this situation? I doubt it, and does Sanders have anything sensible to say about foreign policy? Would he have been to address fears about terrorism. It certainly didn’t seem that way at the time. I suspect that this really is the crux of the issue. At least it’s the main reason why even those who saw Trump’s flaws didn’t care about them. The problem that worried me the whole time is the left’s total failure to speak honestly about Islam and terrorism and the refugee crisis in Europe. This I think was decisive. Certainly, it was one of the things that had it gone the other way would have given us a different result.
. . .

I'd say Harris gives some good criticism in the last paragraph quoted above about the moral bankruptcy and cowardice of the left — thought I'm not sure he fully realizes the implications of what he is saying, since this is the group with which he has aligned himself — 'what does that liberal elite think'?

But in any case, no one knows, including Sam Harris, if Democrats saying something sensible about foreign policy would have been decisive, or given us a different result.

Back to 'The Most Powerful Clown' —

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-most-powerful-clown

. . .
Admittedly, it seems strange to cite polls at this point, but what else can I do? The exit polls show that the people who said their primary concerns were terrorism and immigration, voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Whereas those who concerned about the economy or foreign policy voted for Clinton. So, it wasn’t “the economy stupid” this time around, though economic fears certainly played a role. And it wasn’t just poor whites who supported Trump. The median income of Trump voters was $72,000. And I think that in this election concerns about terrorism and immigration largely boiled down to a concern about Islamism, and to the fear and distrust provoked by liberal lies about it. Immigration means other things of course, but I don’t think it’s mainly that there a lot of white people whose median income is $72,000 who want to pick strawberries for a living. If my collisions on social media told me anything over the last year, it’s that many people were nearly single issue voters when it came to Islam. I would bet that this accounts for many more people than voted for third-party candidate. Which was also probably decisive. The fact that we have a president who wouldn’t even use the phrase “Islamic extremism”, who could even say things like “terrorism has less to do with Islam than any other religion”, right, and the fact that Clinton seemed to embrace this delusion, even though she did on occasion use the phrase “radical jihadism”, as though that made any sense. That was a terrible problem. And of course the fact that she and her husband have taken tens of millions of dollars from the Saudis and other Islamist regimes didn’t help. Couple that with this unexplained desire to increase the number of Syrian refugees by 550% without ever acknowledging what is going wrong in Europe. This was a deal breaker from many people, and I heard these people endlessly over the last year.

And the problem of course is people are right to be worried about Islamism and Jihadism, and all the left has offered on this point are lies, and sanctimony and charges of racism and bigotry. Worrying about Islam more than any other religion at this moment is not a sign of racism or bigotry. Muslims themselves should be worried more about Islam at this moment than about Mormonism, Anglicanism, or Judaism. This is basic human sanity, and most people know it. But Clinton was the sort of politician, who in the immediate aftermath of the Orlando massacre, spoke only about gun control, and then issued grave warnings about a rise in Islamophobia. When we had just suffered yet another jihadist atrocity on American soil. This was unforgivably stupid. And I knew it at the time that this was the sort of stupidity that could pave the way for Trump. I even wrote a section of a speech that I thought Clinton should give about Islamism and jihadism, and put it on my blog. It would have been so easy for her to have made sense on this issue, and to have differentiated a sane understanding of jihadism from bigotry against Muslims in general. But she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. All of these things contributed to her loss, and to the rise of Trump.
. . .

It is interesting that Sam Harris would call out the tens of millions of dollars the Clinton's have received from Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian, Islamist regimes, but Harris leaves out the more important point that arms sales to those same regimes jumped under Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, for the period October 2010 to September 2012 —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/09/paul-krugman-and-hillary-clinton-birds.html

And again, it is fascinating that Sam Harris does not seem to know who he is aligned with — I know he is not a fan of Hillary Clinton (only claiming that she is supposedly a much lesser evil, when compared with Trump) — but did Harris really have any expectation that a politically correct, career politician, would take a stand against one of the world's dominant religions?

Any expectation that Hillary Clinton would not mention a propaganda term like 'Islamophobia' positively, strikes me as pure delusion. Of course, Hillary Clinton did not come out with criticism of Islam, after an act of Islamic terrorism.

Why on earth would anyone expect her to do that?

Back to 'The Most Powerful Clown' —

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-most-powerful-clown

. . .
So the question now is, how do we move forward having to declare the next president to be an absolute jackass, and a sexual predator? And as I’ve said in a previous podcast a liar of the sort one would only expect to find in a mental hospital? How do we move from making jokes about placing the nuclear codes into the hands of a dangerous narcissist to actually placing the nuclear codes into his hands? Well, I’m afraid we just do. And we hope that this man who appears to lie about everything, has also been lying about how awful a person he is. Let’s hope he isn’t who who he has seem to be. Let’s hope that he really is a cipher, let’s hope he was only pretending not to believe in climate change. Let’s hope that he was only pretending to admire Vladimir Putin. Let’s hope that he was only pretending to believe the sorts of conspiracy theories that helped get him elected. Let’s hope he really is a con man without any core commitments, other than to maintain his own fame and glory. Because then there’s a chance that knowledgeable people might be able to influence him.

I thought president Obama struck the right note yesterday, we all must hope for Trump’s success at this point. We want his presidency to be a good one. It’s as if we’re all on an airplane together, and the real pilot has died. And now a man who has never flown an airplane has taken over the controls, and is attempting an emergency landing, and we’re all stuck in the back of the plane. So we’re rooting for the man in the cockpit. Of course, before he got his hands on the controls, some of us complained about how unqualified he was. There were a few other people back here with a lot of time spent flying planes. But this guy stormed the cockpit, and now he’s in the pilot seat, and the runway is in view, and we are out of time. So let’s hope he’s talking to people in air traffic control. The problem of course is, it actually matters who is in the tower. Just think about who Trump has surrounded himself with — Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, Mike Pence — this is a clown car of ideologues and incompetents with a couple of religious maniacs thrown in. But again we want him to land this plane and it doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t matter if we all wind up covered in vomit. We will be grateful just to be alive. And I will be very grateful if after four years Donald Trump hasn’t set back human progress a generation.

This may all sound like hyperbole, but who knows what sort of mistakes this man is capable of. And if you said that about Clinton, you were just wrong. Even with all her flaws we have no idea who Trump is, or what he will do. He probably doesn’t even know. But we do know that he has less understanding about the responsibilities he’s about to assume than any president before him. Indeed, he has less understanding than any candidate most of us have ever conceived of. So, let’s hope he’s a quick study, and let's hope there are thousands of good people who are willing to work for him. Which brings up a point I saw raised on social media by a few people — no matter how horrified you are by this result, no matter how judgmental you are of the people who enabled him, people like Paul Ryan, you have to hope that the best people available will come forward now, and be willing to serve in Trump’s administration. People with good reputation and real expertise. We can’t afford to question the motives and integrity of anyone who would join this administration. We want the best people we can get in the door. We have to hope that being president of the United States brings out the best in Donald Trump. Campaigning for the presidency brought out the worst, it showed what he’s like as an embattled narcissist and fabulist and demagogue, but now he's won, right? Now he will be surrounded by people seeking the warm glow of his power, now he will inspire fear, actual fear not merely scorn in his critics. He is no longer just a clown, he is the most powerful clown on Earth. We have to hope that winning to this degree will pacify some of his demons. Is there a historical or psychological precedent for this? I have no idea. But we’re about to find out what happens to a man with a famously, palpably, visibly unhealthy ego, who suddenly triumphed over everyone who ever doubted him. This is a man who when he voted in New York, at his polling place, got jeered by a crowd on Tuesday. In a city that voted 87% against him, and one day he’s going to ride back into town on Air Force One — imagine the way his ego feels right now. Just imagine the satisfaction Trump will feel when he takes possession of the White House and shows president Obama the door. The first black president who humiliated him in front of all the Washington elites at the White House correspondents dinner. Go watch footage of that, all those laughs at his expense. Trump has been a punchline for decades. He’s been the Rodney Dangerfield of billionaires, but that moment with Obama at the podium was the worst. And now he gets to tell Barack Hussein Obama to get out of his house and then tear his legacy to shreds. You’ve got the first black president being shown the door by a man who always questioned his legitimacy in racist terms, and has been endorsed by the KKK. Only Shakespeare could do this moment justice.

So, while Trump seems like he could become some sort of Caligula with an iPhone, we have to hope that our democratic institution will restrain him. That the awesome responsibilities thrust his way, the responsibility of running a superpower will bring out the better angels of his nature, if he has any. So I think normalizing this mess might be the best we can do for the time being. Needless to say, a pendulum swing into left wing identity politics will not be helpful, but it seems extremely likely to occur. In fact it’s already happening with these ridiculous protests under the banner of “Not my president”. Good luck with that.

How many of you voted for a third-party? Or didn’t vote at all? What we need are smart ethical people in the political center, who can defend freedom of speech and science, and the norms of civil discourse from their enemies on both the right and the left. And so far as I can do anything useful in that area, I will do my best. That is part of what this podcast is for. And if you guys have any ideas about who I should talk to on the podcast about the fate of civilization, I will be very happy to hear your ideas. And I promise I will be getting to interesting topics totally unrelated to politics, in fact I will mostly do this. Because what I say about politics doesn’t seem to do much.

As always you can support the podcast at samharris.org/support, and you can also support it on a per episode basis at patreon.com/samharris. About 2% of listeners regularly support the podcast now, and I’m hoping to bring that up to 10% — that will be a game changer. And if you are already a supporter, please know that your help is greatly appreciated. And once again thanks for listening, until next time.

And here is the ultimate payoff from the hours of Sam Harris's podcasts denouncing Trump — notice this quote from Harris in the center paragraph above —

"And if you said that about Clinton, you were just wrong."

If you do not agree with Harris on this, you cannot be correct — even if Harris cannot explain why.

And, ironically, all this from the author of a book on the harm of lying —
https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/new-ebook-lying

As an interesting comparison, notice that both Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan exude what Thomas Sowell described as 'The Vision of the Anointed', in that they have a vision, or world view, that they wish to enforce on others via a political process, and verifying that view with evidence is not an important concern —
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=thomas+sowell+the+vision+of+the+anointed
https://fee.org/articles/the-vision-of-the-anointed-self-congratulation-as-a-basis-for-social-policy/

The Sam Harris Fail

2016-11-07T00:16:00.004-08:00

Quoted below is a blog post from October 2016, by the well-known atheist Sam Harris, entitled 'Trump in Exile'. This blog post is perversely fascinating, in that it was written by a man who gained fame primarily as an atheist and supposed guardian of rationality, in his critiques of religion. For example, see Harris's books 'The End of Faith' and 'Letter to a Christian Nation'.

The striking thing about Harris's blog post quoted below, is that Harris wrote nothing to support his hyperbolic conclusion that a Trump presidency would be a monumental disaster in comparison to a Hillary Clinton presidency. Harris just seems to expect readers to believe it, because he does —

https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/trump-in-exile2

Trump In Exile

Sam Harris OCT 13, 2016

It is a cliché, of course, to claim that a presidential election is the most important in living memory. But we arrived at that point in the 2016 campaign many months ago, when both sides declared their opponent unqualified for office. Unfortunately, this time the cliché is true, and one side is actually right. A choice this stark proves that there is something wrong with our political system.

Hillary Clinton is a terribly flawed candidate for the presidency, and this has allowed millions of otherwise sane Americans to imagine that she is less fit for office than Donald Trump is. Much depends on a majority of the electorate seeing through this moral and political illusion in the weeks ahead.
. . .

This may be the most important presidential election in living memory, but you would not know it from anything Harris wrote later in his blog post. Sadly, Harris gives no indication that his melodrama is even worthy of consideration — despite his claim that this is 'the most important presidential election in recent memory'. Well, if Harris really believes that, he might have worked a little harder at making a convincing case — it should not have been that hard, given 'a choice this stark', as he put it.

Note that I am making no attempt here to defend Trump — I am pointing out that Harris has not given his insults substance, and so they are ad hominem attacks. Harris does provide some specifics about Trump's 'sexual predations', but they are useless as a point of comparison with Hillary Clinton, since, as Harris acknowledges below, Bill Clinton 'can probably match Trump indiscretion for indiscretion'.

According to Harris, Hillary is obviously massively better than Trump, but at the same time she lacks the character to leave a marriage to a Trump equivalent. I know Hillary's supporters love to dismiss this obvious criticism — since Bill Clinton isn't running for president — but it is pretty nonsensical to claim that Hillary's character is markedly superior to Trump's, while simultaneously making the claim that Hillary's character is such that she made a Trump equivalent her lifelong partner.

Well, at least Harris openly acknowledged that Hillary Clinton is 'terribly flawed' — but that phrase is a euphemism that amounts to a terribly flawed attempt at demonstrating objectivity. It has been well documented that Hillary Clinton's behavior has been criminal, so referring to her as 'terribly flawed' does not do justice to the terrible things she has done. You can read more about that here —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/09/paul-krugman-and-hillary-clinton-birds.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/08/lying-about-hillary-clintons-lies.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/07/mediamatters-hillary-clintons-shill.html

The Clintons at Donald Trump's wedding in 2005.

Our Wretched Situation

2016-11-05T16:25:00.001-07:00

In a previous post, I lamented about the lack of respect that the typical American shows for the U.S. Constitution. I may have made it sound like this is something new, but obviously that is not the case.

'The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution' is a five-volume collection of the U.S. Constitutional debates held at Philadelphia in 1787, compiled and arranged by Jonathan Elliot in 1836.

From the 'Library of Congress' —

The volumes remain the best source for materials about the national government's transitional period between the closing of the Constitutional Convention in September 1787 and the opening of the First Federal Congress in March 1789. On September 17, 1787, the Continental Congress accepted the recommendation of the Constitutional Convention and agreed to distribute the proposed constitution to the states; each state was then to elect delegates to a state convention to approve or disapprove the new constitution. The Constitution would take effect upon ratification by the conventions of nine of the thirteen states.

Here is a quote from James Madison, beginning on page 536 of volume 3 of 'The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution', where Madison states that no form of government can render us secure if the people do not 'have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom' to serve in government —

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1907#Elliot_1314-03_1143
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/madison-the-debates-on-the-adoption-of-the-federal-constitution-vol-5

...
I have observed that gentlemen suppose that the general legislature will do every thing mischievous they possibly can, and that they will omit to do every thing good which they are authorized to do. If this were a reasonable supposition, their objections would be good. I consider it reasonable to conclude that they will as readily do their duty as deviate from it; nor do I go on the grounds mentioned by gentlemen on the other side — that we are to place unlimited confidence in them, and expect nothing but the most exalted integrity and sublime virtue. But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched [537] situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
...

If it wasn't clear when Madison made this claim, it should be clear by now that the overwhelming majority of people do not 'have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom'. We are much closer to a 'wretched situation' from a lack of virtue than Madison thought.

If the 2016 U.S. Presidential debates do not convince you of that, consider the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and its relationship to the prior amendments in the 'Bill of Rights' —

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/overview
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html
https://memory.loc.gov/mss/mal/mal3/436/4361100/001.jpg
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mal&fileName=mal3/436/4361100/malpage.db&recNum=0

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Also notice that the 13th Amendment initially failed to receive the required two-thirds majority vote. Here is a portion of Abraham Lincoln's Fourth Annual Message to Congress, from the Congressional Globe, from December 6, 1864 —

https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=069/llcg069.db&recNum=696

"At the last session of Congress a proposed amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, passed the Senate, but failed for lack of the requisite two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives. Although the present is the same Congress, and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session."

Now consider the 4th and 5th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution —

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The 13th Amendment makes absolutely no sense in comparison to the 4th and 5th Amendments, and helps to undercut the notion that the U.S. Constitution grants a limited set of powers to government, such that the Constitution should not contain an exhaustive list of protected rights — this is the point of the 10th Amendment.

A common fear when the 10th Amendment was written was probably not nearly common enough — despite the 10th Amendment, the overwhelming majority of Americans view the Constitution as a list of restrictions, rather than a list of granted powers, such that government can do anything (even defend slavery), if the U.S. Constitution does not specifically prohibit it by name.

That is, the 13th Amendment is redundant, in that it simply emphasizes what the U.S. Constitution already said about depriving a citizen of life, liberty, or property. The institution of slavery was absurd on its face, and no Constitutional amendment would have been required, had the overwhelming majority of Americans took Constitutional protections seriously.

Notice the high bar placed on the U.S. Government by the 4th and 5th Amendments, for restricting when government can interfere with the lives of private citizens. Never mind the 5th Amendment's requirement that 'due process of law' is a prerequisite for citizens being 'deprived of life, liberty, or property', the 4th Amendment requires government to issue a warrant simply to search a private citizen.

Given these restrictions, one has to do incredibly contorted mental gymnastics to come to the conclusion that, in the absence of the 13th Amendment, it is Constitutional for one private citizen to own another.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may as well read —

'Uh, you know that stuff about being secure in your person, and not being deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law? Well, we really mean it this time.'

Given how little respect most Americans gave for Constitutional protections in the past, it is not clear why anyone would think an overwhelming majority of Americans would respect those protections now.

Obviously, many do not.

Here are massively uninformed Hillary supporters who do not understand that the question being asked was invented to highlight voter ignorance. And ironically, the typical Democrat views Trump as the danger —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiZFXkmofgI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEzCFgltYuY

I predict that some will accuse me of defending slavery, because I argue here that the U.S. Constitution did not permit slavery, with or without the 13th Amendment. If you are familiar with social media (or now, really news in general), and so-called 'social justice warriors' (SJWs), you are familiar with that kind of dishonesty (insane spin to fit a particular agenda).

Paul Krugman and Hillary Clinton: Birds Of A Feather

2016-09-10T00:20:00.001-07:00

Here are some example blog posts regarding Paul Krugman's incompetence as an economist, and his lack of character —
https://www.google.com/search?q=paul+krugman+site%3Amaxautonomy.blogspot.com

To anyone who has made a reasonable effort to educate themselves about economic conditions around the world, and especially over time, Paul Krugman's opinion pieces are blatantly absurd and completely unoriginal. After all, regarding economic problems, he simply repeats the basic Keynesian formula over and over — demand is too low, and so government must increase spending.

See Krugman's praise of WW II, for example, where he attempts to pretend that the massive expenditures of the U.S. Government in preparation for the war, and the massive destruction that followed, supposedly made everyone better off —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/09/oh-what-ugly-paul-krugman.html

And take note that Krugman conveniently dismisses the rationing that had to be enforced by the U.S. Government well after the massive stimulus for WW II began, as if that rationing was simply a necessary byproduct of the war effort. Krugman completely blanks out the inconvenient fact that the rationing that was introduced as a result of the massive spending to support the war effort stands in direct contradiction to his repeated claims that any government spending improves economic conditions by 'stimulating demand' — both Krugman and Keynesians in general insist that any government spending improves economic conditions and makes us all better off.

If you believe that Krugman puts some kind of qualification on the kinds of government spending that are actually helpful, you are wrong. See him speaking here, where he explicitly insists that a massive government spending program does not need to be useful to be helpful. Yes, really, according to the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, even government waste is good —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/06/krugmans-obviously-false-debt-spin.html

So, no one should be surprised that a corrupt academic like Paul Krugman would come to the defense of a corrupt politician like Hillary Clinton. If it is true that Hillary Clinton has no character issues, how on earth would Paul Krugman be able to tell?
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/08/lying-about-hillary-clintons-lies.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opinion/hillary-clinton-gets-gored.html#permid=19699372

...
Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.

Step back for a moment, and think about what that foundation is about. When Bill Clinton left office, he was a popular, globally respected figure. What should he have done with that reputation? Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.

Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”

But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”

Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.

But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.

So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.

And here’s a pro tip: the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.

In other words, focus on the facts. America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo.

Krugman offers this recommendation in the piece referenced above —

" ... So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air. ..."

Krugman's recommendation is pure comedy given his own fetish for using 'weasel words' —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/09/krugman-attempts-defense-of-bad-writing.html

If you are at all sympathetic to Krugman's point of view, you might try actually following part of his advice, and 'read with a critical eye' — you should begin with Krugman's own writings.

Consider Krugman's mocking comment regarding this Associated Press report —
http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/82df550e1ec646098b434f7d5771f625/many-donors-clinton-foundation-met-her-state
http://archive.is/nrmXK

"... Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf. ..."

Well, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that Hillary Clinton did much worse than just have 'meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators', as Paul Krugman derisively joked in dismissing the Associated Press report. Notice that during Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State there were massive increases in arms sales to authoritarian regimes who donated to the Clinton Foundation — regimes that were simultaneously being criticized by the U.S. Government. Pity, Paul Krugman cannot seem to recognize those 'questionable actions' (surprise).

Included below is page three from the 'Historical Facts Book of September 2013', from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, showing large jumps in arms sales to Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, in 2012 under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. These countries, among others, all donated to the Clinton Foundation —

http://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/files/historical_facts_book_-_30_september_2013.pdf

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
http://archive.is/kUGOV
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-hillary-clinton-and-boeing-a-beneficial-relationship/2014/04/13/..._story.html
http://archive.is/MEINV

...
Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012.

The State Department formally approved these arms sales even as many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton also accused some of these countries of failing to marshal a serious and sustained campaign to confront terrorism. In a December 2009 State Department cable published by Wikileaks, Clinton complained of “an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.” She declared that “Qatar's overall level of CT cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region.” She said the Kuwaiti government was “less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks.” She noted that “UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups.” All of these countries donated to the Clinton Foundation and received increased weapons export authorizations from the Clinton-run State Department.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Clinton Foundation did not respond to questions from the IBTimes.

In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records. The Clinton Foundation publishes only a rough range of individual contributors’ donations, making a more precise accounting impossible.
...

As always, Paul Krugman panders to his dull ignorant readers. Notice this positive comment from Reed Scherer, in response to Krugman's piece 'Hillary Gets Gored', shown in the image of Krugman's piece above —

"... Hillary is flawed (who isn't?) and has made mistakes (who hasn't?) but there is zero evidence that she is "crooked." Her knowledge and skills are uniquely impressive in American history. ..."

I guess Reed is having a little trouble following Krugman's advice to 'read with a critical eye'. Reed is in good company, since he fits in well with the many other Krugman sycophants —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/01/paul-krugman-and-his-cadre-of-idiot-sycophants.html

And as is typical of much of what Krugman writes and says, his defense of Hillary here is absurd on its face. If the Clinton's wanted to do charitable work, why wouldn't they simply work for any of a number of other charities doing similar work, and which they do not control, to make any conflict of interest impossible. Do you think that maybe, the whole point was that they wanted control, so they could benefit directly? Are the Clintons better than, say, 'Bill and Melinda Gates' at doing charitable work, or, say, 'Doctors Without Borders'? Your answer to that question reflects on your own honesty —
http://charlesortel.com/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-07/clinton-foundation-charity-fraud-epic-proportions-analyst-charges-...
http://archive.is/YwOre

Thankfully, others among the American public are not as confused about Hillary's track record of corruption as Paul Krugman and Reed Scherer. Both Hillary and Trump have set new records for disapproval in opinion polls —

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/
http://archive.is/vdGOp

Time Magazine: WikiLeaks Is More Dangerous Than A Government Intelligence Agency

2016-08-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

Here is more of the typical fun that one should always expect from the supposedly intrepid reporters in the mainstream media.

Karl Vick from 'Time Magazine' has written a piece, dated August 12, 2016, in which he claims that WikiLeaks, a private organization which supports whistleblowers, seems more dangerous than the government intelligence agency, the National Security Agency of the United States —
http://time.com/4450282/wikileaks-julian-assange-dnc-hack-criticism/

To anyone who is sympathetic with Karl Vick's point of view, I would point out that a private organization cannot send men with guns to arrest you and put you in prison — and kill you if you resist. Whereas, that is the whole point of any government's attempts to gather information about particular individuals without their knowledge.

Also, it would be impossible for a private organization to kidnap you, and then transport you to a foreign country for torture and questioning, as in the case of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's renditions —
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-torture-20120205.pdf
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/...facts-about-cia-extraordinary-rendition-and-secret-detention
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../2013/02/05/...54-countries-that-reportedly-participated-in-the-cias-rendition-program/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

I wonder what Karl Vick thinks intelligence agencies like the NSA or CIA, for example, are trying to do — help create an episode of 'This Is Your Life' ?

Karl Vick seems annoyed that WikiLeaks may have timed their damaging release of Democratic National Committee e-mails with the 2016 Democratic Party National Convention, in order to harm Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the presidency. Vick refers positively to this piece by Charlie Savage from 'The New York Times', dated July 26, 2016 —
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/.../assange-timed-wikileaks-release-of-democratic-emails-to-harm-hillary-clinton.html
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/

Charlie Savage from 'The New York Times' even had the audacity to include this Hillary Clinton quote from a statement she made back in November of 2010, after the cables leaked by Pvt. Chelsea Manning were published by WikiLeaks —

https://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2010/11/152078.htm

"The work of our diplomats doesn’t just benefit Americans, but also billions of others around the globe. In addition to endangering particular individuals, disclosures like these tear at the fabric of the proper function of responsible government."

You could not make that up. Are Charlie Savage and 'The New York Times' trying to defend Hillary Clinton, or attack her? Quoting a corrupt politician regarding 'disclosures that tear at the proper function of responsible government', is more than just a little ironic, when that politician was just involved in a scandal over not properly handling classified information.

And why shouldn't an organization like WikiLeaks try to maximize the attention to the information that was provided to them by whistleblowers, especially when those whistleblowers took risks to provide it?

After all, the content of the published e-mails is not interesting because it is virtuous. It is revealing of a corrupt politician, and the corrupt organization to which she belongs — i.e. any harm is richly deserved. For more on that corruption —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/07/mediamatters-hillary-clintons-shill.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2016/08/lying-about-hillary-clintons-lies.html

Who are Karl Vick and Charlie Savage trying to kid? Should WikiLeaks have sat on the damaging e-mails until after the Democratic National Convention, in a deliberate attempt to minimize the harm? Well then, why shouldn't WikiLeaks have waited until after the election, since in that case, it would have been too late to make any difference?

Oh brother, this is about as dumb as it gets. If you have evidence of corruption, your goal in revealing that corruption should be to maximize the harm to the guilty parties, not to minimize it — in an attempt to make it stop.

Regardless of your assessment of Julian Assange, and the tactics of WikiLeaks, it should be obvious that no good is served by sitting on disclosures that reveal political corruption, in order to supposedly minimize the harm to guilty parties — the only reasonable goal is to get the information into the hands of the public before any important political events, precisely so the public can use that information to its benefit and protect itself (as much as the public is even capable of doing that).

And notice that I made no comment about whether or not anything that the NSA or CIA have done is legitimate. I only pointed out that government power in this regard (as usual) is dangerous — it is very, very dangerous. Abuses are inevitable, and if you defend such government power, then you have no basis for complaint, if you happen to become its victim — that is, as they say, you are just collateral damage.

But I certainly have no illusions about the dangerous nature of the world, and that some men can only be dealt with effectively with violence — for many, if you do not kill them first, they will kill you. That is the world we live in, and if you do not honestly acknowledge that obvious point, then you either do not pay attention, or you are in denial (good luck) — I have no idea what world events it would take to make that simple observation any clearer. So, this raises the obvious question: 'To what lengths should governments go in attempting to identify and deal with people who are committed to violence as a way of life?' I have no doubt that with certain individuals, torture — properly carried out — could be useful (e.g. terrorist/time-bomb scenario). But at the same time, I do not see how government can properly carry it out — that is, without creating more risk to innocents, than they can possibly remove with its practice. As always, there are no easy solutions, only trade-offs, and different levels of risk.

But Karl Vick's comparison of government power, with, say, a private organization like WikiLeaks supposedly being 'careless', is about as absurd as you can get. These things are in no way proportional, and only an imbecile with a strong bias would attempt to make such an obviously nonsensical comparison. Again, making the charge of 'careless' here is especially ironic given Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal, never mind the massive breach of personal security clearance information in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

http://time.com/4450282/wikileaks-julian-assange-dnc-hack-criticism/