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Activism Recap

2011-10-30T16:00:00Z

This week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine):

24 October 2011: The Mandate Both Is and Is Not a Tax by Paul Hsieh, MD
25 October 2011: Hospital Bill From 1960 by Paul Hsieh, MD
26 October 2011: Quick Links: Secret DNRs, PSA by Paul Hsieh, MD
27 October 2011: Wolf On CLASS by Paul Hsieh, MD
28 October 2011: Massachusetts Hardship by Paul Hsieh, MD
29 October 2011: ObamaCare Issues Before the Supreme Court by Paul Hsieh, MD

This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:

25 October 2011: What If God Disappeared? by Diana Hsieh
27 October 2011: Video: State Involvement in Marriage by Diana Hsieh

This week on Mother of Exiles:

24 October 2011: Hate and Racism in the Immigration Debate by Kelly McNulty Valenzuela
26 October 2011: Weekly Quote by Kelly McNulty Valenzuela
27 October 2011: From Fence Jumper to Brain Surgeon by Kelly McNulty Valenzuela
28 October 2011: Happy Birthday, Miss Liberty! by Kelly McNulty Valenzuela
28 October 2011: Famous Immigrant of the Week by Kelly McNulty Valenzuela

This week on the blog of Modern Paleo:

25 October 2011: Chocolate Review: Lindt's 70% Cocoa Almond Brittle by Benjamin
28 October 2011: Question of the Week: Food Sources by Diana Hsieh
28 October 2011: The Paleo Rodeo #084 by Diana Hsieh
29 October 2011: Objectivist Links by Diana Hsieh
29 October 2011: Video: State Involvement in Marriage by Diana Hsieh
29 October 2011: Video: Friendships with People of Opposite Philosophy by Diana Hsieh

The Bullies in Charge

2011-10-27T09:49:00Z

Thomas Sowell notes that the current crusade against bullying in government schools fails to live up to its name, even under cursory examination:

The current media and political crusade against "bullying" in schools seems likewise to be based on what groups are in vogue at the moment. For years, there have been local newspaper stories about black kids in schools in New York and Philadelphia beating up Asian classmates, some beaten so badly as to require medical treatment.

But the national media hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. Asian Americans are not in vogue today, just as blacks were not in vogue in the 1920s.

Meanwhile, the media are focused on bullying directed against youngsters who are homosexual. Gays are in vogue.

Sowell then goes on to note that, as with other past anti-discrimination policies, the focus of this latest crusade is on speech, and results in restrictions on what members of certain demographic groups can and can not say:

Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police -- as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion.

Is this what we want in our public schools?

I was with Sowell until the last sentence: I think he should be asking, "Do we want government-run schools at all?" For one thing, a socialized educational sector makes parents powerless to take action to protect their own children. For another, government schools are inherently bad at preventing bullying.

Clearly, some "public" government schools fail miserably to prevent even the worst kinds of bullying, and so will some private schools. But, unlike today's feudal system, in which transferring a student out of a dysfunctional school is nearly impossible (for legal and economic reasons), a fully private educational sector would make any parent better able to withdraw his child from or altogether avoid schools with reputations for such problems.

Worse, and even setting aside the many well-intentioned, but discriminatory anti-discrimination laws we have on the books (which exacerbate this problem), government institutions are inherently bad at policing non-criminal behavior that may, in certain contexts, be objectionable. This is because the sole proper purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, which include freedom of speech, as Sowell notes.

In a fully private educational system, a school might properly decide to punish children for using epithets as insults or intimidation, since such behavior would detract from its mission to educate its pupils. Parents, aware of such rules, may judge whether the school is really fostering a good educational environment or is merely attempting to indoctrinate the children, and act accordingly.

But a public school is a government institution, and if it attempts to proscribe or prescribe behavior (outside of, for example, punishing or preventing actual crime), it is necessarily in the position, as a part of the government, of forcing these rules on its pupils (and on parents, whether they agree or disagree with them), and, in the process, violating individual rights. But schools, as educational institutions, clearly have to have some rules. Thus a bad precedent is set by the very fact that the government is running a school and has had to dictate rules from the outset.

Because of this precedent, choices like the following come up: protect Asian students from being beaten up by black students or raise the legitimate specter of Jim Crow by keeping a sharp eye on your black students; and watch out for your gay students or blanket-violate freedom of speech (in the name of having a legally-consistent policy). Such schools are damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don't, and which action they take (since the principle of non-initiation of force went out the window from the outset) will be a function of which political pressure group is in power.

Bullying happens any time large numbers of children are gathered together, but the best way to keep it to a minimal level (and train children out of it) is to get the government out of education. In a government education system, with its blurred boundary between proper rules and improper laws, administrators and faculty are placed in the position of bullies. What they do is not guided by proper principles of government or education, and so the best will be hamstrung and the worst unleashed.

-- CAV

TRICK OR TREAT

2011-10-31T01:02:00Z

Have you been "tricked" by the Landover Baptist Church to crash "Satan's birthday party: Halloween"? ;)

My remedy for feeling alive during Halloween, is to have a tea drink!

Halloween Tea Drinks

Enjoy your beverage of choice and play Spooky’s Adventures: Creepy Halloween.

PHOTOS: Celebrities Dress Up For Halloween (huffingtonpost.com)

New York Objectivist Society Conference and Scholarships

2011-10-26T17:30:00Z

The New York Objectivist Society will be holding a conference with a fabulous lineup of speakers next weekend -- Friday, November 4th to Sunday, November 6th. It looks like you can still register to attend -- just check out the web site for details.

Also, you can help students attend by providing them with scholarship money. Nathan Fatal of the New England Objectivist Society was kind enough to put together this announcement:

As many of you may be aware, the New York Objectivist Society is hosting a conference on the weekend of November 5th. The conference will include a series of unique lectures by fellow Objectivists, including Andrew Bernstein, Shoshana Milgram, Jean Moroney, Yaron Brooks, Eric Daniels, and Harry Binswanger.

For students with valid photo IDs, NYOS is offering a reduced price of $300. There are many students who would likely love to attend this conference but would have a difficult time affording the expense.

Anyone willing to help a student of Objectivism to attend the conference would be helping fellow renaissance men to learn more about Objectivism and how to apply and promote it (you’ll also be supporting ARI, which supports student groups around the country). By attending this conference, students will gain a better understanding of Objectivism generally, and more specifically as it applies to emotions, history, psycho-epistemology, the nature of evil, the judicial system, and the debate over the role of government. It will also give them the opportunity to meet more people who share their values and live happily and selfishly. The value of meeting people one’s own age, who have embarked on the same journey, cannot be overstated.

It looks like the only method of payment for this event is by check, which can be made payable to New York Objectivist Society, Inc. To sponsor a student completely or in part, mail a check to the following address:

A. Benlian
c/o NYOS
P.O. Box 939
Bronxville, NY 10708

More information on New York Objectivist Society and their 2011 conference, including speakers and lecture topics, can be found here: www.newyorkobjectivistsociety.org...

I've sent $50 for a student to attend, and I recommend that you do the same, if you can!

The Real Luddites

2011-10-26T10:00:00Z

David Harsanyi very nicely demonstrates why leftists should try looking in the mirror when they feel the urge to demonize their opponents as "Luddites." Harsanyi takes global warming hysteria as his starting point, looks at the disdain on the part of many Demorcrats for the efficiency that technology brings us akong the way, and ends with the "occupy" squatters:

Luddites on the streets of Manhattan can demonize big oil, big food and big pharma all day long. They can decry profit as if Satan himself invented the notion. Yet when the multinational firm GlaxoSmithKline announces, as it did last week, that it has come up with the first effective vaccine for malaria, you can bet that it would never have happened in the system they propose. And if the vaccine is successful, the company will have done more good for the world than a million marches about the evils of capitalism could ever hope to produce.

What irks Robinson, Matthews and others like them is not that people do not accept "science," but that they won’t accept the statist solutions tied to that science. Moreover, a Luddite opposes capitalism. A skeptic only asks questions.

I like the way he disposes of two leftist non-sequiturs in his last paragraph: The statist solutions don't follow from the science, and disagreements with leftist dicta do not equal a rejection of science or technology.

--- In Other News ---

Via HBL and Amit Ghate are two amusing looks at the "occupy" squatters getting exactly what they deserve. The headline in the second sums it all up pretty well: "The Organizers vs. the Organized." Anyone with even the most tenuous contact with reality ends up becoming "The Man" when he attempts to impose any kind of order, like cleaning up the camps or getting the idiot drummers to stop at night to avoid alienating the very people they're allegedly trying to sway.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror writes a rather benevolent piece on parenthood. I like his idea that, in a sense, "Children give the first four years of your life back to you."

Here's a cautionary tale about hiring, "How to Hire an Idiot", that applies more broadly to any human relationship, and which I'd summarize in the words of an old boss: "You get what you inspect." "He was a friggin VP of business development for a $100 million company! He must know what he's saying, right?" Judging other people is hard enough without allowing mere credentials to stand in the way of easily-obtainable data.

Updates

Today: Minor edits.

Occupiers' First Taste of (Ultra Minimal) Responsibilities

2011-10-22T20:04:00Z

You couldn't make this up:

“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.”

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”

Read the whole story.

When Ayn Rand Meets Patrick Henry

2011-10-23T09:49:01Z

From tea partyers to conservatives to “liberals” to flea partyers—everyone has an opinion about what people and governments have a right to.

“People have a right to keep what they earn”—“The government has a right to spread the wealth around”—“Women have a right to abortion”—“No they don’t”—“People have a right to an education, a job, a home, and health care”—“The government has a right to regulate corporate greed”—“The government has no right to interfere in the economy”—“The 99 percent has a right to the wealth of the 1 percent”—and so on. In some form or another, we hear such opinions daily.

But are anyone’s opinions on such matters more than mere opinions? Can anyone name the source and nature of rights and prove that his views are true?

Some say that rights are gifts from God. Others rightly reply: Prove it. Some claim that rights are grants from government. Others note that this contradicts the very idea of rights. Some claim that rights are matters of “natural law.” Others aptly ask: How so? What natural law? Natural law emanating from God? Wouldn’t that be “supernatural law”?

Although everyone has an opinion about rights, almost no one can prove that his opinion is correct. For advocates of liberty, this is a big problem. If we can’t identify the objective source and nature of rights, we can’t defend freedom; we can’t reverse the statist trend that is destroying our world; we will lose our liberty.

Fortunately, Ayn Rand discovered the objective source and nature of rights, and anyone who wants to understand these vital truths can—in the course of about half an hour.

In my article Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society, I examine the traditional theories of rights—God-given, government-granted, and “natural” rights—and show why none of these theories holds water. I then present Rand’s theory, showing step by step how it is derived from perceptual reality, why it is demonstrably true, and how it grounds the propriety of freedom in observable fact.

Rand’s ideas are radical. They go to philosophical roots and challenge the Judeo-Christian worldview to its core. But true advocates of liberty are not averse to radical ideas. True advocates of liberty know that America was founded on radical ideas. True advocates of liberty are willing to examine arguments in support of freedom and to embrace even the most radical ideas when such ideas are grounded in evidence and logic.

From Sarbanes-Oxley to Obamacare to Dodd-Frank to TSA molestations to countless coercive “stimulus” plans, we are losing our liberty. What will our political situation be in five, ten, fifteen years? Will we be free, semi-free, mostly controlled, or essentially enslaved?

It depends on what we are willing to do today.

Are we willing to consider radical ideas and evidence in support of them—even if they challenge the status quo? Are we willing to share with others the truths we discover—even if doing so makes us look radical? Or are we afraid of evidence that might contradict traditional views, afraid that knowing too much unpopular truth might entail too much mental and social fatigue.

“For my part,” said Patrick Henry, “whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth.” When enough people approach Rand’s ideas with Henry’s courage, liberty will live again.

Related:

Image of Patrick Henry: Wikipedia Commons

Image of Ayn Rand: Wikipedia Commons

Freedom Poverty

2011-10-24T09:49:00Z

Forbes contributor Patrick Michaels discusses an interesting phenomenon taking place in Europe: As the worldwide depression continues to worsen, various "green" government schemes are going by the wayside. The whole article is worth reading, but I wish to comment briefly on a couple of points.

First, I think that Michaels misses an opportunity to learn a little bit more from history when he opens with the following:

History ... repeatedly shows that environmental protection is a luxury good. When per-capita income reaches some threshold, the citizenry tire of opaque air and sleazy waters, various agencies and permanent bureaucracies sprout, and, as long as times are good, regulation is good.

...

This all splatters to a halt when economies go south. And the crash can be especially jarring if greenness is one of the causes. Thanks in no small part to the debacle in Europe, in a very few recent weeks, we have witnessed the great green crack-up.

Michaels is right that, in a sense, such regulations are a luxury, but he falls too easily into the trap of giving false credence to the idea that capitalism causes pollution. As a result, he wrongly concedes that such regulations are also, in some sense, a necessity.

Regarding capitalism's assumed deficiencies in the clean air department, Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute has pointed out that pollution couldn't become such a problem under a system in which property rights are properly defined and protected under the law:

Under a pure capitalist system, as described in philosopher Ayn Rand's works, everything is privately owned. As a consequence, nature is preserved only to the extent that it benefits man. Companies cannot dump waste into rivers at whim, because those rivers are the property of someone else. The same applies to any other form of pollution that is harmful to man -- nobody wants to pollute their own property, and no one is allowed to pollute anyone else's, so waste management is handled in a very clean fashion.

No massive tomes of regulations required; and such "luxuries" as clean air arise in the same way that the entire cornucopia of other capitalist luxuries arise -- as a consequence of men being barred from harming each other, and so free to make (and act on) their best judgement. It is hardly a coincidence that, as I wish Michaels had noted, pollution in the communist world was much worse in many respects than it was in the relatively free non-communist world.

The second point follows from the first. When a government is premised not on protecting individual rights, but on prescribing how people are to act, the misguided crusades of its officialdom can, and often do, become threats to the quality of our lives when they don't threaten our very lives. In this vein, Michaels provides us with an excellent example of a "luxury" we can do without:

Guess what? Electricity prices [due to mandated solar power subsidies (in Britain!)] have gone through the roof. The average U.K. household bill is a tad under $200 per month, and so the thermostat goes down. It’s pretty chilly there for much of the year, and a cold house has consequences. A study just came out today on the health costs of what they call "fuel poverty", commissioned by the Energy and Climate Change Secretary (don't we need one of those?), Chris Huhne. Bottom line: the chill from green taxes is now killing more Brits per year than car crashes. [bold added]

The biggest threat to our environment -- properly understood as the conditions, including freedom, that human beings require to live -- isn't "too much" government, but improper government. (You do need government to enforce property rights, for example.) The "energy poverty" seen in Britain is a real problem, but it is only a symptom of its underlying freedom poverty.

-- CAV

Occupy Wall Street: An Axis of Enemies

2011-10-22T23:22:00Z

A number of stark contrasts should be noted between the freedom of speech and assembly as practiced by Occupy Wall Street and Pamela Geller.

On the one hand, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has literally taken over a piece of public property near Wall Street in New York City by force of its protesters and with the tacit sanction of the city and its mayor, Michael Bloomberg. OWS has made itself not only a public nuisance, but an unsanitary and dangerous one.

OWS has attracted every collectivist, socialist, communist, environmental, and even anti-Semitic loon to its cause. It is a grab-bag of “movements,” ranging from the call for the “reform” of Wall Street (meaning its abolition) to the persecution of Jews. If you are “anti-establishment” and have a gripe against “the system” – whether you are a WalMart employee, an unemployed, a welfare recipient, a trust fund tyke, unsure of or unhappy with your gender, a pal of the Palestinians, an indebted career student, a Facebook socialist, a son or daughter of Woodstock, a public employee, an SEIU or UAW thug, an “artist,” “writer,” or “musician,” a fan of Farrakhan, a New or Old Black Panther, a Jew against Israel, a Muslim against Jews, an anarchist, a neo-Nazi, a Marxist, a Trotskyite, or something in between – OWS is the place to go and be.

The Sugar Land Tea Party reserved a conference room at the Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land Hotel to hear Pamela Geller, prominent anti-jihadist and anti-Sharia advocate, speak last week on the subject of the dangers of stealth Sharia and stealth jihad in the United States. The Hyatt abruptly, with little or no notice, cancelled the event, originally citing “security reasons.” The Sugar Land Tea Party rushed to find another venue for the event, a community center. What security reasons did the hotel name? “Complaints” by Muslims that Geller’s explanation of Sharia law constituted “hate speech.”

The Mainstream Media (MSM) has drooled over, cooed about, and coddled OWS, providing it with free publicity it could never afford to pay for itself and implicitly approving of its multitudinous aims. It is tantamount to inveighing against prostitution, but demonizing the “johns” and painting the prostitutes as “victims of the system.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (aka Communist Public Brainwashing, “funded by viewers and taxpayers like you”) through its outlets of NPR and PBS is standing in the corner, treating OWS “neutrally” as though it were a volcanic eruption or an outbreak of salmonella, but not questioning the legitimacy of the protest.

All one hears from OWS, however, is “hate speech” directed against the rich, against corporations, against Jews, against capitalism, against freedom. This is “hate speech” approved by the MSM, while anyone who criticizes Islam, Sharia law, or anything remotely Arabic is branded an “Islamaphobe” or a “racist.”

Some protesters, apparently, are more equal than others. This is how things are done and said on America’s own Animal Farm, a leftist fantasy park that exists only in the minds of the MSM.

Had Geller a right to object to the Hyatt cancelling the venue of her talk? Did the Hyatt’s action constitute suppression of speech? Did it violate her right to speak?
Nominally, the Hyatt exercised its right to cancel the venue, because the hotel is private property. If someone or some organization uses another’s private property as a “soapbox” to promulgate specific views, it is with the tacit or express permission of the property owner. But Geller was not going to address her audience about the wisdom of buying gold stocks, life insurance, or new computer technology. Nothing as mundane as that. She was going to speak on the perils, inequities, and insidiousness of Sharia. This is an ideological subject, not a “practical” one. The Hyatt may have been indifferent to the subject. It is reflective of the “What? Me Worry?” attitude most American business executives exhibit when confronted with important moral and ideological issues.

That indifference ended when the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations mounted a telephone protest against the event, causing Hyatt to think twice and withdraw the venue. Hyatt executives then became “worried.” In concrete terms, the Hyatt did not violate Geller’s First Amendment rights. But seen in a broader context, Hyatt’s action contributed not only to the suppression of her freedom of speech by CAIR and its fellow Hamas- and Muslim Brotherhood-spawned organizations – dhimmis make such useful, facilitating proxies – but of its own, and in doing so advanced the agenda of Islamists to gut the First Amendment guarantee in order to protect itself from legitimate criticism and exposure.

Such is the stuff American businessmen are made of today. Can you imagine what would not have happened had the colonials who gathered on Lexington Green, upon only hearing the distant tramp and cadence drums of approaching British regulars, said among themselves: “Uh, do we really want to do this? I mean, they can bomb our homes, harass our customers, make life miserable for us if we stand here. They got us out-gunned anyway. What’s the point? We got crops to tend to. I’m out of here.”

OWS, on the other hand, not only does not face the kind of obstacle and censure that Geller, Robert Spencer, and other writers about Islamic jihad and Sharia, but has been given a free hand by the MSM and various municipal governments, and without recrimination, retribution, or rebuttal, to slander, libel, trash, and spit on all the hands that feed its yelping, chanting, non-producing, parasitical minions, and make their sorry lives possible – corporations, investors, innovators, taxpayers, and even government.

Is the hand of President Barack Obama to be seen in OWS and the Hyatt back-down? One cannot but help suspect that the answer is Yes. Here are some interesting threads:
Obama “sympathizes” with OWS. He is on “their side.” This is his kind of “community action.” It follows the prescribed methodology and tactics of Saul Alinsky Rule No. 13 to bring about “change” or “reform”: Identify, isolate, freeze and escalate.

"I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel," he said Thursday. "People are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works."

This is Alinsky-lingo dressed in the pinafore of political verisimilitude.

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News.. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

)
Obama tried to equate the anti-big-government sentiments and civil behavior of the Tea Party rallies and town halls with Occupy Wall Street. It is his version of the Bronx Cheer:

The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party. “In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party," Obama says. "Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”

Frankly, the government isn’t separated enough from Americans. There is hardly a realm of action in which the government does not set the terms or make life more expensive and complicated. Americans who value their freedom do not want their government looking out for them, except to protect their individual rights. They want to be left alone, not nurtured, regulated, and throttled from cradle to grave.
It is the rabble of OWS who wish to be wards of the government. Read their signs. Listen to their chants. Observe their behavior.

So, even if the Democratic National Committee actually has had no hand in the fomenting and growth of OWS, a sanction from the highest office in the land is culpability enough.

It should not be surprising that Islamist supremacists wish to share the stage with socialist supremacists. In too many photos of OWS in New York and of “occupations” in cities around the country can be seen men wearing Yasser Arafat-inspired keffiyah around their necks. These photos predated news of an Islamic sanction of OWS. Their presence among the rabble also comports with OWS signs that call for the end of the “occupation” of Gaza. Do we detect a smidgen of double-standards here, concerning “occupations”? Yes, but don’t tax an OWS protester with it. These people wouldn’t know a double standard if it bit them in their butts.

It is only a matter of time that we will see photos of neo-Nazis marching, chanting, singing, sign-waving, harassing, defecating, urinating, shoulder-to-shoulder with Islamist supremacists, flaunting their neo-Nazi swastika banners. Think that’s impossible? Think again. Rocky Suhayda, head of the American Nazi Party, assured his members it was okay to join OWS, even though there are “non-whites” taking part in OWS:

In a message posted Thursday on its official website, organization head Rocky Suhayda said members of the “pro-white” movement should join and support the Occupy demonstrators because they share a common enemy: The “Judeo-capitalist banksters.”

Suhayda said though many “racialists” are concerned about the demonstrations because the “many protesters are non-white and/or ‘communists,’” that shouldn’t matter because they are all against the same “evil, corrupted, degenerate capitalist elitists.”

“… Even Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP had to vote with open communists on some issues to achieve their goals. WE need to utilize and support every movement of dissent against this evil American empire, regardless of which end of the political spectrum it originates from.”

Most people do not know that Hitler also stooped to dealing with those “racially degenerate” Arabs (who were as bad as or worse than those Jewish-led communists!) when it came to eradicating Jews. He had a close relationship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and planned with him a Mideast version of the Holocaust.

Now, the Hyatt Hotel chain is owned or controlled by Penny Pritzker. Geller mentions her in her article about Hyatt’s dhimmitude. Pritzker is another billionaire on the Obama bus. She was his national campaign finance manager in 2008. She oversaw the Superior Bank subprime mortgage scandal. She was recruited to donate money to Obama’s campaigns. She is still active for Obama, serving on a committee to raise (more) money for his 2012 reelection campaign.

President Obama's close relationship with Warren Buffett goes back to his Illinois Senate run; now the billionaire investor is helping Obama not only on the tax fairness front, but in fund-raising for his 2012 re-election bid. Buffett hits Chicago Oct. 27 for a $35,800-per person dinner and reception.

The host committee includes Obama's major Chicago based finance team: Jim Crown, Vicki & Bruce Heyman, Mellody Hobson Steve Koch, Penny Pritzker, John Rogers Jr., David Scherer.

Who are all those people? Rich people. But the kind of “1%” rich people OWS studiously neglects to excoriate or curse. But, don’t bother pointing out the contradiction to the protesters. Contradictions are beyond their grasp, excised from their minds by “reformist” educators in public schools and in the universities.

My betting is that Pritzker ordered the Houston Hyatt executives to scratch Geller’s event. Word got to her, she was appalled (“I won’t allow hate speech to be spewed on my properties!”), or was warned, or was advised, and out went the order.

Occupy Wall Street is an in-plain-sight, transparent vortex of every collectivist and totalitarian cause and movement that ever befouled American soil and that ever assaulted American liberties. “Soaking the rich,” ending property rights, collectivizing or nationalizing all property, can only lead to across-the-board censorship, the end of freedom of speech, and the scuttling of the First Amendment. There would be no private property left on which to advocate or oppose anything. Pamela Geller insists on exercising her freedom of speech. Occupy Wall Street and all its enablers, supporters, allies, and financiers insist on ending it.

That is “Polarization” with a capital P. Anyone with an ounce of self-respect and who values his life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness, should be for it. After all, there is no “coming together,” no reconciliation, no “common ground” possible with OWS or Sharia law. They are both the mortal enemies of America.

What If God Disappeared?

2011-10-24T20:00:00Z

What If God Disappeared?:

(Yes, it's a parody!)

The Naked Apes of Wall Street

2011-10-19T02:06:00Z

While immersed in the 1920’s to complete my latest detective novel, chickens came home to roost on Wall Street. Also, wannabe hippies, yippies, union thugs, and the countless clueless who went to “occupy” Wall Street because they had nothing better to do. I watched and read with dismay the trashing of that short but great street as hundreds, then thousands blocked it, trashed it, yelled at it, probably urinated on it, and then camped out on Zuccotti Park. Or rather, took it over.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the “Duke of New York,” has not ordered the police to clear out the park. He has not called in companies of riot police armed with shields, batons, and Mace. He has not brought in fire engines to hose the barbarians, not so much to give them much needed baths, as to drive them off into custody. But then Bloomberg endorses the Ground Zero Mosque. Perhaps he likes the new “Camp of the Saints.”

The mainstream media has done its best to sanction and egg on the “protestors.” The only objective reporting on the continuing outrage can be found in the non-MSM. From Brian Williams to Diane Sawyer to Matt Lauer, the yelping and gesticulating and sign-carrying on Lower Manhattan amuses them, encourages them. It is provocative and newsworthy. The Occupiers of Wall Street get a free pass, references to the American Revolution, and sonorous sympathy, something the MSM never gave the Tea Party.

To reprise the MSM’S role in perpetuating the alleged “spontaneity” of the occupiers’ “freedom of expression” would be redundant here. Much has been made by the non-MSM of the hypocrisy of the occupiers. Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish is especially on top of the irony of thousands of trust fund beneficiaries protesting the system that makes trust funds possible, and has written a number of perceptive pieces on the character of the protesters and of the phenomenon. Kelly O’Donnell of Canada Free Press exposes the bogus “spontaneity” of the masses of Zuccotti Park by tracing its funding and organization to that Marxist billionaire, George Soros, its endorsement by William Ayers, the former Weatherman bomber, and other notorious notables. All this ground and more have been covered by those not distracted by the task of finishing a novel.

What I would like to do here to present The Naked Ape. I saw a picture somewhere of the protesters on which someone had written all the product names of the things worn and used by the protesters: the cap from Gap, the cameras by Sony, shoes by Nike, the iPods by Apple, and so on. In short, the protesters were protesting the corporations that produced those objects and which helped to facilitate their protest.

Now, governments produce nothing but forms and other kinds of paperwork, and even here government printing offices rely on technology and methods they never originated and could not improve on. The Congressional Record, the Federal Register, White House invitations, and your dollar bills all have their roots in some individual’s or private corporation’s innovation. All the desks, equipment, technology, family pictures, pens, pencils, glass in the windows, rugs, paint on the walls, insulation, flags, memo pads, etc. in any given politician’s office are all privately produced. Not even the military develops its own weapons; that task is farmed out to independent contractors in the private realm. There’s no such thing as a government tank factory or munitions farm.

I will take that photograph one step further.

Picture a protester, fully dressed, armed with his cell phone, iPod, perhaps with a poncho rolled up in his backpack along with toiletries and other necessities.

Take away his cap – his shirt and tee-shirt – his watch – his jacket – his backpack and all is contents – his sweater or sweatshirt – his cell phone – his camera – any other gizmo he has become dependent on to communicate with his pals or to see what else is happening on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and other social sites – his wallet – his pants – his underwear – his socks – his shoes – his shaving instruments – his deodorant (if any) – his hair cut (if he has had one) – his pill box, nasal spray, inhaler, chap stick, or whatever else enables him to breathe without difficulty – his childhood inoculations – his cigarettes – his lighter – his plastic packet of whatever else he may smoke – his glasses or contacts – his tent – his sleeping bag.

Take away his cardboard sign and the length or wood or plastic it may be affixed to, if it is affixed to anything. Take away the marker or pen or spray that printed the words on it.

No Starbucks. No Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. No Zuccotti Park-cooked pasta and stir-fried veggies. Maybe cockroaches. Or silverfish. Or dead rats. But nothing prepared in defiance of Mother Earth. No Poland Spring water. No plastic water bottles at all.

And what have you? You have a naked ape. A protester against corporate greed, an advocate of expropriating wealth and the means of production.

Picture a woman and do the same to her. No hairspray, either. No make-up kits. No dyes. No lipstick. No tampons. No nail polish. No clothes. No gizmos. No signs. Nothing.

And there is the female of the species.

Don’t avert your eyes. Multiple those two images by the thousands, in Technicolor. Pack them all together on Wall Street or Broad Street or Broadway, and what have you?

A frightening, noisy, intimidating mob stripped of everything they are protesting against. A George Romero-like Dawn of the Dead. A phenomenon more repellent than a canvas by Pieter Brueghel the Elder of peasants cavorting in the mud. Coming at you, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the producer of wealth. The owner of wealth. The property owner. The honest wage-earner. The hot dog vendor. The cabbie. The investor. The industrialist. The inventor. The risk-taker. The gainfully employed in any private capacity. The self-employed. The bill-payer. The tax-payer. The savings account owner. The rich. The modestly well-off. Aspirants to being rich or modestly well-off.

Coming to get you, because the naked apes are none of those things.

They are coming at you and for you. If you don’t join them, and apologize, and hand over your property, your wealth, and your life, and join, not their “99%,” but their actual 0.83%, they intend to kill you. So said one protester during the Oakland “occupation.”

Lout: S—t…won’t be exactly how you want it. S—t’s gonna change. You don’t know what’s gonna happen….

Tea Party interviewer: What do you do with the people who don’t want to change their beliefs, or don’t agree with you?

Lout: Kill ‘em. (“Just kiddin’,” he added with a chuckle, but it was too late. His answer came instantly, eagerly, and from the gut.)

Lenin wasn’t kidding. Nor was Hitler. Nor Stalin, nor Mao or Pol Pot. It’s anyone’s guess that Obama isn’t kidding, either. Or William Ayers. Or George Soros.

So, it isn’t a matter of hypocrisy. It’s not an issue of venality. That is not what the protesters are primarily guilty of. It is of allowing themselves to be brainwashed so thoroughly by their educators that they can no longer think. Their brains have been automatized or programmed to repeat whatever their teachers wished them to think. If they are protesting anything, it should be their government-mandated, state-commanded, and bureaucrat-tailored education.

They should be protesting the government’s involvement in their lives and in their futures. By extension, they should be protesting in favor of private property, wealth accumulation, individual rights, and for getting the government out of the economy.

Instead, they are demanding more of what has stunted their minds. And they believe – not think – but believe that impoverishing everyone will compensate for their imagined persecution and purported downtroddeness and make things right and level so that no one will envy anyone else. Their obvious and enervating malice was bred in our schools as surely as Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to drool.

Do not bother asking them to know cause and effect. Syllogisms are beyond their ability to grasp. To them, there is no cause and effect. Things just are. The universe is causeless. Human action is causeless. The unskilled laborer, with nothing to offer the world but his muscles and capacity for mindless routine, is the source of all wealth, which the rich and the industrious and the innovators have somehow stolen from him. Steve Jobs’s personal net worth was $7 billion. He should have been made to exist on a ditch-digger’s wage, and to give them their iPods and other gizmos, too. So they have been taught. All differences in wealth and standards of living are inequitable and unjust, they were taught. The solution is to abolish all equity and the concept of justice.

So, imagine that army of naked, gibbering, wild-eyed apes heading in your direction. John Dewey and a host of other Progressive educators set them loose. And they were made possible by Immanuel Kant, Heidegger, and other philosophers. Karl Marx? He was a Johnny-Come-Lately heir of Kant and Hegel.

Ideas have consequences. And there they are, in Lower Manhattan, occupying it.

Police Fabricating Drug Busts

2011-10-20T20:00:00Z

Did you need another reason to oppose the Drug War? Just in case, here's reason #28173:

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

Go read the whole story.

The Gift that Moves Minds

2011-10-19T20:49:45Z

From a recipient:

“A friend gave me a subscription to The Objective Standard, saying he thought I’d appreciate the articles. He underestimated! I find the articles in TOS fascinating, clarifying, and often inspiring. I love this journal.” —Brad C.

Might your friends or family appreciateTOS? If so, the Fall 2011 issue—with a feature article on Ayn Rand’s theory of rights—is a great issue with which to begin their enlightenment.

Gift subscriptions start at just $29 and are available in Print, E-Book, Kindle, and Audio (mp3) editions to meet today’s various lifestyles.

Three quick and easy ways to place gift orders:

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The Justice of Income Inequality Under Capitalism

2011-10-20T03:18:31Z

Many “Occupy Wall Street” protesters oppose the bailouts of failed banks and financial institutions. They are right to do so: such bailouts violate rights by forcibly transferring wealth from some people to others via taxes, deficit spending (future taxes), and monetary expansion (hidden taxes). At the same time, however, many Occupiers call for even more forced wealth transfers for things such as unemployment payments, student loans, mortgage support, government schools, and “green” energy. Why do many Occupiers oppose some forced wealth transfers and advocate others?

The answer may be found in the popular “occupation” phrase: “We are the 99 percent.” As Vanity Fair explained earlier this year, “The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent.” The 99 percent, then, consist of everyone else. According to the typical Occupier, politicians should forcibly seize wealth, so long as they seize it from the relatively wealthy and give it to those with less. “Tax the Rich” (even more), many protest signs read. Vanity Fair compares America’s wealthy to Middle Eastern theocratic dictators: “Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few.” The magazine predicts that “even the wealthy will come to regret” the income inequality in this country. While some in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement may attempt to make good on that threat, if income inequality is their concern, they should instead consider some history.

True, throughout most of human history, great income inequality arose when the political class looted the masses. Slaves labored in Egypt to build elaborate burial pyramids for their jewel-crested Pharaohs. In the socialist Soviet Union, the “dictators of the proletariat” lived lavishly even as they starved millions to death while selling grain to other countries (for details, see the film The Soviet Story). Thus, while some Occupiers call to replace capitalism with socialism (see the Denver college professor and “born-again Trotskyite” or the Los Angeles Occupier calling for bloody revolution) if successful their strategies would in fact create another kind of income inequality.

But the income inequality under tyranny is fundamentally different from that under capitalism. One arises from looting and forcing; the other from producing and thinking. Looters seize available wealth. They add nothing to the supply of wealth, opting instead to smash things, divert human effort to the task of looting, and squash the incentive of their victims to produce much of anything. Thus, even if looters could achieve income equality, doing so would constitute a moral atrocity. Producers create new wealth: They restructure their own resources—their land, machinery, seeds, and minerals—to create goods and services that benefit human life. Producers earn money by trading voluntarily with those who also benefit from the exchange. Often producers hire others, improving the lot of employer and employee alike.

Looters win (in their own short-sighted view) at the expense of others. Producers win as they help others win. At worst, a looter takes your life; at best, he steals what you produce. At worse, a producer leaves you alone; at best—and most typically—he greatly enriches and expands our lives.

America’s capitalists have nothing in common with dictators in the Middle East or with any other type of looter. (I mean actual capitalists, not those pretenders in business who wield political power to seize subsidies and hamstring their competitors.) Steve Jobs did not earn a fortune by attacking others or stealing from them; he grew wealthy by building remarkably advanced machines that dramatically improve the lives of tens of millions of people. Whatever wealth Jobs personally gained, he added enormously more value to his customers’ lives. The same can be said of any of America’s business leaders, whether the energy producer George Mitchell, retailer Jeff Bezos, software developer Bill Gates, internet visionary Mark Zuckerberg, or anybody else who lives by thinking and producing at whatever scale. Producers trade goods and services for money, and the exchange benefits both parties. A producer’s wealth indicates the scope of his mutually beneficial exchanges.

From the economic point of view, as Ludwig von Mises wrote in a 1955 letter: “Destitution is in a feudal society the corollary of income inequality, but not in a capitalist society. The fact that there is ‘big business’ does not impair, but improve[s] the conditions of the rest of the people.” Mises writes here of productive business in a free economy, not politically-connected “business” that seeks reward in handouts and special favors. To the degree that today’s economy has brought some closer to destitution, the cause is not productive big business, but instead the looting mentality of inflationary government spending, political support for irresponsible mortgages, bailouts for banks and unions, out-of-control entitlements, corporate welfare, and the like. In short, the cause is government interference in the economy.

From the moral point of view, forcibly seizing wealth from producers violates their rights. The relevant moral distinction is not between the 99 percent and the wealthiest one percent, but rather between the producers and the looters on any scale. The great producers of our society do not deserve envious snarls and threats to forcibly seize their property. Instead, they deserve our gratitude and admiration.

Related:

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Reason for Hope

2011-10-18T15:00:00Z

If you ever think that American culture and politics is relentlessly sliding into the abyss, just consider the ginormous strides made by two groups over the past decade -- gun enthusiasts and gays. Both are simply remarkable examples of good causes made real by successful activism.

I was surprised to be reminded -- in this article about the life and death of early gay activist Frank Kameny -- that President Clinton signed an executive order allowing gays to obtain security clearances... in 1995. That's only 16 years ago. That seems like the Dark Ages! In 2021, I bet I'll be saying, "Wow, I just can't believe that gays and lesbians were only permitted to openly serve in the military for the first time ten years ago." Hopefully that will seem like a barbaric distant past too.

As for gun rights, just check out the spread of shall-issue concealed carry laws across American states from 1986 to the present in this animated map. Blood is running in the streets, and every city is like the Wild West now... oh wait, maybe not. (Surprise, surprise!)

Change for the better is possible... if enough people doggedly and openly pursue it.

Nine up the Sleeve

2011-10-20T09:27:00Z

Via HBL, I have learned that Peter Schiff doesn't like the name of GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.

Cain would replace the current system of income and payroll taxes with a 9% flat-rate personal income tax, a 9% corporate tax, and a 9% national sales tax. Great idea. Such a system would unburden businesses, provide a tax cut for most Americans, and shift taxation to consumption and away from income generation. This is exactly what our economy needs. But unlike our current corporate tax system, the plan eliminates the deductibility of wages and salaries from corporate income. The net effect is the creation of a brand new 9% tax on wages. When this fourth 9 falls from Cain's sleeve, many of his opponents will likely accuse him of cheating.

Schiff still sees merit in the plan, though. (That said, I am cautious about getting rid of tax loopholes, at least until there is real momentum towards restricting government to its proper scope.)

Even with its flaws, the 9-9-9-9 plan would create an economic windfall by lowering the top corporate rate to 9% from 50% (35% at the corporate level and 15% on dividends taxed at the individual level), and simplifying the tax code to reduce unnecessary compliance costs and the economically inefficient behavior that is created by perverse tax incentives.

Later, though, Schiff states that he favors cuts in spending to make a "real" 9-9-9 plan possible, by allowing the removal of the de facto new 9% earnings tax.

After hearing Cain's lightweight rivals make silly quips about pizza prices or flipping the digits upside-down, it's good to see a substantive critique of Cain's plan by someone who both favors a strong economy and knows what it would take for us to have one again.

-- CAV

SoCal Objectivists Second Meeting

2011-10-18T20:20:10Z

by Jason Stotts

I’m happy to report that the second meeting of the SoCal Objectivists on Saturday night was a great success! We had 13 people and a lively discussion.

I want to thank Don Watkins for coming and presenting a very good lecture primarily on Ethics, with some Politics thrown in. I also want to thank all of our new members. It was nice meeting each of you and I look forward to seeing you at future meetings.

I encourage everyone to email us your feedback about how you think things went in terms of the lecture itself, the venue, announcements, ease of RSVP’ing, and anything you think we should know. We’re working hard to get SCO going and any feedback you can give is appreciated. You can email either Earl [Earl.Parson(at)gmail.com] or me [Jason(at)JasonStotts.com].

The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for November 12th in the OC area. We need to find an acceptable venue before we can host down there, so you OC people who want a meeting in your area, help us out finding a good venue. For details about what we look for, please email us.

We’re working on putting together the calendar for 2012 now. If you’re interested in presenting a lecture to the SoCal Objectivists, please drop us a line with the subject and a short description.

SoCal Objectivists is taking off! If you’re in the area, please join us for great times and rousing discussions.

Offering Employment to Occupiers

2011-10-20T05:15:00Z

I think this is an effective form of activism, particularly since it is also tied into the activist's job:

Don’t Blame Twitter for the "Post-Idea" Age

2011-10-16T02:41:22Z

Writing in a recent New York Times Sunday review column, Neal Gabler takes note of the The Atlantic’s list of the “14 Biggest Ideas of the Year”:

Take a deep breath. The ideas include “The Players Own the Game” (No. 12), “Wall Street: Same as it Ever Was” (No. 6), “Nothing Stays Secret” (No. 2), and the very biggest idea of the year, “The Rise of the Middle Class—Just Not Ours,” which refers to growing economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Now exhale. It may strike you that none of these ideas seem particularly breathtaking. In fact, none of them are ideas. They are more on the order of observations.

Gabler goes on to observe that we no longer seem to live in a time when big ideas “ignite fires of debate, stimulate other thoughts, incite revolutions and fundamentally change the ways we look at and think about the world.” Compared to the time when thinkers like Albert Einstein, Betty Friedan and Carl Sagan held the public’s attention, our age is impoverished.

But why are we living in this “post-idea” world? Part of Gabler’s explanation is a broader cultural trend:

It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock—to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief.

On this, we could not agree more. At The Undercurrent we’ve long been critics of the increasing popularity of Evangelical Christianity, the looming threat of political Islam, and the bland indifference to both by allegedly secular critics. Science and reason are under assault, whether by right-wing religionists who would arrest the advance of stem cell research, or by left-wing multiculturalists, feminists, and environmentalists who see science as a form of Western patriarchal imperialism.

But why has America abandoned the bold Enlightenment pursuit of big ideas and instead “turned back the ephocal clock” to an increasing reliance upon superstition and faith? Somewhat surprisingly, Gabler blames the Information Age: he claims that we are inundated with so much information from web sites and social networks that we cannot process it into something meaningful. “Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show.”

But does technology really mold our minds? To be sure, it is a tool that extends the reach of our hands and of our senses. As a tool, it can be used poorly or used well. People who watch a lot of television can become illiterate couch potatoes. But they can also become media critics. Twitter can be used to share meaningless gossip about celebrities, or it can be used to foment political revolutions. Even media critics and revolutions are not guaranteed to deliver anything true or meaningful. If we sometimes don’t like what they deliver, isn’t it obvious that we shouldn’t blame the tools—but the choices made by the tool users?

And if America has entered a post-Enlightenment period that distrusts rationality in favor of superstition, should we blame technology? Or should we blame the philosophers who, many decades before the embrace of superstition noted by Gabler, cast doubt on the efficacy of human reason, thereby creating a vacuum into which faith and superstition would enter. One way these philosophers undercut the mind, curiously, was by arguing that it was a helpless pawn of material forces—not unlike Gabler’s own form of technological determinism.

Consider an alternate big idea: the manmade world we see around us is the product of the choices of individual human minds. If we don’t like the world, we should rethink the choices that produced it.

Creative Commons-licensed picture from Flickr user Rosaura Ochoa.

Harry Reid and Company’s Latest Immoral Scheme

2011-10-17T02:42:21Z

As part of the left’s ongoing assault on productive Americans, Sen. Harry Reid is leading the senate Democrats in an effort to impose a new 5.6 percent surtax on people making a million dollars or more. This is economically stupid and morally wrong.

Generally speaking, people who make a million dollars or more do so by means of businesses they own; they run their businesses by employing people to do the various jobs involved; and they employ people by means of the revenues generated by the businesses. To confiscate more money from these business owners is to further prevent them from expanding their businesses and creating more jobs—and thus to cause more unemployment. That is economically stupid.

More importantly, individuals, including wealthy ones, have a moral right to the fruits of their efforts; they earned the money in question (or were given it by someone else who earned it), thus they have a moral right to keep, use, and dispose of it as they see fit. To confiscate their wealth is to violate their rights, and to confiscate more of their wealth is to violate their rights to a greater extent. That is morally wrong.

What does this say about Sen. Reid and company?

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Image: Wikipedia Commons

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The Justice of Income Inequality Under Capitalism

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Nine up the Sleeve

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Offering Employment to Occupiers

Don’t Blame Twitter for the "Post-Idea" Age

Harry Reid and Company’s Latest Immoral Scheme