The Rule of Reason

Sticks and Stones

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:32:00 +0000

Sticks and stones may break my bones, goes the adage, but names will never hurt me.

The new adage, tailored for our age, goes:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, and names, insults, derogatory remarks, denigrations, defamations, "hate" crimes, "bias intimidations," rude or indecent gestures, mockery, satire in textual print or imagery, disrespect, lifestyle harassment, bullying, and other verbal, visual, and non-violent actions, attempts at passive victimization and gross insensitivities that tend or are calculated to hurt, depress, humiliate, or shame me, and otherwise offend my self-esteem and rightful dignity, compromise my privacy, and diminish my standing in the eyes of my fellow creatures – may be grounds for civil and/or criminal suits.

Sticks and stones may be used in the commission of an actual felony, as well as guns, knives, one's fists, or any other physical object. But an evolving complement of new chargeable felonies, often appended to legitimate ones, is growing, and if not challenged, will reach a "critical mass" in law that will stifle all realms of speech. These new "felonies" are "hate crimes." A new subset of them is "bias intimidation."

In "The Peril of 'Hate Crimes'" I noted:

…[T]he why of a crime is increasingly treated as though it were a weapon, such as a gun, a knife, or a club. In standard criminal cases, however, it has never been the instrument of crime that was on trial, but the defendant and his actions.

Proponents of hate crime have attempted to find a compromise between objectivity in criminal law and the notion that a felon should also be punished for what caused him to commit the crime. But no such compromise is feasible if objective law is to be preserved and justice served. The irrational element – that is, making thought, however irrational or ugly it may be, a crime – has suborned the rational. No compromise between good and evil is lasting or practical. Evil will always come out the victor.

It did not take long for the corrupting notion of hate crimes to degenerate into thought crime. This is what happens when reason is declared irrelevant or is abandoned or diluted by the irrational.

It used to be that a criminal was sentenced for his crime, and if the crime was committed from some form of prejudice, the court's and jury's afterthought was usually: And, by the way, your motives are contemptible and despicable.

Appended now to a guilty verdict for the murder of an individual because of his race, gender "orientation," religion, or political affiliation, is another verdict: You had no right to think that way, so we are adding five years to your sentence and adding X amount to your monetary penalty.

"Bias intimidation" played a role in the conviction and sentencing of Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers freshman whose webcam spying allegedly drove roommate Tyler Clementi to commit suicide. The New York Times reported in March;

The jury in the trial of a former Rutgers University student accused of invading his roommate’s privacy by using a webcam to watch him in an intimate encounter began deliberations on Wednesday and asked the judge to define two crucial terms.

Jurors asked Judge Glenn Berman of Superior Court in Middlesex County to restate the definition of “intimidate,” as well as of the word “purpose,” as it related to the bias intimidation count.

The judge ruled that the defendant, Dharun Ravi, could be found guilty of bias intimidation only if he was also found guilty of the first charge, invasion of privacy. And he told the jury that the roommate, Tyler Clementi, would have been the victim of bias intimidation if he had been made to feel fear. [Italics mine.]

“A person is guilty of the crime of bias intimidation,” Judge Berman said, “if he commits an offense with the purpose to intimidate an individual because of sexual orientation.”

Mr. Ravi is charged with 15 counts, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors say he encouraged friends to view a feed from his webcam that showed Mr. Clementi with another man. Mr. Clementi committed suicide shortly afterward, in September 2010.

And the denouement of this drama on May 21st, as reported by the Times:

The jury found that he did not intend to intimidate Mr. Clementi the first night he turned on the webcam to watch. But the jury concluded that Mr. Clementi had reason to believe he had been targeted because he was gay, and in one charge, the jury found that Mr. Ravi had known Mr. Clementi would feel intimidated by his actions.

On May 21, Mr. Ravi was sentenced to a 30-day jail term. He had faced up to 10 years in prison. He was also was sentenced to three years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, counseling about cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles and a $10,000 probation fee.

USA Today provided a few more details of the sentencing by Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman:

While Ravi wasn't charged in connection with his death, he was convicted of 15 counts, including two second-degree bias intimidation charges that carry a presumption of jail time. Ravi also was convicted of a second-degree hindering charge.

Judge Glenn Berman ordered Ravi, 20, to report to the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center on May 31.

Ravi must pay a fine and costs of more than $11,000 -- $10,000 of which will go to an agency that assists victims of bias crimes. Berman also ordered three years probation and 300 hours of community service.[Italics mine.]

USA Today included an important update, a point of Ravi's defense which the jury apparently ignored:

Ravi's defense team is making the case for an acquittal of the charges, saying Ravi did not know the effect his behavior would have on Clementi.

The unstated premise behind the whole trial was that Ravi had driven Clementi to commit suicide. And it is doubtful, highly doubtful, that Ravi's intentions were more than just exposing Clementi to adolescent ridicule. As a new college roommate, he barely knew Clementi. He could not know how "sensitive" he might have been to exposure, mockery, or to an invasion of his privacy. Ravi, then 18 years old, could not have known, even had he been 50 years old with a lifetime of experience behind him, what Clementi might have done as a result of his webcam spying which he shared with others.

Notice that the term bias intimidation is synonymous with bias crime. Whatever it is called, in New Jersey, the "crime" garners a presumption of jail time.

The larger picture is the introduction of the notion, not only of "hate crime," but of an appended but invalid felony charge that may accompany the charge of a validly defined felony. The question is – and it may be a moot question by this time – is how soon mere bias intimidation will be treated as synonymous with hate crime? How soon will individuals be taken to court and charged with it alone, without the excuse of having committed an actual felony?

Salman Rushdie, who surely knows something about the consequences of "defaming" a religion and its central icon, as well as having "insulted" or "offended" the feelings of Muslims, wrote in The New Yorker:

The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free.

Dharun Ravi is not a writer, or an artist. But if a writer or artist experiences the fear of what might happen if he allowed his creativity full rein, then he will not create anything but what has been approved by the million censors of protected classes, who could just as easily file suit against him and see him sentenced to a new Gulag, or just financially ruined. Fear of censorship shuts down the mind and sends it on the main traveled roads of the average, the unexceptional, the bland, the expected. Fear of censorship smothers thought, and makes freedom of expression of all but the mediocre impossible and a cruel taunt.

Let's examine the court's, the jury's, and the law's a priori assumptions, assumptions on which they acted. An a priori assumption is one that is knowable without further need to prove or experience. It just "is." . Clementi was gay. Ergo, Ravi's actions were anti-gay, or biased against gays, or in this instance, against Tyler Clementi because he was gay.

First, note that gays are now becoming a new "protected class," as surely as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the ICNA, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and other Hamas-linked "civil rights" groups are working to make Muslims and Islam a protected class, and with some success, especially in our judiciary, and most importantly in regards to what one may say about Muslims and Islam. .

As there is a legitimate distinction between premeditated and aggravated assault – premeditated meaning that a defendant meant to assault the victim, and his motive not being on trial, and aggravated meaning that the victim expected or apprehended physical assault or battery – will our courts now accept as a legitimate charge premeditated bias intimidation? Will a defendant be arraigned and indicted for aggravated bias intimidation?

If a legitimately defined felony can be deemed an action taken with malice aforethought, will writing satirically (or even seriously) about Islam, or gays, or badly dressed people, or obese people, or even about the disabled, be some day treated as malicious and biased intimidation, because the feelings of the subjects were hurt, or because the words instilled unprovable but asserted fear in them?

The emotional states of a felon and his victim are essentially immaterial when judging a crime. The contents of their thoughts are likewise not proper subjects for criminal justice. I could sit here and plot how to rob my bank, especially because I didn’t like the way a teller treated me the other day, but I could not be charged with any crime unless I acted on my thoughts (or my piqued sense of hurt and mistreatment). It is the action that would count, not my motive. Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman, in her article "Is There a Legal Problem with “Hate Crimes?” emphasizes this point:

The definition of "hate crime" is one of those overkill legislative initiatives with unforeseen consequences. It is noble to recognize that some people commit crimes out of hate, but a murder is a murder, and this should be enough.

How can we possibly know a criminal's inner thoughts (his hatred for his victim); furthermore, even if we can know this for certain, what difference does it make to the victim? The hatred of the murderer should only reflect upon the ultimate sentencing: premeditated and aggravated murder.

While a defendant's emotional or even considered "bias" or "hate" may be demonstrated and proven, it should have nothing to do with the criminal charge at hand. It is the criminal action that should be the subject, and the defendant punished for having taken the action. Murder is murder. Assault is assault. Robbery is robbery. The reason why a person commits a crime, or rather his motive, should not be "punishable" and within the aegis of criminal law. The law can decree that men stop thinking, or emoting, or forming opinions, but cannot enforce the decree. It is only fear of government and/or mob reprisals that may cause their minds to sputter to a halt, and die.

Little horrors, such as Judge Glenn Berman putting Dharun Ravi on probation for his "bias crime," have a way of trickling up to greater realms of human action because they remain unchallenged. There are many forces at work in this country to obviate the substance and meaning of the First Amendment. These range from the outright thuggery of an OWS-linked assault on restaurant patrons, to the concerted campaign by Islamic supremacists to outlaw criticism of Islam, to a confused judiciary that is losing sight of individual rights and replacing them with collective rights.

Salman Rushdie has to date escaped the sticks and stones of the Iranian fatwa on his life, but is certainly right about the miasma of fear and political correctness that stifles and smothers freedom of expression.

Little horrors like "bias intimidation" can and will contribute to a greater, incremental, and totalitarian horror.

Facebook Founder Flees Fleecing

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:28:00 +0000

The subheading would read: Globalist Senators in Hot Pursuit.

One look at the arrogant, sneering expression on the face of Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York) and one glance at what he had to say about Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin's renunciation of his U.S. citizenship in favor of living in Singapore, and I felt an immediate and compulsive urge to, well, slap Schumer silly. Instead, I must leave him with worse than a stung cheek and a cleaned clock.

But then I'd go to jail, because it's a capital offense to strike any member of Congress. Congressmen, however, may assault us with taxes, regulations and countless Bronx cheers and sneers from the safety of their aerie of indemnification, and walk away with impunity.

Schumer said Saverin's actions were "an outrage," adding Saverin "wants to de-friend the United States of America just to avoid paying taxes. We aren't going to let him get away with it." He said Saverin "turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire."

So, I must settle for characterizing Schumer and his colleagues in Congress as a slimy, collective, real-life Jabba the Hutt, the crime lord from Star Wars.

They are the less-than-one-percent filthy rich that OWS isn't concerned about, an elite bevy of senators and congressmen who usually retire from "public service" (that is, from serving the public sunny side up) to multiple homes, continuing fringe benefits, sumptuous taxpayer paid health plans excluded from Obamacare, and cushy university appointments or a lucrative lecture circuit. I call them "filthy rich" because their wealth is largely ill-gotten through connections with lobbyists and special interests and crony capitalists and each other.

I grimace every time I read of a Senate or House ethics committee grilling a victim or plying a leftist activist ringer with leading questions (e.g., Sandra Fluke), when the only ethics Congress is noted for practicing is that of a thug wielding the club of a subpoena. The Party is immaterial. As a rule, Congress lets its own malefactors off the hook with a verbal slap on the wrist. See the careers of Charles Rangel and John Kerry. They can lie through their teeth and juggle the books, but they're still there, untouched.

To return to Eduardo Saverin – here is a man who helped to create a means for uncounted millions to find friends, make connections, and communicate with the rest of the world without spending anything more than their own time. Saverin and his former partner Mark Zuckerberg (now worth $17.5 billion) deserve every penny of profit from their efforts. I do not use Facebook much myself, and there are aspects to it I don’t particularly like, although I have a page which I use primarily to alert "friends" (and enemies) to my columns and writing projects. Facebook went "public" with an Initial Public Offering that dazzled some investors, others less so.

Why did Brazil-born Saverin renounce his U.S. citizenship, which he did in September 2011 and paid the extortionate "exit tax"?

“My decision to expatriate was based solely on my interest in working and living in Singapore, where I have been since 2009,” Saverin, 30, said in a statement released to ABC News. “I am obligated to and will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the United States government. I have paid and will continue to pay any taxes due on everything I earned while a U.S. citizen.”

Saverin, who helped Mark Zuckerberg develop the social network as Harvard students, is expected to save millions of dollars by not paying capital gains taxes on his shares of Facebook, which is expected to have the largest technology IPO ever on Friday.

Saverin paid a standard “exit” tax, which included approximately 15 percent of the pre-IPO value of his shares. Saverin is likely saving millions of dollars because he will not pay capital gains taxes while he lives in Singapore.

“As a native of Brazil who immigrated to the United States, I am very grateful to the U.S. for everything it has given me,” Saverin said. “In 2004, I invested my life’s savings into a start-up company that initially was run out of a college dorm room. Since then the company has expanded dramatically, has created thousands of jobs in the United States and elsewhere, and spawned countless new companies across the United States and other countries.”

All those jobs and new companies are nothing to Jabba the Hutt, nor is the fact that Saverin has already been fleeced by the Treasury Department per Congress's own rules for departing citizens.

The performance of Facebook stock is not the subject here. It opened at $45 a share on the 18th and closed at $38. Whether it will become another Microsoft or Apple stock, or fade away as a flash-in-the-pan, remains to be seen. Some financial observers are wild about it. Some aren't.

Senators, Representatives, and Presidents, however, do not announce IPO's. They make offers Americans can't refuse. Or rather they delegate the tasks to vast, impersonal bureaucracies, which implement the ethics of gangland extortion, shake-downs, and protection rackets. Project, if you will, life in these United States as one enormous TSA airport checkpoint. As Forbes notes: (3)

It is unimaginable that U.S. taxes were not a huge part of his decision, since “taxpatriations” are now all the rage. See Celebrity Leavings: Bidding Stars Adieu. And that is perfectly legal. Tax avoidance intent when expatriating used to trigger tougher tax rules, but that changed in 2008. Tax motivation is no longer even relevant to the tax treatment of citizens or permanent residents who permanently depart the U.S. See Ten Facts About Tax Expatriation.

Inevitably there are tax issues on the way out. U.S. citizens or long-term residents who expatriate after June 16, 2008.are treated as having sold all their worldwide property for its fair market value the day before leaving the U.S. Although taxed as a capital gain, this “exit tax” is unforgiving. See Rich Americans Voting with their Feet to Escape Obama Tax Oppression.

Senator Schumer and his grim-faced co-author of the "Ex-Patriot Act" bill, Pennsylvania Democrat, Senator Bob Casey, are "globalists." That is, they wish to pursue "tax dodgers" beyond American shores with the full power of the Treasury Department to snare expatriate money squirreled away by its owners to protect it from evangelical thieves like Schumer and Casey and their ilk in Congress and the various Washington satrapies. The government has done this before with the same sanctimonious ballyhoo.

In 2008, a hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, estimated that at least 19,000 US citizens were hiding “undeclared accounts” with the help of UBS bankers.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the committee chairman, stated that these accounts held "$18 billion dollars in assets that have been kept secret from the IRS." At the time, UBS was also being investigated by the IRS, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

UBS stated that "undeclared" accounts would no longer be provided as a "service" and that they were planning to weed out those existing accounts; suggesting that they would reveal such account holders to authorities…Last year, The Swiss bank agreed to give U.S. tax authorities the records for more than 4,450 American clients. [Ernest] Vogliana is just one of the seven people that were charged by the U.S Attorney’s office last year. [80 years old, sentenced to two years' probation and fined $900,000 in penalties for depositing $4 million with UBS.]

Saverin's public statement about his citizenship was ill-advised. He should have simply vanished and have had nothing to say after Schumer's hue and cry. His renunciation was likely leaked to the MSM, which promptly took up its pitchforks and torches, led by Schumer and Company. They wish to bring an end to the Frankenstein monster of an evader of the capital gains tax. Schumer wishes to make an example of Saverin – as a warning to other Americans who want to escape servitude and the malignant psychosis of envy that governs the actions of creatures such as Schumer, Casey and their ilk. He has admitted as much.

Schumer called Saverin's decision "outrageous" and labeled his tactics a "scheme."

"Saverin has turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him, and helped him become a billionaire," Schumer said. "This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong."

The only thing wrong with that "success story" is that the country did not keep Saverin safe, did not educate him, and did not help him become a billionaire. But then, according to Schumer's metaphysics, all good things pour from the cornucopia of federal largesse and legislation. No one could exist or save a dime unless Washington, like God or Allah, made it happen.

My point here is that Schumer and his ilk wish to cut off all escape for those who wish to protect their wealth by placing it in off-shore bank accounts. They wave the flag of "paying one's fair share" of taxes when they know damned well that if all the billionaires in America were tomorrow stripped of their wealth and saw all their physical and financial assets seized, and were reduced to sleeping in Zuccotti Park with the OWS, it would result in only a miniscule ding in the national debt while it continues to mount, thanks to legislation passed by Congress. A spitball launched from a slingshot will not pierce the hide of a rhinoceros.

Perhaps that's an insult to rhinoceroses. Again, think instead of Jabba the Hutt and the spitball embedded in his revolting epidermis.

I do not underestimate Senator Schumer's intelligence. He knows that this administration's economic and "social" policies have cooked this country. He knows that it's riding for a fall. He wants to make sure that no one escapes its fate. Schumer is a "humanitarian." A "progressive." A socialist. He doesn't want to die, but if he must die, he wants to ensure that his moral betters do not continue living. Whatever Eduardo Saverin's virtues or flaws, he produced something that Schumer et al. could never even imagine. Looters are not creators, except in the many ways to penalize success, such as the "exit tax" for anyone who renounces his U.S. citizenship. Again, as Kelly Phillips Erb of Forbes explains it:

The expatriation laws are a bit tricky. The basic rule is that, for purposes of the tax, any assets that you leave the country with are treated as though you had sold them on the date before you leave. Any gain which would have occurred had you actually sold those assets are subject to tax (with some exceptions). So Saverin doesn’t get a free pass. His assets are still subject to tax. Lucky for Saverin, however, the value of his assets pre-IPO are [sic] still considerably less than the value of his assets post-IPO. And by lucky, I mean absolutely planned.

…Saverin’s advisors are pretty savvy: Singapore is a terrific choice because it does not have a capital gains tax. It’s also no stranger to expats from all over the world because of its favorable tax laws.

Saverin, age 30, was also moved to renounce his citizenship because Singapore does not recognize dual citizenship beyond the age of 21.

Also important to note is that the U.S. is now violating the sovereignty of other nations by conducting raids on those countries' banks and financial institutions in pursuit of wealth that will not ameliorate the government's debt. These are vendetta raids moved by a malice for the "rich" that knows no bounds – except when it comes to speculating on the net worth of individual Congressmen and federal executives and other czars, and then the drawbridges of privacy are raised to block invasive inquiries. Schumer's press conference was a vote-garnering public relations ploy to assuage the fictive envy of an imaginary citizenry whom he and Congress presume wishes to send the rich to an auditor's guillotine. The New York Times reported in 2011:

The penalty [on foreign banks] stems from the violation of a rule known as Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or Fbar(pronounced EF-bar), that requires American taxpayers with overseas bank accounts and foreign assets to file a special disclosure with the Treasury Department each year. The top penalty for failing to file the disclosure is 50 percent of the account balance for each year of violation, a level that can leave tax evaders owing multiples of what their accounts hold.

Now the Justice Department, which is conducting a broadening inquiry into Swiss and Swiss-style banks, including Credit Suisse and HSBC, according to court papers and statements by the banks, is exploring how and whether it could apply the penalty to the banks, should it find that they violated American tax laws, according to two persons briefed on the matter. The persons, one in government and the other in private legal practice, spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

The malice does not end with punishing U.S. citizens. The Treasury and Justice Departments also penalize those foreign banks for "abetting" tax evasion. This is intended to frighten and discourage foreign banks from offering succor and security to American depositors. Of course, the MSM applauds that move, as well. But the federal government throwing its weight around is not nearly the eye-candy of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Imagine now Jabba the Hutt doing the Twist with one of his slave girls.

Complementing the spectacle of the federal government going on pillaging Easter egg hunts overseas, is the proposed surrender of U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations in a bewildering array of concessions to that looters' club of dictatorships, theocracies, tyrannies, and one-man régimes. Call it a kind of political schizophrenia. Only when the U.N. and the European Union impinge on Congressional power will one hear Congressmen cry foul. However, if the power violates the sovereignty of individual Americans and subjects them to the ukases, mercies and injustices of foreign politicians and bureaucrats, that is only fair and proper for the greater good of global amity. Canada Free Press reports:

Last week, the Senate gave…a clear and unmistakable illustration of why we need to sack all the Democrats, and a bunch of the RINOs, too. They voted down not one, not two, but five budget bills, four of which would actually have done America some good. This comes as we move into the fourth year that the Senate has failed to do its duty by passing a budget, leaving the country economically adrift.

That great patriot and Swift Boat Hero from his four whole months in Vietnam, John Kerry (R-MA), has vowed to get them onto the Senate floor for votes as soon, he hopes, as this summer. They include:

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or LOST, “Law of the Sea), which cedes control of all the world’s oceans and their contents, including our territorial waters, to the U.N.; The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, aka, Small Arms Treaty, that would virtually outlaw privately owned firearms or ammunition of any sort; he United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which takes away parental rights to raise their children as they choose, and gives them to the U.N.; The International Criminal Court, which allows foreigners to have Americans arrested and tried in kangaroo “international” courts, using foreign law; The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which destroys, among many other things, marriage; And a host of outrageous environmental treaties that would doom most of the world’s people to Third-World level poverty in a world-wide police state.

Our omnivorous (and carnivorous) Congress wishes to nail American taxpayers coming and going, and even when they stay put, susceptible to arrest by the U.N., the OIC, and the European Union. Who could have guessed a hundred years ago that Congress would make the surrender of the sovereignty of one's own life to both the parasites of the welfare state here and abroad a measure of one's "patriotism"?

November cannot come too soon. It may be too late for Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, but Senator Schumer and his looting gang must be shown the door as finally as Jabba the Hutt met his end before they do more damage to America. Perhaps, for starters, a charge of treason for not abiding to their oaths of office to preserve and protect would be entirely and legally appropriate.

Alias Marx and Alinsky

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:10:00 +0000

Calling socialists liberals is as deceptive as calling goose gizzards foie gras. It fools no one but the epistemologically blinkered. The term liberal allows liberals to pose as concerned, generous and forward-thinking individuals and to act under what was once an honorable term for anyone who advocated or endorsed liberty. And as any well-read American knows, liberals do not advocate liberty. Quite the opposite.

The subject here is the devolution of the term liberal, not its evolution.

Even out-and-out communists are called liberals. President Barack Obama is called a "liberal." The late Senator Ted Kennedy was called a "liberal." Barney Frank is a liberal. Obama's cabinet is largely staffed by liberals (unless outed, as self-confessed communist Van Jones was). Communism and socialism still carry a bad reputation, so everyone, including the Main Stream Media, and even well-intentioned pundits and commentators friendly to liberty, use the term liberal. The MSM, however, does it to dodge the reputation. Others use it from habit or ignorance, or because calling liberals socialists or communists in drag might open a can of worms they couldn't handle. This is courtesy carried to a fault. Underlying the fault is a fear of the inevitable clash between those who advocate freedom, and those who do not.

Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward," is simply a Progressive marching order. "Forward" to what? To socialism. To communism. To a command economy and a slave state, one half governed by bureaucrats, the other half by an alliance of Islam and quivering religionists of various stripes, willing to pay jizya to Islam in order to be granted their "religious freedom."

The Washington Post trumpeted "Forward" with no reservations or even curiosity about its Communist and Nazi origins. But then the Washington Post has been in the Saul Alinsky camp for over a generation.

One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.

Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky's work in Chicago slums. Her series, called "The Orderly Revolution," made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.

In 1989, The New York Times waxed poetic about Alinsky's powerful friends, and also provided some important information in the course of a review of a biography of Alinsky by Sanford D. Horwitt:

By the end of World War II Alinsky had won a measure of national renown. His ''Reveille for Radicals'' (1945) hit the best-seller list, and he secured the fervent support of important liberals like Agnes E. Meyer of The Washington Post and the retail magnate Marshall Field 3d. Though it undercuts his larger portrait, Mr. Horwitt shows that much of Alinsky's acclaim rested upon his promise that social reform and a democratic revival could take place through what Meyer called an ''orderly revolution,'' which would bypass the new power of the unions and reject the growth of an intrusive New Deal state. Thus ''Reveille for Radicals,'' which ostensibly celebrated social conflict, was panned by most of the left but acclaimed by Time, The New York Times and other mass circulation publications.

Neither Time, nor the Washington Post, nor the New York Times has changed its tune. If anything, they have grown more shrill from the standpoint of endorsing not just Alinsky but socialism. But they repress that term socialism, and deny they are of the Left. They'll admit only that they're "progressive" because, you see, they're "humanitarians." Well, so were Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Hitler. So are Robert Mugabe, and Hugo Chavez, and Ahmadinejad, and all the Kings of Saudi Arabia.

But, what are uncountable millions of dead of humanitarianism, when "progress" has been made, and man has been nudged "forward" into impoverished, straight-jacketed societies?

Let's set the record straight. Liberals are fundamentally collectivists. Specifically, either socialists or communists. Their policies and programs are demonstrably socialist or communist, whether one is speaking of Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and innumerable regulatory and confiscatory programs and policies, practically every bit of legislation that has been entered into The Congressional Record and The Federal Register for the last one hundred years. The term liberal should be retired, put out to pasture, and substituted with the appropriate and correct terms.

Here is a sampling of definitions of the term liberal:

1. Having, expressing, or following political views or policies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of government power to promote social progress….3. Of, designating, or belonging to a political party that advocates liberal social or political views, esp. in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company) 1985. (This is the first definition. Root meanings connected with generosity, open-mindedness, tolerance, etc., follow it. This is a significant order.)

6a. Of, favoring, or based on the principles of liberalism. 6b. Of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; esp. of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideas of individual esp. economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reform designed to secure those objectives. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (G. & C. Merriam Company) 1967. (Meanings connected with generosity, tolerance, etc. precede the political meanings.)

II. 1. Any person who advocates liberty of thought, speech, or action; one who is opposed to conservatism: distinguished from radical. 2. Liberal Party, a party in English politics formed by the coalition of the Whigs and Radicals about 1830: opposed to Tory. The Practical Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Funk & Wagnalls Company) 1939. (Meanings connected with generosity, etc. precede the political ones.)

And finally:

3. (Polit.) Favorable to democratic reform and individual liberty, (moderately) progressive (the Liberal Party). The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 1976. (Here, too, meanings connected with generosity, etc., precede the political definition. This is an acceptable condensation of the term from the two-volume Compact edition of the OED, 1971, whose entry is about half a foot in length in very tiny print, most of whose information is not relevant to my purpose here.)

Notice that the older the dictionary, the more liberty-linked the definition is. The American Heritage definition marks the end of the road for the term liberal, stressing the use of government power to promote social progress. Social progress is a catch-all euphemism for the collectivization of society and the assumption of more and more power by the government. It does not mean the liberation of men from other men's alleged needs or claimed "rights," but the forced or legislated chaining of all men to each other's alleged needs or alleged, government sanctioned "entitlements." It is the devious and misleading byword for incremental socialism, or Progressivism.

You will never hear Brian Williams of NBC or Bob Schieffer of CBS counter George Will or Charles Krauthammer with a statement, "But, we the Left don't think that's a good policy…." You will never hear them admit that they are of and for the Left. That would be "telling," as a con artist's "tell" is a warning that he's about to scam you.

One could say that today's liberals are the true conservatives, that is, those who wish to preserve the status quo of the welfare state and government power over individuals and their property, and any and all socialist programs and policies now in force.

And what do the designated "conservatives," or the "right wing," stand for today, that is, those who identify themselves as Republicans? Nothing, except for a watered-down version of what Progressives, socialists and communists have created over the course of a century, most often accompanied by an appeal to "tradition" and religious faith. All Progressive legislation is altruist and collectivist in nature. Conservatives have never challenged the moral foundations of Progressivism. They can't, because they subscribe to the same morality. They will never confess that Progressives have elevated the state to take the place of a deity, and that men should live for the secular deity's moral code of self-sacrifice and obedience to the state's commands. Also known as The Ten Thousand Commandments.

Social progress implies there are social problems to be solved and overcome. What are the problems? In the beginning, it was a concern – and not an actual problem – of working conditions at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Reformers wailed over the fact that factories employed children and women, neglecting the fact that children and women would otherwise have perished in poverty and disease at the outset of the Revolution, and in fact did perish in the centuries preceding the Revolution. By the millions.

The Abolitionist Movement identified slavery as a major social problem. The result was the Civil War. But the "problems" were numerous, and continue to be numerous and otherwise fictive or imaginary. In search of the City on the Hill, or Utopia, or a "just and fair" society, problems are naturally endless. The sole alternatives as the means to correct or ameliorate them have been: voluntarism or force. Progressivism chose force, because too many people thought the problems were not problems at all. Force bypasses volition or voluntary action.

Successes were many, beginning with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), and the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890). Progressives never spoke with one mind and differed sharply over the most effective means to deal with the ills generated by the trusts; some favored an activist approach to trust-busting, others preferred a regulatory approach.

A vocal minority supported socialism with government ownership of the means of production. Other progressive reforms followed in the form of a conservation movement, railroad legislation, and food and drug laws.

More recent social "problems" led to the endless "war on poverty," and the "war on drugs." Having nearly exhausted the major "social problems," Progressives or socialists are reaching deeper into the bottomless pit of "problems" and coming up with concerns with "wars" on obesity, salt, sugar, smoking, gender inequality in the workplace, in insurance, in the military, on incandescent light bulbs, sexism, ageism, and so on. Name a norm established by men without government supervision or guidance, and Progressives are against it. They immediately wish to abolish the liberty, or subject it to controls, regulation, and licensing. All for the sake of one's "fellow men," in the name of that prettified version of mob rule, "democracy."

All this goes on, and has been going on, more obviously, since the late 19th century. But Progressivism, a.k.a. socialism, has been advanced by intellectuals and writers ever since, say, Rousseau and his contemporaries in the 18th century. It has been disparate in means and ends ever since, but during the 19th century coalesced into a behemoth of an ideology posing as a love for the poor and other alleged victims of freedom. It no longer asks men to "love their neighbors"; it commands that they fetter themselves to each other in the name of "social progress."

Progressivism inculcates in its minions an obsessive-compulsive psychology. Just as Muslim men are obsessed with sex because Islam, on the one hand, hates women, and on the other, targets them for unrestrained and permissible abuse in the way of ownership, rape, enslavement, beating, and "honor-killing," Progressivism requires that all men answer to and be accountable to the state. The state establishes criteria of what is good and what is bad when addressing men's actions and values. It is a prescription for ownership and enslavement, as well. The key to the success of Progressivism is to ensure that a habit of dependency on statism is bred in men.

As the narrator of "If I Wanted America to Fail" notes:

…I'd demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

But first, demonize individualism, independence, and living one's own life, so that men will not miss what they once had, because submission to government controls is so much easier.

This has been, briefly, an account of the devolution of "liberalism." Progressive, liberal or socialist rhetoric is tailored for public consumption, usually innocuous and goose-feather pillow soft, so as not to alarm the public. The title of this column is frankly a parody of that successful TV Western, "Alias Smith & Jones," about a couple of outlaws promised amnesty if they "reformed." I could just as well have parodied the films, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" or "Bonnie and Clyde," for all three "entertainments" portray outlaws as basically nice people who mean well and just happen to commit crimes and who otherwise might have been your next-door neighbors, ready for a barbeque and a round of poker.

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits, and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

So, the radicals cut their hair, donned suits, hunkered down to win those Ph.D's, and infiltrated academia, for one thing. And here's the tip-off about the altruist nature of Progressivism and socialism, and their link to government force:

In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti – Al Capone's second-in-command – gave Alinsky clout on the street.

Just as Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky have wielded clout in political thought and in "practical politics." They, too, "meant well" and were otherwise forgettable souls whom one might pass on a street.

It's time for liberals to "man up," drop the demure veil, or take off the smiley mask, or come out of the totalitarian closet. It's time for them to stop the charade and confess their collectivist allegiances, and for their opponents to call them what they are.

Then we'll see some sparks fly, instead of the dissembling back-and-forth rhetoric between the Republicans and Democrats.

Gunfights, anyone?

Objectivist Round Up - May 10, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) — Thu, 10 May 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Welcome to the May 10, 2012 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up. This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:
Welcome to the May 10, 2012 edition of objectivist round up.

Josh Windham presents The Conservative War on Sex | The Undercurrent posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Josh Windham weighs in on one of the profoundly anti-life positions of the religious right."

Josh Windham presents Hate Crimes Legislation Unmasks Blind Justice | The Undercurrent posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "An argument in favor of objective law and against the "hate crime" classification."

Josh Windham presents All Entrepreneurs are “Social” Entrepreneurs | The Undercurrent posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "An exploration of the newfangled concept "social entrepreneurism.""

Edward Cline presents The Peril of "Hate Crimes" posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "A totalitarian anti-concept of "justice" has been gnawing away at objective law without correction or opposition, and making rapid progress in a judicial system that has steadily abandoned reason and the protection of individual rights: hate crime"

Paul Hsieh presents Linking Licensure to Mandatory Service posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "A new way for the government to extort "free" labor from lawyers. Will doctors be next?"

John Drake presents 5 year goals update posted at Try Reason!, saying, "An update on my 5 year goals. Why should you care? To see intergration in action."

Diana Hsieh presents ATLOSCon 2012 posted at Philosophy in Action, saying, "I'm excited to be speaking on "Forgiveness, Redemption, and the Virtue of Justice" at ATLOSCon this year!"

Darius Cooper presents The men who caused the Great Recession posted at Practice Good Theory, saying, "Look who were supposed to save the world.

***

That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

The Peril of "Hate Crimes"

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Mon, 07 May 2012 01:19:00 +0000

A totalitarian anti-concept of "justice" has been gnawing away at objective law without correction or opposition, and making rapid progress in a judicial system that has steadily abandoned reason and the protection of individual rights: hate crime.

Hate crimes initially were violations of individual rights motivated by the perpetrators' hatred of a victim's race, gender, religion, or political affiliation. Hatred is an emotion that can be traced to two fundamental evaluations: fear, and malice. One can justifiably hate what one fears, if what one fears jeopardizes a rational value or one's life. Or, one can hate what one fears because it threatens an irrational value, such as blind faith or one's purported racial or cultural superiority. Malice is simply a raw, unreasoning hatred of a good for being the good.

But the motivating, emotional element of a demonstrable or provable violation of an individual's right (murder, rape, physical assault) has been factored into the severity of a defendant's crime and in consequent punishment after his conviction and trial.

In short, the why of a crime is increasingly treated as though it were a weapon, such as a gun, a knife, or a club. In standard criminal cases, however, it has never been the instrument of crime that was on trial, but the defendant and his actions.

Proponents of hate crime have attempted to find a compromise between objectivity in criminal law and the notion that a felon should also be punished for what caused him to commit the crime. But no such compromise is feasible if objective law is to be preserved and justice served. The irrational element – that is, making thought, however irrational or ugly it may be, a crime – has suborned the rational. No compromise between good and evil is lasting or practical. Evil will always come out the victor.

It did not take long for the corrupting notion of hate crimes to degenerate into thought crime. This is what happens when reason is declared irrelevant or is abandoned or diluted by the irrational.

It used to be that a criminal was sentenced for his crime, and if the crime was committed from some form of prejudice, the court's and jury's afterthought was usually: And, by the way, your motives are contemptible and despicable.

Appended now to a guilty verdict for the murder of an individual because of his race, gender "orientation," religion, or political affiliation, is another verdict: You have no right to think that way, so we are adding five years to your sentence and adding X amount to your monetary penalty.

A salutary instance of the corruption of justice is the Rutgers University "hate crime" case. The New York Times, in September 2010, reported:

It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

That night, the authorities say, the Rutgers University student who sent the message used a camera in his dormitory room to stream the roommate’s intimate encounter live on the Internet.

And three days later, the roommate who had been surreptitiously broadcast — Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman and an accomplished violinist — jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River in an apparent suicide….

The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office said Mr. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, N.J., and another classmate, Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton Junction, N.J., had each been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy for using “the camera to view and transmit a live image” of Mr. Clementi. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.

In many states, invasion of privacy is a misdemeanor, not a capital crime. Dharun Ravi was originally charged with invasion of privacy. But the alleged "hate crime" against a gay metastasized into a de facto trial for committing a capital crime, because Clementi committed suicide. Ravi was not charged with Clementi's murder, but it was implied that he was responsible for his suicide.

Fast forward to March, 2012. The presiding judge in the case contributed to the confusion;

The Times reported:

The jury in the trial of a former Rutgers University student accused of invading his roommate’s privacy by using a webcam to watch him in an intimate encounter began deliberations on Wednesday and asked the judge to define two crucial terms.

Jurors asked Judge Glenn Berman of Superior Court in Middlesex County to restate the definition of “intimidate,” as well as of the word “purpose,” as it related to the bias intimidation count.

The judge ruled that the defendant, Dharun Ravi, could be found guilty of bias intimidation only if he was also found guilty of the first charge, invasion of privacy. And he told the jury that the roommate, Tyler Clementi, would have been the victim of bias intimidation if he had been made to feel fear. [Italics mine.]

“A person is guilty of the crime of bias intimidation,” Judge Berman said, “if he commits an offense with the purpose to intimidate an individual because of sexual orientation.”

Mr. Ravi is charged with 15 counts, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors say he encouraged friends to view a feed from his webcam that showed Mr. Clementi with another man. Mr. Clementi committed suicide shortly afterward, in September 2010.

There are several things wrong with this. First, Clementi learned of the webcam prank indirectly by reading Ravi's Twitter posts about him (thirty-eight times). Ravi was not attempting to "intimidate Clementi, or "bully" him. Hi-tech back-fence gossip and slander-mongering about another person are not "intimidation." Ravi invited his friends to watch the webcam, not Clementi. Secondly, no one knows why Clementi committed suicide. He left a brief, cryptic suicide note which shed no light on his motive. ABC News reported:

Former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi was told by police that his text message apology for spying on roommate Tyler Clementi was written within minutes of Clementi's suicide note.

In a taped interview with investigators the day after Clementi's suicide Ravi is seen struggling to understand as he is told that his apology to Clementi was received just minutes before Clementi posted a Facebook message saying, "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

"Did he get that text before?" Ravi asked investigators.

"That's the way it looks," an officer responded.

"So he got mine, and then sent his?" Ravi asked, to which the investigators responded yes.

The police, however, appear to have made a mistake. Time stamps on the two messages show that Clementi posted his suicide note at 8:42 p.m. on Sept. 22, 2010. Ravi's apology to Clementi was sent at 8:46 p.m. It's not clear if Clementi ever saw the apology.

But, because no one had or could have had access to the contents of Ravi and Clementi's minds, the jurors, per Judge Berman's instructions and "clarification," were left to resort to second-guessing. To wit:

What the jury had to decide…was what Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi were thinking.

Had Mr. Ravi set up the webcam because he had a pretty good idea that he would see Mr. Clementi in an intimate moment? Had he targeted Mr. Clementi and the man he was with because they were gay? And had Mr. Clementi been in fear?

Without Mr. Clementi to speak for himself, that last question was perhaps the most difficult to determine, and jurors struggled with it.

“That was the hardest because you really can’t get into someone’s head,” said one, Bruno Ferreira, as he left the court. The jury deliberated longest — for well more than an hour, he said — on the bias intimidation charge. [Italics mine]

Mr. Ferreira said he ultimately voted guilty on the bias intimidation charge because Mr. Ravi had sent multiple Twitter messages about Mr. Clementi.

So, Ferreira overrode his initial doubts about getting into someone's head by substituting a number and translating it into a motive, or "bias intimidation." No one knows why Ravi engaged in his admittedly malicious prank. No one knows if Clementi committed suicide over the webcam incidents or because he was embarrassed or shamed or just in a suicidal mood. Any one of those reasons is more credible than is the "intimidation" charge.

But Bruce J. Kaplan, the prosecutor in Middlesex County, applauded the jury for sending a strong message against bias. "They felt the pain of Tyler," he said.

No, they were not. The jurors were projecting what they imagined Clementi's emotional state might have been because they were persuaded by the prosecution that Ravi's webcam actions contributed to Clementi's decision to commit suicide. There were no photos of Clementi's anguished state for them to judge, and so no way to even deduce why he was feeling "pain."

I am not taking Ravi's side here. I am taking a stand against the whole notion of hate crimes. If you want to see how a jury properly treats a bigot, watch Twelve Angry Men (start here at 1.18.56).

In criminal law, and even in Perry Mason TV law, determining a motive is merely a means to determine the reason for a criminal action, whether it is murder or larceny or petty theft. It was never criminalized itself. Motives exist in men's minds and can not be taken out and paraded as evidence. Even if they could be, in the past they would not have counted. It was the criminal action that was actionable in law, not why a crime was committed. That is changing, for the worse. Motives can not hurt anyone; only an action spurred by a motive, just as guns don't (volitionally) kill people; it is people using guns that kill people. The same logic applies to butter knives, rubber bands, spit balls, or rocks. Guns, butter knives, rubber bands, spit balls and rocks are not imbued with magical powers that force people to commit crimes with them. But gun control advocates wish to pretend that guns have magical powers to turn people into criminals.

Emotions and motives alone are not physical objects that can harm anyone.

Emotions are evaluations, and evaluations are products of thought. To condemn and punish an emotion is to criminalize thought. It's as simple as that. Crime enters the picture only when one acts on the emotion. The action is demonstrable.

The guiltiest party in this affair is Judge Glenn Berman, who aided and abetted in the sanctioning of "hate crimes" and "bias intimidation," both of which are anti-reason and anti-rights. A judge ought to know the difference between an actual, proven crime in which action is the evidence of a crime, and the contents of an individual's mind. The contents of the mind are no government's or court's business.

A motive or an emotion may help authorities to find clues to a crime or even identify a felon. But it is not a chargeable offense; it is the action stemming from it.

The why of a crime is not the crime. It is the action that is the crime. One can deduce, or collect evidence that a person wanted to embezzle his employer's bank accounts, that was his purpose; that is the "why." The crime is the embezzlement, the action, not the motive. The why of a crime may deserve condemnation, but it is not the proper object of criminal justice.

But, what has spurred te spread of "hate crime" and "hate speech"? In a word: tribalism.

Hate crimes are a direct result of a nation's population scrambling to join tribes based on race, gender, religion, and political affiliation, and these in turn splinter into sub-tribes. Such tribalism is possible in a nation that has abandoned reason and objective law, and a contest ensues in which the various tribes jockey in politics and fiat power to become the dominant and ruling group at the expense of all others.

Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand about tribalism:

Tribalism (which is the best name to give to all the group manifestations of the anti-conceptual mentality) is a dominant element in Europe, as a reciprocally reinforcing cause and result of Europe’s long history of caste systems, of national and local (provincial) chauvinism, of rule by brute force and endless, bloody wars. As an example, observe the Balkan nations, which are perennially bent upon exterminating one another over minuscule differences of tradition or language. Tribalism had no place in the United States—until recent decades. It could not take root here, its imported seedlings were withering away and turning to slag in the melting pot whose fire was fed by two inexhaustible sources of energy: individual rights and objective law; these two were the only protection man needed.

As the scope of government power grows, so do the number of "tribes" grow to protect themselves from it or to demand a share of it or simply to clamor for a granting of special privileges and status. Today there innumerable tribes locked in constant warfare in response to government power: smokers vs. non- and anti-smokers, gays vs. heterosexuals, blacks vs. whites and/or Asians, Hispanics vs. whites and/or blacks, cyclists vs. motorists, developers vs. conservationists, Christians vs. atheists, and, most prominent of all, Muslims vs. all non-Muslims, and especially Jews.

The last category is particularly vicious because Islam is a totalitarian ideology naturally comfortable, in Sharia law, with the notions of "hate speech" and "hate crime," because the growing ubiquity of such notions in U.S. secular law helps to insulate Islam from Western norms while its activists follow an agenda of conquest or stealth jihad. And, the New Black Panthers offered a $10,000 bounty for the "capture" of George Zimmerman, which is in addition to race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson calling Zimmerman's shooting of a black teenager "racist" and fomenting racial strife.

(It is noteworthy that neither the government nor courts nor the MSM is willing to charge black activists with "hate speech" or "hate crimes." Vociferous black activists are now a "protected" tribe able to slander, libel, and promote malice with impunity.)

As "hate speech" focuses on the written or spoken word (or on "forbidden" images of Mohammad), "hate crime" focuses on thought, whether or not it is spoken or written. You can be sure that the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamic front groups will be looking for ways to exploit the Rutgers precedent. And is certain that ambitious censors in government, such as Cass Sunstein, the "Speech Czar," will also be on the alert for opportunities to silence critics of the current administration based on the Rutgers verdict.

The Rutgers verdict against Ravi does not auger well for the state of criminal justice. Together with the vile notion of "hate speech," "hate crime" is another assault on man's mind.

*"Tribalism," in Philosophy: Who Needs It," p. 42.

Your Mild-Mannered Speech Therapist: Cass Sunstein

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 03 May 2012 02:09:00 +0000

Cass Sunstein, director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, will not like this column. He may be offended by it. Feel insulted. Cry "not fair!" He may recommend that I be taxed, or financially penalized somehow for expressing unapproved speech, or even incarcerated for having said such awful things about him. He endorses these ideas. Works assiduously for them. Has written extensively on how unbridled free speech imperils society and social stability, and so ought to be checked and even licensed.

So, sue me.

Well, he hasn't yet. In September 2009 I penned, "Cass Sunstein: 'Czar' in Wolf’s Clothing," in which I excoriated him for sanctioning censorship and the manipulation of "public opinion" on the occasion of regiment of government arts-grantees being turned loose on the public by the National Endowment for the Arts. (I have written numerous articles on the perils facing the First Amendment and freedom of speech, including "'High Noon' for the First Amendment" in September 2009, which indict Sunstein, as well, including several articles for the Journal of Information Ethics and The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science.)

Sunstein has published thirty-seven books to date, and a mountain of articles and papers. A man who has written so much may have a faulty memory and have difficulty remembering what he's written. On April 30^th, for example, during a lecture at New York University Law School, an attendee asked him if he still endorsed an idea he proposed in a paper he wrote in 2008 while still fully employed at the University of Chicago Law School, "Conspiracy Theories" (before joining the faculty of Harvard Law School; Working Papers Nos. 08-3, 199, and 387).

In the question and answer portion of the lecture, We Are Change founder Luke Rudkowski confronted Sunstein concerning his avocation of a "provocateur" style program to silence what have become the government’s most vociferous and influential critics.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Rudkowski introduced himself as "Bill de Berg from Brooklyn college," before directly asking Sunstein to explain his comments.

"I know you wrote many articles, but I think the most telling one about you is the 2008 one called ‘Conspiracy Theories,’ where you openly advocated government agents infiltrating activist groups for 9/11 truth, and also to stifle dissent online," Rudkowski stated.

"Why do you think the government should go after family members and responders who have questions about 9/11?" he asked Sunstein.

"I’ve written hundreds of articles and I remember some and not others," Sunstein replied, denying that he has a firm recollection of the paper.

"I hope I didn’t say that, but whatever was said in that article, my role in government is to oversee federal rulemaking in a way that is wholly disconnected from the vast majority of my academic writing, including that," Sunstein added.

"I know that, I’m just asking because you may be the next Supreme Court Justice if Obama appoints you, and you did write those things," Rudkowski replied.

"I may agree with some of the things I have written but I’m not exactly sure. I focus on what my boss wants me to do," Sunstein said, intimating that he was just following orders.

When Rudkowski asked if Sunstein would retract his comments about banning opinions that differ from those of the government, Sunstein again claimed he did not remember the article he had written and his personnel intervened to prevent Rudkowski pressing him on the matter.

I don't think Sunstein got the joke. Someone probably filled him in after the lecture. Rudkowski used as a pseudonym a play on The Bilderberg Conference – or Group or Club – an annual meeting in the Netherlands of influential Western politicians, businessmen, industrialists, and media heads. It is the subject of a conspiracy theory for world domination or world government, as have been the annual Pugwash Conference in Nova Scotia, the two-week Bohemian Club encampment in rural California, and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. There are also a number of private organizations the subject of conspiracy theories, such as the Masons and Yale University's Skull and Crossbones, among others. (I employ some of these conspiracy theories in two of my novels, The Daedâlus Conspiracy and Presence of Mind, and not to the credit of the theories or their adherents.)

I have read all thirty pages of this paper. It is a ponderous, sociology-jargon riddled discourse that treats men as interchangeable, volitionless ciphers influenced by peer pressure, rumors, speculation and hearsay, as mere atoms of a social whole, the pawns and playthings of mysterious but unaccountable powers beyond their ken. Sunstein's paper is half Aldus Huxley's Brave New World, forty percent B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and ten percent Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. His career position has been that the government has a natural adversarial interest and power to monitor, "manage," or otherwise counter men's thinking and speech it deems dangerous or potentially dangerous or disruptive.

That Sunstein could not remember having written this paper tests one's credulity. In it he expresses his central, fundamental political premises, one of which stands out: that the government has an obligation to oversee or police speech for the "greater good." Sunstein did not answer Rudkowski's question; he deftly pleaded advanced but selective Alzheimer's in the finest tradition of political stand-up evasion.

There is a sole thesis in "Conspiracy Theories": that the government should act to gag or confuse conspiracy theorists, which would include anyone with a plausible, credible theory of government malfeasance or inappropriate behavior, and not just wild-eyed, crackpot theories. Here are some choice statements from Sunstein's paper. He begins by citing all the conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks, that they were either the work of the federal government or committed by terrorists with foreknowledge of them by the government. But then he diminishes his seriousness about the subject by deeming Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy as "conspiracy theories." Weeding through and enduring all the mushy verbiage about how and why conspiracy theories arise and gain currency, one is persuaded of one single thing about Sunstein's target: the safety and preservation of government power. Conspiracy theories jeopardize government, not the public. Conspiracy theories must be either spoken or recorded, and that action, regardless of the merits or lack of them of any given theory, comes under the protection of the First Amendment.

In Sunstein's worldview, the First Amendment is no guarantor of "democratic deliberation." It must be either rewritten, or complemented with legislation that will identify and regulate what the government deems as true and worthy of deliberation.

Which, of course, means censorship. Here are a sampling of excerpts from Sunstein's half-forgotten paper. The abstract sums up Sunstein's means and ends.

Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a "crippled epistemology," in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light. [Italics mine.]

Remember those italicized terms. They will come in handy later.

A further question about conspiracy theories – whether true or false, harmful or benign – is whether they are justified. Justification and truth are different issues; a true belief may be unjustified, and a justified belief may be untrue. (p. 6)

Confused yet? You may be justified in thinking that your car is powered by gas and internal combustion and electricity, but it may not be true. Sunstein will forgive you.

Karl Popper famously argued that conspiracy theories overlook the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action; they assume that all consequences must have been intended by someone The basic idea is that many social effects, including large movements in the economy, occur as a result of the acts and omissions of many people, none of whom intended to cause those effects. The Great Depression of the 1930s was not self-consciously engineered by anyone; increases in the unemployment or inflation rate, or in the price of gasoline, may reflect market pressures rather than intentional action. Nonetheless, there is a pervasive human tendency to think that effects are caused by intentional action, especially by those who stand to benefit (the cui bono? maxim), and for this reason conspiracy theories have considerable but unwarranted appeal. [p. 7]

Well, yes. Because natural phenomena are not the subject of the paper, all human action is attributable to intended consequences. Whether or not those consequences are intended to subjugate or mislead, or allow the actors to profit from them, is open to interpretation without evidence, but with evidence, those intentions can be proven. It is here, for the first of many times throughout his paper, that Sunstein implies that government policies that cause depressions, inflation, and gas prices, are excluded from any serious discussion of conspiracies. We can, however, determine motives from the consequences of those policies, such as the refusal of a government to allow oil exploration and drilling, or refusing to allow pipelines to be built, actions which result in higher gas prices. This is not rocket science or ethereal economics.

Sunstein continues to cite Popper:

Popper captures an important feature of some conspiracy theories. Their appeal lies in the attribution of otherwise inexplicable events to intentional action, and to an unwillingness to accept the possibility that significant adverse consequences may be a product of invisible hand mechanisms (such as market forces or evolutionary pressures) or of simple chance, rather than of anyone’s plans. A conspiracy theory posits that a social outcome evidences an underlying intentional order, overlooking the possibility that the outcome arises from either spontaneous order or random forces. [Italics mine, p. 7]

Random forces? Not a philosophy of altruism, not a system of collectivism? Ideas and ideologies play no role in Sunstein's explication of conspiracy theories. People just get all this foolishness in their heads.

Members of informationally and socially isolated groups tend to display a kind of paranoid cognition and become increasingly distrustful or suspicious of the motives of others or of the larger society, falling into a "sinister attribution error." This error occurs when people feel that they are under pervasive scrutiny, and hence they attribute personalistic motives to outsiders and overestimate the amount of attention they receive. Benign actions that happen to disadvantage the group are taken as purposeful plots, intended to harm. [p. 15]

That observation admirably describes how most of the American public is alienated from the Mainstream Media, which largely endorses and shills for harmful and intrusive government policies. There are a few independent news outlets that hove to true journalistic reporting. Fox News is one of them, so it is no wonder that some statists are demanding that the FCC revoke its broadcasting license. After all, reporting news of government corruption, policy failures, hypocrisy, and ignorance can be deemed a harmful "conspiracy theory," and we would all be better off without Fox News.

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5). [Italics mine, p. 15]

Sunstein is comfortable with all these options, as he explains further on, although there are "cost and benefit" considerations to take into account. But, he would much prefer to play with the minds of Americans with "cognitive infiltration." Otherwise known as lies or half-lies.

Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. (We do not offer a particular account of social welfare, taking the term instead as a placeholder for the right account.)

I think it is obvious which "social welfare" account Sunstein prefers – precisely the kind that exists now, a mixed economy which has grown less and less mixed under the current administration. Charging that administration with imposing a command, socialist economy on the country – after nearly four years of observation, evidence, and deduction --, would, in his parlance, be a "conspiracy theory" and come under the aegis of government action. Sunstein concludes his vaguely-recalled paper with:

Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence. If government can dispel such theories, it should do so. One problem is that its efforts might be counterproductive, because efforts to rebut conspiracy theories also legitimate them. We have suggested, however, that government can minimize this effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cognitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy minded groups and informationally isolated social networks.

That call for more government power speaks for itself. But the public is no longer "informationally" isolated, or even starved. It has the Internet at its disposal to conduct its own judgment of what is true and what is false. Aside from the traditional repository of information, called books and libraries. And Sunstein has his beady eyes on the Internet to regulate it for the sake of ridding society of all those foolish ideas and theories, to better ensure that the public has the "truth."

And what, fundamentally, is a "conspiracy theory"? It is the contents of an individual's mind. And it is man's mind that Sunstein wishes the government to "infiltrate."

In May of 2010 The New York Times ran an adulatory, almost fawning appraisal of Sunstein and his policies, "Cass Sunstein Wants to Nudge Us."

In "Nudge," a popular book that he wrote with the influential behavioral economist Richard Thaler, Sunstein elaborated a philosophy called "libertarian paternalism." Conservative economists have long stressed that because people are rational, the best way for government to serve the public is to guarantee a fair market and to otherwise get out of the way. But in the real world, Sunstein and Thaler argue, people are subject to all sorts of biases and quirks. They also argue that this human quality, which some would call irrationality, can be predicted and — this is the controversial part — that if the social environment can be changed, people might be nudged into more rational behavior.

"Rational behavior" meaning obeying orders, and deferring to authority, especially government authority. Of course, Sunstein, Thaler and Benjamin Wallace Wells, author of the Times article, are also subject to all sorts of biases and quirks. The difference is that Sunstein in his present position wants to be able to enforce his biases and quirks. One shouldn't call that a "conspiracy," else one might find oneself burdened with a special "irresponsible speech" tax, or taken to court, or sent to a reeducation camp to have one's "crippled epistemology" cured by hard labor and epistemology-altering drugs.

Wells also confirms the existence of that paper Sunstein had difficulty remembering.

Sunstein had, during his academic career, a penchant for publishing trial balloons — they were a necessary part of his inquiry, a perpetual what if? Now, with their author a government official, some of these conjectures seem more worrisome. Sunstein has, for example, written often about the corrosive effects of rumors and falsehoods on democratic discourse (it is the subject of one of the two books that were published while he was waiting to be confirmed last year), and in a 2008 paper, he proposed that government agents "cognitively infiltrate" chat rooms and message boards to try to debunk conspiracy theories before they spread. The paper was narrowly concerned with terrorism, but to some, these were dark musings.

Dark musings or not, Wells approves. He needn't worry about having his thoughts "infiltrated." They've already been co-opted.

Let's take a look at what would be Cass Sunstein's interpretation of the American Revolution.

There were many American colonials who perceived a conspiracy by the Crown to enslave or indenture them to the Crown's benefit, or at least to the benefit of a handful of dissembling plotters.

Of course, from the Crown's perspective – and the Crown knew what was best for everyone, that was part of its job, its authority was the Book of All Knowledge – these dissatisfied and contentious colonials, most notably Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, the Adams cousins, George Mason, and many others, all well-read in the political theories of John Locke and other antiquarian philosophers and theorists, and who were otherwise quite rational gentlemen, nonetheless were burdened with a "crippled epistemology" which inevitably skewed their perception of things. This epistemology permitted them to see dark designs where there were none in every action taken by the Crown, demonstrably taken for public order and the greater good.

These unfortunate gentlemen, who represented the "conspiracy entrepreneurs," rejected any and all explanations of Crown actions, and brooked no dissent within their own core membership. They tenaciously held onto their suspicion that the Crown was a semi-potent entity controlled by a small, secret clique in the deepest but most respectable recesses of the British establishment, who meant the colonies no good and sought to profit from the consequential misery of their distant charges.

In their dealings and correspondence between themselves, the colonials mutually reinforced their collective certainty of a conspiracy emanating from the most impenetrable bowels of the British government, and, in resisting all reasonable explanations, experienced an overwhelming and continuous "cascading" of consensual agreement concerning the means and ends of the Crown, even though some of them differed on specific points. All attempts by the Crown to "cognitively infiltrate" political discussions and gatherings and to sow seeds of discord, disinformation and misdirection, failed. The mechanisms of the conspiracy theorists were proof against tampering. The self-sealing "psychosis" of conspiracy proved too strong, and the Crown, otherwise unprepared to deal with such recalcitrant opposition to its benevolent policies, wondered if the best course of action might have been to simply ignore all colonials obsessed with their conspiracy theory. But, it was too late.

The conspiracy theorists finally took action. Their paranoia resulted in Jefferson's enumeration of libelous and slanderous (and, in other circumstances, actionable, they learned nothing from the John Wilkes affair) charges against the sovereign and his alleged lackeys in the Declaration of Independence. This curious document seemed to sanction any and all resistance to Crown authority, and served to deviously "objectify" their unfounded and delusional grievances against the Crown for the consideration of a "candid world" (neglecting the fact that most of it couldn't read anyway; the Declaration merely "preached to the choir").

This hysterical climax was preceded only a year before by an act of violence (predicted by a number of members of the Commons, notably Isaac Barré) committed by the lower ranks of subscribers to the conspiracy theory when they opposed with firearms a benign expedition by lawful authorities to find and destroy stockpiles of gunpowder and arms, which were intended by the conspiracy theorists to be used against the Crown without regard to law and order should it not belay its purported designs on the colonials. There was a tragic loss of life among those acting only to ensure the public's safety against "extremist" violence.

And we all know the consequences of this unfortunate episode of cognitive dissonance.

Except Cass Sunstein, your wannabe "speech therapist."

The Devil You Say: 'If I Wanted America to Fail'

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:23:00 +0000

On April 9th, FreeMarketAmerica.org, a project of Americans for Limited Government, released a Doberman of a video that goes straight for the jugular of stealth socialism and totalitarian government, "If I Wanted America to Fail." Little more than four and a half minutes long, it is powerful, it is unique, it is effective. As of this writing, hits are nearing the two million mark on YouTube.

Instead of another audiovisual encomium for free enterprise and freedom, "If" takes the inverse position, and that is the key to its punch. A devilishly handsome fellow stares the viewer in the eye and muses in a conversational tone on all the different ways he could make America fail and fall. It's the eye contact that does the trick. You don't doubt his sincerity. His sincerity is palpable. He's thought it all out, and his means and methods of bringing about failure are too familiar to most Americans. You believe him.

Understanding the narration doesn't require a degree in economics or political science. The content is aimed at the layman and anyone who has experienced first-hand the crushing economic and political consequences of past and current policies. Even though the narration is punctuated with alternating visual connections between the narrator and skylines, flags, faces of Americans, oil rigs, closed businesses, bureaucrats, and so on, the eye contact isn’t lost. In the background, a piano flutters around a somber melody to emphasize certain points, employing the same technique as "Three Things About Islam You Didn’t Know."

"If" is as professionally done as any million dollar, Madison Avenue-produced election campaign ad. The photography, the lighting, and the pacing all work together to produce the maximum potency of the video's message. Champions for freedom will grow red in the face in anger. Statists might even blush in shame and embarrassment – and break eye contact.

Another key to its power is that it doesn't name names, but ideas. It assumes that we all know the names of the individuals responsible for the destructive policies described by the musing narrator. The implied guilty party is President Barack Obama – the narrator serves as his proxy – but the policies the narrator describes are those which the Congress and the White House have been adopting and imposing for at least the past half century. It doesn’t identify Woodrow Wilson, or FDR, or JFK, or any of their successors. That task is left to the viewer, should he choose to investigate the history of the ideas the narrator outlines with such hubristic confidence.

This device, of not naming names, obliges the viewer to face and think about the ideas, rather than specific policies appended to specific individuals. It is, after all, these statist ideas which must be combated, refuted and annulled. "If" renders their practitioners irrelevant by virtue of omission.

The narrated script was written by Ryan Houck. He ought to be awarded something for it. So should the director and the actor/narrator. What follows is that script.

If I wanted America to fail …

To follow, not lead; to suffer, not prosper; to despair, not dream.

I would start with energy.

I’d cut off America’s supply of cheap, abundant energy. I couldn't take it by force. So, I’d make Americans feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.

I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.

I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all-but-outlaw America's most abundant sources of energy. And after banning its use in America, I'd make it illegal for American companies to ship it overseas.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d use our schools to teach one generation of Americans that our factories and our cars will cause a new Ice Age, and I'd muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that they’re causing Global Warming.

And when it's cold out, I'd call it Climate Change instead.

I’d imply that America's cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes. I'd teach children how to ignore the hypocrisy of condemning logging, mining and farming — while having roofs over their heads, heat in their homes and food on their tables. I would never teach children that the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class and create lasting prosperity.

Instead, I'd demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones. They would be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists could understand them. That way small businesses with big ideas wouldn’t stand a chance – and I would never have to worry about another Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or Steve Jobs.

I would ridicule as "Flat Earthers" those who urge us to lower energy costs by increasing supply. And when the evangelists of commonsense try to remind people about the law of supply and demand, I'd enlist a sympathetic media to drown them out.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capitol to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights. I'd send federal agents to raid guitar factories for using the wrong kind of wood; I'd force homeowners to tear down the homes they built on their own land.

I'd make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build.

And because I don’t believe in free markets, I'd invent false ones. I’d devise fictitious products—like carbon credits—and trade them in imaginary markets. I'd convince people that this would create jobs and be good for the economy.

If I wanted America to fail …

For every concern, I'd invent a crisis; and for every crisis, I'd invent the cause; Like shutting down entire industries and killing tens of thousands of jobs in the name of saving spotted owls. And when everyone learned the stunning irony that the owls were victims of their larger cousins—and not people—it would already be decades too late.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d make it easier to stop commerce than start it – easier to kill jobs than create them – more fashionable to resent success than to seek it.

When industries seek to create jobs, I'd file lawsuits to stop them. And then I'd make taxpayers pay for my lawyers.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would transform the environmental agenda from a document of conservation to an economic suicide pact. I would concede entire industries to our economic rivals by imposing regulations that cost trillions. I would celebrate those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private.

I'd convince Americans that Europe has it right, and America has it wrong.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would prey on the goodness and decency of ordinary Americans.

I would only need to convince them … that all of this is for the greater good.

If I wanted America to fail, I suppose I wouldn't change a thing.

I suspect that the idea for "If" can be traced to the method and format employed by the late Paul Harvey, a conservative American radio broadcaster. One of his most successful spiels was "If I were the Devil," which he would edit and deliver to fit the outrage of the moment. In it he would describe how he would bring about America’s corruption and downfall – according to conservative values.

"If I Wanted America to Fail," however, and needless to say, goes Harvey one better. It focuses, by implication, on the political and economic ideas and not on concretes, while at the same time stressing those concretes. It is, to say the least, thought-provoking, thought in the sense that it should compel viewers to reflect on the fundamental causes of their current and perilous predicament.

In another sense, it is an encapsulation and worthy twist of John Galt's speech in Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged.

Every nation struggling under the burden of altruism and collectivism should adopt its own "If I Wanted…." The American version cannot help but wake many, many Americans up to the evil of that devilishly handsome visage describing their doom—and move them to fight back.

Islam: A Will-o'-the-Wisp of Political Faith

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:38:00 +0000

Reading Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, one cannot help but marvel at the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes's use of reason to piece together disparate clues and evidence and conclude that the least plausible explanation was the most obvious, true one. The legendary, spectral hound that haunted the Dartmoor bogs for two centuries was a piece of unsubstantiated folklore exploited by a devious criminal whose only purpose was to seize wealth that wasn't his. He bought a hound, coated it in phosphorous, and launched his nefarious designs.

If his plans worked out, everyone would believe that the heir to the Baskerville estate was really killed by an elusive, evanescent hound, just as the heir's uncle apparently was. No one would investigate further. After all, the locals might be offended.

Holmes shoots it as it attacks another Baskerville heir. The Hound from Hell was an invention, based on an apocryphal curse. The Hound was a fraud. A hoax. As insubstantial as marsh gas.

Islam, however, is the very real Hound from Hell now roaming the earth, causing unimaginable suffering and death in nations where Islam rules, invading Western countries with hordes of assimilation-hostile faithful imbued with an implacable enmity for Western values and culture, waging constant violent and stealth jihad in countries its advocates mean to conquer and bring under Islamic and Sharia rule. The aspect that makes it frightening is the phosphorous of moral certainty that it is invincible and ineluctable. But the bogeyman is a phony. A contrivance. A will-o'-the-wisp designed to frighten men into submission or silence. Ignis fatuus. Mere methane.

Robert Spencer calls its bluff.

Spencer performs a super detective service for the West in Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins, but to a degree and extent that would make Holmes green with envy. He examines virtually every aspect of the composition and history of Islam and its purported founder, Mohammad.

Let us begin with one of his summations:

A careful investigation makes at least one thing clear: The details of Muhammad's life that have been handed down as canonical – that he unified Arabs by the force of arms, concluded alliances, married wives, legislated for his community, and did so much else – are a creation of political ferments dating from long after the time he is supposed to have lived. Similarly, the records strongly indicate that the Qur'an did not exist until long after it was supposed to have been delivered to the prophet of Islam. [pp. 214-215]

The Qur'an, the Islamic canon alleges, was the eternal "perfect book," coexisting with Allah, who sent it to earth via the Angel Gabriel to whisper into Mohammad's ear on Mount Hira, and which he, an illiterate, was able to communicate to the world in its entirety, unalterable, unchanged, and untouchable.

Well, because he couldn't write, he had secretaries to whom he dictated the Qur'an. No, wait. Those secretaries began recording the good book after he had died. No, wait….

As Spencer demonstrates, it did not come into existence until long after Mohammad's death (presuming he even existed) in 632. (Gabriel was the "Prophet Whisperer.") The Hadith, the companion to the Qur'an purportedly a collection of Mohammad's sayings and doings, did not begin to accumulate until a century after his death. As Spencer shows, the Hadith became a kind of cottage industry for caliphs, Islamic clerics, scholars and anonymous scribes to invent its contents over the centuries for reasons that can partly be explained, and that partly remain conjectural.

Islam, Mohammad, and even Muslims did not begin to enter anyone's consciousness until early in the 8th century following Arab conquests of the Mideast and North Africa. Spencer emphasizes, and demonstrates, that it was Arabs, and not necessarily Muslims, or Moslems, or Mohammadans who waged jihad on that part of the Dark Age world. And those Arabs, while they were monotheists, were not necessarily Muslims. Spencer demonstrates that possibly it was the biblical and Judaic Abraham who was the "prophet," not the person Mohammad. Surviving commentaries by chroniclers were ambiguous on the point. Moreover, that monotheist creed regarded Christians and Jews in a far more tolerant light of fellowship than would the Islam that finally emerged centuries later. It would explain many of the contradictory verses in the Qur'an, especially the earlier, abrogated ones.

Up until the time the Qur'an was being diligently assembled by a succession of clerics, politicians, and charlatans, no mention is made in the earliest documents that can be linked to Islam of the Qur'an or to Mohammad. What chroniclers referred to when writing about those events and those Arabs – which include fictive battles that Mohammad fought – were Hagarians, Saracens, or Taiyaye.

The invaders referred to themselves as Muhajirun, "emigrants" – a term that would eventually take on a particular significance within Islam but that at this time preceded any clear mention of Islam as such. Greek-speaking writers would sometimes term the invaders "Magaritai," which appears to be derived from Muhajirun. But conspicuously absent from the stock of terms that invaded and conquered people used to name the conquering Arabians was "Muslims." [p. 33]

"Allah," Spencer points out, was not the exclusive name for God of Muslims in this period, but a common term shared by Christians and Jews. "Muhammad" was not necessarily a proper name, but often an honorific title meaning "praised one," which could be appended to any random "prophet" or religious preacher. As Spencer shows with meticulous attention to detail, Islam and the iconic Mohammad were too likely a consequence between feuding tribes, ä la the Hatfields and McCoys, in the prophet's alleged home base, Mecca, in this instance, the Quraysh and the Umayyads. Spencer also points to the dubious role of Mecca itself in the history of Islam, and of the Kaaba, which was originally a shrine for a host of pagan and polytheistic deities, and not the sole spiritual property of Islam as is the common belief. It shared the fate of many churches in lands conquered by the invaders, which were turned into mosques. It was appropriated by Islam. That is, stolen by conquering Arabs of questionable religious color.

The original Qur'an, writes Spencer, had to have been in Syriac, not Arabic, as the Islamic canon asserts it was. Allah commanded it to appear in Arabic, and not in any other language. Spencer bursts that balloon, too. And every fifth verse in the Qur'an is literally incomprehensible, having no intelligible reference to what precedes or follows it.

Spencer devotes important attention to the likelihood that the Qur'an is founded on a substratum of early Christian and Judaic texts. The Qur'an possibly was based on an early Christian lectionary.

My first introduction to Islam was the epic Lawrence of Arabia in 1963. I was in high school when I first saw it on a big theater screen. From a directorial and cinematography standpoint, it is still one of my favorite films. Spencer's book clears up some of the dialogue and scenes in that film. For example, when Lawrence and his Bedouin army are nearing Damascus, an Arab rider offers Lawrence a stem of grapes. Lawrence tastes one and grimaces. "They are not ripe!" laughs the rider.

Spencer discusses the actual meaning of those grapes and their relationship to the seventy-two renewable virgins promised martyrs in Paradise. Citing the researches of Christoph Luxenberg, a contemporary investigator of Islam's origins, he notes:

… [A] closer philological analysis indicates that the Qur'an does not offer such a…promise. After examining the rasm, the other contexts in which hur appears in the Qur'an, and the contemporary usage of the word houris, Luxenberg concludes that the famous passages refer not to virgins but instead to white raisins, or grapes.

Yes, fruit. Strange as that may seem, given all the attention paid to the Qur'an's supposed promises of virgins in Paradise, white raisins were a prized delicacy in that region. As such, Luxenberg suggests, they actually make a more fitting symbol of the reward of Paradise than the promise of sexual favors from virgins. Luxenberg shows that the Arabic word for "Paradise" can be traced to the Syriac word for "garden," which stands to reason, given the common identification of the garden of Adam and Eve with Paradise. Luxenberg further demonstrates that metaphorical references to bunches of grapes are consonant with Christian homiletics expatiating on the refreshments that greeted the blessed in Heaven. The fact that the Syriac word Ephraem used for "grapevine" was feminine, Luxenberg explains, "led the Arabic exegetes of the Koran to this fateful assumption" that the Qur'an text referred to sexual playthings in Paradise. [p. 169]

Luxenberg is one of the many pioneer investigators and examiners of Islam's origins to whom Spencer gives ample credit throughout his book. Luxenberg focused on the philological quirks and inconsistencies found in Islam's holy book in his 2000 The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Qur'an.

A chief inconsistency of Islam for me is that the Qur'an is claimed to have been the "perfect book" that coexisted with Allah. Yet, no sooner had Mohammad died than his successors began to fiddle with its contents to conform to the expediency of the moment – surely a punishable offence in Islam. When this is pointed out to the faithful defenders of the Qur'an's inalterability, the pat answer is that Allah planned it that way, that is, implying that Allah had the Angel Gabriel whisper an incomplete and imperfect Qur'an into a delirious Mohammad's ear. So, it's an either/or conundrum for which Islamists have no credible solution and no rationally comprehensible answer.

The Qur'an especially winds up being a kind of Rube Goldberg-like literary contraption that contains explanations for every unnecessary and obvious contradiction, and its defenders hardly blush.

Islam has swindled its faithful, its communicants, its followers, its believers. All the possible evidence points to the fact that Islam's substance and veracity comprise a theological and historical fraud. The walls of Allah's gold mine of salvation and his blessings were salted with glittering silicate from a shotgun, meant to dazzle and stun the gullible and irrational into buying into what is, at root and in purpose, a totalitarian ideology. Unfortunately, about a billion people are comfortable with being the playthings of that ideology. Which is why Islam is, root and branch, incompatible with America.

Spencer leaves few rocks unturned in his search for the truth about Islam and Mohammad. Beneath them he has found either nothing concrete, or another hand-buzzer of Islamic practical jokers. He posits at the end that Islam was knocked together as a political faith to anchor the Arab empire in the 8th century, and then began to acquire its contemporary character as sheer political circumstances demanded. In this relatively short book, Spencer adds an invaluable resource to the growing and much needed corpus of literature that exposes, if not the peril posed by Islam, then its maleficent and felonious origins.

Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins, by Robert Spencer. 254 pages. ISI Books, Wilmington, DE, 2012.

A Renewed Assault on Freedom of Speech

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:33:00 +0000

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California and her fellow Democrats wish to “amend” the First Amendment in order to prohibit corporations from saying anything or spending anything during national elections. There is some satisfaction to be had in no longer having to identify her as House Speaker. I never liked seeing her wield that gavel. Someone once remarked that a hammer in hand causes one to search for nails to pound in, and she was always searching for nails. She specialized in coffins.

It may be an act of desperation that moves her and her party to push for an “amendment” of the First Amendment in light of President Barack Obama’s falling poll number -- numbers he seems determined to see fall every time he opens his mouth on any subject – to pull his reelection chances from the jaws of ignominious but well-deserved defeat. Or it may be an expression of defeat but an assurance that the Democrats will stick one more knife into America’s back with such an “amendment,” to better the party’s chances of winning the White House in 2016 by loading the campaign finance dice.

Or it may be to establish a legacy of unprecedented malice and contempt for the country.

Think about it: It costs demagogues and wannabe totalitarians nothing to usurp the Constitution. They are all paid handsomely and enjoy fringe benefits and privileges most Americans could not afford. They are also exempt from having to submit to Obamacare. However, it will cost a concerned electorate time and money to combat and possibly see repealed or declared unconstitutional the blatant and sanctimonious thievery of our liberties and wealth. And that’s only if the courts – especially the Supreme Court – is dealing with a full deck and understands the issues and what’s at stake.

Or it may be an act of over-confidence that Obama will be reelected this November, regardless of his poll numbers, and here’s a sample of what the Democrats plan to foist on the country after all the destructive “hope and change” of the last three and a half years. An amendment to the First Amendment would be no less a guarantee than how the Obamacrats fixed BHO’s nomination and probable election in 2008 in several state caucuses and primaries with voter fraud and cooking the electoral books.

One really can’t decipher what goes on inside the minuscule minds of Democrats, except that it’s bound to be no good. That’s for professional strategy watchers to second-guess.

Sporting what looked like a dry-cleaned Confederate Army officer’s tunic, Pelosi explained why she wants to amend the First Amendment. She and her Democratic colleagues wish to prohibit corporations, regardless of their status as for-profits or non-profits, from having any role in political debate or in endorsing any candidate or idea. The Democrats harbor an unrelenting animosity for the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case of 2010, decided in favor of freedom of speech by the Supreme Court (at least partly; the whole 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act , a.k.a. the McCain–Feingold Act or “BCRA,” ought to have been declared null and void). It weighs in the Democrats’ collective political stomach like a helping of Yorkshire pudding, which often has the consistency of a lump of badly set cement.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority 5-4 opinion, noted several key but not fundamental issues in Citizens United. Among them was that the First Amendment, expressing a broad principle that prohibits the government from discriminating between corporations and the news media, consequently, if only implicitly, prohibits the government from exempting newspapers, books, broadcast advocacy and blog sites from a law that suppresses the speech of individuals or entities not favored by the law. Newspapers, networks, and book and blog writers would have an unfair advantage over gagged corporations. To allow that power, would ultimately lead to the regulation or suppression of speech of the formerly exempted.

Kennedy also wrote that the broad protection of the principle behind the First Amendment applied to all individuals, either as persons or collectively in any association, such as a corporation, and that the government could not discriminate between individuals and associations. The identity of a “speaker” is irrelevant and should not carry an arbitrarily assigned stigma or prejudice against such associations. The fact that a group of individuals expressed a position on a candidate or an issue and happened to be expressing it under the aegis of a corporation, or spent money to express such a position or granted another entity (such as Citizens United) the funds to express that position, is irrelevant. The principle applies to all individuals, singly or in groups.

Corporations, the Court asserted, are groups of individuals, and the agreement of those individuals on specific issues, and the leave they grant to a corporation to speak for them on those issues, should not prejudice such an arrangement. The First Amendment does not allow the government to impinge on the right of those individuals to express themselves in such a manner.

By extension, the Court applied the same arguments to the expenditure of money to speak freely in any manner.

The Court’s finding was a “close analysis” of the issue – what I call “bean counting” – and not explicitly based on the principle of freedom of speech. It did not touch on the role of property as a means to exercise that freedom. Justice Clarence Thomas concurred with the majority opinion but wrote a rebuttal to it, saying that the whole campaign finance law should be stricken down, and not just that part of it that abridged on corporations’ First Amendment rights.

Examine this exchange between Chief Justice John Roberts and the government attorney on the status of corporate money:

In 2009, when the Supreme Court first heard oral arguments in the Citizens Unitedcase, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart told the court that the administration believed the Constitution allowed the government to ban a corporation from using its general treasury funds to publish a book if the book advocated voting for something. "Take my hypothetical," Chief Justice John Roberts said to Stewart as he asked him about what kind of books the Obama administration believed it could constitutionally ban, "... This [book] is a discussion of the American political system, and at the end it says: Vote for X." "Yes," said Deputy Solicitor General Stewart, "our position would be that the corporation would be required to use PAC [political action committee] funds rather than general treasury funds." Roberts followed up: "And if they didn't, you could ban it?" "If they didn't, we could prohibit the publication of the book using corporate treasury funds," Stewart answered.

General treasury funds? Political action committee funds? Piggy bank funds? Money market funds? This is an example of bean-counting that eludes the Court, and Chief Justice Roberts did not or was not able to address the issue in terms of fundamentals. It shouldn’t matter where the money comes from. It’s private wealth being expended for private reasons.

Let us now turn to the perspective of that Wise Wasp Lady and former Speaker of the House. At the very beginning, she targets the Court’s 2010 Citizens Unitedfinding.

“We have a clear agenda in this regard: Disclose, reform the system reducing the role of money in campaigns, and amend the Constitution to rid it of this ability for special interests to use secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns,” Pelosi said at her Thursday press briefing.

It’s so unfair, isn’t it? All those secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns. Which campaigns? Whose campaigns? Doubtless, Republican campaigns. The Democrats never did such a thing, don’t you know? So this proposed abridgement of the First Amendment would not apply to the Democrats. Exempt from that abridgement would be People for the American Way, Media Matters, Common Cause, and any of George Soros’s well-heeled front groups. They’ll find a way around the amended Amendment and keep under wraps and out of sight, but it will be perfectly legal – until someone uncovers its illegality.

“I think one of the presenters [at a Democratic forum on amending the Constitution] yesterday said that the Supreme Court had unleashed a predator that was oozing slime into the political system, and that, indeed, is not an exaggeration,” said Pelosi. “Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.”

It is difficult not to laugh at the first sentence. From the very beginning – nay, long before Obama set foot in the White House – the Democratic Party, with Obama as its iconic mover and shaker, has been responsible for a continuing flow of oozing and poisonous slime, such as TARP, Obamacare, the taxpayer-funded but failing “green” companies, the takeover of General Motors to reward and secure the unions, the creation of a kingdom of czardoms, cash-for-clunkers, the subsidy of various “artistic” groups to promote Obama’s agenda, his opposition to making the country oil-independent of parasitical Mideast régimes, Fast & Furious, and an attempted court-packing with two individuals friendly to all manner of collectivized rights, not individual rights. Among his other depredations, too numerous to list here.

Yes, Nancy, the Founders had an idea that escapes you. It wasn’t “democracy” that they slaved to create, but a republican form of government whose Constitution specifically barred Congress and the Executive branch from infringing on individual rights. Built into that Constitution was a mechanism that would protect individuals from the mob rule of democracy. It says: the power of the people stops here. Not that Congress has been listening for the past century.

And, Nancy, you weren’t clear on what exactly you want to reverse: the Founders’ vision, or a Supreme Court decision that denies you the power to put corporations in government-mandated straight-jackets.

Pelosi was joined in her whimsical reflections on the Founders by two other enemies of the First Amendment.

The participants noted that several members in both houses of Congress have offered various versions of an amendment to reverse Citizen United v. FEC and curb unwanted speech by corporations. Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) is one of the members sponsoring an amendment. (Italics mine.)

“I've introduced a People's Rights Amendment, which is very simple and straightforward,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) said at the forum. “It would make clear that all corporate entities, for-profit and non-profit alike, are not people with constitutional rights.

“It treats all corporations, including incorporated unions and nonprofits, in the same way, as artificial creatures of the state that we, the people, govern, not the other way around,” said McGovern.

Mr. McGovern is aptly named. No one ever said that corporations were “people.” And note that he repeats that hoary old communist chestnut, that corporations govern and hold political power, and it oughtn’t to be allowed. Notice also that their speech is “unwanted.” Unwanted by whom? The “people”? Which “people”? Does Mr. McGovern include himself as one of those “people”?

No, corporations are not “creatures of the state.” They are entities formed for the protection of private property. Very likely McGovern would have advocated another old idea, that of granting all corporations “federal charters.” Just as they did in Britain. Remember the East India Company? The royally chartered trading company whose tea was dumped into Boston Harbor? Americans fought a war against Britain for many reasons, and one of them was to get from under the powers and weight of “federally” chartered companies granted monopolies in trade.

Rep. Donna Edwards (D.-Md.) explained the basic principle this move to amend the Constitution is advancing.

“In Citizens United, what the court said is that Congress has no authority to regulate this kind of political speech,” said Edwards. “And so all of these constitutional amendments go to this question of giving Congress the authority that the Supreme Court, I think wrongly, decided isn't within Congress's constitutional--our constitutional purview.

“And so, you know, the traditional rights of free speech that we have known as citizens would not be disturbed by any of these constitutional amendments,” said Edwards. “But what it would do is it would say, all of the speech in which, whether it's corporations or campaign committees and others engage in, would be able to be fully regulated under the authority of the Congress and--and under our Constitution.”

“I mean, in my view, a corporation is not a person. It is not an individual,” said Edwards. “The rights that it has are those that are granted by the state, granted by the, by the Congress.”

Donna Edwards doesn’t seem certain what she is saying. Bluntness is not her style. She dances around the idea that Congress or a delegated committee of empowered interlopers, such as the Federal Election Commission, should regulate speech. Well, what would Congress or the FEC allow a corporation to say? Would it depend on how much money the corporation was willing to spend? Or would it depend on whether or not Congress or the FEC agreed with what the corporation wished to say? This idea is as fuzzy in her head as it is in the other forum heads.

She does repeat a fallacy subscribed to by both Democrats and Republicans: that freedom of speech is “traditional.” No, it isn’t traditional. It isn’t a ritual or practice whose origins are lost in the mists of time, something to be updated or discarded or preserved because it’s old fashioned or because it’s been done over seven score generations. Freedom of speech is integral to the individual in society. If a man must speak out in favor of justice or to defend his life and property, he must be able to speak without hindrance or obstruction, provided it is by means of his property or that of another individual or a corporation.

But the campaign finance law already regulates the property – that is, the money – which is an issue that has not been addressed by the Supreme Court, at least it wasn’t in Citizens United. Pelosi’s forum wishes to close that limited route of expression entirely.

The Founders denied Congress the authority to prohibit speech for any reason. Nevertheless, Pelosi et al. want it for specious reasons, one of them being that Democrats don’t wish to have to compete in the realm of political persuasion.

This is the leitmotif of ambitious, not-yet-ready-for-prime-time tyrants. Nancy Pelosi, of course, would like the amendment to the First Amendment hammered out behind closed doors, and once it’s passed the House and the Senate and is on its way to the Oval Office. Then we can see what’s in it.

Censorship for some, for now. Followed inexorably by censorship for all, forever.

Comic Books, Hate Crime, and Kafirphobia

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:27:00 +0000

What follows is a potpourri of comments I left on various sites over the last few days. I have edited and expanded on some of these comments, because links and connections occurred to me long after I hurriedly posted the comments.

I left this comment on a Daniel Pipes article on Islamic comic books as a propaganda tool of Islamists:

I was fortunate enough to have grown up during the “Last Hurrah” of Western culture, spanning the 1950’s and early 1960’s, when Western values of individualism, heroism, independence, and rational moral values were largely shown on television, in movies, and even in comic books. My introduction to many of the classics of Western literature was through comic books (adulterated or abridged as many of the works were). The “Classics Illustrated “series especially sustained me until I moved on to the actual works. In these I was introduced to “The Red Badge of Courage,” “The Time Machine,” “The Man Who Laughs,” “The Three Musketeers,” “Tale of Two Cities” and so many more. On television, I could watch “The Lone Ranger,”“Sergeant Preston of the Yukon,” “Boots and Saddles,” “Superman,” and other series that romanticized Western virtues, values and action. By the time I was a teenager, this phenomenon was beginning to fade from the culture. What sticks in my mind from that period are “The Avengers,” “Secret Agent Man,” and the original “Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits.”

What was missing from any of these comics or TV programs, however, was the element of indoctrination, overt or subliminal. This is what I observe in children’s programming today. I think that if I were a child today, I would be a revolting creature who would refuse to submit to the government’s mandated indoctrination in the school system, or I would blow up by the time I was thirteen or fourteen. “Self-esteem” nurturing and leftist propagandizing in our schools and the deliberate dumbing down of students are bad enough; now children are being brainwashed to whitewash Islam? “Sesame Street,” a patronizing, “diversity”-heavy, government-subsidized children’s “educational” program, is the gold standard of American indoctrination. I wouldn’t have tolerated it. It has probably by now introduced a Muslim Muppet (who can’t appear in the same installment with Miss Piggy – can you imagine CAIR’s outrage if that happened?).

Hollywood has contributed to the bastardization of comic books, as well, and draws much of its material from the politically correct pop culture it helped to create. That is, it depends on popular cultural figures which it is determined to render politically palatable. I invite anyone to go online and see the trailers for “G.I. Joe,” which is to be released in June.

Those early comic books contributed to my character development. What is being developed in children in today’s comics and cartoon programming? What perverted sense of “tolerance” can be achieved with “The 99”? I shudder to think.

I left this comment on a Jihad Watch article on another French Muslim, this one waving an empty Colt .45 at passengers in the Paris Metro. This person was “inspired” by Mohamed Merah (this is the third varying spelling of “Mohamed” I’ve encountered), the French-Algerian jihadist who murdered a rabbi, three Jewish children, and three French soldiers in Toulouse. Robert Spencer commented on the skittishness of the MSM to lay any blame on Islam.

“It's amazing how often we hear that jihadists and would-be jihadists are unbalanced in some way. It is striking how often their imbalances move them to do exactly the same kinds of things.”

I’ve always contended that Islam is a belief system for the brain-dead or the mentally arrested. It overflows with a zillion unproven assertions that are proof against reason and evidence. All one need do is have faith, to “believe” unconditionally, no questions asked, tolerated or solicited. It isn’t only a Muslim’s body that “submits” to Islam, but his mind. He relinquishes thought in all but the most mundane matters. He becomes one of the herd of unthinking believers. And in that herd will be a minority of believers who wish to assert and prove their “purity,” such as Merah and countless other killers for Allah.

Fundamentally, there is little difference between Islam and, say, the Charles Manson “Family” of followers and killers. Manson was the “Mohammad” of his cult, whose members followed his instructions with unthinking loyalty. Some would claim in answer that Manson was deranged, too, and that his eclectic and warped view of life and the world had little to do with his crimes. However, that view compelled him to instruct his followers to commit horrendous crimes. If he did not take action, of what value was his view? When the crimes were committed, the world would be “made right.” His followers, the ones who actually killed, were moved by the same view, but would never have acted without the “leadership” and guidance of their Mohammad. Without him, they would have floundered in their aimless lives.

For the MSM, dubbing a Merah or the Paris Metro Muslim as “deranged” or “unbalanced” saves it the trouble of condemning Islam for what it is: a death cult for the living dead, a cult that allows the “saints” and wannabe martyrs in the herd to kill for the sake of killing. That is the nature of how Islam warrants massacres and suicide bombings and plane hijackings. It is also behind honor killings, female genital mutilation, acid-throwing, and other crimes of the “religion of peace.” Manson had his “rules” for his followers. Islam has Sharia.

I left this comment on a Sultan Knish article on the symbiosis between Obama and Oprah:

This won’t count for anything, but I nominate Daniel for next year’s Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. What a damning portrait he writes of Obama, a creature who feels a need to be something without actually being anything, a manipulator of contextless ideas and raw emotions and an exploiter of resentments and wishes for the unearned who can’t be anything unless he is seen as master of the universe by all the selfless and rudderless sheep. Without obedience and adulation, he is truly an empty suit –nay, an empty vessel.

Frankly, he’s an amateur in that respect – look at Putin, or Robert Mugabe, or Hitler, or Mao, or Stalin, or the faceless Party tyrants of China. But his professional standing as a wannabe tyrant and half-successful demagogue who keeps reality at bay by commanding the tides and the weather to do his bidding, doesn’t make him any the less dangerous.

No Pulitzer was awarded this year for fiction. It ought to have gone to an anthology of Obama’s speeches.

On Sultan Knish’s article, “We are all George Zimmerman,” about the holistic lynching of George Zimmerman, a “white Hispanic,” who shot a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, I left some brief remarks on the paucity of coverage on the 2007 black-on-white murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom in Tennessee. Snopes argues that it didn’t receive the coverage it deserved as a “hate crime” because of all the thousands of other murders in the news, and that it couldn’t be deemed a racially-motivated “hate crime,” even though the victims were white and the four assailants were black.

Only whites can commit “hate crimes.” Politicians and the MSM shy away from accusing blacks of them. This is called progress in race relations. Ask Al Sharpton.

I call the lynching of Zimmerman “holistic” because he merely represents a wish by race hustlers to punish: all whites for alleged oppression. “Whiteness” means a nominally individualistic measure of character, which tribalists like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Reverend Jeremiah Wright oppose, even though I could point to any number of blacks who are paragons of individualism, independence of mind, and intellectual excellence (e.g., Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell), far more so than any member of the DNC. Democrats, after all, historically have had a vested interest in perpetuating the welfare state, even though their policies are designed to make blacks (and whites, and Hispanics, and others) as dependent on their beneficence as actual slaves were dependent on their plantation masters’ good will.

On June 5, 2007, then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama told an audience of over 8,000 at historically black Hampton University in Virginia during a clergyman’s conference that blacks experience "silent riots" within themselves when they encounter discrimination and “racial injustice.”

Silent riots? This implies that “all blacks” – or at least those not of a Republican or conservative suasion and not tar-brushed with the Scarlet Letter of “Uncle Tom” – fantasize about meting “retribution” on whites for crimes committed six or seven generations ago, that is, before any white octogenarian today had read in his pre-teens about lynchings in the South in the early 20th century, and whose ancestors may have had nothing to do with them, or whose grandparents hadn’t even yet migrated to the United States.

One could argue that Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Eric Holder, Louis Farrakhan and other race hustlers are sanctioning fantasies of other blacks of committing “hate crimes.” But, to return the serve to the other side of the net, the whole notion of “hate crimes” presumes that imagining committing a crime is a felony offense, whether or not an individual acts on his fantasies and commits a racially-motivated crime. Meaning that the preachers against “hate crime” are guilty of contemplating the commission a “hate crime,” or at least hoping that others commit one, so the dead horse can be beaten all over again.

Too often now individuals are arrested and charged with actual crimes against other individuals, in addition to “hate crimes” -- white-on-black, black-on-white, white- or black-on-Jews or other targeted ethnic or religious minorities. This is literal “thought crime.” Further, a “hate crime” is treated as a crime against a group, even though in fact the group is not assaulted in any manner. Martin was killed in Sanford, Florida, but blacks all over the country, from New York to Los Angeles and Omaha in between, donned “hoodies” in shared victimization, even though they’d never heard of Martin until the MSM blew up the story and had gone through life with nary a racial slur ever yelled in their direction.

Motives can be used in an argument to establish a reason why a crime was committed, but it is the crime itself – the actionable offense – that is at issue, not the person’s motive, which may or may not be worthy of condemnation. Actions are evidence, but motives are either conjectural, inferred, or deduced, and then established. But they do not exist in reality. They are not weapons or instruments of murder or mayhem. They are what they are: motives.

“Hate crimes” are based also on the notion that “bad thoughts” float in the air and are there for the snatching, or are like over-the-counter drugs that can be purchased and ingested. So the Left and Islam wish to regulate, if not banish, bad thoughts from the cultural pharmacy, or render the air “bad thought-free,” à la smoking bans, for the sake of anyone sensitive to bad thoughts.

Speaking of retribution, Muslims in Europe are still waiting for a “backlash” after the Merah episode. As of this date they are still waiting for it. One can picture them sitting in their kitchens, drumming their fingers on the table in impatient tattoos, listening to the ticking clock, glancing anxiously at an arsenal of Molotov cocktails in the corner, hoping they’ve assembled enough of them. Waiting, hoping, girding their loins to run out and burn more cars and attack more infidels at the first sign of a dirty look from non-Muslims.

Imagine an Islamic version of “High Noon,” and Sherif Faoud Khan glancing up at the clock on the wall, awaiting the arrival of the Islamophobia Gang on the noon train. Only it never shows up. He hoped it would. The suicide vest around his torso was becoming uncomfortable. And then there are those fool citizens of Hadleyville hiding in the church. They abhorred violence. Didn’t want to see their town torn apart by unnecessary strife. They were willing to compromise and grant him “respect.” They hated Islamophobes, too. After all, weren’t they just racists, and bigots, and insufferably intolerant?

Sherif Khan snickers under his breath: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Guess the Gang isn’t coming.

Comic books, anyone?

Souad Mekhennet, a German journalist of Turkish-Moroccan origin, penned a shiver-me-timbers piece for The New York Times on April 10, “Muslims in France Waiting for the Backlash,” in which she projects the alleged trepidation Muslims in Europe feel in the wake of the Merah killings. She has had a career of white-washing Islam and Muslims and painting them in the glorious Technicolor of victimization and put-upon innocence.

It is terrible what he has done, and there is nothing in Islam that justifies the killing of innocents, especially children,” said Naima, 26, who also spoke on the condition that her full identity be withheld. [I wonder why. Could it be that she fears that a death fatwa would be put on her life by a non-violent Muslim? But, don’t you know, Muslims just want to have fun.]

“But will we Muslims, and especially Muslim women, have to pay the price now?”

Naima cited the debate in France over where Mr. Merah was to be buried — in the end, Algeria refused his body, and he was buried in Toulouse — as evidence of double standards about who is embraced as French and who remains firmly Muslim.

“When someone is like Zidane, a great sportsman, they say he’s French, and when one like Merah, who is a child of this society, runs nuts and kills people, they say he’s not one of us,” she said. Naima’s parents, like Mr. Merah’s, came from Algeria. She grew up in the suburbs of Paris.

Naima and many other Muslims in Europe wonder whether they are caught in a vicious cycle in which increasing xenophobia helps radicalize a generation of Muslims born in France, and they ask whether attacks like Mr. Merah’s will further increase Islamophobia.

So, it’s a cycle? Muslims by invitation move to Europe, establish their own insulated ghettos, refuse to assimilate or adopt Western values, encourage in their children Muslim xenophobia of Western culture, develop Infidelphobia or Kafirphobia, proclaim the superiority of Islam and Muslims over the West and Westerners, prey upon non-Muslims in all sorts of brutal ways, begin shooting Jews and running riot over the pathetic, anemic panaceas of European governments of banning burqas and the like – but it’s a “cycle”?

Whose feet are on the pedals? Whose soles are pressing the pedal to the metal?

The unspoken corollary is that the “cycle” would be broken once “Islamophobia” is outlawed and made punishable, and then the assimilation of Europe – even of the United States – into Islamic culture will proceed peacefully and without violence. No more nasty and vicious incidents of Muslims going “nuts” and embarrassing the faithful and compromising the Islamic communion, even though it could be argued that Islam inculcates a pair of special kinds of mental illness: mentally lethargic submission, and psychosis. Europeans and Americans will be taught to automatically defer to Muslim wishes and demands, in public, in Western courts, on the job, and in private, without protest, and never suspect – there’s that hate crime nexus again, it must be extinguished, but the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Hillary Clinton are working on that – that they are being subjugated, enslaved, and conquered.

Or, if they do suspect it, they won’t resent it and will bend over backwards to accommodate Islam in every way. No more “double standards.” Just one standard. Mohammad’s standard. Allah’s will.

Think again, Miss Mekhennet.

Objectivist Round-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the April 12th, 2012 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up. This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:

Diana Hsieh presents Conquer Your Fear posted at NoodleFood, saying, "What happens with a fourth-grader conquers her fear to make her first ski jump? Watch and see!"

Tony White presents Essay 5: Objectivism: What to Read First posted at Peripatetic Thoughts, saying, "A beginning Objectivist's guide of which items from the dauntingly large Ayn Rand Bookstore catalog to read first. Answers such questions as: What are the three most important Objectivist lectures? What are the first fifteen Objectivist works you should read, in exactly what order? What are the four most important chapter is OPAR, and why? What are Ayn Rand's best essays/lectures? Peikoff's? The best lectures by other Objectivists?"

John Drake presents Do we need classroom lectures? posted at Try Reason!, saying, "Let's turn the classroom around. Instead of lectures in class, I propose digitally recording all my lectures and having students listen to them on their own time. Then in class, we can focus on assignments, discussion, and tangible feedback immediately to better facilitate meaningful learning."

Joshua Lipana presents AmeriCorps: Collectivist, Immoral, and Should be Eliminated posted at The Objective Standard Blog.

Darius Cooper presents Is the "individual mandate" really that bad? posted at Practice Good Theory, saying, "The "individual mandate" is just one in a series more in a series of many other government mandates."

Paul Hsieh presents Positive Alternatives to ObamaCare posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "If ObamaCare is repealed, we need to be ready withsome positive alternatives. Here are a few resources."

Ari Armstrong presents Amazon Considering Renewal of Colorado Associates Program posted at Ari Armstrong's Free Colorado, saying, "A Federal court tossed Colorado's so-called 'Amazon Tax,' a 2010 law that caused the company to cut off its Associates program in the state. Now will it come back?"

Rational Jenn presents Parenting Through a Move posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "We recently moved to a new home. Here is how we are handling some of the move-related parenting challenges."

***

That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Islam’s Affinity with Force and Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:50:00 +0000

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a literary hoax and forgery of disreputable antecedents. It claimed to be the records of a conference of Jews to mastermind the subjugation of the world. Occasionally, in the mainstream media, one hears the Protocols being pooh-poohed. Infrequently, a scholar of Islam and Judaism will appear as a guest to discuss the fabrication of the Protocols and the horrendous crimes it inspired.

The sordid literary genealogy of the work is a series of mongrel plagiarisms and adaptations, appropriated for political reasons by antisemitic writers and the Tsarist secret police. Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, an 1864 political satire by French writer Maurice Joly (parts of which were plagiarized from Eugene Sue’s Les Mystères du Peuple (1856), was the chief source the Protocols, and intended to excoriate Napoleon III.

Dialogue and narrative were freely lifted from Joly’s work and only slightly altered to appear in a chapter of Biarritz, an 1868 novel by the antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche. This chapter contained not only plagiarized portions of Joly’s work, but also a scene from Alexander Dumas père’s novel, The Queen’s Necklace (1848, in which none of the conspirators were Jewish). The specific chapter that deals with the conspiracy of Jewish elders, "The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel,” which also involved Freemasons as co-conspirators, was translated into Russian in 1872 and appeared as a pamphlet.

Philip Graves, a correspondent for the London Times, first exposed the Protocols as a hoax in a series of articles in 1921. Other investigators subsequently built on his work and helped to thoroughly repudiate the Protocols. Herman Bernstein, an American writer, journalist, and diplomat, in the same year published History of a Lie, which also repudiated the Protocols. Nevertheless, Henry Ford underwrote the publication of the Protocols from 1920 to 1922, until ordered to cease by the courts and to publish an apology. Ford saw the Protocols as an alliance between Jews and Bolsheviks. He claimed to have been duped by his underlings.

Still, even before 1921, opposing forces found the Protocols useful as an expression and tool of antisemitism. Monarchists and White Russians before and after the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions cited the work to blame everything on the Jews. In 1903 the Protocols were serialized in a St. Petersburg newspaper, but in 1905 declared a fraud by the Tsar’s chief minister, Pyotr Stolypin.

This was a major indictment of Pyotr Rachkovsky, the former head of the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, and the purported author of the book-length version of the Protocols, called The Jewish Programme to Conquer the World, published in 1903. Radio Islam, however, claims that Sergyei Nilus published the book in 1905, although another site claims they appeared in a chapter of another book written by Nilus, a mystic. The true origins of the book-length version of the Protocols remain as murky and offensive as the bottom of a cesspool.

Yet, even for all the scholarly debunking that occurred beforehand, and whatever their bizarre pedigree, the Protocols remain a force to contend with. Adolf Hitler made the Protocols required reading for all German students. The twenty-four sections of the Protocols served as a justification for the Holocaust. Like the purity of the Aryan race (or of any race, for that matter), the Protocols were fictive in origin and exposed as a collective lie and a heinous defamation. The Protocols plot was the mother of all conspiracy theories, and has had a tenacious longevity. It is the Nosferatu of schizoid politics; demonstrate its bogus origins, drive a stake through its heart with evidence, and it is back haunting the darkness.

Witness the continued belief in anthropological global warming. It has been repudiated and proven to be a fraud manufactured and manipulated by power-lusters determined to reduce man to subsistence level or worse. Yet countless people still believe in it, regardless of the evidence. Laws remain on the books to force men to give up their cars, their food, their “carbon footprints.” Obama has subsidized several solar power companies (which have gone bankrupt despite taxpayer subsidies), he has vetoed new oil pipelines and oil exploration development, and allowed the EPA to condemn coal mining to extinction. All in the name of a fairy tale in which juggled numbers, bewildering graphs, and dramatic but misleading photography substitute for caricatures of bearded Jews rubbing their hands together in avarice.

The Protocols are a kind of Hansel and Gretel fairy tale in which the wicked witch gobbles up the children and cackles in triumph. Yes, a fairy tale. Not a very nice one to read to children.

But it is read to and by countless Muslim children in Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and anywhere else where Islam reigns.

Islam – not “militant” Islam, not “extremist” Islam – but just plain Islam uses the Protocols as the keystone in its agenda. Just as environmentalists believe in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Al Gore’s hockey sticks and Hollywood-produced slide show.

Why? Because the Protocols fit the racism and bigotry of Islam. Because facts, evidence and reason are the enemies of Islam. Because Islam has an agenda, part of which is to extinguish Jews from existence, in addition to subjugating all non-Muslims to Sharia law in a host of caliphates governed by a global caliphate.

But, except on anti-jihadist websites, one never hears about how real is the Islamic agenda of conquest, or, as a few other articles have called it, The Protocols of the Elders of Islam.

The Orange County Register (California) in May 2009 chastised the Wiesenthal Holocaust center for showing “The Third Jihad,” because that film indicted The Muslim Brotherhood for its violent and stealth jihad to conquer Europe and the United States.

As its name suggests, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance is supposed to promote the kind of cultural dialog that brings people together rather than pushes them apart. So it's more than a little bit odd that the center showed a movie last weekend that has been compared to the gold-standard of anti-Semitic propaganda: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The latter tome was supposedly written by the Jews who secretly want to take over the world. Actually it's pure fiction, but the book nonetheless helped pave the way for Russian pogroms in the 19th Century and the Nazi-era holocaust. The film in question, "The Third Jihad," was screened at the Museum of Tolerance last Sunday. Like the book before it, the film claims to provide evidence of a global plot of subversion, in this case a plot to subvert America by blood-thirsty terrorists posing as regular-guy American Muslims.

I am betting that Nick Schou, who wrote the article, is not eating crow. After all, if the White House and State Department can conduct behind-closed-doors negotiations and talks with the Brotherhood, there mustn’t be much to the charge that the Brotherhood has an agenda of conquest. Instead, Schou allows a Hamas-connected CAIR spokesman to take the moral high and have the last word.

On May 15, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Greater Los Angeles Area chapter, sent a letter asking the Simon Wiesenthal Center to call of [sic] its showing of the film. "As an institution that claims as its goal battling hatred and bigotry across the world, I am disappointed to see the Wiesenthal Center engage in promoting hatred and bigotry against another minority--American Muslims," Ayloush wrote….

"Claiming that American Muslims are part of some world-wide conspiracy to take over America is nothing short of concerted hateful fear mongering that intends to build animosity and even eventual violence against Muslims," he argues. "The Holocaust in Europe and the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda did not happen in a vacuum. They were preceded with such baseless hateful material that dehumanized the intended targeted community and were promoted by many enablers who falsely hid behind the claim of "generating discussion and sharing views."

Nothing in Alyloush’s sanctimonious statement jibes with the stated aims of the Brotherhood, which is conquest of the West, and of the world, by violence and stealth. In February, Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, quoted a Brotherhood spokesman about its relationship with Hamas:

Having swept into majorities in Egypt's parliament, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman is making it clear the group has ambitions far beyond Cairo.

"Concerning the Islamic caliphate, this is our dream, and we hope to achieve it, even after centuries," Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghuzlan told Egypt's Ahram news outlet in an interview Sunday. "It is the right of the Brotherhood that this is one of the pillars of its strategy. We are not concerned about the renaissance of the group only. Rather our first goal is the renaissance of Egypt, then the Arab world and then the Islamic world. This will come gradually."

By the “Islamic world,” Ghuzlan means the whole world. The Koran, after all, states that the “whole world” is Allah’s, and that it must be scoured of “man-made laws.” Such as the American Constitution.

Ghuzlan also affirmed the Brotherhood's relationship to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist movement which controls Gaza. "Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and the last bastion to protect it considering that the group is scattered in about seventy countries. It is part of the Da'wa of the Brotherhood. Between the two is an intellectual and emotional link. Our position on them is like our position on any brothers in the world, particularly Arab countries. We do not interfere in its affairs, and give advice if requested; the Brotherhood in every country respecting and living in accordance with the constitution of this state and its laws."

In December, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh similarly acknowledged the connection. Hamas, he said, is the Brotherhood's "jihadist arm."

Just as CAIR is the Brotherhood’s public relations taqiyya arm, posing also as a champion of the “civil rights” of Muslims.

The Orange County Register, as well as every newspaper and publication in this country, as well as the FBI, the State Department and other authorities charged with protecting this country from attack and invasion, should keep these statements in mind:

“Conquer the world through Halal movement” – In 2010, the mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina Mustafa Ceric, a Muslim Brotherhood leader in Europe, has evoked this project of Islamic conquest in a speech given in Islamabad (Pakistan) at the Global Halal Congress – Reported by the Daily Mail (Islamabad) and archived by GMBDR [The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report].

“We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!” – Excerpt of a speech given in 1995 by Youssef Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide, at a convention organized by the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) in Toledo (Ohio) – Archived by Investigative Project

“It should be us, with our understanding of Islam, our principles, colonizing positively the United States of America” – Excerpt of a speech given in July 2011 by Tariq Ramadan in front of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in Dallas (TX) – Transcript by Point de Bascule.

The “Protocols of the Elders of Islam” are not fictive. Not fantasy. Not a figment of anyone’s imagination. Instead of twenty-four points, the Hamas Charter, for example, has thirty-six. They are there to be read in the charters of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. They are being vigorously pursued and implemented in the Mideast, in Far East Asia, in Europe, in Britain, and in the United States, the denials of the Orange County Register and other dhimmi publications to the contrary notwithstanding. As with the fictive assertions of the imaginary Jews, the very real conspirators of Islam will form alliances with any other collectivist ideology, especially with communism.

Here is an excerpt from Protocol No. 3. Assuming that the reader has read about the Muslim demonstrations in Europe, watched them on TV, and is familiar with the daily depredations and violence of Islamic jihadists, can the reader make any distinction between the libelous hubris of imaginary Jews, and the actual and demonstrable ends and means of Islam?

To-day I may tell you that our goal is now only a few steps off. There remains a small space to cross and the whole long path we have trodden is ready now to close its cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolize our people. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe will be locked in its coil as in a powerful vice.

We appear on the scene as alleged saviors of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces - Socialists, Anarchists, Communists - to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our social masonry. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy, and strong. We are interested in just the opposite - in the diminution, the killing out of the goyim [Hebrew, nation; substitute infidels or the People of the Book, and is there a difference in object?]. By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way.

Or, as Ellsworth Toohey, the arch-villain, remarks to Peter Keating, as he relates the state of the world under totalitarian rule in Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead: “Am I raving or is this the cold reality of two continents already?”* Make that four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, and eventually North America. Imagine Toohey in a turban, or sporting a keffiyah and a pair of babouches. He could adapt to Islam, easily. It made no difference to him, either, which totalitarian system prevailed. He could submit to Islam, provided he could also subjugate the independent man and erase him from existence. His ends would comport smoothly with Islam’s – and his means, as well.

Islam’s affinity with force and fraud has no bounds. Its perpetuation and exploitation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a malicious fabrication founded on the lowest form of unreason, has allowed it to emulate the irrationality it purports to oppose.

*The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943. P. 694.

Yes, Nancy, We are Serious

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:06:00 +0000

In October 2009, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, astounded by the apparent irrelevance of a reporter’s question about the constitutionality of Obamacare, spoke the words that ricocheted off the Constitution and then around the world:

CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”

Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”

Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a "serious question."

“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”

She seemed to have been taken by surprise by the question in the chaotic hubbub of the announcement that the Senate might pass its version of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, or the ACA, or Obamacare, or Public Law 111-148). Or at least she was stunned by the idea that anyone would question the government’s “right” to conceive of and pass such a law. No one else was questioning the legality of such a law. All other questions patronized her alleged wisdom about its necessity.

Her flunky press spokesman (with the ironic title of communications director) simply repeated the answer, and shoed the annoying reporter away. But in the previous July, Elshami explained the reason why Rahm Emanuel wouldn’t be accompanying Obama to Russia.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met for about a half-hour Tuesday night with House Democrats as lawmakers try to craft legislation to reform the country's health care system.

"The goal is to get a bill done and signed into law," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Yes. Send in the thug-in-chief to apply some good-old Chicago-style behind-committee-doors arm twisting. Get that usurpation of individual rights passed with the least fuss and public disclosure. Then, as Pelosi would later say, we can find out what’s in it, as though she were a grandmother teasing children in an orphanage about the contents of a great big, brightly wrapped present deposited in the playroom by a groaning forklift.

In December, the Senate would pass its version by a vote of 60-39. The House would go on pass its version (amended) by a vote of 219-212. Obama would sign it on March 23, 2010, with a drooling press in attendance. Vice President Joe Biden would grace the event by calling it a “f***g big deal.”

Well, when Americans finally got to unwrap the present, they found a double-spaced, 2,700-page monstrosity whose chief attribute is compulsion, or government force, to purchase health insurance so that the government may regulate and ration it. The “individual mandate” would be enforced by the IRS and would result in penalties or even jail for those who refused to bow, Muslim style, to the Mecca of socialism. Non-purchasers of Obamacare via Medicare or other venues would pay what Islam calls jizya – a tax on subjugated infidels or conquered dhimmis.

Recall that pre-advertising segment of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show when Bullwinkle says, “Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” And he pulls out anything but a rabbit. Nothing but a series of fearsome, roaring animals. To Pelosi, Harry Reid, the White House, and every politician who wrote or contributed to one or more pages of the ACA, the American people are but one big collective Bullwinkle, and the thing they intended for us to pull out of the hat is Jabba the Hutt.

“Are you serious?” And now those words may come back to haunt Pelosi – even should the court merely strike down the individual mandate, if not the whole law.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also had words of wisdom in relation to the ACA. I’ll bet that no one else knew that youth violence is a “chronic health issue” that can lead to asthma, obesity, or depression for "the youth who are involved.” Sebelius did not make clear whether she was speaking solely about the victims of youth violence or the perpetrators or both.

She will clarify later if she was speaking of the victims of youth violence, or of the youth themselves. Or perhaps she won’t clarify what she meant until the HHS publishes a 1,000+ page report at the end of the year on the relationship between violence and obesity, asthma, depression, and twenty pages of other conditions she didn’t have time to include in her speech, and how this discovery should be incorporated under the aegis of the Affordable Care Act. Only a knuckle-dragging, mentally retarded, “right wing” cynic would claim she was angling for new powers for her department and a justification to include “violence” as a medically treatable social phenomenon.

Call it the “violence panel,” which would have offices right next door to the “death panel,” just down the hall from the “disposable, cost-consuming elderly panel.” This new panel would also have as a neighbor a panel with no placard or number on its door, but rumor has it that it will house the offices of a select group of experts chosen to deal with recalcitrant doctors and patients who have opted out of or resisted the individual mandate.

Pelosi said it was “only fair” that they go to jail.

Violent youth who are obese, have asthma, are depressed and are otherwise deemed ill in the opinion of specially selected social workers with backgrounds in criminology, will be sent to special “health and joy camps” to work out their disabilities under the strict supervision of doctors and other medical personnel drafted into the “ready reserve,” detailed, I think, beginning on page 496 of the ACA, Title V, Section 5210.

Haven’t a number of dystopian novels been written about treating “violence” as a treatable disease or disorder? Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange comes to mind. Also, Huxley’s Brave New World, Levin’s This Perfect Day, and a number of other novels. There was also George Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138.

I do not digress. Let no one say that Sebelius hasn’t a totalitarian frame of mind. Let no one doubt that Nancy Pelosi is of the same mind.

Fast forward to April, 2012. The Texas Tribune had the simplest breakdown of the sequence of events in the Supreme Court when it heard arguments for and against Obamacare:

Today (March 26): The court will consider whether the fact that a taxation provision in the Affordable Care Act doesn't go into effect until 2014 means the current legal challenge is premature. The justices have allotted 90 minutes for arguments.

Tuesday (March 27): The court will review the individual mandate issue and whether Congress has the authority to enact it. The justices have allotted two hours for arguments.

Wednesday (March 28): The court will review two legal questions. First, justices will consider the National Federation of Independent Business’ question of whether the Affordable Care Act can be enacted without the mandate. The justices have allotted 90 minutes for arguments. Then, they’ll take up the states’ question of whether Congress overextends its authority when it forces states to accept “onerous conditions that it could not impose directly by threatening to withhold all federal funding for noncompliance.” The justices have set aside one hour for this issue.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, charged with the task of defending Obamacare, did not do well on the second day. Although those familiar with the Court’s habits caution that the tone and content of questions asked by the Justices should not be construed as premonitory clues to how they will ultimately rule, the questions put to Verrilli were demonstrably harsh, nearly contemptuous, especially Justice Antonin Scalia’s. The Court will deliver its findings in June.

The remarks made by the Justices were a potpourri of positions for and against Obamacare, and especially about the individual mandate. As noted in my previous column, “The Court’s Mock Examination of Obamacare,” the Justices were questioning the beans they found in the government’s bean casserole. Not once did the concept of individual rights occur to them. See Politico’s recap of their questions here.

Then President Obama, obviously disappointed with Verrilli’s poor showing, opined about the Supreme Court, claiming that it dare not go against the wishes of Congress and the American people by declaring the ACA or any part thereof unconstitutional.

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.

Every time I read that patronizing statement, one made with bared teeth, I’m reminded of Don Corleone’s policy of making his obstructers an “offer they can’t refuse.” It's the same offer he made to Americans.

The ACA was not passed by a “strong majority” either in the Senate or the House. In the House, the vote was 219-212. A “strong majority” would have been 319-112. And whether or not Congress has been “democratically elected” is open to question but is a moot point here, as is the whole question of whether or not a government can void a Constitution that guarantees individual rights over an issue it should have absolutely nothing to say about, such as the freedom to buy health insurance or not. For the moment, we’ll let all that go.

Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times, however, was equally miffed, not with Verrilli’s performance, but with the Court, and especially with Justice Scalia.

Nothing in the Supreme Court arguments in the health care case last week, or in the subsequent commentary, has changed my opinion that this is an easy case. It’s the court that made it look hard.

I don’t mean the torrent of wisecracks at the government lawyers’ expense from Justice Antonin Scalia, who despite his clownish behavior in channeling the Tea Party from the bench is surely smart enough to know the difference between broccoli and health care. Rather, I mean the tough but fair questions from the members of the court who actually seemed to be wrestling with the issues: Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. The Affordable Care Act will be upheld if at least one of these justices is satisfied that the briefs, the arguments, and his own judicial perspective provide sufficient answers to the questions.

Scalia at least implied in his statement that he thought that health care was as much a commodity as broccoli or cell phones, a service or trade the same as the Internet or car repair garages. Greenhouse regards health care or health insurance as a “right.” Scalia was not being “clownish.” He was dead serious.

On Tuesday, April 2nd, Obamacare got another upbraiding by Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court in Texas. Speaking for a panel of three judges that was hearing arguments about the status of physician-owned hospitals under Obamacare, he interrupted the government lawyer to ask if the Department of Justice endorsed the right of the Supreme Court to pass judgment on federal law. When Justice Department lawyer Dana Lydia Kaersvang answered in the affirmative, but began to qualify her answer, Smith interrupted her:

Smith: Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?

Kaersvang: Yes, your honor. Of course, there would need to be a severability analysis, but yes.

Smith: I’m referring to statements by the president in the past few days to the effect…that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed “unelected” judges to strike acts of Congress that have enjoyed — he was referring, of course, to Obamacare — what he termed broad consensus in majorities in both houses of Congress.

That has troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority or to the appropriateness of the concept of judicial review. And that’s not a small matter. So I want to be sure that you’re telling us that the attorney general and the Department of Justice do recognize the authority of the federal courts through unelected judges to strike acts of Congress or portions thereof in appropriate cases.

Kaersvang: Marbury v. Madison is the law, your honor, but it would not make sense in this circumstance to strike down this statute, because there’s no –

Smith: I would like to have from you by noon on Thursday…a letter stating what is the position of the attorney general and the Department of Justice, in regard to the recent statements by the president, stating specifically and in detail in reference to those statements what the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review. That letter needs to be at least three pages single spaced, no less, and it needs to be specific. It needs to make specific reference to the president’s statements and again to the position of the attorney general and the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Eric Holder complied with the request on Thursday. Newsmax reported:

The attorney general wrote the letter after appeals court judge Jerry Smith in Texas asked for reassurances that the Justice Department recognizes judicial authority. Smith made the request after President Barack Obama said this week that it would be "unprecedented" for the Supreme Court to overturn a major law passed by Congress like the healthcare overhaul whose constitutionality it is now considering….

"The longstanding, historical position of the United States regarding judicial review of the constitutionality of federal legislation has not changed," Holder wrote.

"The department has not in this litigation, nor in any other litigation of which I am aware, ever asked this or any other court to reconsider or limit long-established precedent concerning judicial review," Holder added. He said "the president's remarks were fully consistent with the principles" the attorney general outlined in the letter.

“At no point has the government suggested that the court would lack authority to review plaintiffs’ constitutional claims if the court were to conclude that jurisdiction exists,” Holder said in the letter drafted to Smith’s specifications. “While duly recognizing the court’s authority to engage in judicial review, the executive branch has often urged courts to respect the legislative judgments of Congress.”

That’s where the issue stands at the moment.

Professor Will Huhn at The Akron Law Café made some interesting observations about the Court and Obama’s verbal scowl. In setting up the argument that Congress has the constitutional power to enact economic legislation, he quoted Justice Kennedy’s query to Solicitor Verrilli:

At oral argument last week in the health care case Justice Kennedy made the following remarkable proposals about the presumption of constitutionality:

Could you help — help me with this. Assume for the moment — you may disagree. Assume for the moment that this is unprecedented, this is a step beyond what our cases have allowed, the affirmative duty to act to go into commerce. If that is so, do you not have a heavy burden of justification?

I understand that we must presume laws are constitutional, but, even so, when you are changing the relation of the individual to the government in this, what we can stipulate is, I think, a unique way, do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorization under the Constitution?

The answer to both questions is NO. Justice Kennedy's proposed view of the role of the Judicial Branch violates the Separation of Powers.

The Legislative Branch enacts legislation. The Judicial Branch ascertains the meaning of laws and determines whether they are constitutional. In interpreting a statute the courts must defer to the intent of the legislature. The touchstone for statutory interpretation is "the intent of the legislature." Similarly, in assessing the constitutionality of a statute the courts must presume that it is constitutional.

It used to be that the Supreme Court recognized "economic liberty" as a constitutional right, and frequently struck down laws regulating employers and protecting workers under the theory of "economic substantive due process." That is no longer the case.

Huhn then lists a number of cases in which the Court upheld the government’s economic policies. Among them:

[R]egulatory legislation affecting ordinary commercial transactions is not to be pronounced unconstitutional unless in the light of the facts made known or generally assumed it is of such a character as to preclude the assumption that it rests upon some rational basis within the knowledge and experience of the legislators. United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144, 152 (1938) (Stone, J.) (upholding federal law against challenge under Due Process Clause).

And,

We have returned to the original constitutional proposition that courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws. Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 730 (1963) (Black, J.) (unanimous decision) (upholding state law against challenge under Due Process Clause).

On the contrary, Professor Huhn, a meaningful separation of powers would complement the Separation of Church and State by separating the state from the economy. This would ensure the protection of individual rights not only in the realm of an individual’s beliefs, but in the realm of his material existence. This would establish a principle that would override the “knowledge and experience” of legislators – or their profound lack of same – and reflect the “necessary and proper” convictions of a Court charged with upholding a Constitution formulated to protect individual rights.

Lost in all the back-and-forth about the individual mandate, the lawful intent of Congressional legislation, or the intent or interpretations of the Court or the “social and economic beliefs” of its members, is the whole issue of individual rights. The Court’s position should be: An individual’s life is his own, he owns his own life, he rejects any claim on it by others, and does not make claims on the lives of others for any purpose whatsoever. His life is not the government’s or the majority’s to dispose of at will for any reason, regardless of whether he is in a market or out of it, whether he consumes cell phones or broccoli. Or buys or does not purchase health insurance.

Nancy Pelosi can put this in the record: The unconstitutionality of Obamacare is a very serious matter, indeed. Americans have had a chance to see what’s in it. What those who value their life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness see is: death.

You can’t get more serious than that.

The Many Appetites for Cruelty

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:20:00 +0000

Daniel Greenfield, during an interview on Jamie Glasov’s radio show on March 28th, was discussing Hitler and Stalin when he noted that they had an “appetite for cruelty.” That got me thinking about the nature and purpose of cruelty.

Hitler and Stalin (and Mao of China) murdered millions by order or by policies they knew would result in the deaths of millions. Was theirs a passionate cruelty, or a disinterested one? Hitler was certainly passionate in his hatred of Jews. Stalin, however, and his predecessor, Lenin, put their victims in an abstract equation that dehumanized those millions and spared the dictators any personal involvement.

Cruelty comes in two sizes: flaming and disinterested. They can be mixed and matched in a bewildering array of styles. All are facets of nihilism. Nihilism has meaning only if there is a good for it to erase or disfigure. It otherwise does not manifest itself. The good must be seen by a nihilist as a threat or a nemesis. Nihilism is evil. It is an evil in action.

Flaming cruelty, for example, is a Turkish or Pakistani or Somali Muslim raping, beating, maiming, and disfiguring a non-Muslim girl or woman in Europe. This also includes “honor” killings of Muslim women who flout Islamic “traditions” or “mores” or prescribed Islamic social behavior. It is a literal crime of passion, a passion for destroying the good for being the good. The offended “honor” is a self-estimate in the eyes of others. The “passion” is rooted in either a malevolent hatred of the good, or in a desperate fear of what other Muslims will think of one if one does not take “corrective” action – the destruction of a value, such as a wayward Muslim girl by her parents and relatives – to preserve one’s standing in the eyes of those others.

Disinterested cruelty is a government arm-twisting the news media into not reporting the rapes, beatings, disfigurements, and honor killings lest Muslims take exception to the fact that Muslims committed the crimes in conformance with Islamic doctrine. The rapes, beatings, disfigurements, and honor killings are not crimes in Islam’s eyes. They are expressions of conquest and dominance over an individual deemed an unbeliever or an apostate – of someone outside the collective. Islam has no moral basis. It is nihilistic to the core.

Government cruelty is its minions walking away from the suffering and impoverishment of individuals stripped of their wealth and rights and left to fend for themselves in an increasingly collectivist society. Observe the ubiquitous indifference to the wishes of Americans expressed by the advocates and champions of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). That it is an incomprehensible law, beset at the very beginning with corruption and special pleading, and is eminently “unworkable” are of no concern to its authors and advocates.

Cruelty is intimately linked to sadism. A sadist is chiefly a nihilist. Like the villain James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged, who yells, “I want to break him! I want to hear him scream!” he wishes to erase the good so that the evil can exist unidentified as such and unopposed.* Destroying the good is an attempt to prove the efficacy of the irrational. It is important to the sadist that the victim be conscious of that intention, and then to acknowledge it. That is the nature of cruelty’s victory.

The Affordable Care Act contains provisions for punishing those who do not submit, Muslim-like, to its mandate. It seeks to break the recalcitrant when they are taxed and punished until they scream in acknowledgement of the law’s efficacy and power. That is the secret hope of Kathleen Sebelius, Nancy Pelosi, and the White House. It is a disinterested example of cruelty. Of nihilism.

People stop being flesh-and-blood individuals with their own personal virtues, and become psychological night-vision, infrared silhouettes with no personal attributes and little or no value to the power-holder. People and the electorate become mere ghostly blobs "out there" beyond the insulated corridors of power.

Still, no matter the distance between the power-holder and the powerless, the appetite for cruelty sits unacknowledged deep inside the enactors and the enforcers.

Cruelty is the inflicting of pain, and serves two purposes: to demonstrate the existential efficacy of the perpetrator’s philosophy, and to derive pleasure from the evidence of pain in a victim.

This makes possible a third purpose, which is linked to or inextricably integrated with the first two: to see the good erased from existence, to see it perish in paroxysms of a pain that acknowledges defeat. The destruction and the pain “prove” to the sadist that his metaphysics is the right metaphysics. The destruction and the pain seem to sanction his actions.

Islam, for example, is a mode of existence that allows men to live half-lives. It does not tolerate an independent mind, and is an enemy of any other religious belief. It requires a mind frozen in action – a kind of conscious coma – arrested at the level of a litany of disparate moral imperatives. Which is why I often refer to Muslims as zombies – the living dead. It is collectivist from top to bottom. It demands the erasure of whatever self a child manages to create for himself and to submit to the collective. To the Borg hive.

Islam is totalitarian in nature, governing all aspects of an individual’s life. It cannot abide anything outside its doctrinal and behavioral confines that contradicts its essence, which is the requirement of mindless and selfless submission and the surrender of all values not approved by the doctrine. What the doctrine does not permit cannot be allowed to exist.

Front Page featured a video of the malevolent hubris of Belgian Islamist Abu Imran, leader of Shariah4Belgium, in Brussels, who explains calmly to a Western reporter how and why Belgium will become an Islamic caliphate (and eventually Europe, and then the world).

“We believe Sharia will be implemented in Belgium and worldwide…Islam and Sharia are inseparable….Democracy is the opposite of Islam and Sharia….This is a dirty, perverted community [Belgium, in particular, and western culture in general].”

Abu Imran can state the goals of Muslims in Europe with impunity and without fear of censorship or government reprisal. However, other rules apply to Europeans who criticize Islam. In Germany,

On February 14, 2012, Michael Mannheimer received a penalty fine from the Heilbronn district court in the degree of 50 days at 50 Euros per day (2,500 Euros). The basis for the fine was Mannheimer’s criticism of Islam, especially his claim that Islam is working on taking over and Islamizing Europe. In addition to this, his evidence that Islam is striving for world power and his conclusion that Qur’an and Sharia are irreconcilable with the Constitution.

The charges against Mannheimer are quoted in the article. He was fined and scheduled for trial by Turkish judges in a German court. This is disinterested cruelty in action. Or nihilistic sadism. The German court proved Mannheimer’s point by doing exactly what he was warning his country against. He was made an example of as a lesson for anyone else who dares criticize Islam.

You can’t condemn a man for the contents of his mind, no matter how evil the contents. It is only when he has taken actions to achieve that evil that one can judge him. Mannheimer spoke out to uphold the good. He was punished by those who seek to erase the good. In fact, he was punished for the contents of his mind.

In the final analysis, his mind was made a meal by and for those whose appetite for cruelty is not limited to mere physical or financial pain.

*Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. 1957. New York: Signet 1992. P. 1048.

The Court’s Mock Examination of Obamacare

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:33:00 +0000

JUSTICE SCALIA: ….And we’ve held in two cases that something that was reasonably adapted was not proper [the necessary and proper wording of the Commerce Clause] because it violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the constitutional structure. The argument here is that it may be necessary, but it’s not proper because it violates an equally evident principle in the Constitution, which is that the Federal Government is not supposed to be a government that has all powers; that it’s supposed to be a government of limited powers. And that’s what all this questioning has been about. What – what is left? If the government can do this, what else can it not do? [pp. 26-27]

JUSTICE SCALIA: An equally evident constitutional principle is the principle that the Federal Government is a government of enumerated powers and that the vast majority of the powers remain in the States and do not belong to the Federal Government…. [pp. 27-28]

Justice Antonin Scalia enunciated those most relevant but less than scintillating words during exchanges between the Court and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the second day of the Supreme Court’s review of the constitutionality – or its unconstitutionality – of the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, nicknamed “Obamacare.” Most of the balance of the back-and-forth between the justices and Verrilli was in the way of bean-counting: the justices would identify specific beans, and Verrilli would deny they were beans, or claim that they might be beans, depending on one’s perspective.

Not once during the exchanges did the term individual rights escape the mouths of any of the parties. It was all about what was and wasn’t a market and whether or not the government could compel individuals to enter a market created by the government for the express purpose of regulating it. The “necessity” of health care or health insurance reform was conceded by the justices, but not deemed strictly “proper” under the aegis of Obamacare. At issue was not the government’s coercive power, but its lawful power of coercion.

Reading the entire transcript of the exchanges, without listening to them, one gets the impression that the justices were only slightly less blinkered than was Verrilli. They seemed to be focused on whether or not a smörgasbord was a smörgasbord because one or two bean casseroles were missing. Definitions of beans and smörgasbords were disputed.

Politico reported that the Left was not happy with Verrilli’s defense of Obamacare:

“Solicitor General Don Verrilli seemed to struggle more than Paul Clement, attorney for the states… Over and over again, [conservative Justices] asked for a limiting principle – a reason to think approving the mandate wouldn’t lead to unlimited federal power. Verrilli struggled to answer the question and, at times, seemed unsure of whether to call upon the Commerce Clause or Necessary and Proper Clause as justification,” noted Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic in a piece titled “”Day 2 at the Court: Well, that Could Have Gone Better.”

At issue was the compulsory "mandate" that everyone must "buy" health insurance or pay a penalty for not buying it. The Solicitor General couldn't decide whether that penalty was a tax or a penalty. He was derided by two of the justices for not being able to make up his mind, which he still hasn't. The exchanges on this subject were humorous, at least to the auditors of the session. The government's case is shot full of holes on Constitutional issues centering chiefly on the power of the Congress to "regulate" commerce.

The term regulate meant something completely different to the Founders; it meant the power of Congress to stop states from interfering with commerce between the states, such as taxing goods coming across state lines and not taxing similar goods produced within a state, thus giving the untaxed producers an edge (the international version of that policy is the “protective tariff”). To the Progressives and other socialists, however, it means the power to control commerce, in this instance, to force people to buy insurance and thus participate in the resultant but nonetheless pseudo-commerce.

But then the Court’s position – at least the positions of the conservative members of it – is also shot full of holes. To judge by the nature and content of the best questions put to Verrilli, there is no reason to feel confident or encouraged that the Court will strike down the entirety of Obamacare. It may declare the individual mandate unconstitutional on purely rationalistic grounds, and leave the rest of the law in place. But it is the coercive and confiscatory nature of the law that is its core. Listening to the Court question the constitutional validity of Obamacare is much like watching someone hunting for a place to fit a piece into a jigsaw puzzle, or looking for round holes for square pegs.

A great deal of verbiage was spent on the nature of the penalty for not buying health insurance, and whether or not it was a tax – that is, a revenue-raising device – or simply punishment for not buying the insurance. Verrilli denied that it was a tax. Yet the Court seemed to think it was one, because it would be collected by the IRS. Verrilli expressed hope that not much pseudo-revenue would be raised by impounding an individual’s income, that the workability of the whole law depended on the pseudo-voluntary compliance with it by Americans and would succeed.

It may be that the conservatives realize that to declare Obamacare unconstitutional because it exceeds the enumerated powers of Congress by violating individual rights, the Court would need to also declare unconstitutional the income tax, the Federal Reserve, Social Security, Medicare, and a host of other kinds of legislation – all of which violate individual rights by direct or indirect coercion or force, or by direct or indirect confiscation. It would mean a wholesale challenging of the doctrine of altruism and collectivism, on which all such legislation is based.

Clearly, such a crucial task is beyond the ken and scope of the current Supreme Court.

The only justice who did not question the Solicitor General was Clarence Thomas. There is hope that he can educate the other conservative justices on the matter of individual rights.

But rather than dwell on the Court’s philosophical and moral shortcomings, several articles have been written that outline “necessary and proper” arguments that the Court ought to have made in reply to Verrilli’s hesitant and eclectic assertions about the imperative nature of Obamacare.

The Institute for Justice has filed an amicus brief which possibly the justices have read. It states that a compulsory contract such as is proposed by Obamacare is not a contract, because a contract is a voluntary affair entered into by two or more parties sans coercion. Compulsory participation has nothing to do with contracts, and whether or not non-participation can be "penalized" or "taxed" is irrelevant. It is still compulsion. George Will, in his nationally syndicated article, “Obamacare’s Contract Problem,” discussed the Institute’s argument:

Hitherto, most attention has been given to whether Congress, under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, may coerce individuals into engaging in commerce by buying health insurance. Now the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, has focused on this fact: The individual mandate is incompatible with centuries of contract law. This is so because a compulsory contract is an oxymoron.

That is, bananas are not a kind of citrus fruit. Oranges cannot be classified as jelly beans. A contract denotes, not merely implies, a voluntary agreement between individuals or private entities, such as corporations or companies. Even should bribery be involved in the creation of a contract, the contract remains a contract.

The brief…says Obamacare is the first time Congress has used its power to regulate commerce to produce a law "from which there is no escape." And "coercing commercial transactions" -- compelling individuals to sign contracts with insurance companies -- "is antithetical to the foundational principle of mutual assent that permeated the common law of contracts at the time of the founding and continues to do so today…."

The Supreme Court in Commerce Clause cases has repeatedly recognized, and Congress has never before ignored, the difference between the regulation and the coercion of commerce. And in its 10th Amendment cases ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people") the court has specifically forbidden government to compel contracts.

IJ argues: The 10th Amendment forbids Congress from exercising its commerce power to compel states to enter into contractual relations by effectively forcing states to "buy" radioactive waste. Hence "the power to regulate commerce does not include the power to compel a party to take title to goods or services against its will." And if it is beyond Congress' power to commandeer the states by compelling them to enter into contracts, it must likewise be beyond Congress' power to commandeer individuals by requiring them to purchase insurance. Again, the 10th Amendment declares that any powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people.

This is the language that ought to have been used by the Court in its interrogation of Donald Verrilli. The Institute for Justice focuses on individual rights and one’s voluntary, consensual contractual relationships with others. This language, unfortunately, is missing from the Court’s proceedings. Will concludes his article with:

IJ correctly says that if the court were to ratify Congress' disregard for settled contract law, Congress' "power to compel contractual relations would have no logical stopping point." Which is why this case is the last exit ramp on the road to unlimited government.

George Leef, director of research, John W Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in North Carolina, also published an article that reprises several salient constitutional points, “The Constitution, 'Constitutional Law,' and ObamaCare.”

What must be challenged is the premise that the Constitution actually does grant Congress "broad power" over interstate commerce. The fact is that the language of the Constitution itself does not confer such power. Anyone who reads the document in search of a clear statement -- and the drafters were nothing if not clear, careful writers -- that Congress or the executive branch is supposed to have any power at all to dictate to individuals and businesses how they must act when engaged in "interstate commerce" searches in vain.

As noted above, the original meaning of the term “regulate” has been swept under the rug of past Court decisions. It no longer means prohibiting states from taxing or handicapping production and trade between individuals in different states.

At the heart of the current dispute is "the Commerce Clause." Included in Article I, Section 8 under the powers specifically given to Congress, we find this language: "To regulate Commerce with Foreign nations, and among the several States..." Why was that inserted? James Madison later explained that "the Commerce Clause grew out of the abuse of power by the importing states in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the states, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the general government."

Thus, the purpose of that clause was to remedy a problem that had arisen in the new nation -- namely, that some states were impeding the flow of commerce with laws favoring producers within their borders. To keep commerce "regular" meant that Congress could enact laws to prevent that abuse of power by the states. It was never meant, as Madison wrote, as a grant of power for whatever future Congresses might want to do to control everything relating to people's commercial affairs.

Leef provides the historical context of how the modern meaning of “regulate” came into circulation:

Late in 1936, however, President Roosevelt, angered at a Court that had struck down many of his statist plans for controlling the nation's economy, issued his infamous threat to pack the Supreme Court. That plan met with a great deal of opposition within his own party, but it apparently worked on two members of the Court: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Associate Justice Owen Roberts. When it came to deciding the test case involving FDR's extraordinarily authoritarian National Labor Relations Act in 1937, they switched from supporting the old, correct understanding of the Commerce Clause to supporting the "progressive interpretation" that the clause gave Congress power to enact any law that would somehow "affect" interstate commerce. The funny thing about that decision, Jones & Laughlin Steel, is that the majority never bothered to mention the Court's previous Commerce Clause decisions. It was as if Schechter disappeared into a black hole.

The Court continued along that same line, allowing Congress to do whatever it wanted by calling it "regulation of interstate commerce" until reaching the utterly absurd case Wickard v. Filburn in 1942. Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a farmer in Ohio was fined for having grown more wheat than federal regulators permitted him to. He argued that the law was unconstitutional (at least as applied to him) because all of the wheat had been consumed on his own property. None had been sold at all, so there was no commerce, much less "interstate commerce." But, eager to uphold the "progressive" ideal of unlimited federal control over every aspect of the economy, the Court fashioned a remarkable justification. Since the farmer might have purchased some wheat in interstate commerce if he had not illegally grown his own, his conduct therefore could have "affected" the interstate market for wheat, and therefore his action was subject to federal punishment.

Much more verbiage was devoted on March 27 to how an individual who did not purchase health insurance would somehow affect the costs of insurance and cause those costs to rise. To borrow a line of thinking from the Court: I do not consume avocados, never have, never will. But somehow that affects the price of avocados everywhere and I am to blame for the current and probable rise in the price of avocados. So, I must be compelled, under penalty of noncompliance, to buy avocados to help share the cost of avocados with everyone else, in the name of avocado regulation. My former absence from that market, after all, was a detriment to society as a whole.

Now, that is just as remarkable an analogy as that presented by the Court. But it is not an argument, by either the bench or the dock, that addresses the fundamental coercive nature of Obamacare, all 2,700 pages of it.

The rectangle of light in the acres of a farm was the window of the library of Judge Narragansett. He sat at a table and the light of his lamp fell on the copy of an ancient document. He had marked and crossed out the contradictions in its statements that had once been the cause of its destruction. He was now adding a new clause to its pages: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade ..."*

In Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged, Narragansett is a judge who has withdrawn his wisdom from the world in protest of the kind of “wisdom” exhibited by the Supreme Court. What he would actually be writing is an amendment.

Doubtless he would have included the private realm of health insurance. It would have been a no-brainer.

*Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. 1957. New York: Signet 1992. Pp. 1068-1069.

Islamic Jihad: Hurry Up or Wait?

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:15:00 +0000

“The difference between the "radicals" and the “moderates" is that the radicals want to engage in genocide even while they are a minority, while the moderates want to wait until they are a majority. The radicals are satisfied with killing a few Hindus, Christians, Jews, here and there. The moderates want to wait and kill millions. Neither are our allies. Both are our murderers.”

So wrote Daniel Greenfield in his Sultan Knish column of March 21st, “The New Nazis,” in response to the murders of a rabbi and three children in Toulouse, France, and to the murders of the French paratroopers by Mohamed Merah. He likens, and not for the first time, Muslim jihadists, their agenda, and their tactics, to those of the German Nazis. He ended his column with:

“The old Nazis marched in at the head of an army. The new Nazis bought a plane ticket. The old Nazis had to get by the French Armed Forces and the Royal Air Force. The new Nazis are welcomed in and anyone who says a word otherwise faces trials and jail sentences. The old Nazis deported Jews to camps. The new Nazis kill them right in the cities. And the killing will not stop until the Muslim occupation of Europe comes to an end.”

Greenfield is right. I would liken Islam to an ideological Black Death that must be faced up to by politicians and intellectuals. There's no such thing as a "benign" Islam. It is a death-worshipping ideology from top to bottom. And the only way to emasculate it is to repudiate it in its entirety.

The Black Death or the Bubonic Plague invaded Europe in the 14th century chiefly through Europe’s seaports. Ship rats carrying the Oriental rat fleas and passengers and crews of merchant vessels already infected by the fleas called on these ports and transmitted the disease to populations. The plague wiped out between 30 to 60% of Europe’s population over the course of two centuries, chiefly because no one knew what caused it or how to fight it. Beginning in 1346, it crept across Europe until by 1353 it had decimated all of Europe including a goodly portion of Russia. The Mideast was also stricken; many vessels calling on Italy, France, and England originated in the Black Sea. It would recede, then return many times over the centuries with diminishing potency, until the last outbreak of it in the early 19th century. The only nation to escape the Black Death’s first wave was Poland, which had no seaports, and Iceland, which had relatively little contact with Europe.

The Black Death was not welcome to Renaissance civilization. Political and religious leaders did not rationalize away its presence or its causes. They may have prayed for relief, or called it God’s vengeance, or perhaps blamed it on witches, but whatever they said, was said in ignorance of the causes. Suddenly, the plague was there and city streets filled up with the dead and diseased.

And today, just as suddenly, Europeans have noticed that their city streets were filling up with the living, walking, and arse-lifting dead, an invasion of them by invitation of their governments and often by the citizens themselves. The living dead wish to be accommodated in all things, which means gutting the cultures they migrated to and transforming them into replicas of the cultures they left behind.

I make no bones about my hatred of Islam. It isn’t the Rotary Club, or the Moonies, or any other harmless cult. Islam is as much a collectivist ideology as are socialism and communism and Nazism, and like those secular brands, its primary aim is total domination of their adoptive societies to the point that those societies become wholly Islamic. To submit to Islam is to voluntarily lobotomize oneself in favor of a ghostly authority and an iconic “prophet” who was basically a thug and a killer. Muslims submit to it, and expect all those around them to submit to it, or to defer to them.

Islam is the Black Death of modern times. It completes with secular totalitarianism. Its carriers are Muslims, who arrived by countless planeloads at the invitation and encouragement of western governments and proceeded to procreate and begin a process of insulation. At first these governments believed that Muslims would assimilate into the cultures they were migrating to, as though they were Christians of one sect settling into a country dominated by Christians of another sect. However, they were not Catholics settling in Lutheran Germany, or Episcopalians starting over in Catholic Italy.

There is no middle ground. There is no “reforming” Islam. Just as there is no “reforming” Nazism, or Maoism, or Stalinism. Islam is not a “buffet” religion; there is no picking and choosing which of its imperatives to adhere to, and which to disregard. The creed demands one’s full allegiance and obedience in every aspect of one’s private and public life, all one’s waking hours. That many Muslims do not live “by the book” is irrelevant. It’s their creed in whose name violent jihadists commit atrocities, and stealth or cultural jihadists corrode or corrupt Western social and judicial norms like bagworms consuming a tree’s bark, which means the death of the tree. The “silent majority” of Muslims dare not or care not to speak against the actions of their more zealous religious colleagues.

"Radical" and "moderate" Muslims aren't about to “reform” Islam to make it “tolerant” of other creeds or more palatable to their adoptive cultures. So that task must be accomplished by those who will be its ultimate victims, either as dhimmis, or corpses. The penicillins of multiculturalism, “diversity,” “tolerance,” “sensitivity,” moral relativism and plain political expediency are what have allowed the plague to kill so many and make significant inroads in Western civilization. It's time those who value that civilization to adopt the same "in your face" tactic as the violent and stealth jihadists have adopted. That will mean identifying Islam as a killer ideology. Period.

In his review of Abigail R. Esman’ Radical State on Family Security Matters, Patrick Donleavy noted:

“It would seem that the very strength of Holland’s democracy and tolerance became an Achilles' heel when it came to dealing with Muslim immigrants arriving from non-democratic, Islamic fundamentalist regimes.” [Italics mine]

The problem is that the Netherlands, like the U.S., has “democracy.” Democracy is mob rule. Should the Muslims achieve an electoral majority there, or even a significant minority – then The Netherlands is finished. As will be any other European nation that boasts both “democracy” and a Muslim population whose adults don't believe in condoms or contraceptives or self-restraint. Their “planned parenthood” strategy is to breed like rabbits with the aim of swamping indigenous populations with their numbers.

The antidote to “democracy” is a republican, limited government that upholds and respects individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, all concepts antithetical to Islam and any other species of collectivism. This is what the Founders intended. They abhorred democracy. Democracy means that the majority can nullify one's rights and seize one's life and property, and abridge one's happiness at will. This is what successive American administrations have been doing under the guidance of the Democratic Party, abetted by a politically bankrupt Republican Party. So, until Europe discovers the principle of individual rights, it is doomed to thrash about combating Islam without knowing what political system would make it impossible to conquer Europe. Banning burqas in France isn't going to prevent such a conquest.

The Economist ran a story on Mohamed Merah that is typical of mainstream media reporting of the killings. Unlike many other publications, It actually employed the term “Muslim” but with cautious qualification to underplay the Islamic motivation in the killings: Merah was segregated from his Muslim calling and branded as a “lone wolf”:

Yet the number of Frenchmen returning from al-Qaeda camps with such high-level training is only “in single digits” reckons François Heisbourg, of the French Institute for Strategic Research. Isolated French Muslims, radicalized in Islamist training camps, have been foiled trying to mount terror attacks in France before.

Once the candidates resume their campaigns, Mr Sarkozy may emerge strengthened. Having flown straight to Toulouse after the school shootings, he has done a skilful job of being statesmanlike and solemn, yet in touch with the national mood. His Socialist rival, François Hollande, has also sounded the right note, but from the shadows. Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front candidate, may also benefit. She spoke out this week against confusing Muslims with fundamentalists, and denounced those who had at first accused her of being implicated for having fuelled racial divisions in France. “Putting real problems on the table in no way justifies the spread of Islamic fundamentalism,” she declared. The real issue, she added, was that such fundamentalism in France had been “underestimated”. [Italics mine]

Even Marine Le Pen, who is campaigning against Sarkozy on an anti-immigration and nationalist plank, found it politick to temper her words by claiming that Muslims shouldn’t be confused with Islamic fundamentalists. Which misses the point that Islam is inherently radical and can’t be divorced from its inherent fundamentalist tenets. That is, Merah’s motivations can’t be excised from Islam. What is already radical cannot be radicalized. One may as well deny that spaghetti is a form of pasta.

Merah wasn’t a “lone wolf” sociopath like Andre Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer. Merah was not acting out an episode of Sesame Street, but rather the imperatives of the Koran. He went to Afghanistan for jihadist training. His brother was a probable accomplice in securing Merah the weapons he used and stockpiled in his apartment. And the further the French authorities delve into Merah’s background and actions, the more they will find links to the “leaderless jihadist” network and Islam.

The Associated Press also commits the same error. Rewritten to excise any mention of Muslims and Islam, the original Associated Press article read:

PARIS - Authorities investigating France's deadly shooting rampage have released the mother of the Islamist fanatic blamed for the killings but were questioning his older brother to determine whether he served as an accomplice, officials said Saturday.

Police are trying to determine whether 23-year-old Mohamed Merah had any help in carrying out the execution-style murders of seven people that have shocked France and refocused attention on the threat of radical Muslim terrorists. Police say there is evidence to suggest that his brother worked as an assistant. [Italics mine]

The usage of the terms “Islamist fanatic” and “radical Muslim terrorists” is an instance of denial that a Muslim’s criminal action has anything to do with Islam. “Islamic fundamentalism” is a redundancy. One’s life is not jeopardized by “fanatical” Catholics or imperiled by “Mormon fundamentalism” because one isn’t asked by fanatical Catholics or Mormon fundamentalists to defer to their beliefs or even respect them. But such deference (and submission) is routinely required of non-Musims by Muslims and organizations such as CAIR, the ICNA, the MSA, and other Islamic front organizations.

I was reminded of an early episode of Star Trek, in which Captain Kirk and his crew land on a planet governed by 1930’s period gangsters, whose “bible” is a history of 20th century organized crime and whose customs and practices are followed to the letter by the society. It was an amusing episode written around an incredible premise.

And that reminiscence caused me to recall the ending of Francis Ford Coppola’s first Godfather movie. While Michael Corleone, acting as godfather of a son of a gang member he has had executed (his sister Connie’s husband), is attending the solemn baptism of his godson, on his orders rival gangsters are violently wiped out across the country.

That powerful, cascading sequence of scenes may be taken as the essence of Islam. There is no fundamental difference between Michael Corleone’s loyalty to the tribe and his concept of “family honor” and demands for respect, and that boasted of by Muslims. That is what panicked politicians and “moderate” Muslims must grasp here and in Europe before any progress can be made against the war declared and waged against the West by Islam. No compromise is possible between Islam and its utter and complete repudiation.

This is a philosophical conflict, and not merely a “religious” or political one. Islam’s spokesmen seem to know or sense this. Our “protectors” do not. The Mohamed Merah’s of Islam are in a hurry. The “moderates” are counseling patience.

We are their enemies. We are targeted for destruction or subjugation by both groups. Whether one views the Islamic incursions as a form of the Black Death, or as the corrupting influence of gangster government, the West must identify its enemy before it can be successfully opposed.

Allah’s Oops!

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:38:00 +0000

Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, a chaotic and bewildering novel which earned him a permanent death fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in February 1989, will attend a literary conference in New Delhi, India in March, in defiance of Islamic naysayers. We can credit him with the defiance, but not his oeuvre with literary worth. I signed a petition in 1989 that opposed the fatwa and called on Western governments to uphold freedom of speech, a petition inspired by Khomeini’s death sentence on Rushdie and on anyone who dared defend him or promote his book.

Out of curiosity, I tried reading The Satanic Verses, and one-quarter into it was unable and unwilling to finish it. I would liken it to a fantasy tale centered around the ribald adventures of believers in the merged worlds of the Rosicrucians and Yale’s Skull and Bones secret society.

If it hadn’t been for Khomeini’s fatwa, as someone has noted elsewhere, Rushdie’s novel would be gathering dust in second-hand bookstores, and Rushdie himself perhaps would be writing for The Daily Telegraph or the Guardian to earn a living.

So, what were those “Satanic Verses” that got the turbaned tyrants of Iran incensed? What is Sura 53 all about? It has to do with that obsession of inadequate and repressed Muslims everywhere: women! No wonder they’re raped, and beaten, and disfigured, and reduced to fractions and invisibility! Allah was the original male chauvinist pig. But, never mind The Satanic Verses. Here is a less obtuse accounting of what really happened in seventh century Mecca.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Once upon a time Allah had three daughters. You heard right. Not one, but three daughters, and they were all as powerful as he. As goddesses, they were worshipped by Arabs before Mohammad put an end to that pagan polytheism. Their names were al-Lät, al-Uzza, and Manät. They were okay, said the Angel Gabriel to him in his sleep, or in his dreams, or in his ear. “They are the Sorority of Serenity Now! Sirens of the Belly-Dance. Top-drawer cunning vixens! Make offerings to them in their temples, and your wishes will be granted!”

That was the original Sura, as reported by early Islamic scholars. Mohammad of course was dictating the Koran and speaking as though in a trance (reciting what he was hearing, so to speak, or so he claimed), and his scribe hurriedly scratched it all down on parchment rescued from the looted Alexandrian Library, bleached of any blasphemy. Mohammad, the Billy Sunday of his day, had decided that the Meccans he was trying to convert to Islam liked variety in their deities. Why not keep some sexy seductresses, and add some spice to the creed?

At least, that’s what he thought he thought, as he was listening to “the voice.” Mohammad was of two minds: he was hearing voices, while his subconscious worked overtime to see how he could take advantage of what he was hearing.

Then he had a change of mind. Or Gabriel came to him again one night, chewed him out, and changed it for him. Gabriel peered over the scribe’s shoulder and read the latest Sura. He exploded.

“You fool! You dunderhead! That wasn’t me whispering in your ear last night! That was…Shaytan! I was in the Crab Nebula last night on other business, so I never told you that Allah had three daughters! I got a proper tongue-lashing from Allah this morning, thanks to your date-addled brain, you mewling kid of a camel, you spawn of a Jewess!”

Mohammad looked hurt and humiliated. He muttered under his breath, “Oops!”

Gabriel paced back and forth furiously, shaking his finger at Mohammad. “Now, listen up, chowder head! There is only one God, and his name is Allah! No goddesses! No daughters! No sons, either! Tell your scribe to cross out that Sura, and replace it with, ‘Are men’s children to be boys and Allah’s to be girls? How unfair!’ That’s how it should read! Those are Allah’s very words!”

Now, Mohammad wanted to establish a new religion, and be exalted for what remained of eternity as its infallible founder. Still, he found it a curiously awkward means to spread the Word, and the Word was Allah’s. A rather roundabout way of revealing that Word to mortals he could not imagine, he would think in his most private moments. Allah speaks it to this snooty Angel, and the Angel whispers it to him, and he recites it to this bent-over, aging scribe. Not very time efficient.

Mohammad blinked in confusion. “But, oh, my Winged Whispering Wonder! What about al-Lät, and al-Uzza, and Manät? Do they not exist? Temples have been built for them, the yokels here have worshipped them for ages. Are we to have no variety in our worship? Allah is fine, as the Main Moon Man, but…people say it gets old, just worshipping one god. Why not a family of them?” He paused, and had a thought. “And if they are his daughters, who was their mother? We are missing a goddess, it would seem.”

“What Shaytan told you was blasphemy!” shouted Gabriel. “There are no other gods! Only Allah! All other gods are figments of men’s imaginations! Unreal! Without temporal or spiritual substance! Shape up, Mohammad, or Allah will choose another Prophet, and leave you to run with the dogs!”

Mohammad looked quizzical. He blurted, “Is Allah androgynous? Is he…without gender?”

Gabriel was stunned by this statement. Mohammad was illiterate. Where could he have picked up those words? But, he stepped up to Mohammad and slapped him silly, and so hard that the lice in the Prophet’s beard jumped ship, and Mohammad’s cheek was red for a day and a night. “How dare you question Allah’s manhood, you filthy jammal! You pile of dog chur!”

But Gabriel otherwise did not answer the question. He remained in the tent long enough to make sure that Mohammad instructed the scribe to make the change. He could not instruct the scribe himself, because he was visible only to Mohammad, and could only be heard by the Prophet. Mohammad explained to the scribe that he got it wrong the first time, because of accumulated wax in his ear.

The scribe, of course, was accustomed to Mohammad talking to himself, or at least to the unseen and unheard Angel Gabriel. He sort of believed in the existence of the Angel, because, often as he scratched away on the parchment, he felt a cold presence weighing on his shoulders and breathing down his neck.

We are assuming that Gabriel was of the masculine suasion. The Bible tells us so.

Before he went poof and vanished, the Angel Gabriel pulled from inside his robes a long, curved object. “Here,” he said. “With this you will conquer Arabia, if all else fails.” He handed it to Mohammad.

The Prophet gasped and took the object. Holding the bejeweled and intricately tooled leather scabbard in one hand, with the other he drew out a curved sword. The blade was shiny and beaten to razor sharpness. It was the most wicked looking weapon he had ever seen. His hand fit perfectly inside the guard, grip, and pommel. He hefted it once or twice. It had an admirable balance. “Milord!” he exclaimed. “What workmanship! What is it called?”

“It is a scimitar,” answered Gabriel, ignoring the open-mouthed amazement of the scribe, to whom the weapon had appeared miraculously in Mohammad’s hands without cause. “It is a better tool for conversion than the spears and flat swords your companions carry.” He paused and looked sly. “What does its form remind you of, Mohammad?”

The Prophet’s sight was fixed on the gleaming metal. His mind was dazzled. He shook his head.

“Allah is the Moon God, and that is the shape of the quarter moon. Henceforth, that will be your symbol, and your pulpit, so to speak. Sew that symbol to your banners. Now, get to work! Pack up everything here and move to Medina! There you may plot without distraction.” With that, the Angel Gabriel said, “ma'a as-salaama,” and went poof.

“Thank Allah for me,” said Mohammad to the empty air.

So, Sura 53:19-20 were emended to deny the reality of Allah’s daughters. These are verses 21-22.

Of course, this embarrassing and compromising episode was reported over a century after Mohammad’s alleged death (his existence being alleged anyway) by Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari. They had cell phone camera video evidence of the confrontation and correction – recorded by an anonymous witness, who may have been Baal – but that evidence was lost during the turmoil of the Islamic conquest of the Arabian Peninsula.

As everyone knows, Islam was so far ahead of its time. Lost also are volumes on quantum mechanics, heart transplants, the discovery of Uranus and Neptune, various heliocentric theories, a tantalizing treatise on electricity, a dissertation on agricultural irrigation, not to mention the entire oeuvre of Abdul ibn-Knish, including his Córdoban comedies. Western scholars argue that ibn-Knish was the Noël Coward of his day, to judge by the pitifully few fragments of his plays that are preserved in the Vatican Library. It is thought by experts that the Angel Samantha served as ibn-Knish’s muse, going by the name of Elvira.

In the Unexpurgated Koran, only one copy of which has survived and which is secured in a booby-trapped vault deep beneath the Vatican, another scholar relates that it was the Angel Samantha who whispered the untruths into Mohammad’s ear about Allah’s daughters. In this rare, early copy of the Koran, Suras 53 through 57 have been nicknamed the “Henpecked Allah Verses.”

The Angel Samantha was in due course unceremoniously chucked out of Paradise by Allah, once he learned of her betrayal and her role in advising Mohammad behind Gabriel’s back. As she plummeted to the flaming nether regions in a burqa, she balled up a fist, punched a hole through it, and shouted back, “Oh, who wants to sit at your stinking feet forever singing your praises, you megalomaniac!” It is reputed that she formed a liaison with Shayton and assisted him over the millennia in spurring hostile and often bloody divisions among Muslims. It was, underground scholars aver, she who enticed many Muslims to part from the Sunnis and become Shi’ites, whose original name was “She’s It!” It was quite a radical career change.

The End.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Of course, most of the Korans that are regularly burned by Muslims are those containing the uncorrected Sura 53 and other shocking and prurient chapters that were simply edited out of standard, general circulation Korans over the centuries by conscientious Islamic scholars. It explains much, such as why most Muslims are a humorless lot and super-sensitive to any criticism. Muslims are a most repressed people. And the Korans with the corrected Sura 53 underscore Islam’s inherent and wholly creditable misogyny, not to mention the scale of its troubling and murderous psychosis.

The “False Alarm” of the latest Executive Order

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:24:00 +0000

A few nights ago I watched John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964). And a few nights before that, his The Manchurian Candidate (1962). I was in a foul, pessimistic mood, given the nature of the presidential election campaign and the vacillating prospects of seeing a changing of the Red Guard in the White House. Both movies, excellent in their direction, casting and theme, dramatized conspiracies to take over the United States government and establish a dictatorship.

Then, on Sunday morning, March 18th, I learned about the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order, signed into law by President Barack H. Obama on March 16th. As some news blogs noted, Friday was a curious time to inform the nation of the NDRP EO, or “EO 12919” (for Executive Order), an EO to which the mainstream media seemed oblivious and un-newsworthy.

I immediately recalled Directive 10-289 from Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged, in which the Head of State, at the behest of his national economic planner, issues a decree that freezes everyone and everything in place to combat an ongoing, government-caused national “emergency.”

Previously, in December, I had written about the ambiguous language in certain sections of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 (NDAA), language that could authorize the warrantless arrests of American citizens for cocking a snook at the government and treating said citizens as enemy combatants or prisoners of war subject to indefinite detention in conditions less salubrious than those enjoyed by actual enemy combatants now housed in Gitmo. EO 12919 seemed to complement the NDAA. Searching for the text of the EO on the Internet, I saw that it was the subject of scores of blog sites and news outlets, most claiming that it was a move by Obama to take over the government or establish tyranny. In fact, many of them cited Directive 10-289.

I found the full text of the EO on the White House site, and also a critique of it on Hot Air by Ed Morrissey, “’National Defense Resources Preparedness’ executive order: Power grab or mere update?” I read the EO, expecting to find the worst; however, the droll bureaucratic language almost caused me to nod off. It dwelt mostly on shifts of delegated powers among the Cabinet and federal departments to “identify, assess, be prepared, improve, foster cooperation.” Most of the language seemed to be a legitimate mandate for a government charged with defending the country from its enemies.

Then I read Morrissey’s comments. Morrissey justifiably chided everyone for being alarmed by EO 12919. In a thoroughly researched article, he stressed that the EO is merely an amendment to an EO enacted in 1950 during the Korean War and subsequently revised to accommodate technological and policy changes since then.

Again, this is almost identical to EO 12919 from 18 years earlier [1994]. Note what this EO specifically orders: identify, assess, be prepared, improve, foster cooperation. None of these items claim authority to seize private property and place them at the personal disposal of Obama. What follows after Section 103 are the directives for implementing these rather analytical tasks, mostly in the form of explicit delegations of presidential authority to Cabinet members and others in the executive branch.

If one takes a look at EO 12919, the big change is in the Cabinet itself. In 1994, we didn’t have a Department of Homeland Security, for instance, and some of these functions would naturally fall to DHS. In EO 12919, the FEMA director had those responsibilities, and the biggest change between the two is the removal of several references to FEMA (ten in all). Otherwise, there aren’t a lot of changes between the two EOs, which looks mainly like boilerplate.

In fact, that’s almost entirely what it is. The original EO dealing with national defense resources preparedness was issued in 1939 (EO 8248) according to the National Archives. It has been superseded a number of times, starting in 1951 by nearly every President through Bill Clinton, and amended twice by George W. Bush.

As Morrissey writes, many “right-wing” bloggers susceptible to conspiracy theories jumped the gun, asserting that EO 12919 was a creature of the current administration. That was my original supposition, as well. Morrissey was seconded in his correction by Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway:

Executive Order itself is nothing more than a restatement of policy that has been in place in decades and grants no authority to the President or the Cabinet that they don’t already have under existing law. …

There are, perhaps, some issues worth discussing that this EO raises. The fact that the President of the United States is still exercising authority granted during the Korean War and the height of the Cold War is yet another reflection of how power, once assumed by the Imperial Presidency, is never surrendered.

The fact that an Executive Order like this was released on a Friday afternoon and has been largely ignored by the traditional media is an indication of just how easy it is for politicians to manipulate the news cycle. And the idea that the government has authority like that described in this document, even only in theory, and that most Americans aren’t even aware of it, is a reflection of just how little we know about the things that are done in our name. Those are all legitimate issues, but they go far deeper than this one relatively innocuous Executive Order.

So, the news about EO 12919 is that there is no news.

Still, Mataconis does question the dubious legitimacy of granting the executive branch powers that could easily morph from ensuring that the government has the equipment, funding, and means to deal with “national emergencies” – which remain undefined throughout the document, which could mean a war, or a natural catastrophe – to powers to “manage” any crisis the White House could find handy or even manufacture to excuse an assumption of dictatorial powers.

Furthermore, actions sanctioned by the EO do not require Congressional approval. Precedents include President Bush not asking for a formal declaration of war against Iraq, albeit taking military action, or Bill Clinton’s Bosnian “intervention.” Or even Obama’s Libyan “intervention.” The EO could have been invoked, for all we know, to take over General Motors (“too big to fail”), or be invoked to ensure the survival the Patient Affordable Protection Act should the Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional.

There are two ways that presidents can enact initiatives without congressional approval. Presidents may issue a proclamation, often ceremonial in nature, such as naming a day in honor of someone or something that has contributed to American society. A president may also issue an executive order, which has the full effect of law and is directed to federal agencies that are charged with carrying out the order. Examples include Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order for the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Harry Truman's integration of the armed forces and Dwight Eisenhower's order to integrate the nation's schools.

Congress cannot directly vote to override an executive order in the way it can a veto. Instead, Congress must pass a bill canceling or changing the order in a manner they see fit. The president will typically veto that bill, and then Congress can try to override the veto of that second bill. The Supreme Court can also declare an executive order to be unconstitutional. Congressional cancellation of an order is extremely rare.

There are many troubling points in EO 12919, one of which is the indeterminate nature of the “national emergencies” that would justify the decree of an EO. Another is the ambiguous statement that:

The head of each agency otherwise delegated functions under this order is delegated the authority of the President under sections 710(b) and (c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(b), (c), to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation and to employ experts, consultants, or organizations. [Sec. 502. Consultants]

Which may or may not mean indentured servitude. Time will tell

“Section 702 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2152,” as well as other Acts, is frequently cited throughout EO 12919. Section 702 here concerns “emergency” powers approved in 2003. But one must wonder if the Founders had intended the government to collect so much information on not only the economy, its industrial and technological base (which the government treats off-handedly as a personal asset), but on the private citizens who make it all possible. I think not.

And how does the federal government usually “foster cooperation,” except by extortion, fraud, bribery, falsehoods, blackmail, and direct physical force? It is not as benign a term as it appears.

Mac Slavo at The Intel Hub also “jumps the gun,” but ends his column with a calmer warning:

When implemented simultaneously with existing laws and Presidential orders, the National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order establishes a clear chain of command and control over all aspects of American life in what can only be described as a police state under martial law.

And that’s the rub. The groundwork for a fascist control of the country is there. It has been carefully laid over decades. And it may be that even the White House knows that it is too early to implement simultaneously all those “emergency” orders and laws, because the reaction by Americans would make the Tea Party phenomenon look like a friendly marital spat.

Objectivist Round-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 01:01:00 +0000

Welcome to the March 1st, 2012 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up. This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:

Nicholas Marquiss presents “Ron Paul Lacks the Principles Needed to Defend Freedom” at The Undercurrent, saying: “In this piece written for The Undercurrent, Nicholas Marquiss highlights the failure of Ron Paul to truly grasp and defend individual rights.”

Jon Glatfelter presents “Do We Need Faith to Know Right From Wrong?” at The Undercurrent, saying “Is morality the process of adhering to divine edicts? In this Campus Media Response, Jon Glatfelter argues otherwise.”

Zak Szalewski presents "The Hypocrisy of Islamic States" at The Rational Extremist, saying: "I am an Objectivist and new to the blogging circle."

Jared Rhoads presents “Assorted thoughts on contraception, Bell, physicians, and more” at Center for Objective Health Policy, saying “Here are a few short thoughts and observations on recent events--some health-related and some not.”

Darius Cooper presents “Federal Debt Project” at Practice Good Theory, saying “I show how government debt is projected to grow.”
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Ross England presents “Organ Donation: Check the ‘Selfish Bastard’ Box for Me Too” at Think Twice, saying “Some of my thoughts on the wisdom of having organ donor status on your driver’s license.”

Paul Hsieh presents “Free Market Lessons from Contraception Fight” at We Stand FIRM, saying “My latest at PJM discusses 3 lessons we should learn from the political fight over birth control.”

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That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Ayn Rand Nation: A Celebrity Roast

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:37:00 +0000

Imagine a lecture on the ideas of Ayn Rand – or on those of Immanuel Kant, or John Locke, or Plato, or Aristotle, or on the philosophical system of any major thinker of the past – delivered by Ronald MacDonald in full clown regalia. Pretty ludicrous?

Picture it combined with the rhetorical equivalent of “death by a thousand chortles,” punctuated with spittle-spewing Bronx cheers. Pretty disgusting? Not very amusing?

Then you will have an idea of the nature and purpose of Gary Weiss’s book on Rand and Objectivism, Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul. (St. Martin’s Press, 2012). Weiss presumes to be a kind of modern day Dante Alighieri who will show you the “truth” about Rand and her philosophy. What he actually is, is a pretentious stand-up comedian who’s cadged the words and sentiments of a host of malicious detractors who went before him.

The title itself is misleading. At first glance, it suggests an in-depth study of how Rand’s ideas have permeated the culture, especially in politics, in terms of opposition to federal economic and social policies. But it is no such thing. The book is mocking, sneering screed, two hundred and ninety-nine pages long, penned by a nihilist posing as an “investigative” journalist. Or muckraker. Better copy can be found in any supermarket tabloid.

The first part of the title also is an exercise in calculated tackiness. Roll it off your tongue. “Ayn Rand Nation” slurs into “Alienation.” This is called syllabic autosuggestion, and is meant to worm its way into one’s mind like an aural earwig. If you are susceptible to that kind of psychological manipulation, it might work.

In his Huffington Post column of March 7th, “Why You Shouldn’t Dismiss Ayn Rand,” Weiss claims that his book is about why Ayn Rand’s ideas should be taken seriously. But once one has the book in hand and is read from page one, one will see that it is actually a plea to not take her ideas seriously. It is a long-winded warning, written as an “exposé,” to stay away from Rand’s ideas, lest one be branded as a kook or a cultist or a zombie. Weiss coined several other disparaging names for Rand and Objectivists in this book, which will not be repeated here.

Nor will any of the book’s contents be discussed here. There is not a single page in which Weiss does not employ his disdain and malice. And what would be the point of actually reviewing such a book? It is a hatchet job from beginning to end on Ayn Rand, on Objectivism and Objectivists, and on many of the interviewees, whom I suspect were interviewed under the false pretense of a serious interest in Rand.

A Barnes & Noble ad for Weiss’s book glowingly reads:

Weiss provides a strategy for a renewed national dialogue, an embrace of the nation’s core values that is needed to deal with Rand’s pervasive grip on society.

Yes, that’s right. Weiss wishes people to “deal with” Rand’s allegedly “pervasive grip on society.” If it were true that her ideas had such a “pervasive grip,” the country would not be in as bad a shape it is in. But the ad does identify the fact that Weiss regards Rand as an enemy to “deal with.” The “strategy”? Guffaws unlimited. Snickers by the dozen. Countless calloused elbows and sore ribs.

Publishers Weekly also gave Weiss a pass.

Weiss poses an important question: will we be a country that values human life and dignity, or one that values only the dollar?

There’s a dichotomy? A conflict? Rand wrote there needn’t be one, but neither Publishers Weekly nor Weiss understands this. Well, perhaps Weiss does, which would partly explain why anyone so desperate to derogate Rand and her ideas would stoop to writing a two-hundred and ninety-nine page celebrity roast.

To attempt to refute or rebut anything said in Weiss’s book would merely dignify an insult by elevating it to the level of a philosophical proposition worthy of an answer.

Caveat emptor.

The Afghanistan Murders and the Abyss of Altruism

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:09:00 +0000

The military policy of the United States has been governed by altruism since at least World War I, when Herbert Croly, the proto-fascist and Progressive writer, advocated that America involve itself in that war as a “tonic of a serious moral adventure.” The shocking news is that, if an American soldier murdered sixteen Afghani citizens in cold blood, it is a direct consequence of that policy.

The messianic President Wilson could not pass up what he saw as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help remake the world. As historian Arthur Ekirch writes in The Decline of American Liberalism, "The notion of a crusade came naturally to Wilson, the son of a Presbyterian minister, imbued with a stern Calvinist sense of determinism and devotion to duty." He was goaded by a host of Progressive intellectuals, such as John Dewey and Herbert Croley, editor of The New Republic, who wrote that "the American nation needs the tonic of a serious moral adventure."

In terms of a self-sacrificing foreign policy, you can’t get more altruistic than that. It has been the rule of thumb ever since, with only superficial variations on the theme.

To forego any counter-arguments, it is not the purpose of this column to argue for or against why the U.S. involved itself in that war and in World War II, as well. America was already regarded as an enemy by Germany before our entry into either war; it may have become embroiled in those conflicts regardless of the rationality or irrationality of our policy. Speculation on this particular issue is not the subject here.

First, it would be helpful to clarify exactly what I am referring to when I say that our foreign policy has been governed altruism, and it would be especially helpful if we got it from the horse’s mouth, that of French philosopher, Auguste Comte:

Altruism (also called the ethic of altruism, moralistic altruism, and ethical altruism) is an ethical doctrine that holds that individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve, or benefit others, if necessary at the sacrifice of self interest. Auguste Comte’s version of altruism calls for living for the sake of others. One who holds to either of these ethics is known as an "altruist."

The word "altruism" (French, altruisme, from autrui: "other people", derived from Latin alter: "other") was coined by Comte, the French founder of positivism, in order to describe the ethical doctrine he supported. He believed that individuals had a moral obligation to renounce self-interest and live for others. Comte says, in his Catéchisme Positiviste, that:

[The] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service.... This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely."

Two articles were published almost immediately after news of the crime broke, Ralph Peters’s angry article on Family Security Matters (FSM, March 13), Soldiers Murders Afghans – Generals Murder Solders: It was Only a Matter of Time Before One of Our Men Broke Down,” and Daniel Greenfield’s bitter and sardonic Sultan Knish article of March 12, “The Blood Price of Afghanistan.”

By contrast, the MSM reported the killings with an almost palpable tone of glee, a tone of near relief that finally, American troops can be accused of something heinous, and America itself implicated in the crime. CNN decided to quote the dismay of one of the head savages in Afghanistan:

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the soldier acted alone and turned himself in after opening fire on civilians. U.S. President Barack Obama called the killings "tragic and shocking," and offered his condolences to the Afghan people in a phone call to his counterpart in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, the White House said.

But no condolences offered for the numerous Americans, Canadians, British, and Australians killed in cold blood by Afghans?

But the attack is likely to further more anger at international forces following deadly riots over the burning of Qurans by U.S. troops.

Oh, yes, let’s bring up those Korans with the scrawled Muslim marginal notes that were burned. Let’s fuel the anger by mentioning that subject.

"The Afghan people can withstand a lot of pain," Prince Ali Seraj, the head of the National Coalition for Dialogue with the Tribes of Afghanistan, told CNN. "They can withstand collateral damage. They can withstand night raids. But murder is something that they totally abhor, and when that happens, they really want justice."

Really? The Taliban and other Afghans “abhor” murder? But not honor killings, rape, torture, beheadings, ritual disfigurements, beatings, and whippings, all prescribed or sanctioned by the Koran? All a matter of everyday practice in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Libya…well, you know the map. ABC opined:

In the wake of the Quran burnings, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, visited troops at a base that was attacked last month and urged them not to give in to the impulse for revenge.

The tensions between the two countries had appeared to be easing as recently as Friday, when the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding about the transfer of Afghan detainees to Afghan control -- a key step toward an eventual strategic partnership to govern U.S. forces in the country.

Now, another wave of anti-American hatred could threaten the entire future of the mission, fueling not only anger among the Afghans whom the coalition is supposed to be defending but also encouraging doubts among U.S. political figures that the long and costly war is worth the sacrifice in lives and treasury.

General Allen ought to caution the troops on revenge – but, revenge on whom? Revenge on the politically-correct officer corps that instructs the troops to not fight back, to not show disrespect for the Afghans and their brutal and primitive culture, to not feel resentment for being a mere sitting-ducks “police force” to contain an enemy the policymakers dare not name, to not resent being guinea pigs in an altruistic war to bring “stability” to a part of the world that has never known it and never will?

And the transfer of those Afghan detainees? Did the “memorandum of understanding” lock the Afghan government into a promise to detain the “detainees” in the rottenest prison in the country? Or did the Afghan signers of the memorandum sign it with tongue in cheek?

And, oh, gee, we mustn’t do anything that will unleash another wave of anti-American hatred and murderous anger, like exterminate the Taliban, withhold financial and material aid to a corrupt government, or urinate on Taliban fighters, or even so much as sketch a cartoon of Mohammad in a Koran. No, we, the policymakers and the MSM, will only focus and dwell on American actions, and not Afghan crime, for after all, if we weren’t there, there wouldn’t be any Afghan crime.

Right. Before the Americans arrived, Afghanistan was the playground of the rich and famous, with immaculate beaches, five-star hotels, a friendly and outgoing populace, health spas, ski resorts, and crime statistics so low they put the Amish country to shame.

Ralph Peters’s column netted several score comments from readers of FSM. It resonated with those readers, because he was able to paint a picture of the obscene decrepitude that is Afghanistan, a decrepitude America should never have tried to correct, because it is the natural state of the country.

If there’s a “battle cry” in Afghanistan, it’s “Blame the troops!” Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to “respect Afghan culture.”

But generals don’t have a clue about Afghan “culture.” They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing. The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women. When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to “respect Afghan culture,” they must want to puke up their rations.

And that’s the country and populace we are sacrificing blood and treasure to bring “democracy” to a hellhole. But the “democracy” was already there. The squalor and the brute culture is what the Afghans want. They voted for it at an invisible ballot box, the ballot box of stagnation and status quo.

Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind).

What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.

And the moral code that allows us to kid ourselves is: Altruism. After all, altruism can do no harm. It cannot be corrupted. It cannot corrupt.

Altruism took us to Iraq and Afghanistan, and altruism will be the death of us there (and of more U.S. troops). Purists claim that you can't corrupt altruism, that only good can emanate from it. But, there you are. Mr. Peters identifies with justifiable anger just how that can be and has been done. He puts his finger on the cause of such crimes by excoriating the policies that have governed the conduct of American operations in Afghanistan.

Is it really better to give than to receive? Altruism says so. But all the U.S. has received in return for expending American lives and incalculable wealth in that hellhole is hatred, scorn, and death.

It's interesting to note that the advocates of self-sacrifice rarely volunteer to sacrifice themselves, if they have cannon fodder available and the funds to send the cannon fodder in their place. Altruism is eminently corruptible, and the Afghan murder incident is merely the most visible instance of it. The advocates indulge in their altruism by proxy – with other men’s lives. They consider themselves virtuous. In reality, they are a unique species of coward – men who know the consequences of the moral code they expect others to abide by, but refuse to themselves, because they know it means death and dishonor.

That is the dirty little secret of every altruist who has ever championed self-sacrifice. And when someone goes insane and violates that code, they howl in indignation. They disavow any knowledge of its inevitable consequences. They pose and pontificate about that “higher cause” and spit on its victims.

Altruism can also corrupt, and cause one to sacrifice or surrender one’s most cherished values – or to employ force to compel others to surrender them.

Daniel Greenfield’s Sultan Knish article is nearly literary in its explication of that altruist “military” policy.

The alleged attack on Afghans by an American soldier in Kandahar, where 91 soldiers have been murdered last year alone, is already receiving the full outrage treatment. Any outrage over the deaths of those 91 soldiers in the province will be completely absent.

There will be no mention of how many of them died because the Obama Administration decided that the lives of Afghan civilians counted for more than the lives of soldiers. No talk of what it is like to walk past houses with gunmen dressed in civilian clothing inside and if you are fired at from those houses, your orders are to retreat.

No, no POTUS, no MSM anchor or pundit, no Charlie Rose or “Washington Week” host will raise those issues. After all, self-sacrifice demands that our soldiers expose themselves to the whim and malice of their enemies. Isn’t that what soldiering is all about? So, please, don’t bore our liberal/left elite with such stories.

Air strikes are for days gone by. The American soldier in the ISAF is expected to patrol and retreat, to smile and reach out to Afghans while they shoot him in the back. After risking his life to hold back the Taliban, he is expected to take it calmly when his government announces that it is trying to cut a deal with the Taliban. As he waits out the final months until withdrawal, seeing his friends lose their limbs and their lives, knowing that the enemy has won, that he has been betrayed and is being kept senselessly on the front line for no objective except the diplomatic position of a government that hates him, that is taking away his health care, his equipment and his job; how does he feel?

Who knows what motivated the staff sergeant to kill those Afghans? He was a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, with several tours of duty. While his crime was inexcusable, Greenfield here, as well as Ralph Peters, describes the irrational “war-fighting” conditions our soldiers are expected to behave in.

The Panjwai district, where the shootings happened, is the cradle of the Taliban. Smiling civilians plant IED's and children serve as lookouts. Obama's Surge pushed hard into Panjwai and the Taliban pushed back. American soldiers were caught in the middle, dying for a handful of dusty towns where the inhabitants took their presents and shook hands with them, and then shot at them from cover.

That describes very well the surreal environment our troops must endure. Well, there were the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) of yore, with whom university presidents and professors negotiated. And there is the Taliban for a Democratic Society (Taliban from talib, meaning an “army of Islamic students”), with whom our government is negotiating a surrender. Some things never change; only the garb and the ideology. Only this time it is the heirs of the SDS negotiating with the TDS. That fact alone deserves book-length treatment.

Does our military actually expect to have first-class soldiers who are also armed social workers? Does it really expect our soldiers to develop pride, honor, and dignity by instructing them to become sacrificial animals? Does it really expect an altruistic “war-fighting” policy to not inculcate contradictions, contempt, and confusion in the minds of our soldiers – and still expect them to remain steadfastly sane and loyal?

Altruism is not a guide for living, but a prescription for dying. Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand noted:

What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good. (“Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 61)

And:

Do not confuse appeasement with tactfulness or generosity. Appeasement is not consideration for the feelings of others, it is consideration for and compliance with the unjust, irrational and evil feelings of others. It is a policy of exempting the emotions of others from moral judgment, and of willingness to sacrifice innocent, virtuous victims to the evil malice of such emotions. (“The Age of Envy,” Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 136)

The appeasement practiced by past presidents and policymakers was horrific enough. The wholesale destruction or surrender of values was inevitable. They thought they were being diplomatic and practical. But the appeasement being practiced by our leadership today – in Iraq, in Afghanistan – is consciously calculated to destroy, and destroy not only our military, but, in the long run, America itself. It represents a deliberate, intentional surrender of values, with full knowledge of the consequences.

Our "war-fighting" policy from the beginning -- just after 9/11 -- has been one governed by altruism.

It was not in our self-interest to "spread democracy” in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan. It was in our self-interest to eliminate states that sponsor terrorism in our own self-defense. That has not happened. Obama can blame George Bush for inaugurating that policy – although don't expect him to mention that – and Obama can blame himself for perpetuating it. But he won't blame himself. He doesn't give a damn. He hates this country, its freedom (what's left of it), and our military.

Appeasement is altruism in action. And the only destination possible by that policy is an endless, nihilistic abyss.

It is time that Americans called the appeasers and altruists to account for their actions. It is time they were judged in the court of reason.

Steal This Philosophy

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:17:00 +0000

A new book on Ayn Rand and Objectivism came out in February, from St. Martin’s Press, Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul, by Gary Weiss. The book will be reviewed here at a later date. However, if Weiss’s Huffington Post article on Ayn Rand is any indication of its objectivity, or lack of it, it telegraphs the book’s inherent malignity.

In his Huffington Post article, “Why You Shouldn’t Dismiss Ayn Rand,” Weiss does something no other liberal or conservative writer has ever done: he urges everyone to take Rand seriously, not because she was right, or prophetic, or was a deeper thinker than most academics will ever admit, but because she and her philosophy pose a danger to the political establishment, especially to the liberal/left establishment. To my knowledge, he is the first liberal to adopt the policy of knowing his enemy, instead of dismissing Rand as on or beyond the fringe of political thought.

That is the single credit I can grant him. And he is Rand’s enemy. He was clear about that in his article. And he doesn’t know Rand as well as he claims. He writes from essentially a “libertarian” perspective.

First, his article reveals that leftist director Oliver Stone of Wall Street notoriety wanted to adapt The Fountainhead to film, but apparently failed.

Stone believed that it would be possible to make a movie that would turn [The] Fountainhead’s lead character, an incredibly selfish man named Howard Roark, into a public-spirited altruist – a species of human that Rand believed to be evil incarnate. Why not? The positive character traits of Rand’s heroes – their individuality, their integrity – are not the exclusive territory of the far right.

Stone points the way, I think, for progressives and liberals to make a greater effort to understand Rand, and even to adopt some of her views, so as to better counter the right’s assault on social programs and the very concept of government.

Of course he failed. Individualism – authentic individualism, and not whimsical eclecticism or being “different” for the sake of being different, immature men wearing their baseball caps backwards come immediately to mind – is morally and politically incompatible with any brand of collectivism, and especially with altruism. Weiss and Stone see a value in individualism and integrity? No. If they did, they would respect the individualism and integrity of the author that made the novel possible, and not propose to steal it to promote collectivism.

Perhaps a better and more feasible film project for Stone might have been to turn Ellsworth Toohey, The Fountainhead’s chief villain, into a public-spirited altruist “good guy,” a less challenging transformation, to be sure. However, no “public-spirited altruist” or humanitarian can ever be a “good guy.” An altruist is fundamentally selfless, and asks his beneficiaries to be selfless, as well. And also dependent on his selflessness. Hitler was selfless – personally, and in his career – and look at the results.

Saul Alinsky was selfless, too. He was a real life Ellsworth Toohey, the character who made Howard Roark his special target.

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

But, that wouldn’t have been any fun for Stone. He prefers to speak kindly of dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Hugo Chavez. He would ignore, or be oblivious to, the fact that most humanitarians are at bottom killers. Such as Mother Teresa, who not so much wished to cure her charges of their diseases, as relieve their suffering, without actually eradicating it, and to make them dependent on her selflessness.

Weiss’s “exploration” of the idea of Howard Roark as a humanitarian may be discussed in more detail in the book. That remains to be seen, and will be covered when I review the book.

Even more absurd than proposing the appropriation of Rand’s hero and turning him into a selfless anti-hero, is Weiss’s proposed appropriation of the concept of “rational self-interest.”

Sure, the hyper-selfishness that she advocated was absurd. Rand was so intent on winning the intellectual argument over selfishness that she blithely misquoted the dictionary. But there is much to be said for people pursuing their rational self-interests, to use Rand's terminology, when doing so does not infringe on the rights of others. That's a concept the 99% should embrace. Why do we support social programs? Because it is in our rational self-interests. Progressive taxation is not in the rational self-interests of the 1%, but it is in the best interests of society as a whole--a concept that Rand did not accept. One can make a good argument that taxation is in the interests of the 1%, as members of the greater society.

Now we know something about Weiss’s own “individualism and integrity”: he has picked up the slogans of Occupy Wall Street and made them his own.

In the Randian worldview, however, there is no such thing as "the public," there were only individual people, with individual rights. That may be fine if you're a billionaire and don't give a hoot about other people. It's not so great if you're a little guy, which is why collectivism--ordinary people's collective prerogatives--is the antidote to the privileges of the 1%. It's not in the rational self-interests of the 1% to support collectivism, but it is in the selfish interests of the rest of us. It's also far more in keeping with the view of the Founders, who included forward-thinking progressives like Thomas Paine. He advocated a guaranteed national income.

So, progressive taxation, robbing the rich to support the mythical poor 99%, and not minding being robbed blind by an omnivorous government and endless “wars” on poverty and smoking and homelessness and unhealthy foods and whatever other “social” problems a humanitarian can concoct, is in one’s “rational self-interest”? One may as well, to paraphrase Whittaker Chambers in his hysterically malicious review of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, claim that entering a gas chamber would be in one’s rational self-interest, if one cared about “society,” because it would mean more air and food and shelter for those who don’t enter it.

Thomas Paine was not one of the Founders. He was a pamphleteer who, after the American Revolution, left the Revolution behind and began advocating socialism, something none of the Founders ever did.

Collectivism is the “ordinary people’s collective prerogative”? So were the OWS mobs. So were the guillotines of the Reign of Terror. Or Derrick Bell’s “critical race theory.” Or ObamaCare.

I'm not a Rand follower--an "Objectivist"--and never will be. I don't believe in laissez-faire, free-market capitalism. I believe in regulation and taxation and Medicare--all the things she hated (even though she became a Medicare recipient when it suited her purposes). But I can't deny that there were aspects of her work that appealed to me. It's foolish, I found, to pretend that Rand is a repulsive creature that only nutcases could fine appealing. If that were so, she wouldn't be as powerful--and dangerous--as she is today.

Weiss believes in regulation, taxation and Medicare – and probably Social Security and the plethora of other entitlement scams, scams founded on government fraud, extortion and force, as well – but has never actually bothered to examine the moral and economic consequences of these laws and policies. Weiss has the reputation of being an “investigative journalist,” although to judge by his publishing credits, they are more in the nature of publicist for collectivism than they are instances of genuine investigation or journalism.

Note Weiss’s parenthetical; snarky zinger he includes in his statement, that Rand was a “Medicare recipient when it suited her purposes.” Evva Pryor, who worked for Rand’s law firm and handled signing the paperwork to apply for Social Security and Medicare towards the end of Rand’s life, said that she persuaded Rand to grant her power of attorney in these matters.* At the time when it “suited her,” Rand and her husband, Frank O’Conner, were in declining health. Pryor argued with Rand that because Rand “had worked her entire life and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it.”

I would disagree with that argument, because Social Security by that time was being financed by deficits; the money extorted from individuals having already been spent a generation before. The government was simply “crediting” Social Security based on the future income earnings of generations that hadn’t even yet entered the work force. Medicare itself was an overture to ObamaCare and the enslavement of the medical profession. Pryor does not explain how she convinced Rand to grant her the power of attorney to handle the matters, but when one is dealing with force or the consequences of force, virtually any decision is legitimate that allows one to “fight another day.” Such a concession is not indicative of defeat or compromise, nor is it indicative of moral corruption, as Weiss insinuates.

Weiss ends his article with:

The Founders were certainly not Randian; they sacrificed for others. They were altruists. If they'd have thought only of themselves, there would have been no revolution. Today, the revolution is being waged by the right. It will be successful--unless the rest of us stop ridiculing Ayn Rand and begin taking her seriously.

No, the Founders did not sacrifice themselves, nor were they altruists (the term not having been coined yet by August Comte). They were political thinkers who were committed to the idea of freedom, and that commitment required an individualism and integrity utterly foreign to Weiss. Fighting to preserve one’s values is not a “sacrifice” if those values are imperiled by especially government force.

It was the Founders’ commitment to political freedom – of selfishly thinking of their own personal freedom – that made the Revolution possible. America has been the beneficiary of that selfishness ever since 1776. That inheritance has since been frittered away in the realm of politics.

However, if liberals and leftists heed Weiss’s advice, and attempt to appropriate elements of Objectivism for their own collectivist ends, one can expect to hear yelps of shock when their collectivist premises encounter Rand’s individualist ones and cause philosophical short-circuiting.

Alchemists have tried turning lead into gold before. The modern alchemists will be equally as unsuccessful in their attempts to turn a philosophy of reason into a philosophy of need and "social justice," and at their own peril.

To be continued in a forthcoming book review of Weiss’s Ayn Rand Nation.

*100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand. Scott McConnell, ed. New York: New American Library, 2010. P. 521

Occupy the Money

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 04:03:00 +0000

“I think we’ve been too slow to realize [why] people our own age, with histories just like ours, going through all that state stuff, to be [sic] dishonest, unprincipled, back-stabbing sleaze balls….Well, I was prejudiced in their favor. I thought that because they looked like us, and talked like us, they were going to think like us.” (The Big Chill, 1983)

So whined an ex-radical from the protest movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s, at a reunion of ex-radicals on the occasion of the funeral of a former comrade, “Alex,” who committed suicide and who was apparently the only one who “fought on.” Most of the characters in Lawrence Kasdan’s film of post-“revolutionary soul-searching over how they were “co-opted” by the “establishment” and now all lead comfortable middle class lives. That is, they had to actually support themselves.

Well, sir, they haven’t stopped talking and thinking like “us.” Taking a leaf from Saul Alinsky, they fought on. “There was only the fight.” Now they’re in power. They’re the “establishment.” You spoke too soon. You were dropped from the club of sleaze balls who ascended to the top and left you and your angst-ridden house-mates behind.

When the pond scum and bilge surfaced in American politics, you were not to be found in it.

Who would have thought, three or four decades ago, that Communist activists and terrorists such as Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Van Jones, Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Tom Haydn, Jane Fonda, and a gallery of other protégés, associates, appointees, and fellow travelers would become the social and political elite to formulate, determine and oversee domestic and foreign policies of the United States? Early on, in their violent and demonstrating heyday, they were virtually penniless, or the progeny of well-to-do parents. Now they bask in relative luxury, either as respected and tenured “academics,” or thanks to their munificently compensated government appointments, or as heads of liberal non-profit organizations, or even as executives of multi-million dollar corporations.

They are not whining. How did they do it? Was it a conspiracy, or did they just fill a moral and political vacuum?

In “The Storm Troopers of OWS” last November, I noted that:

Occupy Wall Street was no spontaneous phenomenon, but a planned and organized instance of “community organizing,” on a scale that would make Saul Alinsky proud. It is orchestrated anarchy intended to cripple the “system,” careening towards whatever target its mobs reach a consensus to freeze, personalize, isolate, and polarize, angling for “confrontation” with the police that would put them in the role of “victims of violence” – when they are the initiators of force. One OWS chant is, “The whole world is watching.”

Who are in the ranks of the OWS?

OWS is an amalgam of communists, welfare state liberals, old school radicals, gray panther leftists, new age hippies, holders of worthless degrees, the professionally unemployed, the perpetually alienated, the clinically certifiably disgruntled, career vagrants, vehicles of middle class guilt, black power advocates, Muslims, anti-Semites, Hispanics of indeterminate national origin, unions, AmeriCorps manqués, Peace Corps veterans, environmentalists – all the bilious movements that mushroomed on the mulch of American educational philosophy, and which were prepared and sanctioned by grade and high schools and universities and patronized, idolized, and encouraged by the news media.

And what did the mobs of the OWS want?

The variety of protest signs, usually scrawled on cardboard, often revealing a profound illiteracy in spelling and grammar, testify to the unity of “angst and anger” and the triumph of a university education. OWS brandishes a variety of banners, including the American, but the Palestinian and Puerto Rican flags were also in evidence. On the whole, what OWS is rebelling against is reality, but it is a reality their elective ilk have created.

OWS has in its ranks countless individuals ready to emulate the German Free Corps of post-World War I Germany. The paramilitary Free Corps helped to elevate Adolf Hitler to power. Many of them made the easy transition from the Free Corps to the SA and SS once the Nazis began to gather electoral steam. Many others found employment in other departments and programs of the Nazi Party.

OWS does not boast uniforms or paramilitary discipline. Its legions have not been street-fighting Communists, but rather have been jockeying for confrontations with the police, so that “all the world” would witness the altercation. But the absence of uniforms and discipline is irrelevant. There is no fundamental difference between the OWS and the Free Corps.

How did Hitler finance his rise to power? There are parallels to explore.

OWS is preparing Phase II of its clamorous and disruptive calls for “change.” Phase II will require money. Aside from the usual suspects of George Soros affiliated donors, there is the usual assortment of affiliated fools, such as Ben & Jerry’s founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The Wall Street Journal of February 28th has this interesting story:

A group of business leaders—including Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg—are planning to pour substantial funds into the Occupy Wall Street movement in hopes of sustaining the protests and fostering political change.

Their goal is to provide some ballast to an amorphous movement that captured the world's attention with nonstop, overnight protests in dozens of cities but has had trouble regaining momentum since most of those encampments were broken up by police in the past few months.

OWS has gone “formal,” creating a mother ship of finance and guidance. No more of that rowdy, unsanitary, chaotic come-by-chance organization for them. It has “incorporated.”

The latest Occupy supporters call themselves the Movement Resource Group and have raised about $300,000 so far to parcel out in grants to protesters, said Mr. Cohen. Their goal is to raise $1.8 million.

Cohen and Greenfield were not protesting “radicals” of yore, though early photographs of them would lead one to believe they had been right in there battling police and inhaling tear gas and risking thwacks on the head by nightsticks and batons.

Nevertheless, they were “radicals,” and still are.

A little more than two-thirds [of the $1.8 million] was donated by the Ben & Jerry's Foundation and members of the group's steering committee, which includes Dal Lamagna, founder of the company Tweezerman, entertainment-industry executive Richard Foos and Judy Wicks, founder of the White Dog Café in Philadelphia, along with Messrs. Cohen, Greenfield and Goldberg.

The remainder—about $60,000—came from individual donors, including Norman Lear, a television producer and philanthropist, and Terri Gardner, former president and chief executive of Soft Sheen hair products.

Some entrepreneurs and successful businessmen will gladly provide the rope with which they will eventually be hanged. Norman Lear? Got to keep those “Meat Heads” all in the family.

"Many of us have been working for progressive social change," Mr. Cohen, a prominent supporter of liberal causes, said Monday. "There's been a critical ingredient missing."

Such as better coordination, a focused agenda, and better-trained troops. Perhaps an escrow account for attorney’s fees and bail bonds.

The group will give grants of as much as $25,000 to protesters across the country after undergoing an application process that begins in March. The group, along with five Occupy activists, will review applications.

Of the money raised so far, $150,000 will pay for rent and equipment for an office in New York for the national Occupy movement. An additional $100,000 has been set aside for individual project proposals, and a small portion of the money has been set aside to provide stipends for people Mr. Cohen describes as "core activists."

Still, the dog insists on, if not biting the hands that feed it, then growling at it in dissatisfaction. There were complaints about the donations.

Mr. Cohen and other members of the group met with protesters in a Manhattan church Sunday night to pitch the idea to dedicated activists. Not all were impressed, on the theory it would only add bureaucracy.

"Essentially this is a group of very wealthy people who have picked a handler to deal with Occupy Wall Street," said Ravi Ahmed, 34 years old, a protester who works as an academic administrator. "They've re-created what's wrong with nonprofits and philanthropy structures."

What’s wrong with the whole system is that without all the iPods, and cell phones, tents, and shoes, and processed food and Starbucks, and especially ice cream, not to mention cardboard on which to scrawl semi-literate protests with Magic Markers and dime-store stencils – all that and more produced by wealthy people and used by OWSers to facilitate their protest against “wealthy people” – where would Mr. Ahmed and his colleagues be? Would they even exist? But, these are subjects beyond the ken of OWSers.

And what is actually wrong with most nonprofits and philanthropies is that they are largely altruistic and leftist vehicles to distribute wealth their administrators never created. Watch the credits for any PBS television program about the plight of penguins or polar bears or rain forests, or the struggles of Mexican-Americans and Muslims to retain their “culture,” or the aspirations of inner-city graffiti artists and gang members; it is a roll call of guileless and guilt-ridden “humanitarians.”

Ben & Jerry’s isn’t in the same league as Krupp, German industrialists, bankers and manufacturers. But the German magnates and moneyed elite were also bitten by their beneficiaries. It’s a difference in scale but the ends are the same.

Many years ago, Antony C. Sutton, a British-born “rogue historian,” produced a three-volume blockbusting study under the auspices of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University of why the Soviet Union was able to stumble through seventy years of existence in spite of its mass murders, its vast gulag of prisons for dissenters, its chronic crop failures, its crippled industrial base, and a lethargic population of “workers,” Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development. In this remarkable study Sutton demonstrated how the Soviets were chiefly thieves and copycats in every major technological and industrial field, and that much of the thieving and copycatting was abetted by Western industrialists, bankers, and politicians.

Sutton made the same revealing and thoroughly documented study of the origins of the Nazi Party and its financial underpinnings, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, detailing as well Hitler’s ability to command the whole German economy once the Party was in power.

We do know that prominent European and American industrialists were sponsoring all manner of totalitarian political groups at that time, including Communists and various Nazi groups. The [post-WW2] U.S. Kilgore Committee records that:

By 1919 Krupp was already giving financial aid to one of the reactionary political groups which sowed the seed of the present Nazi ideology. Hugo Stinnes was an early contributor to the Nazi Party (National Socialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei). By 1924 other prominent industrialists and financiers, among them Fritz Thyssen, Albert Voegler, Adolph [sic>] Kirdorf, and Kurt von Schroder, were secretly giving substantial sums to the Nazis. In 1931 members of the coal-owners' association which Kirdorf headed pledged themselves to pay 50 pfennigs for each ton of' coal sold, the money to go to the organization which Hitler was building.

Reading about the humble donations of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, and their concerns about OWS’s future as a mover and shaker for “social change” is a let-down, when we can see how big-scale financing of a mover and shaker was done in Germany.

In 1925 the Hugo Stinnes family contributed funds to convert the Nazi weekly Volkischer Beobachter to a daily publication. [Ernst] Putzi Hanfstaengl, Franklin D. Roosevelt's friend and protegé, provided the remaining funds. Table 7-1 summarizes presently known financial contributions and the business associations of contributors from the United States. Putzi is not listed in Table 7-1 as he was neither industrialist nor financier.

In the early 1930s financial assistance to Hitler began to flow more readily. There took place in Germany a series of meetings, irrefutably documented in several sources, between German industrialists, Hitler himself, and more often Hitler's representatives Hjalmar Sehaeht and Rudolf Hess.

The critical point is that the German industrialists financing Hitler were predominantly directors of cartels with American associations, ownership, participation, or some form of subsidiary connection. The Hitler backers were not, by and large, firms of purely German origin, or representative of German family business. Except for Thyssen and Kirdoff, in most cases they were the German multi-national firms — i.e., I.G. Farben, A.E.G., DAPAG, etc. These multi-nationals had been built up by American loans in the 1920s, and in the early 1930s had American directors and heavy American financial participation.

America has not seen the last of Occupy Wall Street. Like a spoiled, unruly brat who fouls his own nest on principle, the organization and its hierarchy are being preened for a more active role in American politics. This takes money, guidance, organization and very sophisticated press agentry. For an almost amusing story of the aimlessness and infighting among OWSers, read the New York Post’s story from last October, “They Want a $lice of the Occupie,” an aimlessness and inner-ranks conflict that “new money” hopes to correct.

As for George Soros’s connection with OWS, Reuters published an insipid exposé that merely scratches the surface:

Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.

The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

Aides to Soros say any connection is tenuous and that Soros has never heard of Adbusters. Soros himself declined comment.

As tenuous a connection as a pit bull latched onto one’s leg. News Busters, however, not a member of the MSM, goes into far more detail:

Reuters even posed the question “Who’s behind the Wall St. protests?” on Oct. 13, but downplayed Soros’s actual financial involvement. Even though “Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground,” the story added. But Reuters undersold the connection significantly.

The protesters stand by their claim that theirs is purely a grassroots movement. But it is hard to ignore the concerted effort by liberal groups, unions, and other Soros-funded entities that prop-up and fuel the Occupy movement. An echo-chamber of left-wing blogs and news sites that receive Soros cash continues to push the anti-capitalist protest story. Articles repeatedly praise labor and climate activists for their support while denigrating police for their efforts to keep the peace.

Organizations that joined the protesters were granted more than $3.6 million from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. On Oct. 5 there was a “march in solidarity with #occupywallstreet” that listed seven such groups out of the 16 overall supporting the protest. Those seven organizations received $3,614,690 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since the year 2000, with more than $2 million going to Common Cause Education Fund, part of Common Cause, and another $1.1 million to MoveOn.org.

This writer does not subscribe to conspiracy theories. He puts more credence and the onus of responsibility on a moral and philosophical vacuum that collectivist plotters and actors are only too happy to fill. If there were a proper, principled defense of individual rights and the inviolate sanctity of an unadulterated Constitution, plotters and conspirators could act all they wished and would be foiled by such a defense. But what we are seeing unfolding before our eyes, with not much of an alarm being raised, as far as OWS is concerned, is simply a rerun of what happened in Germany, with a whole new cast of directors and actors.

Imagine Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will remade in the spirit of Hair.

Nobody said that fascism had to speak German and wear shirts and ties when it resurfaced. And nobody ever claimed that communism, or its national-socialist doppelganger, had to speak Russian and wear fur hats, either, to march in the streets.

All it has taken, ever since the rise of totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century, is a little cash under the table to help make things happen.

Objectivist Round-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:03:00 +0000

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:

Burgess Laughlin presents Postmodernism on reason and mysticism posted at The Main Event, saying, "Postmodernism is anti-modernism, where "modernism" means the best elements of the Enlightenment that have survived to our own time: a commitment to reason and the products of reason. Specifically what are the postmodernists' positions on reason and mysticism?"

Jared Rhoads presents Invisible independents: another missing voice in the healthcare debate? posted at The Center for Objective Health Policy, saying, "Is public support for health reform higher than polls indicate, because some people choose not to answer the questions?"

Darius Cooper presents A modest Platform - On Employment Policy posted at Practice Good Theory, saying, "I suggest some ways the government can help reduce unemployment."

Diana Hsieh presents SnowCon 2012: A Full Slate of Fabulous Presentations posted at NoodleFood, saying, "SnowCon 2012 will have some fabulous presentations by our local Front Range Objectivists! Join us!"

Stephen Bourque presents Constitutionally Unable to Defend Liberty posted at One Reality, saying, "Was Justice Ginsburg’s assertion that she would 'not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012' simply a remark pulled out of context?"

Paul Hsieh presents Wine Tasting Fallacies posted at GeekPress, saying, "Wine tasting is far more subjective than most people (including experts) think."

C.W. presents Europe Money Flood posted at Krazy Economy, saying, "This is the latest kraziness from Europe. Potentially, it could be more harmful than the bailout, which is why it is being hailed as such a good thing and actually getting less attention. At least for a while trips to Europe will be cheaper."

Edward Cline presents Only Words posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "But angry words, offending words, impermissible words, and even unspoken words, when it comes to Islam, Muslims, and politically correct speech and thought, are not the stuff of farce. They can be fatal, fatal to freedom of speech, fatal to its practitioners. And the First Amendment can no longer be relied upon to ensure one’s right to criticize Islam or Muslims or trump politically correct speech."

***

That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Only Words

noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:15:00 +0000

Words. Angry words. And objects!
Wilfred Lawson as the butler, Peacock (The Wrong Box, 1966)

The line is from a comedy about plots and mix-ups to collect the proceeds of a tontine. Peacock was describing the farcical altercation between two aged brothers, the last surviving members of the lottery, which was actually a kind of a trust-administered survivorship insurance policy.

Angry words? Offending words? Dangerous words? Impermissible words?

But angry words, offending words, impermissible words, and even unspoken words, when it comes to Islam, Muslims, and politically correct speech and thought, are not the stuff of farce. They can be fatal, fatal to freedom of speech, fatal to its practitioners. And the First Amendment can no longer be relied upon to ensure one’s right to criticize Islam or Muslims or trump politically correct speech.

Readers are probably already familiar with the story in the Daily Telegraph and in other newspapers (and, needless to say, on the Internet). Gatwick Airport "security" guards wanted David Jones, a traveler, to admit he made an "offensive" remark and apologize for it. It is interesting that it was a Muslim "security" guard who demanded an apology for a remark not made to her but to another guard. She was not even present when Jones made it. So, the question also is, aside from the fact that this "security" let a veiled Muslim through without a check: Why wasn't she "offended" by the person who related the remark to her?

Put another way, if words can "hurt," why wasn't she hurt by the words of her colleague? Aren't words intrinsically "hurtful," no matter who utters them? These are rhetorical questions, of course, but the incident underscores the whole phenomenon of politically correct speech and its natural potential for abuse. There is no reasoning with Islam or with political correctness. David Jones learned that the hard way. Assertions made by Muslims are never to be questioned or held up for scrutiny.

There seems to have also been an element of racism in the security guards' treatment of Jones, as well. And it is precisely this kind of submission that Hillary Clinton wishes to impose on Americans via the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) and the UN. I must give David Jones credit for standing up to these distaff thugs, although it seems that, like many Westerners, he has inured himself to being treated guilty until proven innocent at police state check points.

As David Jones arrived at the security gates at Gatwick airport, he was looking forward to getting through swiftly so he could enjoy lunch with his daughters before their flight.

Placing his belongings, including a scarf, into a tray to pass through the X-ray scanner he spotted a Muslim woman in hijab pass through the area without showing her face.

In a light-hearted aside to a security official who had been assisting him, he said: “If I was wearing this scarf over my face, I wonder what would happen.”

The quip proved to be a mistake. After passing through the gates, he was confronted by staff and accused of racism.

Note that David Jones did not utter either the word “Muslim” or “Islam.” He was wondering outloud. He did not say, “I wonder why that Somali or Egyptian or Saudi or Jordanian or Pakistani woman is allowed to pass through wearing a hijab, while I, a Caucasian male, am forced to pass inspection?” No reference was made by him, either, to the woman’s race.

And guess what dimwit (or dhimmi) snitched on him to Gatwick Airport security.

He said that when he made his initial remark the security guard had appeared to agree with him, saying: “I know what you mean, but we have our rules, and you aren’t allowed to say that.”

The security guard apparently was not “offended” by the remark. He implied that women wearing hijabs regularly pass through without screening. That appeared not to concern him. But his mind had been captured by enforceable politically correct speech and behavior, that is, by wholly irrational rules, and off he went to report the “offensive” remark to others who would enforce the rules and confront the culprit with his offense.

By way of underscoring the phenomenon, here is a private anecdote from a British acquaintance about his own encounter with politically correct speech and its numerous enforcers.

Making logical observations in the UK is a dangerous pastime. There are more and more 'unwritten rules' governing how we should (or should not) express ourselves.

Just the other day, I was reprimanded by a colleague at work for talking about Koran burnings in Afghanistan. [Referring to the destruction of Korans on a U.S. base in Afghanistan, in which had been written messages by jihadists, surely an offense by Islam’s own rules.]

This colleague was not a Muslim, but was concerned that someone who might or might not be a Muslim could overhear what was being said and might be offended.

I proceeded to explain that I was not referring to the burnings of the Koran on a US base, but of the destruction of the Nasir-I Khusraw Foundation by the Taliban in 1998, where they destroyed by fire an entire archive of ancient Islamic literature, including a Koran that was over a thousand years old.

And if someone were offended, he could, in such a risky circumstance, resort to two actions: assault the offender, or turn to the authorities to have them assault the offender.

I was advised to cease and desist from any further discussion of burning the Koran, upon which I proceeded to be more creative, finally settling on discussing the use of pages from the book to wallpaper a pigsty using alcohol-based glue. At this point my colleague called me a racist and said he would report me to my manager (who was sitting nearby, quietly sobbing with laughter).

I then pointed out that racism was prejudice against a human genetic or ethnic group and that the last time I looked, paper books were not being considered a valid branch of the hominid genus. I also pointed out that the person he thought might be a Muslim was indeed of Asian stock, but was actually from the UK by way of British Guyana and was a protestant Christian, in which case my colleague was guilty of racial stereotyping.

My colleague walked away.

David Jones was not so fortunate. Men with the power to enforce politically-correct and permissible speech do not walk away from offenders and other loose-tongued culprits, who are grilled until they confess, capitulate out of sheer exasperation, and, in effect, submit to Islam. Enforcers of politically correct speech pose as moral crusaders, especially Muslim spokesmen and “civil liberties” advocates. But what they are actually practicing is extortion.

Then there is the case of Charles Krauthammer, noted conservative columnist and panelist. He delivered a critique of President Barack Obama’s apology to Afghanistan president Karzai over the burning of the Korans.

“He argued all the administration needed to do was just come out with a singular apology from a commanding officer in Afghanistan, and that would have been sufficient.”

No, he ought to have said that an apology was neither necessary nor forthcoming. And he seems to have forgotten that the burned Korans were being disposed of because Muslims had written jihadist messages on their pages. He ought to have condemned General Allen and Obama and every civilian and military dhimmi for rushing to apologize. The United States has nothing to apologize for – except for its irrational foreign policy of propping up a master of taqiyya and probable drug lord with a big stash of money in a Swiss bank, Karzai, and treating as an ally a passive enabler of terrorism, Pakistan. He ought to instead have questioned the sanity of our foreign policymakers. But don’t expect him to. His logic goes only so far, but not to a conclusion.

This news story underscores a fact that is not stressed nearly enough. Islam is a disease that enfeebles. It is meant to enfeeble not only Muslim believers, who refuse to think or listen to reason and “believe” that their creed allows them to dispense with reason. It also enfeebles its non-Muslim victims, and punishes anyone who does not “submit” to Muslim irrationality. The enfeebling element in non-believers is fear: fear of reprimand, or of punishment, or even of death. So, they say nothing. The enfeebling lies in the absence of any defense of them by and in the West.

Krauthammer has always bewildered me. I think that, like many articulate anti-jihadist writers, he is reluctant to condemn Islam across the board simply because it’s a religion, and he may do this for the sake of Muslims who aren’t violent. Perhaps he also thinks that Islam can be “reformed.” As I have often argued in the past, Islam can’t be reformed without killing it. You can no more “reform” Islam than you can an alchemist’s sanctum by redecorating it with pictures of Einstein and Pasteur on the walls and furnishing it with Formica tables. It will still be an alchemist’s sanctum.

Krauthammer practiced psychiatry, and one would think that he would examine the psychological appeal of Islam, and conclude that it requires no thought – in fact, demands that Muslims surrender their minds to brute authority – and so Islam, as a guide to living, is basically a guide to death. It spares Muslims the obligation of becoming individuals in command of their lives, of becoming independent thinkers, and inculcates the habit of deferring to mystical authorities who refer to a textbook that justifies murder, rapine, torture, and theft – with a quantum of pretty-sounding poetry thrown in. And in condemning Islam without reservation or shilly-shallying about all the wretched manqués who are in its ranks, Sunni, Shi’ite, and the lesser sects of Islam, condemn all Muslims, even the “moderate” ones, in the bargain.

But I suspect that if he ever made such a denunciation, the defamation mob would be all over him, Fox News would drop him, he’d no longer be invited to sit on PBS roundtables, and he’d lose his syndicated column. And I suspect that he knows this. He’s too bright to have not suspected this would be the consequence of condemning a religion. Dancing around or evading that condemnation is, from where I sit, a form of submission to Islam.

“This is a world in which nobody asked the Islamic Conference, a grouping of the 56 Islamic countries, to issue an apology when Christians are attacked and churches are burned in Egypt or in Pakistan….”

It’s interesting that he cites the OIC, which, with Hillary Clinton’s help, is “work-shopping” how to abrogate and nullify the First Amendment, that is, to insulate Islam from any and all open criticism and examination. His statement, while cogent, seeks to shame the OIC into conceding that it is being hypocritical. This is a futile tactic. One can’t shame Muslims because hypocrisy is an operative element of Islam. They know it, and Krauthammer ought to know it, but apparently he doesn’t. Muslims will perform fantastic mental gymnastics to justify why Christians are being murdered and persecuted and their churches burned, and that’s if they bother to answer the charge of hypocrisy, which they usually don’t, especially if the charge is levied by an infidel, and, in Krauthammer’s case, by a Jew.

Finally, there is the case of the Pennsylvania atheist who was assaulted by a Muslim for wearing a “Zombie Mohammad” costume during a parade. In this incident, not only was the assailant “offended” by the costume, but the judge, as well, who dismissed the charges against the assailant “for lack of evidence,” even though a police officer testified that there was an assault, and even though there was a video of the incident, which the judge refused to admit as evidence. Judge Mark W. Martin proceeded to lecture the victim on the ways of Sharia and the fact that Islam is a culture whose adherents can be offended by mockery of it. Read the story here. In a display of gratuitous contempt for Perce, he called the man a “doofus.”

Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand had these observations on words:

It is often said that definitions state the meaning of words. This is true, but it is not exact. A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept; a word has no meaning other than that of the concept it symbolizes, and the meaning of a concept consists of its units. It is not words, but concepts that man defines—by specifying their referents. (“Definitions,” Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 40)

Words transform concepts into (mental) entities; definitions provide them with identity. (Words without definitions are not language but inarticulate sounds.) (“Concept Formation," Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 11)

The “hurtful” or “defamatory” concepts that supposedly inflict “pain” on Muslims refer to the Koran, to Islam, or to anything Islamic in nature. These are the referents. The Koran is a real, actual thing in reality. Islam is a real theocratic system, which, like any other ideology or political system, resides exclusively in men’s minds. It is an actionable ideology.

But concepts do not exist in reality, only in men’s minds. There are no Platonic, “ideal forms” of thoughts floating about in space that inexplicably descend into men’s minds. They have no physical attributes; they are not temporal manifestations of thought. They have less substance than bubbles; in fact, none. They cannot harm or alter or affect physical objects; unless actions are taken in their name, they are insubstantial. They cannot emanate or be projected from a mind or from print or even from a costume or illustration across space to harm or affect anything. To believe they can is to believe in telepathy or magic spells or psychokinesis. By themselves, words have no intrinsic power or efficacy. I know of no instance in which a man was sent to the hospital for injuries sustained by an avalanche of bubbles.

But I do know of countless – thousands – of instances in which men believed they were harmed by thought bubbles and subsequently sent countless men to the hospital – or to their deaths. By “offended” Muslims.

What about a Muslim’s feelings? On what are those offended feelings based? What is their nature? Is it wounded “pride”? A tenuous, or insecure “self-esteem”? Can his pride or self-esteem be “injured” by concepts, by words? If a man’s sense of self-worth can be injured by another’s words, that self-worth is teetering on ten-foot-high stilts of uncooked spaghetti.

But is it really the case? Perhaps a better explanation is that, down deep, in the repressed recesses of his “soul” (or mind), a Muslim “knows” or suspects that his creed is debauched, evil, wrong, and horrendous. But believing in Islam is convenient; it spares him the effort of thought and critical introspection. So “hurtful” words can damage his pretence of pride or self-esteem. He has invested time, if not thought – rarely thought – in adhering to this creed. His creed, however, is one he accepted without the least conscious critical evaluation. He was born into it, or some weakness in him allowed him to be converted to it. Belief in the creed is an absolute, not to be questioned, let alone mocked or subjected to rational scrutiny. He will, at all costs, refuse to “go there,” that is, to reexamine his premises.

Perhaps the very concept of “rational scrutiny” is beyond his ken. To him, rationality as such does not exist. Rationality is optional, subjective, and can be dispensed with. If that is his premise, then the “offended” is alive simply because he has copied the rational actions of others, and that is the limit of his understanding.

Perhaps it is just a matter of the “offended” making little or no distinction between right or wrong (or at least, right and wrong as defined by Sharia and the Koran), and is moved by a desire to compel others to not say anything critical about his religion, to see them mute from fear of discussing the subject, and also by a desire to “punish” anyone who does make a critical remark, directly or by implication, of Islam, such as the hapless David Jones at Gatwick Airport. He derives satisfaction from knowing that others dare not speak ill of his creed (and, in many cases, by implication, of his race), and from having the power to punish, or see punished, anyone who does dare speak.

What about “hurtful” or “insulting” actions, such as that of the Pennsylvania atheist in his “Mohammad zombie” costume? The same menu of explanations applies. One cannot get into any random Muslim’s mind to determine precisely why he can be “offended” or “insulted” by the sight of a Mohammad cartoon or by someone dressed like Mohammad, sympathetically or satirically. One can only judge a Muslim by the actions he may take to uphold Islam’s “honor,” to avenge its defamation by others’ rational scrutiny or mockery. Unfortunately, Islam requires that all Muslims – Sunni, Shi’ite, Salafi and so on—either wage active or violent jihad on non-believers and their cultures, or to lay low, say nothing, and pretend to be friends with non-believers, to help bring down “their miserable house” from within.

No one would have any reason to examine or mock Islam if the creed were not being constantly shoved in front of our faces like an unwelcome pop-up ad, just as no one would have any reason to criticize Obama or his policies if we were not daily reminded of their disastrous and destructive consequences. Islam would be virtually the sole subject of scholarly study, because, like the dead religions and ideologies of the past, it would pose no threat. There would be no living exponents of it attempting to impose Sharia law on us or demanding that we respect it by saying nothing about it. “Islamophobia” would not exist, because there would be nothing Islamic to fear.

“Magisterial” Judge Mark W. Martin scolded Ernest Perce and accused him of being ignorant of Islam. But Perce exhibited a better knowledge of Islam than Judge Martin suspected when he donned the costume of a “zombie” Mohammad, that is, of the icon of the “living dead.” Islam is indeed a religion of the living dead. What it deserves is the bullet of reason driven through its rotting cranium.

Politically correct speech vis-à-vis Islam is, incredibly enough, the wedge with which Islam and its allies in the West work to eradicate freedom of speech.