Current Events

Cell Phones on Airliners?

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , ,

The FAA recently decided, tentatively, that cell phone use would be OK on commercial airplanes. But forthwith, moans went up from near and far and the FAA backed off. Lots of travelers understandably dread the prospect of captivity to loud conversations by boors seated inches away from them. It’s unclear at this time what the final decision will be.

Why does it never occur to anyone to let the owners of the airplanes decide this issue? They could experiment with various policies ranging from outright bans to unlimited use with all sorts of possibilities in between. Following Amtrak and some commuter railroads that have quiet cars, they could establish a no-talk section of the airplane like the non-smoking sections of yore. Or they could try pleading with talkers. Soon enough they will discover what their customers want and competitive pressures would force all airlines to fall into line.

That sort competitive experimentation works quite well in many market segments, as a moment’s reflection will confirm. So why do we hear nothing about this simple solution for the cell phone problem? Part of the answer, I fear, is that so many people are resigned to letting bureaucrats set the rules for practically all of life. An extreme example of this attitude is the kind of message that appears in my spam folder with a subject like “Obama lowers re-fi rates.” Of course this is nonsense but it suggests that a good many people think Obama has the power to set re-fi rates and worse: that it’s perfectly OK for him to wield such dictatorial powers.

Back to cell phones on airplanes: the whole issue came about as a result of determinations by the FAA technical staff that cell phone signals don’t really interfere with airplane communications as had been feared. That suggests a more difficult question: suppose there were credible evidence that cell phone use really was a threat to airplane communications. Should the FAA be empowered to ban cell phone use? I suggest that it does not. The airlines have an enormous incentive to avoid interference problems. If they were free to make their own decisions about this (again, assuming there was credible evidence of a real problem), their lawyers would be all over them about instituting their own prohibitions. The owners of the control towers (I’m envisioning a privatized FAA) would have strong incentives as well. Many passengers would be aware of the issue and would press for bans.

We have here another example of what a tough job we face, those of us who advocate free markets. The general public, Mencken’s “booboisie” if you will, hasn’t the mental horsepower to envision even modest deviations from the command and control paradigm that is smothering our society.

Somebody wake Dr Delacroix from his midday, wine-induced nap

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , ,

For the first time in 112 years, snow has fallen in Cairo, Egypt. I haven’t been to that side of the Mediterranean yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to, but I can’t believe it’s snowing there. It seems like it’s been cold everywhere over the past couple of weeks.

Dr Delacroix, if he weren’t off somewhere sulking, would be ecstatic. (h/t Aliens in the Family)

Русские и Евромайдан

Evgenii Grigorev Current Events , , , ,

Думаю, что все в курсе последних событий на Украине. Постоянные митинги в поддержку Евроинтеграции, подозрительное молчание со стороны правительства, силовой разгон мирных акций демонстрантов, захват правительственных кварталов… На фоне этих событий отношения между Россией и Украиной изменились не только на “высшем” уровне, но и на уровне общения отдельных граждан. Для тех, кто не сильно разбирается в вопросе, поясню, что руководство Украины решило временно заморозить проект о интеграции с Европой, мотивируя это тем, что Украина испытывает на себе давление со стороны России. Вроде как и в Европу хочется – и “старший брат” (то есть Россия) не пускает. С нашей стороны, точнее, со стороны правительства России идет что-то типа шантажа или давления, я пока никак не могу понять. Казалось бы, события мирового уровня не должны были отразиться на взаимодействии простых людей братских народов, однако это далеко не так. Сейчас очень много украинцев считают русских виновными в том, что правительство Украины приостановило Евроинтеграцию. Как будто каждый отдельно взятый гражданин России виновен перед народом Украины. Отсюда следует определенное ухудшение отношений между гражданами двух стран. По крайней мере по общению в интернете, многие злы на русских. При этом, как мне кажется, президент Украины просто пытается усидеть на двух стульях: и в Европу попасть, и с нами отношения не испортить, но такого в принципе не может быть. Украина находится в таком положении, что необходимо принять какое-то одно твердое решение. Как по мне – так лучше бы президент Украины подписал соглашение о Евроинтеграции, по крайней мере отношения между людьми бы нормализовались. По большому счету, это является главным.

Интересно, какие мнения по этому вопросу у моих заграничных коллег, и как в Америке относятся к событиям в Киеве? Я читал, что Барак Обама крайне негативно отозвался о действиях властей Украины и в частности о применении силы против мирных демонстраций. Но меня больше интересует не мнение правящей элиты, а комментарии обычных жителей. Жду развития дискуссии в комментариях!

Middle Eastern Musings: Why I Blog

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , , , , ,

The news from Syria seems to have dwindled to nothing in the last couple of months. The hawks have focused their continued, never ending ire on the peace process between Tehran and Washington that the Obama administration has courageously initiated. The lack of news is too bad, of course, since the (quite unintended) consequences of Western meddling in the region are now beginning to be felt by everyday Syrians. PRI (“you’re listening to The World”) reports on the misery Syrians are now forced to endure:

It’s been a trying week for Syria. The United States and Britain suspended providing even non-lethal aid to the country. A prominent Syrian opposition leader has gone missing. And now winter has brought snow and cold weather.

The cause of suspended aid? Why, the fact that the anti-Assad national socialists have lost out to the Islamists militarily, politically and economically, of course. Instead of letting the anti-Assad national socialists fight it out with the pro-Assad national socialists and the Islamists – which would have produced a quick winner and thus reduced the suffering of Syrians – the West remained content to heavily arm the least prominent faction involved in the fighting (the anti-Assad national socialists). The result, of course, has been the continued bleeding of Syrian society as a war that could have ended years ago continues to drag on.

In Iran, a mild brouhaha has emerged over the censorship of most of the World Cup draw in Brazil (Iran’s national soccer team made the World Cup, and the draw – a huge deal in most of the sporting world – was held in Brazil, which is hosting the event next year). According to PRI, the state-run media in Iran had to censor most of the draw’s coverage due to the lack of coverage on Brazilian supermodel Fernanda Lima’s big, beautiful breasts.

While the effects of the state-run media are fairly straightforward, I find the cultural implications of this episode to be most fascinating. PRI reports:

The Islamic Republic doesn’t allow women deemed to be dressed immodestly on television, so every time the camera focused on Lima, the picture was dropped on Iranian TV.

This made for terrible viewing for Iranian soccer fans waiting to find out who Iran was going to be playing at the World Cup.

So, who do Iranians blame for this debacle? Lima or FIFA? The many abusive messages left on Lima’s Facebook page seem to suggest they are blaming her.

Comments ranged from insults to suggestions she should have worn a hijab, so everybody around the globe could watch the draw.

The abuse got so bad Lima had to take down her Facebook page. But then, a lot of Iranians started to apologize for the abuse, saying Iranians are not really like this. This, in turn, triggered posts by Brazilians saying, not to worry, Iranians are still welcome in Brazil.

Nationalism is prevalent in Iranian society, but so is a yearning to open up to the world. In my anecdotal experiences, I have found this nationalism to be very common among all young men in the non-Arab Muslim world. I suspect this nationalism is also prevalent in places like the Balkans and Arab Mediterranean world as well. I have no reason for suspecting this, except for the fact that in each of these parts of the world, relatively young states exist but nations are still being defined.

In Western Europe and, to a lesser extent Japan and South Korea, states and nations have long ago melded together through wars, policy battles, trade and sophisticated diplomacy. Along the peripheries of these areas the narrative of nation and state has not occurred, and may never occur (this type of nationalism is altogether absent from the New World republics for a number of fascinating-but-digressing reasons). I think the factions that encourage this narrative, national socialists all of them, are just as bad for their respective societies as are the conservatives (Islamists in the Muslim world, monarchists in other parts, Confucianists-cum-communists in China, etc., etc.). Only liberalism can bring about peace and prosperity to these societies.

The people apologizing for the actions of their fellow Iranians are a natural fit for liberalism’s humble creed. Unfortunately, I think the national socialists and the conservatives know this, and therefore advocate for policies that will keep their societies insular (and apart from the world of ideas that only liberalism has produced).

This brings me to a final thought for the day: What can I do about this, if anything? The regimes that hawks wish to destroy are bad guys, to be sure, but I have yet to see a regime that has been destroyed by an outside power give way to a regime that is benevolent and just. In fact, often these new regimes are worse than those they have replaced. The battle for ideas can only be won with the pen, and wars will only ever be won by ideas.

This realization, I think, is why I continue to write and to blog. Thanks for reading and, more importantly, for adding your thoughts to my own in the ‘comments’ section.

Around the Web: Globalization, Racism and Surfing

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , ,
  1. Check out this fascinating reddit thread on ‘blackness’ in the US and the UK. As somebody who has spent a fair amount of time outside of the US, and who is interested in ethnicity from a scholarly perspective, the answers were nothing new to me, but it’s always nice when the streets confirm your suspicions.
  2. A beautiful photo essay on surfing in Liberia. I wish there were a traditional essay to go along with the photos, but it still suffices.

I think there are too many people in the world who don’t think hard enough about the benefits of globalization (i.e. world trade). As populism continues to gain traction here in the US (and elsewhere I presume), I fear that the everyday beauty a more globalized world gives to us will be thrown under the bus in the name of The People.

Is the European Union “socialist”?

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

The short answer is ‘no’, but first, Justin Raimondo writes:

The EU is a failed socialist experiment that exists to fund a huge (and hugely arrogant) bureaucracy and impose a bloodless ideological abstraction over and above the authentic nationalisms it seems to subsume. It is deeply authoritarian in that it provides no mechanism for member states to withdraw, and its super-centralist model is a prescription for tyranny if ever there was one. When a referendum is held on EU membership, and the results aren’t to the pro-EU side’s liking, the election is simply ignored and the Eurocrats mount yet another campaign until the “right” result is achieved.

I thought I’d highlight this paragraph for a couple of reasons:

1. It explains the tensions inherent in the EU from a nationalist viewpoint (as opposed to the internationalist view most often espoused on this blog), and the tensions between defining the place of centralized and decentralized power in a society. Although Raimondo’s hyperbole might cause some of us to blush, I think it actually adds to the depth of the nationalist argument as it better captures the sentiments of these factions. That is to say, I think the nationalists in this debate are a bit more boorish than the internationalists and as such Raimondo exemplifies their arguments despite being an American.

2. It shows why facts are important and in the long run much more valuable. Socialism, by definition, is the state ownership of the means of production. Is there anything about the EU that suggests it wants to “nationalize” industry? Anything at all? Of course not, which is why you often find populists – even of the “libertarian” kind – to be hyperbolic, arbitrary and vague in their arguments (for a better treatment of populism, see this old piece here at NOL). In the long run getting these definitions right is important. Slandering a faction or an organization you don’t like as ‘socialist’ (or ‘bourgeois’) may earn you a couple of brownie points from the peanut gallery, but you are very likely to steadily lose influence in the arena of ideas by peddling such drivel.

The EU is a confederation of states (much like the pre-Civil War US) and entry and exit are entirely voluntary. The EU, more than any other institution save for perhaps the US military, is responsible for the unencumbered peace throughout Western Europe since the end of World War 2. To suggest that the EU is somehow ‘socialist’ not only confuses younger, more susceptible readers but it also weakens one’s own arguments. If, for example, Raimondo is going to label the EU as ‘socialist’ when it clearly is not, what should I think about his arguments when he labels Israel as ‘fascist’ or Russia as a ‘defender of national sovereignty’?

Foreign policy is an important component of libertarianism, and if we continually allow our arguments to be defined by populist organizations like Raimondo’s antiwar.com then I fear libertarians will continue to be (rightly) ignored in the more traditional venues of foreign policy discussion.

A Drip of Local Flavor

Adam Magoon Current Events, Economics, Politics , , , ,

The city of Little Falls, New York is missing nearly 400,000 gallons of water.

Located about twenty-five miles from me; the small central New York city is unable to locate over half of water that had been distributed in 2011. This amounts to about $300,000 dollars in wasted tax payer dollars and on top of that the city is expected to raise water rates.

Unsure whether the losses are caused by leaks, faulty meters or anything else the lead plant operator Daniel Benett says “”Some of it may be going in the ground. Some of it may be not captured by meters. We don’t really know. That’s why we’re out trying to fix as many leaks as we can.”

The cost of replacing the system is reported at a million dollars a mile which Benett assured citizens “The labor is the smallest cost ’cause the guys have to be here to work anyhow.”

Which  leads me to wonder what are those workers doing on a regular basis if it would cost no additional labor hours to do additional work.

Equality and Fairness

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Philosophy, Politics , , ,

Yesterday, President Obama gave a stirring speech on income inequality and he declared war on it. The President is a rich man who was abandoned by his drunken immigrant father. He was brought up by his hippie mother. She had a doctorate. It took her twenty years to earn it. (I don’t mean to say that she was idle during most or any of these twenty years.)

I am an immigrant myself. I came to this country with no money (that’s NO money), no degree, no skill, nothing. (I was white, it’s true, still am.)

(By the way, about half the people with African blood in the US have zero American slave ancestry. Yes, like the president. They are descendants of immigrants like me, people who volunteered to come to this allegedly racist country.)

I have an American doctorate too. It did not take me twenty years.

Fifty years after reaching this country , I live modestly but with no serious wants. And I live in a very desirable place, even by world standards.

I bet you filled in the blank: “Poor guy, poor immigrant worked hard all his life, blah, blah…”

But I didn’t. Nearly every time I found myself at a crossroad, I chose the other path; I selected psychic income over money income; I wanted more free time rather than a bigger car, or a bigger house. Now, does President Obama mean that I should feel bitter toward the other guy in initially similar circumstances who chose the income, who put in fifty hours weeks, and who is now worth several times what I am worth?

Does the President mean that I should be bitter because so many men my age are richer than I am ? Men who live in Cleveland and such?

Does President Obama really mean that I should enlist the services of government to take that other old guy’s money by force to give it to me? And next, will they take from me, equally by force, my golden memories of the three months I spend spear-fishing on the Caribbean coast of Mexico?

That would be fair, or would it?

And do we prefer to live in a society that gives even a poor immigrant the kind of choices I had or in a society where nearly everyone gets about the same regardless of personal preferences?

Inequality

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , ,

President Obama’s signature achievement is in shambles. He believe himself that it cannot be saved. He is going for left-radical broke. Today he denounced “inequality.”

I am not sure younger people have the sophistication to realize that there are thousands of ways to measure inequality and that, therefore, you can always find one that serves your political purpose.

I don’t know how many could tell me what’s wrong with inequality.

By the way, I am far from rich myself, although I have worked all my life, not very hard, it’s true. (Did you notice how I often give you the answers to the questions I raise?)

Climate Change and the First Amendment

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Religion , , , , , , , , , , ,

Like nearly everyone in the world, I don’t have the training to judge directly the pronouncements of organizations that affirm that there is:

a) Serious temperature rise on a global scale (“global warming”).

b) That it is caused by human activity (such as burning fossil fuels or keeping too many belching cattle).

c) That human beings must quickly reverse manufacturing growth and driving (and growth in cattle) or suffer devastating consequences.

Instead, I have to rely on indirect evidence to judge the claims of specialists and to decide what the appropriate action would be (including deliberate inaction). This is not a new situation. We all do this all the time. So, I am unable to assess the talent of the surgeon who is going to open up my chest but I can sure smell the booze on his breath and make the logical jump that it’s not good news. Similarly, I know little about the care of automobile engines but when I see a car mechanic banging on an engine with the back of a screwdriver, I am alerted.

The quality of specialists is not the only way indirectly to gauge the quality of a viewpoint. It’s also legitimate to infer the seriousness of a claim by assessing the quality of its believers. Thus, I am leery of so-called “alternative medicine” and other “informal” health perspectives because many of their proponents seem to live in la-la Land in matters other than health. And if marathon runners kept falling dead at 39, I would have good reason to wonder if running is that good for you. (I said “if.”) If the proponents of Chinese traditional medicine turned out to be sick all the time, I would have to think twice (thrice) about its merits. (I know, there is a causation issue in this sentence. It’s not a solution; it’s part of the problem.)

The quality of its followers say something about the credibility of a creed, I believe.

Here is an anecdote about the credibility of climate change proponents, “ccprops.” It’s only an anecdote. It may be isolated. It may represent no one but those involved. Or, it may sound familiar. Think!

I live in the Green People’s Socialist Republic of Santa Cruz. My wife and I may be the only residents with anti-Obama bumper stickers. (There is a good chance we only get away with it because leftists can’t spell: “Obamination,” mine says.) Those residents who are not greenies or leftists of some kind tend to observe a discreet silence. The voice of rationalists like me who oppose big government and the myths that support it is muffled to the point of being mostly inaudible. I am not saying that I am a victim; I am suggesting a minor degree of heroism.

One ordinary day, I am peacefully drinking coffee at my downtown coffee shop. My daughter and my five-year old grand-daughter are with me. There is a demonstration on the other side of the street, yards away, of about 200 people, most young, a few of retirement age. They have placards and they sing slogans against pipelines, all pipelines, against global warming, for the environment. I notice that some of them wear what I think is a fairly witty t-shirt sign: “Don’t frack your mother.” The usual collection of Mother-Earth loving catastroph-tropic semi-educated Santa Cruz crowd, I think.

When the demonstration disperses because of rain (the environment does not cooperate), a group of five demonstrators comes to sit under an umbrella of my coffee shop. After a while, they start making ingratiating noises toward my attractive, impossibly cute grand-daughter. I tell them in a calm voice that they may not talk to the child because I think they carry a bad, morally objectionable message.

I am just tired of letting my enemies go unchallenged. I believe they have enough influence collectively to sap what’s left of the economic life of California. They are precisely endangering my grand-daughter’s future with their anti-economic mindless message. There is no reason to waste an opportunity to show some unkindness here.

They are stupefied. This is Santa Cruz, California, after all. It’s one of the world centers of foo-foo-headedness. By locals standards, these people are 100% virtuous. More importantly, in their parochial minds, they are 100% right. They have never encountered hostility before, not even opposition. No one has ever treated them that way. They did not know anyone actually could, even legally. They kind of believe that the First Amendment protects them against criticism. They don’t know that it only enjoins the government. (“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….”) They don’t know that the First does not guarantee against a private person making you cry with unkind comments. Nowhere does the First say or suggest: “Dr D shall not say hurtful things to silly Luddite greenies.”

Many young people are in the same state of ignorance nowadays. It may be because they don’t read much. It may be because they believe wrongly that they already know the Constitution. It’s the result of many years of left liberal education that is both biased and lazy. Even a friend of mine accuses me of “starting a fight.” I did no such thing. I was peacefully drinking my coffee while reading the WSJ. A bunch of strangers began yelling empty and offensive slogans near my face and I replied very moderately. “But they have a right….” Of course, they have a right; I did not say otherwise. I only instructed them to not speak to the child for whom I am responsible. I told them why in a brief and moderate way.

Immediately, the demonstrators start using religious-sounding language: You are “deniers” they say. Boy, that hurts! Boy, I am glad there is not much firewood handy! (I am not that stupid. I know well that they are trying to compare me to with theory of evolution “deniers.”)

A  frumpy woman in her forties presents herself as an expert because she is making a documentary on climate change, she says. This leaves me cold. Santa Cruz is full of self-declared, self-admiring artists. (I know this for sure, I am one.) I am thinking that if I worked on a movie about human female sexuality it would be no evidence that I know anything on the topic. Am I right?

For some mysterious reason, the film-making housewife insists on treating me as if I were a born-again Christian. Again, I have no idea what she would have done that. I don’t look the part in any way. I am sure I don’t act Christian, whatever that may be. I am absolutely certain I did not say anything leading to that kind of identification. I am an atheist of the calm, non-militant kind. Religion is not at the forefront of my preoccupations except sometimes, the silly Earth worshiping of her gang, precisely. As I said, the madness is close to the surface. The woman appears a little strange, a little twisted.

Temperatures have already risen by 1.4 degrees – the woman experts asserts in a loud voice.

Centigrade or Fahrenheit – I ask?

Yes – she says.

I ask again.

I don’t know – she brushes off my question.

In how long – I ask viciously – in what period?

I don’t know, she says with disarming honesty.

I am under the impression that her ignorance about the things she, herself, chose to evoke does not trouble her a bit.

Are you smarter than the 95.5% of scientists who believe in climate change – she challenges me with finality?

I refrain from answering out of humility. (Could well be that I am; I wouldn’t be that surprised; depends what you call a scientist; I have been reading for more than a half century; I read well; I retain better than most – not better than most at Harvard, better than most in the street. I went to an excellent or maybe just good graduate school, etc.) Also, I was seized like an overworked engine by this affirmation. I have encountered it for years with some variations in digits. I will just make again the obvious point the statement calls for:

If it were true that 95.5 % of scientists believed that there was man-made global warming that will have disastrous consequences, if it were true in reality, how in the world would anyone know this? Has there been a worldwide poll with strict definitions of who is a “scientist”? Was it conducted according to all the known intricate rules of polling including careful, neutral wording? What qualified pollster organization accomplished such a big difficult task? Why isn’t the pollster bragging about it? 95.5% is obviously a bogus number some one made up years ago and that keeps being repeated by believers. Its precision itself cries out, “Phony.” People who assert it are asserting that they don’t know what they are talking about, that they lack ordinary criticality. They are asking to not be believed.

The woman is joined by two younger people who appear to be her children. (Craziness might be hereditary.) A young man of about twenty is using the F word loudly five feet from my grand-daughter they all thought so cute three minutes ago. I am not a prude; I am not especially clean talking but there is no chance, zero chance that I would use such language in the presence of a small child. These people are insane. I don’t mean this figuratively. I mean literally. I mean that if they showed the same loud zeal in connection with say, parking, or house painting, they would risk being institutionalized.

In addition to factual waywardness and bad logic ccprops demonstrate their moral blindness in small ways as well as in big ones. They insist on their right to kill birds, for instance, including the legally protected bald eagle, in order to continue installing wind mills that contribute essentially nothing to the resolution of the imaginary problem of global warming (WSJ 10/11/13 “Fighting Climate Change by killing Eagles,” Robert Bryce.)

I listen to them calling the local talk shows. (I used to have a local talk show radio program myself.) They sound insane even if they are right. Most callers of talk shows are perfectly reasonable. Left-oriented ccprops are of a feather with rightists Bildeberg conspirators. Why do both kinds of callers sound regretful that it’s not yet technically feasible to murder over the airways?

Notice what I am not doing: They can go on demonstrating their irrationality, their lack of trustworthiness, their ignorance. It’s protected by the First Amendment. I will continue to try to make them cry every chance I get. It’s protected too.

The Tyranny of Ambiguity: “Hate Speech” laws in Japan and subtle Western imperialism

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Economist Tyler Cowen linked to the following report in the Washington Post about a supposed increase in enmity between Japanese citizens and Korean expats in Tokyo’s Koreatown. Setting aside all of the hyperbole on the part of the Post concerning rising tensions, and setting aside the interesting fact that there is a Koreatown in Tokyo, and setting aside the fact that there seems to be an increase in nationalism throughout the developed world, I’d like to focus on the Post‘s advocacy of “hate speech” laws. The Post reports:

“Japan is right now at a crisis point,” said Yoshifu Arita, a [Left-wing] lawmaker who is campaigning for new laws to regulate hate speech. “A situation like this — people getting so publicly hostile — never happened in the seven decades after the war until now.” […] In 1995, Japan did accede to the United Nations’ convention to eliminate racial discrimination, including hate speech, but its parliament has not passed legislation to enforce that treaty commitment. Its reluctance, experts and politicians say, stems from a separate war-era legacy — the wholesale suppression of anti-government dissent. Japan created free-speech laws to prevent a repetition of that censorship, and many still oppose the idea of regulating speech, said Kenta Yamada, a media law professor at Senshu University. The Japanese government’s hope, Yamada said, is to reduce hate speech with education and enlightenment, not with new laws.

Now I think we can all agree that ethno-nationalism is a bad thing, and there has been a rise in ethno-nationalism throughout the world since the 2007-2008 economic crisis began. However, I hope we can all equally agree that squelching free speech in the name of an imposed tolerance would be a much, much worse outcome.

“Hate speech,” of course, is ambiguous and invites arbitrary censorship. The fact that the Leftist politician pushing for the assault on free speech is employing the language of crisis does nothing to relieve my suspicions of her intentions.

This piece brought up three more quick thoughts in my mind:

  1. The report states, in the above quoted passage, that Japan created free speech laws after the war. This is all well and good for the most part, but I’ll never tire of reminding people that the right to free speech cannot be created by government. Free speech is a natural human right, and as such it is impossible for governments to create free speech. For example, what would happen if Japan had not created free speech laws after the war? Would free speech not exist? It’s possible, but this could only be true if governments had laws in place prohibiting free speech.
  2. Is it just me, or did the reporter – a Western Leftist – come off as sounding a bit imperialistic in his subtext?
  3. Imagine what a federal incorporation with the US would do for ethnic relations between Koreans and Japanese.

College Football Blurb

Brandon Christensen Current Events ,

Ohio State versus Florida State for the national championship? What a joke. The national championship should be played between the SEC and PAC-12 champions. These champions play the toughest schedules in the nation by virtue of their conferences, and it is ludicrous when the shot at a title is awarded to schools that are not in these two conferences. Remember last year’s “championship” game between Alabama and Notre Dame? Just imagine what would’ve happened if Alabama had to play Oregon instead. There might’ve been a game to watch.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Here’s what I knew about education when I was 18

Rick Weber Current Events , , ,

Fresh out of 12+ years of high end public education in Canada I had learned two (and a half) things about education. These two bits of information are relevant for understanding the closely related problems of poor academic performance and school violence.

1) Education means going to a school where bundles of knowledge are presented to students who are compelled by law (and subsidy, but I figured that out later) to be there. This learning occurs while sitting quietly at desks in rows, listening patiently to a teacher (most of whom genuinely care) teaching a standardized curriculum (the best!). Smart students will get good grades without much effort, “dumb” students will pass without much effort (because they need that education to succeed it would be unfair to deny them their future).

1.5) Europe’s version of this system has higher standards and works better some how.

2) The above I learned from experience and discussion with my peers, the following from watching discovery channel and in science class: all mammals learn by play fighting. Bear cubs gnaw on each other’s faces, squirrels chase each other, and in this constant movement they learn how to survive.

This second stylized fact about education points to a deep systemic cause for gruesome violence in schools. School is not the same thing as education. By confusing the two and establishing policy to dramatically increase schooling, we are essentially bear baiting teenagers and being left with predictable results.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , ,
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  3. The prospects of Scottish secession from the UK
  4. The waxing and waning schools of economics: Chicago, Vienna and San Francisco
  5. Cooperation Emerging: Institutional diversity and the history of the West

Blind Faith

Adam Magoon Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Adam Magoon

On November, 26th Eric Liu, founder of “Citizen University”, a pro-government think-tank, wrote a telling article about having faith in government on the CNN opinion page. He begins the piece with a story about leaving his suitcase in a New York City cab saying:

“I had an experience recently that reinvigorated my faith in humanity — and bureaucracy.”

Keep that equivalency in your mind for a few minutes. Humanity and bureaucracy.

He goes on to explain that he did not even realize he left the suitcase in the cab for twenty minutes and only then began calling people for help. He explains this process in detail, emphasis mine:

“For almost three hours, various people tried to help me — two folks at my bank, whose credit card held the only record of the cab ride; three people at two yellow cab companies based in Long Island City; a service rep at the New York City Taxicab & Limousine Commission; people in my office back in Seattle.”

So Eric was helped by no less than eight individuals (counting the cab driver) in his successful search for his luggage. Eight people helped improve Eric’s business trip. He then claims this experience taught him three lessons.

First:

“Always, always get a receipt.”

This, as he says, is obvious.

Second:

“Another is that New Yorkers, contrary to popular belief and their own callous pose, are essentially nice.”

As someone born in New York I would like to think this is true, but I adhere to the maxim that terms such as “New Yorker” can only describe places where someone lives or is born. Saying “all New Yorkers are nice” is equivalent to saying “all Scots are drunks” or “all Scandinavians are attractive”. Essentially it is a non-statement that is easily refuted. There are just as many people who would have taken anything of value from his case and threw it into the nearest dumpster.

That is just the appetizer though, here is the main course.

His final lesson, and where the train totally leaves the rails, is this:

“But the third, even more deeply contrary to popular belief, is that government is not the enemy.”

Wait, what?! What kind of logic is Mr. Liu using? Of the eight people who helped him only one (the service representative at the New York City Taxicab & Limousine Commission named Valerie) even worked for a governmental organization and “she insisted she was just doing her job”. How did Mr. Liu get to “government is not the enemy” from that series of events? He goes on to claim that:

“Government is not inherently inept. It’s simply us — and as defective or capable of goodness as we are”.

Mr. Liu tries to rationalize his faith in government with a single good experience with a few select people. What he ignores though, is that many people are not “essentially nice”. If that were the case crime, corruption, and violence simply wouldn’t exist. There are people in the world who only seek to exploit and profit from the work of others and to quote the great classical liberal theorist Frédéric Bastiat:

“As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder”

Even if we were to assume that most people in the world are “essentially nice” the very nature of government attracts precisely the opposite type; the corrupt, the malevolent and the lazy. His agenda finally becomes clear nearly two-thirds of the way through the article when Mr. Liu unabashedly asks us to not wonder what our country can do for us, but rather what we can do for our country in response to the failed Obamacare launch.

Individuals are expected to bail the government out when it fails at intruding into our lives? How can we expect the government to run healthcare without kickbacks and corruption when they cannot even get someone to build the website without it being a disaster?

Mr. Liu fails to offer any helpful advice on how to improve things but he does offer one revealing suggestion. He says that citizens should not expect the “state…to serve us perfectly” and that individuals should not “forget how to serve”.

The argument often goes that taxes pay for services provided by the government but Mr. Liu suggests we shouldn’t expect too much from those services. That we shouldn’t get upset when we pay a third of our labor to the government and it spends that money on things we do not want; in fact he implies we should fix for free the broken things they have already spent our money on.

If Mr. Liu goes out to dinner and his silverware is dirty when he sits at the table does he go back to the sink and wash them? Or does he expect more from the things he spends his money on? At least in that situation Mr. Liu could choose to spend his money elsewhere. With the government spending our money for us we aren’t even afforded that meager victory.