This time one of my pieces has been the subject of debate.
What fascinates me most is simply how often people get their facts totally, utterly and completely wrong. If everybody were operating under the same set of facts, I think there would be much more room for libertarian policies to be implemented. Unfortunately, I think the enemies of freedom know this, so they spew lies that lead to assumptions like those being debunked in the linked-to thread above…
If I wanted to set up a secret police in the US, would I try to create a Gestapo from scratch? Would I call it “Gestapo,” or “NKVD,” or “KGB”?
Or would I rather take an existing, comparatively efficient agency, familiar though unloved by the mass of the people, and simply extend the reach of such an agency? I mean the Internal Revenue Service, of course.
Do I believe that President Obama ordered the IRS to discriminate against Tea Party-sounding groups and others identified as conservatives? No, I do not.
I think he is responsible for the actions of low-level underlings because he created a statist, totalitarian atmosphere. He did this a lot through his non-actions regarding his old friends, in particular, including the bomber- terrorist Bill Ayres. He is responsible for allying himself with out-and-out extremist groups in his first election. The mainstream press is light-heartedly helping him erode democracy in this country.
None of these important actors is fundamentally evil (not even Ayres today). The president is a man who looks so good in a suit that he is the suit itself in the end, an empty suit. The liberal press is silly in the manner intelligent people who are seldom contradicted become silly. Many of the ordinary Americans who voted for Mr Obama are keeping their eyes and ears tightly shut in an effort to keep believing that everything is alright because they elected a man of color. I mean even college professors, aside from journalists. Black voters have been trained to have low expectations. They tell themselves it’s good enough that the president is (more or less) African-American. Another kind of supporters, unions, is as corrupt as ever. Take all the teachers’ unions, for example….or, rather, don’t!
I think Mr Obama is the non-Fascist leader of a genuine, grass-root American Fascist movement. The recent discoveries at the IRS are just one manifestation of creeping fascism.
The Second Amendment has rarely been more relevant.
Just below the fold.
The Economist has a great piece on France’s current socialist government and the scandal of wealth that has recently erupted there. From the report:
Now the Socialist president’s new disclosure rules reveal that seven of his ministers, including his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, are millionaires.
The French are discreet about money and flinch at ostentatious displays of wealth. So the new rules have prompted much discomfort, with ministers given only a week to declare their wealth. On April 15th Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, who comes from a family of art dealers, duly declared over €6m ($7.9m) of assets, including a flat in Paris worth €2.7m and two country houses. Michèle Delaunay, minister for the elderly, reported €5.2m of assets, including two properties in Bordeaux and two houses in different south-west resorts. Michel Sapin, the labour minister, declared three country houses, some large tracts of farmland and a flat in Paris, for a total of over €2m. Even Mr Ayrault, a former schoolteacher, is a millionaire, with two properties to his name.
Other details raised eyebrows. Cécile Duflot, the Green housing minister who makes much of taking public transport, owns two cars, neither of them electric. Mr Fabius, despite his millions, has a €30,000 overdraft. Arnaud Montebourg, the left-wing industry minister, owns three properties and a Charles Eames armchair worth €4,300. French Socialist ministers turn out to be keen property investors; almost none holds shares.
Mr Hollande hastily devised the new rules after his former budget minister, Jérôme Cahuzac, had confessed to lying about a secret foreign bank account. Until now, only the president had to publish his wealth. Mr Hollande’s 2012 declaration included two flats in Cannes and a villa nearby, valued in all at nearly €1.2m, just under the threshold at which France’s annual wealth tax kicks in.
Now the president wants to extend the disclosure rules to all of France’s deputies. This will be tough. Even Claude Bartolone, the Socialist parliamentary speaker, denounced the exercise as “voyeurism” and expressed fears of the advent of “paparazzi democracy”. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fiery hard-left European deputy not bound by the rules, mocked them by revealing on his blog his height and weight, and stating that he owned no paintings, cars, yachts or horses—and did not dye his hair.
Be sure to check out the graphic, too. The reality of the world today is that socialism is truly dead and done. Something else – equally reactionary – will arise in its place to challenge the liberal order’s peace and prosperity, but for the next few decades the world will know nothing but relative calm as it enjoys the benefits brought about by individualism and world trade.
When a new collectivism arrives to challenge liberalism, you can be sure that it will look very much like the collectivisms of old. Do you know what collectivism looks like?
Hope y’all like the new layout of the blog. Take a few minutes to get comfortable. Take off your coat, your shoes and your troubles. Now have a glass of red wine and a look around.
Has Beijing suddenly begun hearing the demands and complaints of its citizens? Not quite. From the Economist:
In recent days Chinese internet users have begun to petition the White House on other issues; for instance, asking President Obama to “remonstrate” with China over a proposed paraxylene chemical plant in the south-western city of Kunming, where thousands of people staged a protest on May 4th. Others are more frivolous, asking America to send troops to liberate Hong Kong, or that the official flavour of tofu be designated as sweet rather than salty.
The petitions obviously have no legal force, but they reflect a popular lack of faith in Chinese justice and the seductive soft power of America. China has a petitioning system of its own, but those who use it are often threatened or detained.
This is quite interesting for a few reasons:
I mean, just imagine if Americans began writing to Mexico City or Ottawa rather than Washington to air out their grievances. What kind of signal would that send to others around the globe? It wouldn’t necessarily mean that the US is bad so much as it would signal that Mexico and Canada set the standard for excellence in governance (not an oxymoron, by the way; see Dr Foldvary’s piece for details).
Another fact the article takes care to point out is that authorities in Beijing have been quick to clamp down on internet usage. Check out this map of worldwide internet connected devices. It’s a little bit more honest than the maps showing China to be a giant “dark spot” of internet usage that I’ve seen displayed around the web.
Lastly, the article in question shows, once again, that the US has nothing to fear from Beijing.
Le taux de crimes à main armée (presque toutes avec armes a feu) a chute environ de moitié depuis 1990.
Pendant la même période, tous les chiffres liées à la possession d’armes privées ont augmenté.
D’accord, ça ne prouve rien. Il n’y a pas nécessairement cause à effet.
Quand même, si je gagnais ma vie le revolver àla main, j’y regarderais à deux fois avant de m’en prendre à un porteur de revolver de calibre plus ou moins égal.
Quand même, si je pensais évoluer dans un milieu où de nombreux citoyens sont armés àtitre privé, je songerais sérieusement à me reconvertir dans la fraude bancaire.
That’s the title of a recent piece on immigration in Europe, as told through a Greek family settling down in Germany, by the Wall Street Journal. Among the gems:
Despite the enmity often directed at Berlin for its insistence on painful austerity as the cure for Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis, Germany has become a new land of opportunity for tens of thousands of people fleeing their recession-racked homelands.
Data released Tuesday by the German statistics agency showed immigration hit a 17-year high last year, with the increase from Europe’s crisis-riddled nations “particularly evident.”
And this:
Germany has long had an uneasy relationship with migrants. Previous generations have often integrated poorly, facing high hurdles to gain citizenship—if they even try. Many Germans also believe that migrants come to live off welfare benefits or criminal activity [but] experts say today’s renewed influx of migrants is good for Germany. As its population declines and ages, the nation badly needs qualified workers to fuel economic growth and support its pension and health-care systems […]
The youngest, Nikos, at 15 years old, told his parents he missed his friends. Don’t worry, Mr. Karoustas replied. He’d see them again.
“I don’t hope for it,” the father told his son, “but all of them will come to Germany too.”
Read the whole thing. You can get around the WSJ‘s subscriber firewall by copying-and-pasting the title of piece and Googling it. Once you do that, just click on the article.
See our past notes on the EU here.
In some places, it’s much warmer than usual. That’s so many instances of climate change, of course.
I some places, it’s much colder than usual. That’s also evidence of climate change.
Good technical article in the Wall Street Journal of 5/8/13 to remind us that CO2 is plant food. The more CO2 the more plants, and the more food for humans. It’s by NASA astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt and W. Happer, a professor of Physics at Princeton.
Hey all, I’m entering into a tough stretch at school, so my posting will be minimal for the next little while. Before I get to the cool links I’ve been reading, I thought I’d highlight Evgeniy’s recent piece on the chemical warfare taking place in Syria. If I am not mistaken, it is the rebels – al-Qaeda and Hizbollah – who are responsible for using chemical weapons. These are the same rebels that Dr Delacroix advocates the United States not only support morally, but militarily as well.
You can spot weak reasoning – morally as well as logically – when a person starts to hurl epithets like ‘isolationist’ or ‘pacifist’ around even after the other side insists that their position is anything but.
Y’all have a great week!
Привет, сообщество! На днях прочитал свежие новости по теме сирийского конфликта и с ужасом обнаружил сообщения о том, что сирийская оппозиция применила химическое оружие. В качестве поражающего вещества был применен нервно-паралитический газ зарин, печально известный еще по токийскому инциденту 1995 года, когда организация Аум Синрикё применила это вещество против мирного населения на нескольких ветках токийской подземки. Я в свое время прочитал две книги на тему этого прискорбного случая из страниц истории Японии (в ближайшей записи я еще раз вернусь к этой теме) и имею достаточно полное представление о принципах действия этого газа, о симптомах, и последствиях его применения. Книги оказали на меня очень сильное воздействие, и с тех пор любое упоминание о применении зарина становится личной трагедией для меня. Самое мерзкое в данной ситуации, что газ убивает медленно и изначально не чувствуется в воздухе. Первые симптомы проявляются не сразу, что затрудняет правильную постановку диагноза и во многом определяет смертельный исход болезни. Вылечиться можно, более того, принципы лечения весьма просты. Об этом я тоже расскажу в следующей записи. Я хочу чтобы каждый человек понял, каково это – подвергнуться воздействию зарина – пусть не на собственном опыте, но хотя бы теоретически.
Так вот. Зарин применен, и Америка пообещала “полностью пересмотреть свою политику по поводу конфликта в Сирии, так как оппозиция переступила красную черту”. Будем следить дальше. Теперь эта трагедия, во многом благодаря зарину, стала еще ближе мне. Будем следить за развитием событий.
I can’t believe I’ll be done with school in another five weeks. Time really flies by. I recently came across an interview of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Esquire and thought I’d pass it along to readers here. It’s kind of a wimpy interview, actually (as an alumni, I have access to much higher quality interviews with famous Bruins). Abdul-Jabbar lists twenty things he would’ve done differently if he could step into a time machine and become a young man again.
Two of them were interesting, and one of them not so much. First, the two interesting choices:
11. Cook more. After I got divorced I missed home cooked meals and the only person I had to rely on was the guy in the mirror. Plus, I found it impressed women if you could cook a good meal. Once, very shortly after I started cooking for myself, I had a first date with a woman I really wanted to make a good impression on.
And this:
16. Don’t be so quick to judge. It’s human nature to instantly judge others. It goes back to our ancient life-or-death need to decide whether to fight or flee. But in their haste to size others up, people are often wrong—especially a thirty-year-old sports star with hordes of folks coming at him every day. We miss out on knowing some exceptional people by doing that, as I’m sure I did. I think the biggest irony of this advice is that it’s coming from someone who’s black, stratospherically tall, and an athlete: the trifecta of being pre-judged.
These are both things I’ll be working on as I figure out how to live a proper middle class life post-graduation. One thing I can’t help but to disagree with Him (pay attention to capitalization, and bow down) on:
10. Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.
Nonsense! Every libertarian knows that it’s far more important to be right than to be popular!
I agree with President Obama. It’s unacceptable that we, the US, have kept people as prisoners for as long as ten years without trial or any other procedure that could conceivably result in their release or conviction.
Let me say first that it’s not an issue of toughness or not toughness. I, for one, think it’s ridiculous to invoke the Geneva Conventions to protect people who burn women and children alive and who assassinate while wearing civilian clothing. I am also in favor of making their lives difficult, of increasing the hardship of doing their disgusting job any way we can. That would include making a public announcement that specific individuals may be volatilized from the sky anytime, any place. That sure would create a circle of isolation around them. I would also be in favor of including an option to surrender and be investigated (by us.) I don’t understand why this option does not already exist.
There are three purposes for keeping people locked up. One is to secure them while they await trial. The lock-up time in this case should be as short as technically possible. The second reason is that they are serving a prison term, a punishment imposed after a conviction of guilt in a well-described, appropriate procedure.
The third reason to prevent people from leaving is to keep them out of any situation where they can hurt others. Thus, the classical treatment of prisoners of war is to secure them until there is peace. No punishment ought to be intended. In fact, there is international agreement that such prisoners should be treated the same as the soldiers of the nation detaining them. Again, to punish people, you have to try them formally and to find them guilty of something. That’s true even if the accused are prisoners of war, for example. A prisoner of war may also be guilty of crimes. The two issues are separate. A civilized society should not allow its collective judgment to drift from one situation to the other.
I often hear comments among my fellow conservatives that obscure the existence of a line separating the task of punishing terrorists from the mission to keep them out of our harm’s way. I also hear an absence, the absence of realization that the issue if not one of some Middle-Eastern strangers’ – many of whom openly hate us – rights. It’s about our rights. (It always is, in the final analysis.) Confinement to a small space open has not chosen is experienced as punishment regardless of intent. It’ s even the most severe punishment several other civilized societies have. I agree with President Obama that we should not punish severely individuals who may be completely innocent. They may be people who are no more guilty of violence against the United States and against Americans than I am. (Repeat this sentence. Make th”I” yourself.” )
I suspect many of my fellow conservatives believe in their hearts that those detained by American forces because they are suspected of terrorism must be at least a little guilty, or guilty of something. Of course, there is no such thing as being a little guilty in our legal tradition. The idea belongs in totalitarian societies.
If we need to control some people’s movements for the third reason, to prevent from from doing us harm, in a war that may never end, we owe it to ourselves as a nation to develop inventive solutions that don’t confuse our need to be safe with the imposition of undeserved punishment. I can think of two such solutions .
We could develop a place to keep them that does not resemble prison except that it should be guarded from intrusion by outside forces. High-tech surveillance methods on the periphery of such a place connected to missiles, for example come to mind. I am thinking of a sort of armed Club Fed. It could even be a Guantanamo Two, a decent resort where the detainees could lead a life more closely approximating normal life. Inside the resort, they would govern themselves as befit people who are not in jail or prison. There is no reason why they couldn’t have a normal family life with spouses and children. I can hear some already snickering about the cost of such a scheme. It’ s extremely unlikely that it would be more expensive to maintain than the highest security jail this country has ever had. It would also be less expensive than war, any kind of war.
There is another, a sort of libertarian solution to the problem of neutralizing those we suspect of wishing to do us harm. We could try to free them on bail. Let me explain: There are millions of individuals around the world and thousands of organizations who profess to be terminally disgusted by the very existence of Guantanamo prison. Among the latter are hundreds of Muslim non-government organizations (NGOs). Some of the latter have thousands and tens of thousands of members. The US government could negotiate the transfer of custody to private NGOs of inmates who have been held for several years and who are not slated to be tried. The US government could ask for a vertiginous bail amount, millions or even billions of dollars per inmate so transferred. The bail money would be refunded after a determined number of years (say, when the detainee reaches a certain age) if the detainee had not been killed or recaptured in the process of conducting or of supporting terrorist activities.
Either some would take up this offer of privatization of custody or not. If the offer were taken, we would at least have put some distance between us and the practical problems of dealing with people we think dangerous. (This includes, as I write, the horror of force-feeding.) Relapses of terrorists would become more publicized than they are now, less subject to the constant suspicion that the US is manipulating appearances. At the very least, if there was no no rush to adopt Guantanamo detainees, it would be nice to point out the hypocrisy of our critics.
From one of the concluding paragraphs:
We have therefore hypothesized that most disagreement is due to most people not being meta-rational, i.e., honest truth-seekers who understand disagreement theory and abide by the rationality standards that most people uphold. We have suggested that this is at root due to people fundamentally not being truth-seeking. This in turn suggests that most disagreement is dishonest.
This reminds me, mostly, of debates about the illogicality of more federal gun control laws or using American military power to intervene in a foreign conflict that has nothing to do with national security (see, on this last point, my recent post “Imperialism: The Illogical Nature of Humanitarian Wars“).
Why, just the other day I was deleted by a female FB acquaintance for pointing out to her that her facts were wrong on gun control and that the numerous, hastily Googled studies that she threw at my feet contained either errors in statistical reasoning (“saying that ‘more guns equals more crime’ is like saying ‘the black cat is a cat because it is black'”) or simply wanted to inflame passions rather than discern truth from tall tale.
On this second point, I even went so far as to suggest that since the piece did not contain any quantitative reasoning whatsoever, it would be safe to agree with me that it was merely an attempt to inflame passions rather than educate. The female (a UC Santa Cruz alumni, in her defense) did just the opposite: after acknowledging that the piece contained no intellectual argument whatsoever, she stated – matter-of-factly – that the piece was an attempt to document all 62 mass shootings over a 30 year period with visuals (posting the killers’ faces to a timeline) and explain that most of the guns used were obtained legally. Therefore, it was quantifying the evidence and proving that mass murders were on the rise, federal gun control is proven to work, and that bans on certain types of guns have been proven to work.
Indeed. This is the face of the enemy of freedom, and it’s not Satan. It’s the bimbo next door.
Read the whole PDF. Grab a cup of coffee or hot tea first.
A couple of tips for figuring out if you are on the right side of the facts or not:
Hope this helps!
Longtime reader –Rick provides some helpful clarity to the Syrian debacle in the Middle East. He writes:
For me the answer is that unless there is a direct connection between Syria and their use of force against America or its population, then the right course is to let the fools kill themselves by whatever means they choose. Dead is dead. Innocents die in revolutions; it is unavoidable.
if the Syrian people are left to fight their own revolt for liberation, they might actually learn to value the peace that comes with freedom and individual rights as they shed the collective. It should be obvious that trading one collective for another collective is not a solution, only a change in masters. Only when people have the right to live as they choose, to worship or not worship as they choose, to travel freely as they choose, to freely and openly associate with people they choose and have the right to earn a living and keep most of what they earn…only then will the country find both peace and freedom.
Until Syria launches a weapon at the United States or our troops, then, Syria’s problems belong to the Syrians.
If the Syrians, either alone or in concert with some other nation choose to attack America or her citizens/troops, then, the United States should enter into the conflict with the goal of no less than unconditional surrender and a capitulation by the enemy to surrender all arms and pay for the destruction suffered by all involved for their warlike behavior. Continue reading
Notes On Liberty 