- A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting.
- Listen to the fascists sing.
- Philosopher Kevin Vallier’s response to a hatchet job on FA Hayek in a stale (and apparently desperate) Left-wing publishing outlet.
- Political scientist Samuel Goldman’s response to the same hatchet job.
- The aforementioned hatchet job (in The Nation).
- Monkey Gone to Heaven.
Current Events
Zarine wind over Syria. Pt.2
Привет, друзья!
Сегодня, как и обещал, продолжу рассмотрение темы с зарином, которую поднял несколько дней назад. Постараюсь максимально конкретно пояснить на литературном примере, почему недопустимо применение химического оружия “в целом” и конкретно “зарина” в частности в вооруженных столкновениях. Все дело в природе газа. Вспомним трагические события в Токийском метро в 1995 году, когда члены секты Аум-Синрике применили зарин для демонстрации силы. Большое количество жертв было обусловлено не только замкнутым пространством вагона метро, из которого не спастись, но и самой коварной природой действия газа. Помимо этого не стоит списывать со счетов особенности менталитета японцев, которые превыше всего ставят трудовую дисциплину, и лишь затем собственное здоровье, счастье и благополучие: большинство пострадавших в тяжелом состоянии добирались до работы, откуда их в еще более плачевном виде уже и доставляли в медицинские учреждения. Если бы сознание рядового японца позволило ему незамедлительно обратиться за помощью – большого количества жертв можно было бы избежать.
Применение зарина в Сирии – событие с гораздо более устрашающими последствиями, чем это может показаться на первый взгляд. Мировое сообщество получило наглядное подтверждение факта, что “применять можно”. Так что я предвижу прогнозируемый рост подобного вида террористических актов не только в конфликтующих странах, но и вообще во всем мире. Случившаяся зариновая атака в Сирии требует капитального пересмотра позиций миротворческих сил в боевом секторе, и, я считаю, ужесточения тактики их действия и противостояния насилию.
Специфика воздействия зарина на организм человека – это вообще тема отдельной статьи. Собственно, почему я и начал делать эти записи. Сравним зарин с каким-нибудь другим газом, который применялся во время Второй Мировой Войны. Взять, скажем, иприт. Основное действие горчичного газа проявляется почти сразу: от 30 минут до 2-3 часов. При этом человек сразу понимает, что “что-то пошло не так”, потому как симптомы проявления не похожи на течение обычных болезней. При отравлении зарином первые симптомы также появляются достаточно быстро, но сильно похожи на обычную простуду. Таким образом человек не догадывается, что сильно отравлен, и пытается лечиться подручными средствами от простуды, которые при действии зарина совершенно бесполезны. Учитывая специфику конфликта в Сирии, люди далеко не всегда имеют возможность незамедлительно обратиться за квалифицированной медицинской помощью. Именно по этой причине зарин является одним из самых “подлых” ядовитых газов.
Если нормы человечности и осуждают применение химического оружия, то зарин, по праву, должен возглавлять этот список.
Un petit baiser pour le cinéma Français
Au cours des longues annéees de ma vie américaine, j’ai eu l’occasion de dire des tas de choses désagréables sur la pauvreté du cinéma français pourtant surnourri de subsides publics. J’aimême publié un article méchant en Anglais sur la question.( “Can protectionism ever be respectable? A skeptic’s case for the cultural exception, with special reference to French movies.” The Independent Review 9-3:353-374. 2005.)
Malgré tout, de temps en temps, le même cinéma me procure une agréable surprise, souvent une si minuscule surprise qu’on aurait pu la rater. Je viens de regarder “Emma”, un film sorti en 2011. C’est l’histoire d’une jeune fille mal dans sa peau. Il y a une scène avec un garçon de quinze ou seize ans quelle n’avait pas vu depuis leur petite enfance. En vacances dans la même maison, ils sont assis ensemble sur un lit. Ils parlent de tout et de rien,évoquant même la peluche que le garçon aurait volé, jadis, à la fille.
Soudain, le garçon se penche et dépose un baiser sur le genou (couvert) de la fille. Il y a dans ce geste infime toute la tendresse du monde. C’est le geste juste, plus que juste. Après cela, la fille lui appartient corps et âme, bien entendu.
Malgre tout ses péchés, je pardonne beaucoup au cinéma français pour ce simple baiser au genou.
Mais bien sûr, c’est un film français où donc, le tordu, l’insolite, le gratuit remplacent l’émotion, l’imagination, et même l’érotisme. Le petit ami se revèle vite être plus précoce voyeur qu’ enthousiaste pénétrateur. Enfin, personne n’est parfait, comme on dit.
A la fin du film, aussi la fin des vacances, la jeune fille dit au revoir à son demi-frère. Elle se fait la réflexion, dans son fors intérieur, qu’elle souhaiterait être plus libre des ses paroles, pour pouvoir lui dire, “Je t’aime” – “comme dans un film américain.”
* “Instead of the eager penetrator you would expect, the boyfriend turns out to be mostly a voyeur.”
Another Fascinating reddit Thread
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…
The IRS and Fascism
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.
Eye Candy
Just below the fold.
The Triumph of Liberalism Over Socialism
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?
Around the Web
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.
- IRS specifically targets conservative Tea Party groups; So the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein naturally defends the IRS for not doing more: Listen to the fascists sing
- Ken White has an update on the man who made the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims”
- Dear life (gun control and gun violence). Again and again: gun violence has been declining for about two decades now.
- The Crushing of Middle Eastern Christianity
- A Brutal Peace: the Postwar Expulsion of the Germans
- Barack the buck-passer. A laudatory account of Obama’s foreign policy that I largely agree with.
Petitioning for a Redress of Grievances: Chinese Style
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 think it helps lend credence to arguments that claim a functioning democracy is a byproduct of capitalism.
- I think it just goes to show you that no matter how hard Beijing tries to initiate a nationalism compatible with its aims, the reality of American prestige and liberty – despite all its many faults – is simply too high a hurdle for Chinese statebuilders.
- Let it be duly noted that many collectivists on both the Left and the Right here in the US have pointed to China as a great model for the future (unlike the reactionary federal system currently in place).
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.
L’Amérique et les armes: mise à jour.
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.
“Europe’s Job Seekers Flock to Germany”
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.
Climate Change Worse (No Matter How You Look At It)
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.
Around the Web
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.
- Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.
- China: Year Zero. 1979 and the Birth of an Economic Miracle.
- “Of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor.”
- GMO Opponents are the Climate Skeptics of the Left. Not quite. Climate skepticism is rooted in scientific inquiry and politics, whereas the anti-GMO backlash is rooted in superstition. Nevertheless, a good read.
Y’all have a great week!
Zarine wind over Syria
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.
Kareem, UCLA and Time Travel
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!
Notes On Liberty 