Current Events

Criticizing the Right

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty, Links, Politics , ,

There has been lots of attention on this blog geared towards the hypocrisy of the Left, and I think that it is justified, but all too often we have been giving the Right a pass. I think this has to do with the fact that the Left holds the presidency, but I still think it’s appropriate to remind readers that libertarianism is of neither the Left nor the Right. Philosopher Jason Kuznicki does just this in a brilliant post:

Scrutinize your own side too. Take a hard look at cushy “privatization” deals that really just funnel power and money directly into private corporations’ hands. As a certain liberal recently observed, the way to privatize a prison isn’t to give imprisonment power to a corporation. It’s to stop imprisoning so many people, then sell off the property. About which more below […]

But other restrictions exist. Many of them bite even harder.

Consider immigrants. In particular, if our free market is so great, why do you work so hard to exclude immigrants from it? Is the immigrant laborer less a moral self-fashioner than the Wall Street banker? I wouldn’t say so. He’s clearly at least as motivated. If the immigrant wants to make a life in America — why not let him?

Mr. Ryan recently proclaimed that the United States is the only nation founded on an idea. It’s a common conservative theme, and even if it’s not 100% accurate, I’m certainly sympathetic to it. But we are founded on an idea if and only if our borders remain open to all who share that idea. The moment we start checking for purity of blood, we become a tribalist nation-state just like so many others. Not founded on an idea, but on accidents of birth—and in fact standing squarely against the idea that all people should be the authors of their own lives.

You can read the rest here.

Again, I suspect that much of the vitriol aimed at the Left on this blog (mostly by myself and Dr. Delacroix and something that probably has to do with our previous, sovereign associations with that side of the aisle) is due to the fact that it currently occupies the White House, but it’s nice to remind readers that the Right is very hypocritical as well.

For more on immigration, see Hermanos* and Immigrants: A Story Pregnant with Deep Meaning.

For more on “privatization”, see Who Stole Our Trillions? and An Ominous Expansion of Eminent Domain.

For more criticism of the Right, see Ugly Conservative Sacred Cows and Blissful Ignorance….

McCloskey Review = Leftist Rhetoric in Tatters

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, History, Liberty, Links , , , ,

Deirdre McCloskey has an excellent review of a new book focusing on the immorality of capitalism. An excerpt:

The poor have benefited the most from capitalism. The sheer, first-act, unanalyzed equality that Sandel advocates would have killed the modern world and kept us in the appalling poverty of the human condition down to 1800. In fact in some countries it did, such as India after 1947, under Gandhi-plus-London-School-of-Economics egalitarianism, the “License Raj” and “the Hindu rate of growth,” as the Indians themselves bitterly described their communitarian economy. When I talk to friends who think like Sandel I worry that their dispositions will kill, quite unintentionally, the only chance for the world’s poor to achieve the scope for a full human life.

[…]

Sandel worries properly that the market can crowd out the sacred. A corporate market in, say, instruction in elementary classrooms can crowd out unbiased teaching about capitalism. Yet Sandel does not tell his own classroom that state schools can crowd out unbiased teaching about, say, the environment.

Do read the whole thing. McCloskey is an expert writer and a prestigious scholar, so be sure to grab a cup of coffee before you settle in. (h/t Jason Brennan)

From the Comments: The Climate Change Cult

Jacques Delacroix Comments, Current Events, Politics , , ,

I reread your paragraph, Travis:

“I can see Delacroix’s point that a few un-peer-reviewed sources make one question what other sources are also un-reviewed, but it seems absurd to me to throw out all the information in all of the chapters of the IPCC report because it contains one un-peer-reviewed source. The chapter-leads who ultimately allowed the un-reviewed source to enter the IPCC report are not in charge of other chapters, which are essentially independent manuscripts, so why arbitrarily distrust them as well?”

You seem to say that the process by which papers (peer-reviewed papers, another issue discussed above) are compiled within each chapter of the IPCC reports is like  Wikipedia’s process for each of its entries.

Would you say that IPCC is as open to revision as Wikipedia is? I mean only revision by means of serious peer-reviewed papers. Suppose someone produced a study using good methods and trustworthy data and had it peer-reviewed (say on Mars). Suppose further the study concluded that there has been no real appreciable global warming since 1780. Do you think that there is a likelihood that the new study would be incorporated into the next IPCC report? What likelihood: 100%, 75%, 50%, 5%?

This is a real question for Travis . I don’t know if Travis is listening so, anyone besides Travis should feel free to answer it.

[Editor’s note: you can find the context of this post in discussions found here and here]

Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand: What’s the Connection?

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

I will admit up front that the only Ayn Rand novel I’ve read (so far) has been Anthem. I liked it. It reminded me of Brave New World and 1984. A lot of books came out at around the same time as Anthem that had themes of the struggle between totalitarianism and the individual. Recent commentary has focused on Rep. Ryan’s connections with the late, great author, though, and Will Wilkinson does a great job of summing them all up in a post over the Economist. An excerpt:

In practice, arguments like Mr Black’s and Ms Walsh’s tend to come to the silly idea that one’s ideological opponents are duty-bound (by their own lights!) to either unilaterally disarm or shut up. Heads, I win; tails, you lose. It’s a cheap trick. The argument as usually deployed also depends on a combination of lazy partisan Manichaeism and the naive practice of taking politicians at their word. Paul Ryan is an elected official whose views therefore fall squarely within the ambit of conventional political wisdom. Despite his professed admiration for Ayn Rand, and the ardent wishes of his admirers and detractors alike, Mr Ryan is far from a laissez faire radical.

Indeed. Do read the rest of the post here.

What are your thoughts on Ryan as Romney’s VP? Longtime reader Hank has shared his thoughts here. Personally, I agree with Hank and I don’t think the nomination matters all that much, and I share libertarian sentiments that Rep. Ryan is hardly a fiscal conservative, but I am also curious as to what you think.

Apologies and Reaffirmations

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Politics , , ,

My co-blogger Dr. Gibson alerted me to the rudeness of my tone regarding Dr. Delacroix in a previous post. Dr. Gibson rightly admonished me for three things:

  1. Using the term “Dr. J” instead of the formal Dr. Delacroix
  2. My insinuation that anybody who disagrees with my observations is insane or irrational
  3. My accusation of demagoguery on Dr. Delacroix’s part

I am guilty of all three of course. I referred to Dr. Delacroix as Dr. J because it is a self-administered nickname he gave himself on his other blog, Facts Matter (it’s on the right-hand side under “links”), and he has not objected to me using it before. I took Dr. Gibson’s critiques in stride and have made the corrections. I apologize again.

On point number two I shouldn’t have discounted the arguments in favor of imperialism or interventionism so brusquely. I again apologize and have altered the text accordingly.

On point number three, though, I feel like I hit the nail on the head. Check out the following three posts by Dr. Delacroix and tell me if I went too far by labeling his arguments demagogic:

In these three posts Dr. Delacroix insinuates that all who disagree with him are anti-Semitic (knowingly or otherwise), immoral, and cowardly. What do you guys think?

Blissful Ignorance and the Conservative Worldview

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

I have been mulling over the recent foreign policy debate I had with Dr. Delacroix and have come to a couple of conclusions. The first conclusion is that conservatives have absolutely no evidence to support their foreign policy proposition of world hegemony, so they instead rely on that old faithful tactic of demagoguery.

Dr. Delacroix was once a prestigious scholar and an expert in international affairs, so his arguments are ones that we can use to ensure that no straw man is being built for the purpose of winning the fight. Libertarians maintain that the 9/11 terrorist attacks did not come out of anywhere and that the United States is not an innocent actor overseas. This causes many people on both the Left and Right to ruffle their feathers and denounce libertarians as unpatriotic or worse.

Yet just consider the two points that libertarians do make in regards to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (again, I wanted to pick out the strongest example so that no straw man may be built for the crass purpose of “winning” the argument):

  1. The 9/11 terrorist attacks did not come out of nowhere.
  2. The United States is not an innocent actor overseas.

I don’t see how any sane, rational individual good skeptic can avoid these two arguments. Just look at the evidence in support of both. Al-Qaeda has been around since the Cold War and the CIA had actually worked with them in their operations against the Soviets in Afghanistan. When the first Bush administration (daddy) decided to keep troops in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and Al Qaeda became an instant enemy of the republic. The bin Laden family is a rival of the Saudi family in the Arabian peninsula, and Osama bin Laden did not like the fact that Washington was now in bed with his hated enemies.

Policymakers in Washington knew that they had irked a potentially dangerous faction in the Muslim world, and the Clinton administration attacked Al Qaeda operations in both Sudan and Afghanistan with precision missile strikes during his presidency. Conservatives and liberals often pretend that the United States was an innocent bystander in the world up until the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and public ignorance is something that cannot be discounted, but intellectuals like Dr. Delacroix have resorted to demagoguery and myths instead of confronting the facts on this issue. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Imperialists cannot even acknowledge that the US had troops in Saudi Arabia at the time of the 9/11 attacks. They cannot admit this because it destroys almost every myth that the God of War depends upon to flourish in the minds of the hoi polloi. Just look at Dr. Delacroix’s images within the cave. Continue reading →

From the Comments: Manufacturing Jobs and American De-Industrialization

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Economics ,

I hate to admit it, but Dr. Delacroix has been on fire lately (with the exception of his foreign policy quackery, of course). I pulled this reply out of the ‘comments’ section of his post on the de-industrialization of the United States. You can find the condescending comment to Dr. Delacroix’s post here, but I’m going to reproduce Dr. Delacroix’s whole reply beneath the fold: Continue reading →

From the Comments: Guns and Truth

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, History, Law , , , ,

I often think that reading through the ‘comments’ section of a post or an article online can tell me much more about an idea or an event than can the original article. Oftentimes the nitty-gritty details of an article or post can be illuminated in the ‘comments’ section if the author is kind enough to wade into the pool of hoi polloi and defend his argument. Dr. Delacroix is an expert in this regard, and I thought I’d reproduce his defense of the Second Amendment here (since he is being uncharacteristically humble out it!). A European drive-by commentator left the following comment bragging about the superiority of Europe’s gun control laws, which sparked the following brilliant response from Dr. J:

Thank you and a fairly disjuncted response because I would need several days to provide a response that would both be fairly complete and well organized.

History matters. The US was born in revolution, Unlike the case of France, for example, the American revolution was never confiscated. Many Americans, including me, believe that insurrection against a government gone rogue is a remote but possible scenario. Those who scoff at this possibility should remember that totalitarian regimes are eager to control even one-shot, small caliber shotguns. Maybe fascists know something liberal gun-control advocates don’t understand. Even, if the scenario is utterly unrealistic, it could give the American people backbone, as sacred myths often do. Continue reading →

Staying out of Syria

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

Dr. Ivan Eland has a great op-ed on what the US needs to do in regards to the situation in Syria, but what I found even more pertinent were his criticisms of US hypocrisy overseas:

The United States sometimes likes to stay above the fray while secretly fueling conflicts indirectly and accusing rival countries of stoking the conflict by supporting the bad guys. For example, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently accused the Russians of providing offensive weapons to the Assad regime. The Pentagon immediately started backpedaling by saying that attack helicopters being sent from Russia to Syria were not new but were probably old ones being repaired. The Russians then stated that the only arms contracts they had with Syria were for defensive weapons, such as air defenses. The American media of course gave a pass to the deceptive pronouncement by Clinton.

Bashar al-Assad is a brutal ruler who has so far killed more than 10,000 civilians in his own country. And the United States may be generally correct in criticizing Russian support for him. But even that is hypocritical, because the U.S. has supported governments that killed far more people—for example, in the 1980s, the U.S.-backed government of El Salvador killed 65,000 of its own people, many execution-style.

Also, the United States has directly killed more innocents than Assad ever has. In Vietnam, U.S. carpet bombing and other types of attacks killed millions of civilians and rivaled the wanton Nazi destruction in the Balkans during World War II. In the Korean War, the United States targeted dams in North Korea to flood cropland, thus inducing starvation among the people in order to hamper the North Korean war effort.

Conservatives often like to pretend that they favor limited government, but their blind support for US policies overseas highlights their true desires. Conservatives and liberals alike hide behind libertarian rhetoric when it is politically necessary (like when the other party is in the White House). This is because the American public is broadly libertarian and doesn’t like being told what to do, so why can’t somebody like former Governor Gary Johnson – who represents the best of both the Left and the Right – gain more traction in the national political process? Continue reading →

I Am Bored So Here Is A Story

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , ,

I am not yet mentally ready to face squarely the fact that the Obama administration is going to do all the wrong things about our dire economy. Let me say again that Pres.-elect Obama is not the Anti-Christ. It’s just that you can’t implement policies the existence of which you don’t even suspect. Obama is a recognizable type. He is a Social-Democrat, European-style, circa 1970.

I am bored with current events. One more time, the Democratic Party has to deal with corruption in its Illinois branch. Reminder: a former Governor of Illinois is currently in jail. Gov. Blago was caught with his hand close to the cookie jar, not even inside. Big deal! The Democratic Party does not want to risk a special election to fill Obama’s Senate seat because of the tiny chance that a Republican might win. Makes me yawn.

The West Europeans are suffering from heating gas delivery cuts in the middle of the winter. Russia is cutting them off. My only reaction: It told you so, in the nineties!

The mayhem is continuing in Gaza. That’s boring too: Some Palestinian group gets up on a hill, pounds its chest, shoots in the direction of Israel with a .22, and promises aloud to obliterate the Zionist entity and to kill many Zionists. The Israelis get pissed off, they return fire with an M16. They kill hundreds of Palestinians; a handful of Israelis die. Then, anti-Semites worldwide join hands with mindless do-gooding tender-hearts and force Israel to stop. Everyone goes home until next time.

Hamas, lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, with two broken legs, a skull fracture, and one eye missing declares victory. The Arab world cheers!

A question lazy journalists don’t ask: The current death rate of Gaza residents at the hands of Israel is comparable to the homicide rate of what country? (Relevant blog: Nationamasterblog.)

As I said, I am bored. I don’t seem to be the only one. Today at noon, every major television network showed us an empty room awaiting impeached Gov. Blago to arrive to make a meaningless declaration instead of broadcasting Gaza and surroundings.

You may be bored too so, here is a completely unrelated story. Continue reading →

Around the Web: Lazy Saturday Edition

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

I’m not actually being lazy, I am just doing a bunch of homework (wink wink).

Knowledge is Power, so let the WikiWar begin!

Illegally Wiretapped? In the US? Sorry, but the courts won’t help you.

Can Syria’s Christians Survive?

Public ignorance about Paul Ryan and federal spending.

“Isolationism” Revisited

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Links , , , , ,

Socialist Zach Dorfman has a great review up over at Dissent on a recent book by a historian about American foreign policy from roughly 1890 to about 1940, Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age. I am really tempted to just copy and paste the whole review, but here are some juicy excerpts from Dorfman’s review (the book itself will have to wait until Christmas):

Today, isolationism is often portrayed as intellectually bankrupt, a redoubt for idealists, nationalists, xenophobes, and fools. Yet the term now used as a political epithet has deep roots in American political culture. Isolationist principles can be traced back to George Washington’s farewell address, during which he urged his countrymen to steer clear of “foreign entanglements” while actively seeking nonbinding commercial ties […] Continue reading →

From the Comments: Climate Change Advocates and Religion

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

Jacques Delacroix has a thoughtful response to an equally thoughtful comment by a climate scientist (full disclosure: the climate scientist is also a childhood friend of mine and a fairly decent man; I say “fairly decent” because he sometimes associated with people like me!) in his post on the peer review process. I thought I’d reproduce the whole thing here: Continue reading →

“The Fastest Race Ever Run”

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

That’s a headline piece from the Economist. An excerpt:

Nate Silver, a blogger for the New York Times and sports statistician, points out that only five world records in track and field were broken in Beijing out of 47 events. Even that was a decent tally: the previous four Olympics saw a total of just seven new world bests, compared with a whopping 22 world records in swimming. Mr Silver attributes this disparity to economic inequality. “An athlete with the perfect swimmer’s build,” he writes, “and a world-class work ethic would still stand little chance of competing in this year’s games if he happened to be born in a poor nation like Cameroon or Panama—he might never have gotten into a pool, let alone an Olympic-size one.”

Running, in contrast, is more democratic […]

Read the rest here. I’m not a big fan of the Olympics, just because of the nationalistic impulses it taps into. Why shouldn’t these sports become completely separated from the state?

With that obligatory libertarian statement out of the way, I can’t help but admire the feats accomplished by some of these athletes. A lot of hard work goes into training for the Olympics, and I think that pushing the state out of the way would help to reduce the obvious inequalities associated with national competitions. Did anybody see the US basketball team play Nigeria?

If sports were separated from the state we’d see more games like the NBA: very competitive, cosmopolitan and lucrative (unlike the bloodbath between the US and Nigeria).

Anyway, I like it when individuals from poor states win big in the Olympics. Nothing like seeing an underdog win, especially an underdog with a name like Usain Bolt!

Update: I spoke too soon about the level of competitive play at London’s basketball tourney. Check out this piece in Grantland about the semis between Spain v. Russia and the US v. Argentina. And ESPN has a brief recap of the Russia v. Spain game. I’ll keep my eye out for a more passionate recap, though. Spottieottiedopalicious!

Update 2: Spain’s leading daily newspaper, El Pais, reports on the game with Russia. The Russian press spilled a lot of ink on their team’s quarterfinal win over Lithuania, and not so much ink on their semifinal loss to Spain…

What? You don’t surf with Google’s Chrome browser? I hope you have fun looking for some sort of translating software instead having Chrome do it for you on the spot…

Why Blog?

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

Blogging is very time consuming. It’s cutting seriously into the life of leisure for which I am so obviously gifted. I am certainly not trying to achieve fame. I renounced that particular kind of folly many years ago: It’s not worth it because you are likely to fail. It’s not even worth it when you succeed according to many tabloid stories.

I can’t even say I am terribly successful in terms of effect achieved.

Only 26 people at most read my most recent ambitious posting, “Fascism Explained”. Writing it took me the better part of two or three half-days. Its sequel, “How about Communism?” captured only a little less of my free time and it was read by the same small number of people at best.

My two biggest hits ever, “The Inauguration; the Hamas Victory” and “Advice to Pres. Obama on Manhood” were each read by 56 people maximum.

Why am I alienating my free time that way? Why this fairly futile effort on my part? I could be on my pretty boat on Monterey Bay catching suicidal and cognitively challenged fish. Or, I could simply be reading one of the books I have been wanting to read for weeks. I might even rub my wife’s feet instead. (She is a talented artist and a conservative who thinks Attila the Hun was kind of a girlie man. The only thing that reaches her nowadays is hard foot massaging.)

There is an answer to this multiply-worded single question above:  Continue reading →