Oct 9, 2008 | Dollars & Crosses
Washington, D.C. –Asked when American combat forces should be used to quell humanitarian crises that pose no threat to U.S. security, Barack Obama pointed to Darfur and Rwanda, saying, “When genocide is happening…and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.” McCain agreed: “We must do whatever we can to prevent genocide.”
But according to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “Vowing to send U.S. troops on selfless missions is a travesty.
“What Obama dismisses as standing ‘idly by’ really means: to protect the irreplaceable lives of American soldiers by refusing to ship them off on sundry ‘peacekeeping’ missions that do nothing to make us safe. That is not some cold-hearted gesture, but the government’s moral obligation. Nothing but a threat to American lives or freedom can justify putting our soldiers in harm’s way. Demanding they spill their blood in order to stop warring tribes from slaughtering each other is an obscene violation of their rights–regardless of how noble McCain or Obama thinks the cause is. “Our soldiers deserve better. Instead of sacrificing U.S. treasure and lives for the alleged welfare of foreigners, we should demand a foreign policy that treats American security as its exclusive concern.”
Oct 7, 2008 | Dollars & Crosses
Washington, D.C.–Columbus Day, observed this year on October 13, will celebrate the 516th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America.
“Although in recent decades Columbus Day has fallen out of favor in many circles, it is vitally important that we continue to celebrate this holiday with pride,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
“Columbus Day is, at root, a celebration of the worldwide spread of Western civilization–a value that is under attack by ‘multiculturalists.’
“Multiculturalism, which rejects the idea that some cultures are superior to others, makes it possible for American Indian activists to get away with castigating Columbus as a ‘cultural imperialist,’ calling for abolition of his holiday and replacing it with ‘Indigenous Peoples Day.’ This is outrageous. Contrary to the multiculturalist position, it is possible to demonstrate objectively that one society is superior to another–by the standard of what benefits human life. By this standard, modern industrial society is incomparably superior to the barbaric, tribalistic Stone Age culture of the Indians who predated Columbus.
“Those who attack Columbus Day are attacking the distinctive values of Western civilization that America so proudly embraces–reason, science, individual rights, and capitalism. Americans need to understand that their lives and happiness are at stake in the struggle to uphold the core values of Western civilization–a struggle that is epitomized by the continuing controversy over Columbus Day.
“We need not evade nor excuse Columbus’s flaws–his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives–to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion,” Bowden said. “On Columbus Day, we must continue to celebrate that civilization, and declare our resolve to defend it against both its intellectual and political enemies.”
Oct 6, 2008 | Dollars & Crosses
From Thomas Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus:
Q: […] Multiculturalism regards all societies and traditions as of equal merit and is very critical of the West, claiming to see in America an explanation for the world’s evils. How can you defend the West, as you do in your book, and claim that its traditions and civilization are superior?
A: […] Defending Western civilization is not defending the “superiority” of white men. That other peoples had not developed the application of reason to life does not mean that they are in any way inferior. It means that they had not yet achieved what the Europeans achieved over many centuries. But if we take an objective look at the standards of men’s lives, then Western civilization is superior in very visible ways. The Indians might have developed it all on their own, but they did not. There is no such thing as a racial inferiority that says they couldn’t have done it. But you don’t have to invent everything yourself to benefit from it, and any gift of knowledge is a great gift. In any case, tribal society is prerational. And no moral blame can be attached to a tribal society living in a prerational, primitive manner. I always point out that there is no shame in having ancestors called “savages” since everyone living on Earth today has ancestors who were in fact savages. The root of the word is “forest,” meaning people who live in the forest. […] Q: But what about the ways the Europeans treated the Indians in America? Doesn’t that prove that Western civilization was corrupt and brutish? A: What happened is that there were Europeans who abandoned civilized standards in dealing with the Indians. The problem wasn’t that those Europeans had too much civilization. The problem was that they had too little. It is true that many Christian Europeans treated the Indians brutally. But it is also true that the Europeans treated the Indians no differently that they treated one another. Think of Europe’s endless wars. And it is true that the Europeans treated the Indians in ways the Indian tribes treated one another. [Stephen Goode, Insight Magazine, 2007. Hat Tip: Provenzo Express]
Oct 6, 2008 | Dollars & Crosses
Washington, D.C.–President Bush just signed into law what the Wall Street Journal describes as “a low-interest loan package to aid U.S. auto makers.”
“Have we learned nothing from the subprime mortgage fiasco?” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “We are embroiled in a credit crisis, rooted in government policies that promoted and backed reckless, low-interest loans to subprime home buyers–loans that could eventually cost Americans trillions of dollars in bailouts and losses. And now, when lenders on the private market understandably won’t lend $25 billion to car companies that often shed billions by the quarter, the government is making reckless, low-interest loans to these subprime automakers?
“Obviously, our government has learned nothing from the crisis. But it has taught industry a terrible lesson: you fail, you get a bailout.”
Oct 2, 2008 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes Alex Epstein on the $700 Billion Bailout at FoxNews:
This socialistic power grab, just like the last half dozen, is being sold as a necessary, one-time “emergency” measure. But these measures are simply greater and greater doses of the poison that got us where we are in the first place: government manipulation of the housing and financial markets.
Government manipulator number one was the Federal Reserve, which dictated artificially low interest rates, inflating the currency to create the illusion of economic growth. The result was a borrowing spree by banks, which proceeded to lend nonexistent capital to homebuyers, who proceeded to collectively fuel a housing boom–which fueled a boom in mortgage-backed securities. Fannie and Freddie added dramatically to the number of bad loans and bad securities on the market under the banner of “affordable housing,” using their implicit government backing to make trillions in loans that wouldn’t have otherwise been made. And there were dozens of other government-created distortions, from rating agencies to the “too big to fail” policy.
Many private bankers and borrowers made foolish decisions: they should have known housing prices cannot go up forever. But today’s crisis could not have reached a fraction of its current proportions were it not for the government’s power to create bubbles and pervert lending practices in the name of some indefinable “public interest.” The basic solution, therefore, is to disentangle and remove the government from the financial and housing markets. This means, for starters, getting rid of the Fed’s power to manipulate interest rates, letting housing prices fall to market levels, dismantling Fannie and Freddie, and ending bailout promises.
Untangling this government mess is not an overnight job, and it is not obvious how best to proceed. It is conceivable that on the way to removing its toxic presence, a repentant government might need to take stopgap financial assistance measures to prevent market-wide catastrophe. The current plans, however, do not seek to dismantle the government’s command-and-control financial apparatus, but to expand it. Observe that Bush’s recent explanation of the causes of the crisis didn’t even mention the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, let alone give them proper blame. But he did mention them in all his solutions, which give these entities near-dictatorial control over financial markets.
Read the entire article here.
Oct 1, 2008 | Dollars & Crosses
What: A lecture examining the escalating censorship in America and explaining what is needed to protect our freedom of speech
Who: Eric Daniels, research assistant professor at Clemson University’s Institute for the Study of Capitalism
Where: 101 Morgan Hall, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
When: Monday, October 6, 2008, 7 pm
Description: In this lecture, Dr. Daniels examines the state of free speech in America and finds that it is under serious threat. From campus speech codes to anti-discrimination and harassment law, from campaign finance to commercial speech, Americans today enjoy less and less freedom in communicating their ideas. Today’s colleges and universities have become a hotbed of censorship, producing generations of Americans who have accepted suppression of speech as the norm. Daniels argues that the emerging crisis is a result of the lack of a proper understanding of individual rights, especially property rights. Only by understanding the proper basis of rights can we act to secure our freedom of speech and to protect the rights that give rise to it.
Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a research assistant professor at Clemson University’s Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has lectured internationally on American history, particularly on American intellectual history, business history and political history. He taught for five years at Duke University’s Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, where he was nominated for a university-wide teaching award. Dr. Daniels was a contributor to the recently published Oxford Companion to United States History, and wrote a chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust. He has appeared on C-SPAN and Voice of America Radio.
