Nov 22, 2019 | Culture
Theodore Dalrymple has written an eloquent, insightful review on the memoir of David Cameron:
David Cameron’s supreme achievement is banality
For a man to have been at the peak of political power for six years and to have written a 700-page memoir without a single arresting thought or amusing anecdote, without giving any insight into the important people he has met, and without displaying any interest in, let alone knowledge of, history, philosophy or higher culture, is an achievement of a kind.
Public relations as the queen of the sciences
In a sense, Mr. Cameron is a Kantian: he believes that we can never get beyond appearance to things in themselves. Behind presentation there is no substance: just more presentation, so that public relations is the queen of the sciences and opinion polls must be consulted as Roman soothsayers consulted chicken entrails.
A “bread and circuses” populist against Brexit populism
Mr. Cameron castigates supporters of Brexit as populist, but he is himself a firm believer in the circus-division of a bread-and-circuses regime, for example counting Britain’s high tally of medals in the London Olympics as a great national success and cause for pride, rather than as evidence of a shameful and frivolous concentration on a trivial diversion during a period of national decline.
Conserving the principle of statism
Mr. Cameron poses not only as a man of the people, but also as a conservative, admitting in his memoir, however, that he means by this the pursuit of progressive ends (that is to say, the fashionable nostra of the day) by conservative means: once again, the form without the content. And insofar as he can be said to have any philosophy at all, it is profoundly marked by statism.
“Valuting ambition” + “utter mediocrity” = Cameron
In the end, I felt slightly sorry for David Cameron. There is no plumbing his shallows. As politicians go, he was obviously at the decent end of the spectrum, he was no monster; but when vaulting ambition (as his must surely have been) is allied to utter mediocrity, the result is… 700 pages that are a torture to read.
Cameron’s memoir may not be worth reading, but the entirety of Mr. Darymple’s “arresting and amusing” essay, David Cameron’s Big Lie, surely is.
Nov 20, 2019 | Politics
Alex Epstein on the moral case for fossil fuels at the University of Texas at Austin followed by a Q&A.
Nov 15, 2019 | Culture
Arthur Milikh exposes the lies and distortions behind the New York Time’s so-called “1619 Project” that seeks to reinterpret the history of America, over at City Journal.
Writes Milikh:
To make America’s Founding contemptible, one must hide, ignore, and distort the Founders’ writings and thoughts. Irresponsibly omitted from this narrative is the fact that not a single major Founder endorsed slavery.
[…]
Ample evidence shows that the Founders wished for an end to slavery, contrary to the Times’s assertion that “neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery.” John Adams argued, “every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.” He hoped that the inequalities of the Old World would eventually disappear. In 1778, Jefferson introduced a bill in the Virginia legislature banning the importation of slavery, which he hoped would lead to the institution’s “final eradication.”
[…]
It is true that, in order to ratify the Constitution, the Founders decided to allow the abhorrent practice of slavery to continue for a limited time. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and possibly other states, would never have ratified the Constitution otherwise. This decision was made, however, on what the Founders considered prudential grounds—better to have union than endless wars among the states.
[…]
Another often-ignored fact is that America was home to approximately 60,000 free blacks around the time of the Founding; this number tripled in just 20 years. Black Americans voted in several states, which appears to make America the first nation in recorded history where both races voted side by side. Those free and freed persons represented the beginning of our long and strenuous path toward justice.
Black Americans have been treated in a grossly unjust fashion throughout our history. But the Declaration and the Constitution themselves, according to the Founders’ intentions, contain the principles through which justice would come, as Fredrick Douglass and, later, Martin Luther King, Jr. believed. These countervailing facts and statements, should produce a more balanced view of America’s Founding. Why, then, are they so thoroughly and carefully avoided by today’s narrative-creators, who intend to persuade through distortion?
Rather than indulge in recrimination, we should follow Lincoln in seeking “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and “to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves.” Manipulating the next generation to disdain the American Founding will not accomplish this.
The 1619 Project, by selectively failing to highlight critical facts, is not a project to educate and enlighten, but to destroy and demean, and bury the actual principle that animated America’s greatness: individual rights.
The entire essay, America’s Founding Was Not Defined By Slavery and White Supremacy as NY Times’ 1619 Project Claims, is worth a read.
Nov 15, 2019 | Politics
“How do you communicate when the government censors the internet?” asks Forbes Contributor John Koetsier in Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can’t Block: Usage Up 3685%. According to Koestsier,
“With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet. That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Francisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.”
Government regulates; freedom innovates.
Nov 8, 2019 | Culture
Is history marching inevitably towards centrally planned socialism, as Karl Marx proclaimed? Or is the best path to continued progress and expanding prosperity liberal, democratic capitalism as recommended by Ludwig von Mises?
Learn more at http://misesvsmarx.aier.org
Nov 8, 2019 | Politics
Writes Carl Barney on the celebration he hosted:
I was honored to host at my home a celebration for my dear friend and mentor, Leonard Peikoff, on the occasion of his 86th birthday. It was a delightful evening. Leonard’s close friends engaged warmly, and a dinner was served in an elegant surrounding.
Several guests, including Lisa VanDamme, Andrew Lewis, and myself, expressed our profound gratitude for Leonard, his books, courses, and advice that has impacted our lives so greatly. It was an evening to be remembered.
Video and photographs of the celebration can be viewed here.
Mr. Barney has done much work in advising and funding the spread of Objectivism through his Prometheus Foundation.
Nov 8, 2019 | Business, Politics
In an age with a frenzy of Government antitrust departments going after successful businessines like: Alphabet (Google), Amazon and Facebook, Bill Gates commented in a recent interview that he thinks that Windows would have been dominant in the mobile phone category if not for the DOJ antitrust suit against Microsoft.
“There’s no doubt the antitrust lawsuit was bad for Microsoft, and we would have been more focused on creating the phone operating system, and so instead of using Android today, you would be using Windows Mobile if it hadn’t been for the antitrust case” […] “Oh, we were so close….I was just too distracted. I screwed that up because of the distraction.” He said the company was three months too late with a release Motorola would have used on a phone….Now nobody here has ever heard of Windows Mobile. But oh, well. That’s a few hundred billion here or there…” [Bill Gates: People would use Windows Mobile if not for antitrust case]
This is a damning indictment of how government policy determines winners and losers in the marketplace.
(It would be an interesting investigation to see how many government officials and their cronies have profited over Microsoft losing the Mobile category to Google and Apple.)
Even worse, reports the article:
Gates also said he would not have retired as soon had it not been for the U.S. government case, which began in 1998. Gates started the company with Paul Allen in 1975, then stepped aside as CEO in 2000, letting Steve Ballmer take the reins as the antitrust case was at its peak.
From the archives:
Nov 8, 2019 | Business, Politics
From Bill Gates: People would use Windows Mobile if not for antitrust case:
Gates also said he would not have retired as soon had it not been for the U.S. government case, which began in 1998. Gates started the company with Paul Allen in 1975, then stepped aside as CEO in 2000, letting Steve Ballmer take the reins as the antitrust case was at its peak.
Recommended Reading:
Nov 6, 2019 | Politics
“British did not give us democracy. Democracy is only the means. The end is freedom. British gave us all the institutions of freedom: the rule of law, human rights, free speech, freedom of association, the free-market.”
Nov 6, 2019 | Politics
Wake Tech’s James Roberson moderates two distinguished speakers, authors, and professors -– Dr. John Komlos and Dr. Richard Salsman — to debate Socialism vs. Capitalism.
Nov 6, 2019 | Politics
Douglas Murray to discuss his new book The Madness of Crowds: Race, Gender and Identity. Murray examines the most divisive issues today, including sexuality, gender, and technology, and how new culture wars are playing out everywhere in the name of social justice, identity politics, and intersectionality. Is European culture and society in a death spiral caused by immigration and assimilation? Robinson and Murray also discuss the roles that Brexit and the rise of populism in European politics play in writing immigration laws across the European Union.
Nov 5, 2019 | Culture
Five myths cloud our perception of both the past and the present:
(1) The “robber baron” myth, which holds that in late nineteenth-century America there were powerful men who became rich at the expense of the poor. The reality is that they became wealthy by being productive, and that there is no other period in history which saw such a rapid and widespread improvement in the well-being of the average individual;
(2) The myth that the Great Depression was caused by a failure of business, when it was, in fact, produced by a failure of government and specifically by the Federal Reserve System;
(3) The myth that government in the economy has expanded in response to public demand, when, actually, the public has had to be sold “hard” for politicians to enact every major social program;
(4) The “free lunch” myth, which forces the individual to pay more, no matter how the government raises money – by taxing individuals, by taxing businesses, or by printing more money; and
(5) The myth that government, like Robin Hood, transfers wealth from the rich to the poor, when the reality is that the government usually transfers wealth and income from both the very rich and the very poor to those in the middle.
Nov 4, 2019 | Politics
Reports the NY Post, on Pregnant Florida mom uses AR-15 to kill home intruder
A pregnant woman is credited with saving the lives of her husband and daughter after she used an AR-15 to fatally gun down a home intruder, a report said. The hero mom sprung into action when two intruders entered the family’s Lithia, Fla. home last week and pistol whipped her husband while violently grabbing their daughter, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. “They came in heavily hooded and masked,” the husband, Jeremy King, told Bay News 9. “As soon as they had got the back door opened, they had a pistol on me and was grabbing my 11-year-old daughter.”
[…]
“He made it from my back door to roughly 200 feet out in the front ditch before the AR did its thing.” […] The homeowner said he took a “severe beating,” but credited his wife for saving him. “I’ve got a fractured eye socket, a fractured sinus cavity, a concussion, 20 stitches and three staples in my head,” said King. “Them guys came in with two normal pistols and my AR stopped it. [My wife] evened the playing field and kept them from killing me.”
Nov 2, 2019 | Education
Education policy analyst Andrew Coulson travels to Michigan’s prestigious Cranbrook High School, one of the top ten private high schools in America, in “Push or Pull,” the second episode of School, Inc.
Cranbrook — and other excellent private schools in America –typically don’t “scale-up” to replicate their excellence on a larger scale and serve more students. So, is there someplace else where scaling up excellence is happening?
The answer is “yes” and it is in America’s charter schools.
But when charter schools compete with public schools, there is often trouble ahead. From those involved we hear how the Sabis School, tremendously successful in Springfield, Massachusetts, was prevented from operating in nearby Brockton, because a school superintendent decided such excellence was simply not in the best interest of his public school.
For six years the American Indian Charter School, part of a small network of California charter schools, ranked among the top middle schools in California. But in the spring of 2013 the Oakland Public School District voted to shut down all three American Indian Schools, because the charter school had chosen to use its own special education services, and not those controlled by the state; that resulted in a loss of revenue to the public school system.
Not every story has a negative outcome. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the city’s vibrant charter schools came to the rescue, and provided the facilities and services which other schools needed to get back on their feet. Finally, Coulson travels to South America, for a comparison of how the success of Chile’s wine industry sets the scene for the growth of the country’s successful private school networks.
Chile’s private schools consistently outperform schools in all other Latin American countries, but trouble is always on the horizon. Still the private school networks of Chile provide a note of optimism in Andrew Coulson’s journey to discover the secrets of School, Inc.
Oct 30, 2019 | Culture
Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe.
A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years) with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe, this provocative work examines ‘flashpoints’—unique geopolitical hotspots where tensions have erupted throughout history—and why conflict is due to emerge again.
“There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8-Ball.” —The New York Times Magazine
With uncanny accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. Now, in Flashpoints, he focuses on the continent that was the cultural and power nexus of the world for five-hundred years: Europe. Analyzing the historical fault lines that have existed for centuries within the borderlands of Europe and Russia–which have been the hotbed of numerous catastrophic wars–Friedman walks readers through the flashpoints that are smoldering once again. The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize these built-in geopolitical tensions, but as Friedman shows with a mix of fascinating history and provocative cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints is George Friedman’s most timely book, delivering an unflinching forecast for the coming years.
About the author:
George Friedman is the Chairman and founder of Stratfor, the world’s leading private intelligence company. He is frequently called upon as a media expert in intelligence and international geopolitics, and is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Oct 29, 2019 | Education
Haaretz has an interview with Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden:
Twenty prisoners live in one small room. They are handcuffed, their heads shaved, every move is monitored by ceiling cameras. A bucket in the corner of the room is their toilet. The daily routine begins at 6 A.M. They are learning Chinese, memorizing propaganda songs and confessing to invented sins. They range in age from teenagers to elderly. Their meals are meager: cloudy soup and a slice of bread. Torture – metal nails, fingernails pulled out, electric shocks – takes place in the “black room.” Punishment is a constant. The prisoners are forced to take pills and get injections. It’s for disease prevention, the staff tell them, but in reality they are the human subjects of medical experiments. Many of the inmates suffer from cognitive decline. Some of the men become sterile. Women are routinely raped. Such is life in China’s reeducation camps, as reported in rare testimony provided by Sayragul Sauytbay (pronounced: Say-ra-gul Saut-bay, as in “bye”), a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden. Few prisoners have succeeded in getting out of the camps and telling their story. Sauytbay’s testimony is even more extraordinary, because during her incarceration she was compelled to be a teacher in the camp. China wants to market its camps to the world as places of educational programs and vocational retraining, but Sauytbay is one of the few people who can offer credible, firsthand testimony about what really goes on in the camps.
The article also posts the official Chinese response to Sauytbay’s claims:
In Xinjiang in recent years, [responds the Chinese embassy in Sweden], “China has been under serious threats of ethnic separatism, religious extremism and violent terrorism. The vocational education and training centers have been established in accordance with the law to eradicate extremism, which is not ‘prison camp.’” As a result of the centers, according to the Chinese, “there has been no terrorist incident in Xinjiang for more than three years. The vocational education and training work in Xinjiang has won the support of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and positive comments from many countries across the world.”
None of the countries are listed, but one NBA billionare who is “educated on the situation at hand” on China agrees.
Read the full article: A million people are jailed at China’s gulags. I managed to escape. Here’s what really goes on inside
Oct 29, 2019 | Politics
The Mathusian is quoted in the Daily Mail Online:
Prince William has warned that the future of wildlife is under threat from rapid population growth, as he prepares to welcome his third child.
Oct 28, 2019 | Culture
Author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It’s not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how the meeting and mating of ideas.
