Nov 28, 2017 | Culture
Professor Jason D. Hill, a Jamaican-born professor of philosophy at DePaul University, writes in An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates: writes that Coate's ideology and his book, Between the World and Me, "function as deputized stand-ins for the black male and the black experience in America, respectively. And I believe that as stand-ins, both fail. Because I write as a black immigrant who chose to live in the United States, whose biggest hope as a child was to become an American citizen, and who chose to embrace the American Dream you condemn, please consider these words my Declaration of Independence—an independence that only my beloved America could have given to me."Continues Hill later in his letter:
I am saddened by your conviction that white people wield such a great deal of metaphysical power over the exercise of your own agency. In making an enemy of the Dream that is a constitutive feature of American identity, you have irrevocably alienated yourself from the redemptive hope, the inclusive unity, and the faith and charity that are necessary for America to move ever closer to achieving moral excellence. Sadder still, you have condemned the unyielding confidence in self that the Dream inspires.
Hill continues to make many important points, such as why...1. The American Dream is proof of the metaphysical impotence of racism:
In the 32 years I have lived in this great country, I have never once actively fought racism. I have simply used my own example as evidence of its utter stupidity and moved forward with absolute metaphysical confidence, knowing that the ability of other people to name or label me has no power over my self-esteem, my mind, my judgment, and—above all—my capacity to liberate myself through my own efforts.On this matter, you have done your son—to whom you address your book—an injustice. You write: “The fact of history is that black people have not—probably no people ever have—liberated themselves strictly by their own efforts. In every great change in the lives of African Americans we see the hands of events that were beyond our individual control, events that were not unalloyed goods.”I do not believe you intended to mislead your son, but in imparting this credo, you have potentially paralyzed him, unless he reappraises your philosophy and rejects it. In your misreading of America, you’ve communicated precisely why many blacks in this country have been alienated from their own agency and emancipatory capabilities. The most beleaguered people on the planet, the Jews, who have faced persecution since their birth as a people, are a living refutation of your claim.
2. There is nothing beautiful, noble or special about skin color per se:
You touch on your flirtation with some special black racial essentialism in your book, and it is both affecting and sympathetic: “My working theory then held all black people as kings in exile, a nation of original men severed from our original names and our majestic Nubian culture. Surely this was the message I took from gazing out in the [Howard] Yard. Had any people, anywhere, ever been as sprawling and beautiful as us?” Unfortunately, there is nothing special about the black body. There is nothing special about any racially distinct physical body per se. Black skin does not convey nobility. Neither does white skin, or yellow skin. Your body is not special until it conjoins itself to a mind and adapts nature to its needs and desires and rational aspirations, its self-actualization and manifested agency. Any human body that fails to achieve a self-cultivated moral character and inscrutable human will is merely an ecological social ballast: ignoble, exploitable, a heap of unintelligible flesh on this earth.
3. Abnegation of personal responsibility promotes the pathology of black on black crime:
This abnegation of personal responsibility assumes its logical end in your failure to grant black people responsibility for their own lives in the phenomenon of black-on-black crime. You tell your son: “Black-on-black crime is jargon, violence to language . . . . To yell black-on-black crime is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding.” Why? You give no reasons. In truth, black-on-black crime is a pathology that has to be reckoned with.
4. So-called reparations are based on the racist notion of collective guilt:
No self-respecting black person ought to take a single penny from the state for the infliction of any ancestral damage. The very premise supposes that blacks are wards of the state. If individual rights are currently being violated by states that illegally discriminate against blacks, that is a matter to be redressed in the courts. People who are possessed of self-esteem, who are dignified individuals capable of supporting themselves, do not seek any form of reparations. It is beneath them. Reason indicated that you cannot codify either collective guilt or collective entitlement. And reparations are predicated on the attribution of collective guilt, which in turn is based on the worst form of racism: biological collectivism. [...] By what impertinence would you hold any white person guilty for the crime of simply being born white? You would, perhaps, imply that an accident of birth confers on them a white privilege for which they are to spend the rest of their lives atoning.
5. On why individualism is the solution to the collectivism of racism:
I myself have cultivated a love of humanity. It is a love for the human species that involves, above all, and paradoxically, a ruthless practice of individualism. This is America, where chromosomal predestination must be challenged by individual achievement.[...]Here’s another idea: How about blacks just ask that white people not regard them as anything special and not obstruct their efforts to enhance their lives?[...]But I suspect my request for our being ignored and left alone to create our own destiny will not satisfy you. This is because you are trading on black suffering to create a perpetual caste of racial innocents. And the currency of your economic system is white guilt.
An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates is must reading.
Nov 20, 2017 | Culture
Let’s stop normalizing the Palestinian movement | TheHill
....By negating the need for objective moral judgment and acting on it, our policymakers have landed us in a dead-end situation that sells out our ideal of individual freedom and harms our regional ally, Israel. We need to begin undoing that pattern. For a start: Stop normalizing the Palestinian movement. Stop brushing aside and playing down its crimes and vicious aims. Stop pretending that one faction, Fatah, is somehow well-intentioned — a fact refuted by its murderous, tyrannical history, not to mention its openness to allying with Hamas. Let's recognize that the Palestinian movement is deeply hostile to individual freedom, and treat it accordingly.
Nov 20, 2017 | Culture
Robert Stubblefield has penned this excellent letter to the Aiken Standard on why "School vouchers have benefit outside of religion":
Star Parker’s recent column noted that school voucher programs could allow religious parents to shield their children from bad ideas currently taught in government schools. Evolution, abortion and gay marriage are bad ideas to many religionists. Note that secularists might use vouchers to avoid their children being taught such ideas as profit is bad, sacrifice is good, words are equivalent to sticks and stones, and that racism to get diversity is OK.(Alternatively, tax credits for education would also allow such avoidance of government indoctrination without funds first flowing through the hands of sticky-fingered, bureaucracy-expanding government bureaucrats, who could set requirements – that a school qualifies for a program only if government-approved ideas are taught – more easily than a legislature could.)The fundamental fact is that the government’s virtual monopoly on education means every student is taught content and methods approved by the government. And the dismal results of our educational system are so well-known that late-night TV shows have frequent man-in-the-street interviews illustrating people’s ignorance of geography, history, our form of government, current events … much worse than the missing and confused content of students’ minds is the fact that they lack the correct methods of thinking. Many act as if public opinion establishes fact and feelings yield knowledge. They are not taught to think in principles because the ruling educational philosophy is pragmatism, which holds that there are no principles.For a superlative analysis of what government schools have done to abuse education and what a free system can do better, see the book “Teaching Johnny to Think” by Leonard Peikoff and Marlene Trollope.But the main point I want to make is about the relation of this issue to the principle of the separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers recognized the potential tyranny of giving the government control of religious ideas. At the time there were no governments monopolizing the ideas educators promulgated. If there had been, they might have seen the church/state separation rule as a narrower instance of a broader principle: there should be an ideology/state separation. The state should have no role in promoting or decrying any particular set of ideas. Its sole job is to protect the individual rights of its citizens from the initiation of force at home and abroad. -- Robert Stubblefield
Nov 20, 2017 | Politics
https://youtu.be/S-nsU_DaIZE“[H]alf of that greening comes from carbon dioxide itself. In other words, the fact that we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air means there's more fuel to grow plants and when a plant has more carbon dioxide in yet doesn't have to open its pores so much so it doesn't lose so much water in absorbing the carbon dioxide that it needs to grow and so there's tons of experiments now showing that plants grow faster if there's more carbon dioxide in the air; roughly speaking on average for a 200 parts per million increase in carbon dioxide in the air you get a 30% improvement in plant growth. That's experiments both in the field and in the laboratory. So it's really quite a remarkable phenomenon here because of the burning of fossil fuels we're making the planet greener. It's an astonishing discovery I think. I think it's rather amazing and of course it's an incredibly unwelcome discovery for the environmental movement. They don't want to hear this at all and how is it possible…” – Matt Ridley
Nov 20, 2017 | Politics
Writes Peter Schwartz at TheHill on 'America First:' Rethinking the meaning of self-interest:
On his latest foreign trip to Asia, President Trump again invoked the idea of “America first.” As someone who is repelled by Trump and his presidency, I am a little reluctant to justify something he nominally upholds. But, actually, his support for it is all the more reason it needs to be clarified and defended — defended not only against those who criticize it, but against those, like Trump, who embrace it for the wrong reasons.
Schwartz succinctly identifies that "America First" means a policy of "taking action to defend the individual rights of Americans" and that to sacrifice those inalienable rights for "the nation" is a contradiction in terms.
A nation’s self-interest consists of the interests of its citizens. And there is one fundamental social value that is in everyone’s interest: individual freedom. The ultimate goal of American foreign policy — the end to which all alliances and confrontations are the means — is the preservation of Americans’ freedom against attacks from abroad. “America first” is a policy of taking action to defend the individual rights of Americans — the rights to their property, to their liberty, to their lives — when they are physically threatened.Concomitantly, it is a policy of refusing to sacrifice those rights by elevating the needs of other nations above our own.
Schwartz then shows that "Trump’s interpretation of 'America first' is shaped by the collectivist notion of economic nationalism":
A foreign policy based on self-interest, therefore, embraces free trade, with everyone (leaving aside dealings with countries that pose military dangers to us) allowed to seek out the best products at the lowest prices — which is, incidentally, how the entire society prospers. This is radically different from Trump’s outlook. Trump cannot conceive of trade as being mutually beneficial. Instead, he argues that one party’s gain comes only at another’s loss. His ideal is the conniving wheeler-dealer, master of the “art of the deal,” who manages to put one over on his partner. His view of human interaction is that one must be either victimizer or victim, predator or prey. So he calls on the government to intervene and decide who is to be favored and who is to be sacrificed.
Read the rest: 'America First:' Rethinking the meaning of self-interest
Nov 14, 2017 | Culture
It’s No Mystery Why the Fed Sees Low Inflation as a Mystery - The Daily Capitalist
The Wall Street Journal reports that Fed head “Yellen Defends Fed Rate-Rise Plan Despite ‘Mystery’ of Low Inflation.” For Yellen, it’s a “mystery” that the U.S. today enjoys, simultaneously, a low rate of inflation (1.9%) and unemployment (4.4%). It’s a fact, yet “theoretically” impossible, per Yellen, so she’ll keep raising the Fed’s policy interest rate, hoping to prevent further declines in the jobless rate. Get it?Here’s why Yellen’s silly mystery is no mystery at all, at least to those who know something about the good and bad of economic theory and know some economic history too. For decades, Keynesian economists and their dominant textbooks have pushed the erroneous claim, to millions of students (including many now working at the Fed), that there’s an inevitable, unavoidable “trade-off” between a nation’s inflation rate and jobless rate. This bogus “cost-push” theory of inflation asserts that a low jobless rate somehow boosts labor’s “bargaining power” versus Scrooge-like employers, who eventually buckle under and concede to pay higher wage rates but, intent on preserving profit margins, also raise prices (thus inflation). The alleged tradeoff is captured by the so-called “Phillips Curve.” It’s in Yellen’s head.In fact, inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon; technically, it’s a decline in the purchasing power of money caused by the interplay between the supply of and demand for money. Its effect is a general rise in prices. The main determiners of money supply are its monopoly issuers: today’s central banks (including the Fed). Contrary to what the Phillips Curve myth implies, inflation is not caused by real factors – i.e., by a greater proportion of folks working to produce things or by faster rates of growth in economic output. In fact, stability in the value (or purchasing power) of money, much like stability in the rule of law and policy, fosters better growth and employment. Such stability is also beneficial for profits and equities.
Read the rest.
Nov 14, 2017 | Business, Politics
From: Richest 1% own over half the world's wealth - Business Insider
The world's richest 1% of families and individuals hold over half of global wealth, according to a new report from Credit Suisse. The report suggests inequality is still worsening some eight years after the worst global recession in decades.[...]"The bottom half of adults collectively own less than 1% of total wealth, the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 88% of global assets, and the top percentile alone accounts for half of total household wealth," the Credit Suisse report said.[...]In most countries, including the US, a large wealth gap translates into those at the top accruing political power, which in turn can lead to policies that reinforce benefits for the wealthy.
The real question is: how many used political power to acquire wealth as opposed to honestly producing it economically? If someone created the wealth -- like a Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos -- then they rightfully own the assets they created.Billionaire politicians and dictators (Castro, Putin, etc.) who earned their money through political means -- theft and cronyism -- do not.Sadly Business Insider, like much of the anti-capitalist press, does not make that distinction.
Nov 1, 2017 | Culture
Capitalist Richard Salsman: The Limits of Public Debt
November 13, 2017, | 4:00–5:00 PM | Broyhill Auditorium (Farrell A31), 1834 Wake Forest Rd, Winston-Salem NC
Government borrowing is at record levels, by some measures, and is projected to climb still higher in the coming decade. Are there “tipping points” we should worry about? If so, what happens after that?Why do governments borrow in the first place? Why do they sometimes over-borrow? Why (and how) do they sometimes default? Are democracies more prone to over-borrowing than other regime types? Does excessive public borrowing commit intergenerational injustice?While answering these questions and illustrating public debt history in multi-century charts, this talk reveals what leading political economists – from Smith in the 18th century to Krugman in the 21st century – have said about public debt. Theorists are classified as pessimists, optimists, and realists. The talk reveals which factors best distinguish these views, which view dominates today’s public debt debate, and why it matters.
Richard Salsman, PhD, is an assistant professor in the philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) program at Duke University and a core faculty member of the political economy program there. He received his B.A. in Government and Economics from Bowdoin College (1981), his M.A. in Economics from New York University (1988), and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke (2012). Prior to entering academia, he was a banker in New York City (the Bank of New York and Citibank) and founder and president of InterMarket Forecasting, Inc.Dr. Salsman is the author of two books—Breaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions and Gold and Liberty—in addition to scholarly journal articles and dozens of essays on political economy for Forbes. His most recent book, The Political Economy of Public Debt: Three Centuries of Theory and Evidence, was published by Elgar in February 2017. Co-sponsored with the Wake Forest Department of Economics
Oct 23, 2017 | Politics
Writes Scott Holleran on Sacrificing Harvey Weinstein:The downfall of movie studio executive Harvey Weinstein following articles earlier this month in The New Yorker and the New York Times alleging sexual assault and harassment not only demonstrates Hollywood’s hypocrisy, though it certainly does that. What’s happened in the two weeks since the Weinstein claims first emerged has major, possibly ominous, implications for due process, free exercise of speech and the press, and moviemaking.
[...]
...Harvey Weinstein’s fast, epic downfall makes faster the fusion of the New Left’s and conservatives’ political agenda. The result is likely to be accelerated momentum toward a common, sinister goal: total government control of the arts, starting with movies.
[...]
In a statement, the Academy celebrated its expulsion of Oscar-winning Harvey Weinstein by boasting that he was rejected by a vote “well in excess of the required two-thirds majority.” The Academy, which has initiated no action against members accused of serial rape and sued for sexual assault (Cosby), convicted of drunk driving before lashing out against Jews, gays and women and pleaded no contest to a charge of battery against an ex-girlfriend (Gibson) and those who plead guilty to a sex crime involving a 13-year-old girl (Polanski, who fled the country), added that they expelled Weinstein “to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.”
[...]Cautioning against jumping to conclusions about Harvey Weinstein fell to film director Woody Allen — who, incidentally, has been offered membership in Hollywood’s academy and refused — who warned that Hollywood’s and New York’s purge “could lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself. That’s not right either.”
The entire article is worth a read.Aug 21, 2017 | Business, Politics
Writes Jason Wilson in "Socialism, fascist-style: hostility to capitalism plus extreme racism: | The Guardian:
...some of the [Alt-Right] groups that marched evince a hostility to neoliberal capitalism, which is equal to that of the most ardent supporters of Bernie Sanders, the leftwing populist who mounted a vigorous challenge to Hillary Clinton during last year’s Democratic primaries – although for the far right it comes inextricably linked to a virulent racism. Many also support the enhancement of the welfare state.For example, those marching under the red and blue banners of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) have signed up to a manifesto that supports a living wage, sweeping improvements in healthcare, an end to sales taxes on “things of life’s necessity” and “land reform” for “affordable housing”.An establishing principle in the document written by their leader, Jeff Schoep, is that the state “shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens”. It calls for “the nationalisation of all businesses which have been formed into corporations”.The manifesto of Matthew Heimbach’s Traditionalist Worker Party calls for “opportunities for workers to have jobs with justice”. And in a manifesto issued on the day of the Charlottesville march, the noted far-right figurehead Richard Spencer wrote that “the interests of businessmen and global merchants should never take precedence over the wellbeing of workers, families, and the natural world”.Spencer has previously spoken out – including at the American Renaissance conference, a gathering of far-right activists in Nashville in July – in favour of “single payer” universal healthcare.At the conference, Spencer gave Trump just three out of 10 when invited to rate him – because he was “too focused on the Republican agenda” of tax cuts and dismantling Obamacare.These critiques of capitalism and mainstream conservatism are key to the socialist element of national socialism. Observers of the far right argue that understanding this is essential to demystifying the far right’s appeal, especially to the alienated millennial men currently swelling its ranks.
Aug 21, 2017 | Philosophy, Politics
Writes Ben Shapiro on The Group That Got Ignored in Charlottesville | Daily Wire:
In Charlottesville, Antifa engaged in street violence with the alt-right racists. As in Weimar, Germany, fascists flying the swastika engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Antifa members flying the communist red. And yet, the media declared that any negative coverage granted to Antifa would detract from the obvious evils of the alt-right. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times tweeted in the midst of the violence, "The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding 'antifa' beating white nationalists being led out of the park." After receiving blowback from the left, Stolberg then corrected herself. She said: "Rethinking this. Should have said violent, not hate-filled. They were standing up to hate."Or perhaps Antifa is a hateful group itself. But that wouldn't fit the convenient narrative Antifa promotes and the media buy: that the sole threat to the republic comes from the racist right. Perhaps that's why the media ignored the events in Sacramento and Berkeley and Seattle -- to point out the evils of Antifa might detract from the evils of the alt-right. That sort of biased coverage only engenders more militancy from the alt-right, which feels it must demonstrate openly and repeatedly to "stand up to Antifa." Which, of course, prompts Antifa to violence.Here's the moral solution, as always: Condemn violence and evil wherever it occurs. The racist philosophy of the alt-right is evil. The violence of the alt-right is evil. The communist philosophy of Antifa is evil. So is the violence of Antifa. If we are to survive as a republic, we must call out Nazis but not punch them; we must stop providing cover to anarchists and communists who seek to hide behind self-proclaimed righteousness to participate in violence.
Aug 11, 2017 | Philosophy, Politics
Dr. Richard Salsman, visiting assistant professor at Duke University, discusses misperceptions about Alexander Hamilton's political philosophy. Salsman offered these comments during an interview for Carolina Journal Radio Program No. 723. Aug 3, 2017 | Business, Politics
From Al Gore can’t deny that his climate crusade involves great suffering | Financial Post:
Take the rising dominance of solar and wind, which is used to paint supporters of fossil fuels as troglodytes, fools, and shills for Big Oil. The combined share of world energy consumption from renewables is all of two per cent. And it’s an expensive, unreliable, and therefore difficult-to-scale two per cent.Because solar and wind are “unreliables,” they need to be backed up by reliable sources of power, usually fossil fuels, or sometimes non-carbon sources including nuclear and large-scale hydro power (all of which Gore and other environmentalists refuse to support). This is why every grid that incorporates significant solar and wind has more expensive electricity. Germans, on the hook for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s self-righteous anti-carbon commitments, are already paying three times the rates for electricity that Americans do.Stories about “100-per-cent renewable” locations like Georgetown, Tex. are not just anecdotal evidence, they are lies.[...]
Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel gives a biased, self-serving, and convenient picture of fossil fuels and climate — convenient for Gore’s legacy, that is, but inconvenient for the billions his energy poverty policies will harm. As citizens, we must start demanding responsible thought leaders who will give us the whole picture that life-and-death energy and climate decisions require.
The lunar shadow enters the United States near Lincoln City, Oregon, at 9:05 a.m. PDT. Totality begins in the United States in Lincoln City, Oregon, at 10:16 a.m. PDT. The total eclipse will end in Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:48 p.m. EDT. The lunar shadow leaves the United States at 4:09 p.m. EDT. A partial eclipse will be visible throughout the United States.NASA has created a 