Video: Being Selfish: The Virtue of Selfishness by Yaron Brook
Quoteable: On Share-the-wealth
“The share-the-wealth movement appeals most to those with the least to share.” ~ Anonymous
[H/T: Anoop Verma]
Simpson: Both Left and Right Don’t Support The *Right* To Free Speech on Principle
Steve Simpson, a constitutional lawyer, and director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute has a brilliant op-ed in TheHill on why Free speech is a right, not a political weapon.
He makes the case for why free speech “protects the right to take the actions necessary to make one’s speech heard, whether that means spending money on political ads or publishing books or newspapers free of the crushing costs of frivolous libel lawsuits.”
1. Trump Does Not View Free Speech as a Right
Trump […] doesn’t view it as a right that protects speakers regardless of their views. […] Whether Trump is opposing free speech outright or trying to bully speakers, he is no friend of free speech.
2. Trump’s Urge to Censor is No Different From Hillary Clinton
[…] Trump’s urge to censor this form of speech [flag-burning] really different from Hillary Clinton’s desire to ban the political speech at issue in Citizens United? The case, which upheld the rights of corporations to speak during elections, involved a law that prevented a nonprofit from distributing a film that criticized Clinton the last time she ran for president. During her campaign, she promised repeatedly to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the case, calling the film it protected “a right-wing attack on me and my campaign.”
3. Campaign Finance Laws Silence Freedom of Speech
During the floor debates for McCain-Feingold, the law at issue in Citizens United, many politicians, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz., included, championed the law because it would prevent groups from funding negative political ads against them. After Citizens United was decided, Congress considered the Disclose Act, which would have forced many organizations to disclose their donors. In praising the law, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that its “deterrent effect” on corporate political speech “should not be underestimated.”
4. Politicians Attacking the Speech of Opponents is Not New
Remember the Obama administration’s attacks on Fox News as “not really a news station”? Or the FCC’s investigations of news broadcasters to determine if their coverage was “biased”? It is certainly scary for Trump to attack the media as he’s done, but it is equally scary when any president or administration does so. […] Remember Harry Reid’s sustained assault on the Koch brothers, whom he called “un-American” for having the temerity to oppose his agenda? Or the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups, which was prompted by politicians who urged the agency to investigate the groups?
5. Both Left and Right Don’t Understand or Support The *Right* To Free Speech on Principle
They treat free speech not as a principle but as a weapon to be used against their political enemies. When your enemies are in power, complain about the threats to speech you like; when you are in power, use government to intimidate and silence your critics.
Don’t for your bookshelf, his book, Defending Free Speech (ARI Press,2016).
Jacoby: Harvesting The Organs of China’s Prisoner’s of Conscience
Writes Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe:
The documentary, “Human Harvest,” won the coveted Peabody Award for its exposé of an unspeakable crime against humanity. In 1999, Chinese hospitals began performing more than 10,000 organ transplants annually, generating a vast and lucrative traffic in “transplant tourists,” who flocked to China on the assurance that they could obtain lifesaving organs without having to languish on a waiting list. China had no voluntary organ-donation system to speak of, yet suddenly it was providing tens of thousands of freshly harvested organs to patients with ready cash or high-placed connections. How was that possible?
The evidence, assembled by human-rights researchers and investigative journalists, added up to something unimaginable: China was killing enormous numbers of imprisoned men and women by strapping them down to operating tables, still conscious, and forcibly extracting their organs — and then delivering those organs to the hospital transplant centers that have become a major source of revenue. Chinese officials claim that organs come from violent criminals on death row. But “Human Harvest” makes it clear that most of those killed are peaceful citizens persecuted for their beliefs: Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians — and, above all, practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddhist-style spiritual movement of peaceful meditation and ethical commitment.
Read the rest of In China, prisoners of conscience are literally being butchered.
See the movie trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EykFRYWl9Q
Bayer: Developing a Critical Mind for Judging The Validity of News
In the The Sniff Test – Medium philosopher Ben Bayer lists 5 important questions one should ask in judging stories we hear online:
(1) What is the source of this story and what do I know about it?
(2) How likely is the story to be true in the first place?
(3) If this were true, what else would be true?
(4) Does the story represent its own facts honestly?
(5) Why do I want to believe it is true? Why would someone else want me to believe it’s true?
Cross: Political Executions in Communist Cuba
Writes James Scott Linville on Plimpton and Hemingway in Cuba in The Paris Review:
Castro’s death has renewed an open, vibrant, and sometimes heated debate about his regime and its treatment of Cuban citizens. Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the Cold War, much less was known in the U.S.—these were not things the American media dwelled upon. An incident while working at The Paris Review with George Plimpton in the early nineties opened my eyes, especially to Che Guevara’s supervision of the detention of political prisoners at La Cabana prison in Havana.
[…]
A sad look overtook his face, and he began to explain: “Years ago, after we’d done the interview, Papa invited me down again to visit him in Cuba.” (In the fifties, George had interviewed Hemingway for the magazine on the Art of Fiction, and now he always referred to him as Papa, as Hemingway encouraged his young friends to do.) “It was right after the revolution,” George continued. After he arrived in Havana, he settled in at a hotel room above a bar. One afternoon, at the end of the day, Hemingway told him, “There’s something you should see,” and to come by the house.
When he arrived at Hemingway’s house he saw they were preparing for some sort of expedition. Before they ventured forth, the elder writer made shakers of drinks, daiquiris or whatever, and packed them up. This group, including a few others, got in the car and drove for some time to the outside of town. Arriving at their destination, they got out, set up chairs, brought out the drinks, and arranged themselves as if they were going to watch the sunset. Soon enough, a truck came, and that, explained George to me, was what they’d been waiting for. It came, as Hemingway explained to them, the same time each day. The truck stopped and some men with guns got out of it. In back were a couple of dozen others who were tied up. Prisoners. The men with guns hustled the others out of the back of the truck and lined them up. And then they shot them. They put the bodies back in the truck and drove off.
Castro’s Legacy: Torture and Execution of Political Opponents
Writes Lee Habeeb on Fidel Castro’s Brutal Dictatorship: Armando Valladares & Cuban Dissidents Tortured | National Review:
A young artist and poet who also happened to be a Christian, Valladares understood the meaning of the request. What he did not know, and could not know, was how far his own government would go to bend him to its will. Soon after his refusal to comply, Valladares was arrested by political police at his parents’ home. Faced with trumped up charges of terrorism — a favorite tactic of the Castro regime for silencing dissent — he was given a 30-year sentence.Valladares would spend time in different prison camps for the next 22 years. The first, La Cabaña, forged some of the very worst memories. “Each night, the firing squad executed scores of men in its trenches,” he told the Becket Fund, which last year honored him with its Canterbury Prize, given annually to a person who embodies an unfailing commitment to religious freedom. “We could hear each phase of the executions, and during this time, these young men — patriots — would die shouting ‘Long live Christ, the King. Down with Communism!’ And then you would hear the gunshots. Every night there were shootings. Every night. Every night. Every night.”
[…]“I spent eight years locked in a blackout cell, without sunlight or even artificial light. I never left. I was stuck in a cell, ten feet long, four feet wide, with a hole in the corner to take care of my bodily needs. No running water. Naked. Eight years,” Valladares recalled. “All of the torture, all of the violations of human rights, had one goal: break the prisoner’s resistance and make them accept political rehabilitation. That was their only objective.”
Related Reading:
Trudeau: Castro’s Useful Idiot
Writes Jonah Goldberg on Fidel Castro died as he lived — praised by useful idiots – LA Times:
The gold medal in the Useful Idiot Olympics should probably go to Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada. In a statement, he expressed his “deep sorrow” upon learning that “Cuba’s longest serving president” had died. […] “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century,” Trudeau continued, repeating that word. “While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante.’”
“El Comandante”: The term drips with affection, doesn’t it? Castro’s “detractors”? Would those be the families of the thousands he had executed? The survivors of Castro’s Caribbean gulag? Those who didn’t drown trying to escape?
Trudeau’s expression of “deep sorrow” was typical of a whole genre of Castro eulogies. His apologists have tended to romanticize the “revolution” and parrot Cuban state propaganda – literacy rates! Free healthcare! – while dispensing antiseptic euphemisms for the brutal reality of what the revolution wrought. At least when people note that Hitler built the autobahn and Mussolini made the trains run on time, they’re usually being ironic. To listen to some Castro defenders, you’d think the scales of justice can balance out any load of horrors, so long as the substandard healthcare is free and the schools (allegedly) teach everyone to read.
As much of the American left is openly mooting whether or not the American president-elect is a dictator in waiting, one has to wonder whether they would take that bargain: No more elections, no more free speech, no more civil liberties of any kind, but socialized medicine and literacy for everyone! American political dissidents, homosexuals, journalists and the clergy, just like in Cuba, can languish in prison or internal exile, but at least they’ll be able to read the charges against them.
The Dangers of Trump ‘Protectionism’
Writes Tyler Cowen on Trump’s Disastrous Pledge to Keep Jobs in the U.S.:
“…a policy limiting the ability of American companies to move funds outside of the U.S. would create a dangerous new set of government powers. Imagine giving an administration the potential to rule whether a given transfer of funds would endanger job creation or job maintenance in the United States. That’s not exactly an objective standard, and so every capital transfer decision would be subject to the arbitrary diktats of politicians and bureaucrats. It’s not hard to imagine a Trump administration using such regulations to reward supportive businesses and to punish opponents. Even in the absence of explicit favoritism, companies wouldn’t know the rules of the game in advance, and they would be reluctant to speak out in ways that anger the powers that be.”
“In other words, the Trump program for protectionism could go far beyond interference in international trade. It also could bring the kind of crony capitalist nightmare scenarios described by Ayn Rand in her novel ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ a book many Republican legislators would be well advised to now read or reread.” [Bloomberg View]
Ben Shaprio on the Alt-Right Movement
Good interview with a Ben Shaprio on the Alt-Right movement, Steven Bannon and Donal Trump. Two important points:
1. “Alt-Right” Ties Western Civilization (Good) with White Nationalism (Bad).
Basically, the alt-right is a group of thinkers who believe that Western civilization is inseparable from European ethnicity—which is racist, obviously. It’s people who believe that if Western civilization were to take in too many people of different colors and different ethnicities and different religions, then that would necessarily involve the interior collapse of Western civilization. As you may notice, this has nothing to do with the Constitution. It has nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence. It has nothing to do actually with Western civilization. The whole principle of Western civilization is that anybody can involve himself or herself in civilized values.
2. Left is making a mistake of labeling everyone on the right, or who voted for Trump, as “alt-right.”
I think that the left is making a huge mistake by labeling everybody on the right “alt-right.” Because what they’re doing is they’re pushing people into the arms of the alt-right. You call people racist enough, and they begin to think OK, well, who’s not calling me a racist—I’ll side with that guy. So the worst thing the left can do is continue to suggest that everyone who backed Trump was a racist, sexist, bigot homophobe; everyone’s evil, everyone’s terrible. What they really should be doing is they should be saying, “Look, we understand one of the reasons that we lost is because Hillary Clinton was a uniquely terrible candidate”—she really was—“and because of that, we’re not trying to throw you guys out of the tent. We think it was a bad choice to choose Trump, but we would sort of appeal to the better angels of your nature—that if we think he’s divisive as time goes on, that you recognize that he’s being divisive.” I think it’s a big mistake to have the left pushing the notion that they’re just going to double-down on the Obama coalition and tell everybody else to go screw.
Read the entire interview here: Ben Shapiro on Steve Bannon, the alt-right, and why the left needs to turn down the outrage.
Hudson: The Problem with Steve Bannon
Photo: by Don Irvine Photos
Walter Hudson has a fantastic op-ed — Fellow Republicans, Don’t Sell Your Souls for Bannon and the Alt-Right | PJ Media: — on Steve Bannon — the former head of Breitbart News who served as Trump’s campaign CEO, and has been named the Trump administration’s chief strategist and senior advisor — and his relationship with the white nationalist, anti-individual rights movememt that calls itself the “alt-right.”
1. The problem with Bannon is not his personal views, but his role in disseminating abhorrent views
[…] The problem with Steve Bannon is not his personal views, for which there seems to be little evidence of anything egregious.The problem with Steve Bannon is the role he has played in proliferating the abhorrent views of others. While in charge of Breitbart News, Bannon transformed it into a haven for the alt-right. While Bannon may not be racist, antisemitic, or white nationalist himself, the alt-right plainly is. It’s their defining characteristic, and they’ll be the first ones to tell you so.
2. Coiner of the term “alt-right” admits Trump and Breitbart and Bannon are NOT part of alt-right
The man who coined the term “alt-right” is Richard Spencer. He holds a distinction as the movement’s most prominent thought leader. As president of the National Policy Institute, an alt-right think tank, Spencer spoke at a celebration in Washington D.C. over the weekend attended by his fellow white nationalists. From Politico:
[…] “I would say Steve Bannon’s comment that [Breitbart is] a platform of the alt-right is probably something I could agree with, say 90 percent, just in the sense that it’s clearly moved away from the conservative movement,” Spencer said. “It was pro-Trump, it was also a site that tons of people on the alt-right [go] to get their news from, they share [it]. I don’t think Breitbart is really ideologically alt-right, no, but it’s interesting and very hopeful for me that Bannon is at least open to these things.”
3. Trump (and Bannon) should distance himself from those who identify with ethnic identity and not America’s founding principles
[…] As that same son of a black father and a white mother, my existence proves offensive to the alt-right. According to them, I have no worth whatsoever. Neither do my children.
[…] Trump should go out of his way to condemn the alt-right. He should make clear that their objectively racist, white nationalist views have no place in his administration or in the Republican Party. That declaration should be echoed by a repentant Bannon, or Bannon should be fired. It must be abundantly clear that American greatness is defined by our founding principles and not ethnic identity.
Well said.
Ghate: What the success of the Trump campaign reveals about the United States
What does the Trump’s campaign success signifies about the American electorate — and America’s future? This is the question post by Ayn Rand Institute senior fellow Onkar Ghate in his essay “One Small Step for Dictatorship.
Writes Ghate:
…as destructive to freedom as I think a Trump administration is likely to be, this is also not my point.
My argument is that Trump publicly projected the mentality, methods and campaign of a would-be dictator—however much it may have been an act and however difficult it may be to enact specific decrees—and that he won the presidency because of this.
The issue is not Trump the person or what he might do to the country while in office. (Though these are important concerns.) The issue is what the success of his campaign reveals about the country.
Update: For a contrasting view of what the Trump election means for the country see “C. Bradley Thompson: Trump Won Because of the “Forgotten Men and Women.”
I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump
Asra Q. Nomani, has written an interesting perspective in The Washington Post on how “… a 51-year-old, a Muslim, an immigrant woman ‘of color’ — am one of those silent voters for Donald Trump. And I’m not a “bigot,” “racist,” “chauvinist” or “white supremacist,” as Trump voters are being called, nor part of some “whitelash.”
Writes Nomani:
Days before the election, a journalist from India emailed me, asking: What are your thoughts being a Muslim in “Trump’s America”?
I wrote that as a child of India, arriving in the United States at the age of 4 in the summer of 1969, I have absolutely no fears about being a Muslim in a “Trump America.” The checks and balances in America and our rich history of social justice and civil rights will never allow the fear-mongering that has been attached to candidate Trump’s rhetoric to come to fruition.
What worried me the most were my concerns about the influence of theocratic Muslim dictatorships, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in a Hillary Clinton America. These dictatorships are no shining examples of progressive society with their failure to offer fundamental human rights and pathways to citizenship to immigrants from India, refugees from Syria and the entire class of de facto slaves that live in those dictatorships.
We have to stand up with moral courage against not just hate against Muslims, but hate by Muslims, so that everyone can live with sukhun, or peace of mind, I finished in my reflections to the journalist in India. [I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump.]
Gun Free Zones Benefit Mass Shooters
Writes John Lott Jr. in the The Washington Post:
Since at least 1950, every single one of Europe’s public mass shootings has occurred in a place where general citizens are banned from carrying guns. In America, there have been four exceptions to that rule.
In late 2013, the secretary general of Interpol — essentially a global version of the FBI — proposed two ways of preventing mass shootings: “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves [should be] so secure that in order to get into the soft target, you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”
But Noble warned, “You can’t have armed police forces everywhere.” He also suggested that it is essentially impossible to stop killers from getting weapons into these “secure” areas. He concluded by posing the question, “Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past, with an evolving threat of terrorism?” The answer is an emphatic yes. [It’s already too late for gun control to work]
How Did Hillary Clinton Lose The Election?
Every poll except the IBD/TIPP one predicted a Clinton victory. From Why Hillary Clinton Lost: An Election Post-Mortem:
1. Eight years of President Obama operating dictatorially by executive order and edict
[Obama] signed ObamaCare into law without bothering to get even one Republican vote. He almost entirely ignored GOP input on the Dodd-Frank bill that he signed into law — and it’s now blamed by many prominent economists for the worst recovery since the Great Depression.
Even after losing control of Congress in 2012, Obama chose not to work with Republicans, despite his comments to the contrary. Instead, he issued edicts, executive orders that enabled him to act in some cases like a petty dictator without consulting Congress at all.
2. Hillary went from a centrist position against Bernie Sanders in the primaries to the Left in the general election
The typical pattern for a Democratic candidate in a presidential election is to run to the left in the primaries, then move toward the center in the main campaign. Hillary reversed that — and alienated millions of potential voters by doing so.
She talked about tax hikes, about a war on coal and other forms of cheap energy, about a complete government takeover of health care, about further regulating the financial system, and about making the top 1% “pay their fair share.” She promised to hit the American industrial economy hard with new rules to halt the hypothetical evils of climate change.
3. She was the darling of the media the his held in contempt by the average America.
…recent polls [show] that the media is now the most loathed national institution in American civic life. The media are perceived as filled with people who have contempt for average people, along with a profound liberal bias.
4. A history of corruption and scandal
… the Clinton email scandal, the Clinton Family Foundation scandal, and the weird goings-on with former Congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, who was found to have thousands of official emails from Hillary’s server on his own unprotected computer.
5. Women voters did not fully support Hillary
What was interesting was how it broke down. Men overwhelmingly supported Trump, 46% to 38% for Hillary. But even women, supposedly Hillary’s most ardent base voters, supported her by just 48% to 44% for Trump. She never really closed the deal.
Read the full article: Why Hillary Clinton Lost: An Election Post-Mortem.
The Positive Lesson To Be Learned From The U.S. 2016 Election
Writes Alexander Marriott:
“Hyperbole is exploding on the internet, good God people sound and look silly. We don’t elect dictators. We have a Constitution, time we dust it off and start using it to make sure our elected officials stick to their limited jobs. Maybe Democrats will realize this is precisely why limited government is so important, to prevent ambitious demagogues from abusing power. The more we all stand up to the next President to protect individual rights in all spheres of human activity, then the abysmal election will have a positive result.”
Well said Professor Marriott!
Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity
“In this book, we will reveal how and why the calamitous clash of civilizations between the Romans and the Jews brought into existence a new religion. For the first time, we will present astonishing new evidence proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the Roman government, in direct response to this bitter clash of cultures, created the religion known today as ‘Christianity.’
“Although we will in the course of this book agree with nearly all of the accepted factual conclusions of historians who have covered the subject of Christianity’s origins, we will require no conspiracy-theory-like leaps of faith or logic to establish what we are suggesting—quite the opposite. The theory presented reconciles all of the seemingly contradictory evidence of Christianity’s origins for the first time with none of the convolutions employed by scholars and historians for centuries.” –– James S. Valliant and C.W. Fahy, Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity
Exhaustively annotated and illustrated, this explosive work of history unearths clues that finally demonstrate the truth about one of the world’s great religions: that it was born out of the conflict between the Romans and messianic Jews who fought a bitter war with each other during the 1st Century.
The Romans employed a tactic they routinely used to conquer and absorb other nations: they grafted their imperial rule onto the religion of the conquered.
After 30 years of research, authors James S. Valliant and C.W. Fahy present irrefutable archaeological and textual evidence that proves Christianity was created by Roman Caesars in this book that breaks new ground in Christian scholarship and is destined to change the way the world looks at ancient religions forever.
Inherited from a long-past era of tyranny, war and deliberate religious fraud, could Christianity have been created for an entirely different purpose than we have been lead to believe?
Praised by scholars like Dead Sea Scrolls translator Robert Eisenman (James the Brother of Jesus), this exhaustive synthesis of historical detective work integrates all of the ancient sources about the earliest Christians and reveals new archaeological evidence for the first time. And, despite the fable presented in current bestsellers like Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, the evidence presented in Creating Christ is irrefutable: Christianity was invented by Roman Emperors.
Order Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity
United Nations vs Capitalism
From UN deletes tweet calling free market an “urgent threat” – UN Watch:
GENEVA, Sept. 5, 2016 — The UN human rights office deleted a bizarre statement on Twitter, published on its account with 1.5 million followers, in which it slammed “free market fundamentalism” as an “urgent threat,” after the head of a watchdog group questioned the tweet.
Though the UN tweet from Friday had garnered more than 160 retweets and likes, the world body removed it under criticism from Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch.
“This was a loony tweet, and it calls into question the judgment of the UN’s top human rights office,” said Neuer. “While millions of people are suffering from genocide, sexual slavery and starvation, it is far from clear why the UN would instead focus its attention on unidentifiable ‘urgent threats,’ let alone on economic subjects about which it has neither competence nor expertise,” said Neuer.
“Tellingly, the same UN human rights office has failed to issue a single tweet about this past month’s dire human rights crisis in Venezuela, where millions face mass hunger in part due to attacks on the free market in the failed economic policies of the late president Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, which included arbitrary seizure of businesses and private property.”
“If the UN did not have a strict policy of ignoring its own guaranteed human right to private property, established in Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then perhaps Venezuelan mothers would not be struggling to find food for their children.”
“Virulent anti-capitalism was a policy of the defunct Soviet Union, but it should not be embraced by the UN body which is supposed to be focused on human rights emergencies.”
Perhaps the Tweet should have asked is anti-free market fundamentalism — the belief in the infallibility of socialist, anti free market economic policies — an urgent threat to economic and political freedom?