Oct 7, 2013 | Politics
John Allison on the choice that faces us:
“The U.S. has a simple choice – return to the principles that made us great or face economic decay and social unrest. One of the reasons I wrote my book is because it seemed to make sense to have someone who had an inside and comprehensive understanding of the causes of our financial problems to comment on the issue. In the aftermath of the recent election, it’s even more important for the public and policy makers to understand what drove the financial crisis and what choices we must make to revitalize our economy. The media and other statists have created a myth that the financial crisis was caused by banking deregulation and greed on Wall Street. However, banks were not deregulated. In fact, three major new regulations were passes during the Bush Administration: The Privacy Act, The Patriot Act, and Sarbanes-Oxley. Banks were mis-regulated, not de-regulated. Also, there has always been plenty of greed (and fear) on Wall Street. However, there is not one shred of evidence there was a greed plague that swept the Street. The financial crisis and failed recovery were primarily caused by government policy. The two main culprits were errors made by the Federal Reserve and government housing policy, specifically as executed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the giant government-sponsored enterprises that would never have existed in a free market. My book covers this and other economic myths and misunderstanding such as the ‘shadow’ banking system, fair value accounting, Pick-a-Payment mortgages, and the like. However, as interesting as the economic discussion is, the real solution for our financial problems is philosophical and the cure was espoused by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ People on all sides of the political spectrum defend liberty, but few people understand why liberty is essential to human well-being. Government regulations put ‘balls and chains’ on innovators and entrepreneurs and thereby, slow and eventually stop progress. Given man’s nature, socialism and communism are doomed to failure. So, again, I say, the U.S. has a simple choice: The laws of mother nature and human nature are not subject to popularity or political whim. Capitalism or decline. You choose.”
Sep 16, 2013 | Politics, Sci-Tech
Another one from Alex Epstein in Forbes:
I explicitly acknowledged the phenomenon of global warming. And if you read the work of the rest of the “deniers,” you’ll find that most if not all of them do, too.The real point of contention is not whether there is some global warming and whether human beings have some climate impact, but a) whether warming is a problem and b) whether fossil fuel energy should be restricted. My answers are a) “No” and b) “No!” As I explained in the column Rolling Stone cited (but may not have read):
Our cultural discussion on “climate change” fixates on whether or not fossil fuels impact the climate. Of course they do—everything does—but the question that matters is whether it is becoming safer or more dangerous. Here, the data is unambiguous—in the last 80 years, as fossil fuels have increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from .03% to all of .04%, we have become 50 times less likely to die because of climate-related causes. Give thanks to the proliferation of climate-protection technology (climate control, sturdy homes, weather satellites, drought-relief convoys, modern agriculture), which are made possible by fossil fuels.
And, as I also explained in the column, Rolling Stone cited, not only do fossil fuels make us safer from the climate, they dramatically improve human life across the board.
The average life expectancy of a human being without electricity–and there are 1.4 billion in this category–is 48 years old. In the last 30 years, thanks to a tripling or more of electricity production in countries throughout the developing world, mostly using coal, over 2.5 billion people have added 6 years to their life expectancy. Think about someone you love that you lost early, and think about what 6 more years would mean. Now multiply that by 2.5 billion people.Around the world, hundreds of millions of individuals have gotten their first light-bulb, their first refrigerator, their first year with clean drinking water or a full stomach, their first decent-paying job thanks to coal-based electricity. Without coal, none of that would have been possible. In the US, 30 years ago the average household had 3 electronic devices—today it has 25, overwhelmingly thanks to fossil fuels.
If Rolling Stone has a counter-argument to the economic and environmental case for fossil fuels, let it make it. But to pretend that case doesn’t exist, to pretend that its advocates deny basic scientific facts, is dishonest.
Read the rest of Rolling Stone Attacks Global Warming 'Deniers' As Anti-Science, Then Commits Big Scientific Blunder.
Sep 2, 2013 | Politics
From The Right Scoop:
John Bolton spoke last night to Greta about the Syrian situation and was asked about the New York Times saying that we would be ‘advertising our impotence’ if we just lobbed a few missiles and didn’t go for regime change by taking out Assad. But Bolton disagrees with the premise…sorta:
“Well we’re advertising the president’s impotence and I think this is important as well. People say the president has put the American credibility on the line, therefore he has to strike. He has damaged our credibility – I acknowledge that. But mostly he’s shredded his own. And it’s about time for the rest of the world to understand that Barack Obama and the United States are not the same thing. We’ve got 1200 days of this left and it’s going to be very costly. But the United States should not be put in a worse position just to help out Barack Obama’s credibility.”
When asked if we should do something militarily simply for humanitarian reasons, to end the conflict, Bolton says absolutely not:
“My answer to that is ‘no’ and here’s the hard reality. It is entirely possible that there are humanitarian tragedies all around the world that tug at our hearts. But that doesn’t mean there’s an American interest, one way the other, in resolving the conflict. We’ve got huge interests at stake in the region as a whole, in Syria because of Iran in particular. But there are conflicts where there are no white hats and no American interests. People say we’re not the world’s policeman. That’s not the issue here. The issue here is that we should not use military force in pursuit of abstractions. We are not the world’s nanny.”See a video of the full interview at Bolton: It’s time for the world to understand that Barack Obama and the United States are NOT the same thing.
Aug 28, 2013 | Politics
Trying to reconcile MLK's "I have a dream speech" with racist affirmative action polices. Can't be done.Writes Edwin Locke:What should we remember on Martin Luther King Day? In his “I Have a Dream” speech Dr. King said: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
This statement means that in judging other men, skin color should be ignored–that it should not be a factor in evaluating their competence or moral stature. It follows that skin color should not be a factor in taking actions toward other people, e.g., hiring and admitting to universities.
What has happened in the years following King’s murder is the opposite of the “I Have a Dream” quote above. Colorblindness now has been replaced with color preference in the form of affirmative action.
Aug 23, 2013 | Education
Writes Lisa Von Damme at Pygmalion of the Soul:
Years ago, I accompanied an 8th-grade student I had homeschooled as she visited prospective high schools. At one school, the director of admissions welcomed us and then proceeded to assault my student with the information that entry to college had become highly competitive, and she must therefore chart the right course through the right high school to stand even a chance of admission to the better colleges. She then proceeded to sell the school with the following: my student would need to take multiple AP courses—this school offered a wide variety; she would need to complete the IB program—they were honored to be a member school; she would need to be competitive in a sport and ambitious in an extra-curricular activity—they had many from which to choose. As the director mapped out all that my student must do (with the unquestioned assumption that admission to Harvard was her foremost educational goal), I looked over—and saw her wilt.This was a child of whom I had endless vivid, touching stories from the classroom—stories of her gasping out loud when she was irrepressibly moved by a passage from Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three; stories of her eagerly recreating science lessons at home with her parents as students; stories of her writing with ferocious confidence (though she had previously loathed writing), because, she said, I taught her how. Now, before both our eyes, education was becoming nothing about the development of invaluable, life-long skills, nothing about the discovery of joy and utility in the acquisition of knowledge, nothing about the deepening of a capacity for emotional experience. Admission to high school was about… admission to college, which was about…The answer to that was nothing more than a vague, unstated apprehension of doom.Many years later, I am the owner and director of a private K-8 school of 140 children in Aliso Viejo, CA. And eternally conscious of that visit to the high school and all the educational principles it implied, I am proud to say that I have a refrain here at VanDamme Academy: “We don’t talk about college.” We talk about how...
Read the rest of “We Don’t Talk About College.
Aug 23, 2013 | Education
Writes Lisa Von Damme at Pygmalion of the Soul:
Years ago, I accompanied an 8th-grade student I had homeschooled as she visited prospective high schools. At one school, the director of admissions welcomed us and then proceeded to assault my student with the information that entry to college had become highly competitive, and she must therefore chart the right course through the right high school to stand even a chance of admission to the better colleges. She then proceeded to sell the school with the following: my student would need to take multiple AP courses—this school offered a wide variety; she would need to complete the IB program—they were honored to be a member school; she would need to be competitive in a sport and ambitious in an extra-curricular activity—they had many from which to choose. As the director mapped out all that my student must do (with the unquestioned assumption that admission to Harvard was her foremost educational goal), I looked over—and saw her wilt.This was a child of whom I had endless vivid, touching stories from the classroom—stories of her gasping out loud when she was irrepressibly moved by a passage from Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three; stories of her eagerly recreating science lessons at home with her parents as students; stories of her writing with ferocious confidence (though she had previously loathed writing), because, she said, I taught her how. Now, before both our eyes, education was becoming nothing about the development of invaluable, life-long skills, nothing about the discovery of joy and utility in the acquisition of knowledge, nothing about the deepening of a capacity for emotional experience. Admission to high school was about… admission to college, which was about…The answer to that was nothing more than a vague, unstated apprehension of doom.Many years later, I am the owner and director of a private K-8 school of 140 children in Aliso Viejo, CA. And eternally conscious of that visit to the high school and all the educational principles it implied, I am proud to say that I have a refrain here at VanDamme Academy: “We don’t talk about college.” We talk about how...
Read the rest of “We Don’t Talk About College.
Aug 23, 2013 | Business, Politics
More Guns, Less Crime? - Capitalism Magazine
One highly visible scholar in the media debate is economist and social scientist, John Lott, Jr., the John M. Olin Visiting Law and Economics Fellow at the University of Chicago. The title of his 1998 book, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, may at first strike the reader as provocatively counterintuitive. Lott argues that states’ issuance of permits allowing private citizens to carry concealed handguns has NOT caused crime to rise, but has in fact dramatically REDUCED violent crimes. That’s one fact you won’t here on Rosie O’Donell.
Aug 21, 2013 | Politics
The New Romanticist has a sneak peak of Edward Cline's forthcoming novel, A Crimson Overture. Writes Cline about the novel:
I was asked by The New Romanticist to provide a sneak preview of my new Cyrus Skeen novel, set in January 1930, A Crimson Overture. Those of you familiar with this series of novels set in late 1920′s San Francisco will know that Skeen is a private detective and the son of East Coast wealth. He is a successful and well-liked short story writer under a pen name, and collects material for his stories from his cases. Dilys Jones is his wife, his former secretary, and is an accomplished painter. This series begins with China Basin, and moves chronologically to The Head of Athena, The Chameleon, The Daedâlus Conspiracy, and now to A Crimson Overture. I expect to finish the latter in the Fall.Nineteen-Thirty was the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Red Decade, thus the title. Fiona Nesbitt, whom readers will meet in these first two chapters, turns out to be a British spy carrying crucial information about the Soviet penetration of and influence in the American and British governments. Skeen, who in The Chameleon has already tangled with nascent American Nazis, becomes embroiled in his first, and, he hopes, last adventure in espionage. So, please enjoy this preview. I know I enjoyed writing it. Read the preview.
Aug 21, 2013 | Politics
From Anthem the play: Spread the Word:
ANTHEM is a futuristic story of a young man who asserts his individuality in a world of total conformity. Based on Ayn Rand's best-selling novel, ANTHEM will be staged this fall in a major professional, Off-Broadway production to run at the Jerome Robbins Theater at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City.Austin Shakespeare developed this successful, 2011 production of Ayn Rand's ANTHEM, which was adapated by Jeff Britting. Playing to sold-out audiences in Austin, we added performances with people coming from around the U.S. and aboard. Austin Shakepseare, a professional theater entering its 30th year, is taking ANTHEM to New York, with previews beginning Sept. 25, and running through Dec. 1. Get Ayn Rand's ANTHEM into the center of culture --- New York City --- this fall in time for the novel's 75th Anniversary. You can help us get people outside of New York City interested, too!Link: Indiegogo
Aug 19, 2013 | Politics
Writes Om Malik:
In the first episode of the second season of British television show, The Hour its protagonist, Freddie Lyon upon returning from America explains why he was intoxicated by the new world:
“Being nobody in a country where everybody thinks they can be somebody…”
That one utterance by a fictional character sums up why every immigrant wants to come to America and that does include me. This is the country where Albert Einstein and Nicola Tesla were somebody. This is the place where Kim Kardashian and Alex Rodriguez are somebody. Kanye West and Steve Jobs, they are somebody. At one point they were nobodies. This quirky, burger munching, frappuccino swigging, football loving, gas-guzzling cross between utopia and Disney Land is a nation of nobodies who are on their way to be somebody.And that is the beauty of America.On a globe, America is a landmass, a country. In an immigrant’s heart it is a belief that future is almost always better. It may not be perfect and it is certainly not equal, but it still is one of a kind — the only place where an absolute stranger with a funny name and a funny accent with no friends or contacts can show up, work hard and actually get to do what he was destined to do. That America is the place, I can now officially call home.[iAMerican]
Aug 18, 2013 | Politics
Quoting Obama Presidency A Lengthening Legacy Of Lawlessness:
[...] the Constitution requires the president to "faithfully execute the law." That's no editorial opinion, but Article 2, Section 3, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "(The President) shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed."Our founders conceived and established in that document three co-equal branches of government to preserve our individual liberty and restrain the unlimited power of government. But this president and his administration have routinely ignored the divisions of power between the presidency, the Congress and its legislation, and the Supreme Court and its rulings.[...]Whether one agrees with [a] law or not, its legal authority lies within the constitutional powers of Congress, not the executive branch. And that's the issue. It's part of a growing litany of presidential lawlessness [...]
Aug 17, 2013 | Politics
Charles Krauthammer identifies the lawlessness of the Obama Administration:
"The point is whether a president, charged with faithfully executing the laws that Congress enacts, may create, ignore, suspend and/or amend the law at will. Presidents are arguably permitted to refuse to enforce laws they consider unconstitutional (the basis for so many of George W. Bush’s so-called signing statements). But presidents are forbidden from doing so for reasons of mere policy — the reason for every Obama violation listed above.
Such gross executive usurpation disdains the Constitution. It mocks the separation of powers. And most consequentially, it introduces a fatal instability into law itself. If the law is not what is plainly written, but is whatever the president and his agents decide, what’s left of the law?...
The problem is not just uncertain enforcement but the undermining of the very creation of new law. What’s the point of the whole legislative process — of crafting various provisions through give-and-take negotiation — if you cannot rely on the fixity of the final product, on the assurance that the provisions bargained for by both sides will be carried out?
Consider immigration reform, now in gestation. The essence of any deal would be legalization in return for strict border enforcement. If some such legislative compromise is struck, what confidence can anyone have in it — if the president can unilaterally alter whatever (enforcement) provisions he never liked in the first place?
Yet this president is not only untroubled by what he’s doing, but open and rather proud. As he tells cheering crowds on his never-ending campaign-style tours: I am going to do X — and I’m not going to wait for Congress.
That’s caudillo talk. That’s banana republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.
At stake is not some constitutional curlicue. At stake is whether the laws are the law. And whether presidents get to write their own."
Aug 8, 2013 | Philosophy, Politics, Sci-Tech
Best-selling philosopher Ayn Rand on racism:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination. [“Racism,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 126]
Aug 6, 2013 | Politics, Sci-Tech
From Richmond Times-Dispatch: Central Virginia:
Gun-related violent crime in Virginia has dropped steadily over the past six years as the sale of firearms has soared to a new record, according to an analysis of state crime data with state records of gun sales. The total number of firearms purchased in Virginia increased 73 percent from 2006 to 2011. When state population increases are factored in, gun purchases per 100,000 Virginians rose 63 percent. But the total number of gun-related violent crimes fell 24 percent over that period, and when adjusted for population, gun-related offenses dropped more than 27 percent, from 79 crimes per 100,000 in 2006 to 57 crimes in 2011.The numbers appear to contradict a long-running popular narrative that more guns cause more violent crime, said Virginia Commonwealth University professor Thomas R. Baker, who compared Virginia crime data for those years with gun-dealer sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
[...] "My opponents are constantly saying, 'If you got more guns on the street, there's going to be more crime.' It all depends on who has the handgun," Van Cleave said. "As long as it's going into the hands of people like you or me, there's not going to be a problem. Criminals are going to continue to get their guns no matter what."[...]"From my personal point of view, I would say the data is pretty overwhelming," said Baker, who is new to VCU and studied under Florida State University professors Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, whose nationally recognized research on guns and homicides in the District of Columbia was cited in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2008 that overturned the district's handgun ban. "But we're pretty cautious in the social sciences in talking about causality. We only talk in probabilities."The multiple years of data for gun purchases and gun-related crime help strengthen the premise that more gun sales are not leading to an increase in crime. Using what Baker calls the "lag model," the data show that an increase in gun purchases for one year usually is followed by a decrease in crime the next year.
[...] Gun-control lobbyist Goddard, whose son was wounded during the Virginia Tech massacre five years ago, doesn't dispute the numbers but questioned their significance."It's quite possible that you can sell a whole lot more guns and crime is still going down," Goddard said. "But is the crime going down because more people are buying guns, or is the crime going down because the crime is going down?" [Gun-related violent crimes drop as sales soar in Va. -]
So is he saying that guns don't cause crime, but criminals do?
