Iran Election Chaos…Future of The Islamic Republic of Iran in Question?
John Lewis appears on Pajamas TV to discuss the Iran Election Chaos. He also gives an excellent contrast between Israel and Iran. (LINK)
Punishing Google for Its Success
Washington, D.C., June 8, 2009--In an op-ed published last week by Investor’s Business Daily, Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, reacted to the Department of Justice’s recent announcement that it will increase enforcement of antitrust laws, and argued that the government should leave successful businesses alone to operate as they see fit. According to Mr. Epstein, companies like Google, which are in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice, have “no power to force consumers” to use their products and “no power to prevent competitors from offering products” of their own. Consequently, such companies can pose “no threat to anyone’s rights or to the competitive process.” The only player in today’s market that can thwart competition, said Epstein, is the government. “By using the vast and arbitrary political power given to it by antitrust law, the government can forcibly control successful companies such as Google and Microsoft, telling them what products they cannot sell, what markets they cannot enter, what prices they cannot charge. Obama’s new push to ‘protect’ competition,” noted Epstein, “is the real threat to competition.” “Under the reign of antitrust, any superior company can be stopped in its tracks because some bureaucrat, company, or academic decides that the prices in its voluntary contracts are too high, or its voluntary terms are too onerous, or even,” added Epstein, “that its stable of free products is too large!” “Success earned in a free, competitive process is an achievement.” It is a travesty, concluded Epstein, that “our Department of Justice regards it as a crime.”Judge Sonia Sotomayor is Unqualified for Supreme Court
Washington, D.C., May 27, 2009--“Judge Sonia Sotomayor is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Sotomayor was nominated yesterday for the seat being vacated by the retiring Justice David Souter. “What disqualifies Judge Sotomayor,” said Bowden in his new commentary at the Voices for Reason blog , “is a judicial philosophy that explicitly rejects objectivity and impartiality. She has declared that ‘the aspiration to impartiality is just that--it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact’ that ‘our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.’ “Elsewhere in her 2001 speech titled ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice,’ she noted that judges are typically unable to ‘transcend . . . personal sympathies and prejudices’ and that ‘gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.’ She also stated that ‘there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.’ “Referring repeatedly to her ‘Latina soul’ and ‘Latina identity,’ Sotomayor rejected the view often expressed by the Court’s first female Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, that ‘a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.’ “On the contrary, Sotomayor said, ‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.’ “This is a blatant endorsement of subjective emotional decision-making, which has no place on the Court and will swiftly corrupt what’s left of its integrity,” said Bowden. “The Supreme Court has a solemn duty to interpret and apply the Constitution. That is an intellectual task requiring ruthless objectivity--which, contrary to Judge Sotomayor, is not an illusory ‘aspiration’ but a requirement of justice. “A conscientious judge strives to banish all emotional influences from the decision-making process. But here is Judge Sotomayor declaring herself helpless to resist--indeed, even welcoming--the influence of personal intuitions that cannot be grasped or shared by persons of another gender or ethnicity. “Although Judge Sotomayor has many of the tools necessary for service on the Supreme Court--judicial experience, intelligence, legal knowledge--she has adopted a philosophy of judging that makes all of those qualities irrelevant. “The Senate Judiciary Committee should expose Judge Sotomayor’s dangerous judicial philosophy, and the Senate should vote to reject her nomination.”CNN Video on the Popularity of Atlas Shrugged
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2009/04/18/finnstrom.atlas.shrugged.cnn (Hat Tip: HB)The video (to add balance) also quotes an anti-capitalist on the banking crisis who blames freedom for the mess. Peter Schwartz's Mob Rule Comes to Washington: Capitalism as a Scapegoat for Government Intervention answers her nicely by pointing out that Washington by Peter "blames capitalism for the mortgage and credit crisis, in order to divert attention from the real culprit: government intervention."
[Update] And this from ARC:
First, ARC executive director Yaron Brook was interviewed on CNN on Saturday. The report, titled "Ayn Rand Resurgence ," can be viewed on the CNN Web site. Unfortunately, the report concludes with comments attempting to blame capitalism for the present financial crisis, and to link Ayn Rand to the failed policies of Alan Greenspan. Dr. Brook was not given an opportunity to respond to these statements, but readers may visit the ARC Web site to read our statements on the financial crisis and Alan Greenspan . In addition to this, yesterday Dr. Brook published an op-ed in The Fox Forum titled “The Ayn Rand Renaissance .” The article discusses the popularity of Atlas Shrugged, and its relation to today’s cultural and political trends. As of this writing, there are more than 500 comments on the article.
How to End Piracy in the High Seas
Washington, D.C., April 20, 2009--In a dramatic rescue operation a week ago, U.S. Navy Seals succeeded in freeing Capt. Richard Phillips from captivity by Somali pirates.According to Elan Journo, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, even though the operation was successful, it did not teach the pirates the appropriate lesson, as evidenced by news of a pirate attack on another American-flagged ship, the Liberty Sun.
“The pirates have not been deterred,” said Mr. Journo, “because we have emboldened them for years through an entrenched policy of passivity and accommodation--and the freeing of Capt. Phillips was unfortunately just one halting step in a better direction.
“What we need--in response to piracy as well as other foreign threats--is an across-the-board reversal in U.S. policy. When, for example, it became clear more than a year ago that the waters off the coast of Somalia are a playground for pirates, the minimum that Washington should have done was to lay down an ultimatum to the pirates to leave Americans alone or else--and lived up to it.
“The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force.
“When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross,” Mr. Journo concluded, “we won’t have to worry about pirates.”
End States That Support Piracy
Elan Journo has an excellent short piece on dealing with piracy off the Coast of Somalia in his blog post "Ending the scourge of piracy?" His solution:The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia (and any neighboring African country). No country that harbors pirates can demand that its sovereignty be respected. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force. Not just occasionally, when negotiations go south — but on principle.This appraoch is similar to the one America should take with terrorism in general. For details see Dr. Peikoff's End States That Sponsor Terrorism.
When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross, we won’t have to worry about pirates.
Video: Professor John Lewis on the Meaning of The Tea Parties
An History Professor Speaks About The Tea Parties of 2009
On April 15 I had the pleasure of addressing a tea party at Charlotte, North Carolina. Attendance was probably 3,000 people, and they were well equipped with signs, placards and tee shirts bearing messages of outrage against the present state of government. Every individual came not by some orchestrated plan, but by a desire to support liberty.The event was non-partisan. There were lots of anti-Obama signs, but not a one pro-Bush that I saw. Nor did I hear any religious right propaganda; the only mention of abortion was the assertion that a doctor who does not want to do an abortion should not be forced to do it. The overriding message was outrage against the growth of government power.
My own talk focused on the moral aspects of the crisis. I contrasted the elevated view of man and his rights that is enshrined in the American founding documents, versus the cancerous view of man and the phony rights that dominate today. I noted that those who think that such events must be financed by billionaires have no conception of autonomous individuals with independent minds, and thus cannot understand people who come together out of love for liberty.
My mention of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" brought cheers. Afterward, at least two dozen people told me that Atlas was their favorite book. The crowd was hungry for ideas; I passed out hundreds of pieces of literature, and talked to dozens of people about the nature of this crisis.
These tea parties are expressions of an emotion, outrage, that is directed against a rising tide of taxation and increasing government coercion. But emotions are not guides to life, and will not tell a person either how to oppose a motivated socialist movement, or how to formulate a rational alternative. Unless some intellectual focus is brought to these events, they are likely to fade into irrelevance.
Thanks go to Andy Clarkson for the video, to Matthew Ridenhour for organizing the event, and to Lin Zinser and Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
Atlas Shrugged and the Tea Party Revolts
Atlas Shrugged and the Tea Party Revolts ARC has lots of great resources such as the following suggested remarks:For those who have an opportunity to speak at the Tea Party efforts, we offer the following as a guideline for remarks that you may wish to use. We are not suggesting that you read this, but rather that you take it as a presentation of essential ideas that you may wish to express. On April 15, thousands of Americans will gather for modern day tea parties, proudly named after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Like our revolutionary ancestors, we are protesting against growing government power, a government that increasingly oppresses its citizens instead of protecting them. But what are we fighting for? Have we earned the right to call our protests by the same name the Founding Fathers used? Believe me, they understood exactly what they were fighting for. When those Bostonians boarded the cargo ship, Dartmouth, and hurled chests of tea into the ocean, they were not just mad about high taxes. In fact, the Tea Act that inspired the protest had actually lowered the tea tax on the colonies. No, the colonists were driven by a certain view of the proper purpose of government, which the Tea Act repudiated. That view, which would reach its full expression in the Declaration of Independence, was that the role of government is to protect individual rights--to protect the sovereign individual’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. But over the past two centuries, the ideal of individual rights has all but disappeared from public discourse. In its absence has emerged today's massive regulatory-welfare state, which taxes away nearly half our income, tells us what medicines we can take, what kind of light bulbs to buy, and is rapidly consolidating control over America’s banks, insurance companies, and industrial giants like General Motors. What happened? Why did we abandon the American ideal? Above all, because the ideal lacked a moral defense. To uphold the individual's political right to pursue his own happiness, we must recognize the individual's moral right to pursue his own happiness. But just try and say such a thing, and the voices will come from all sides--that’s selfish. "It's selfish to want to plan for your own retirement--what about those who aren't responsible enough to save? It's selfish to oppose bailouts for struggling homebuyers--why should they have to move? It's selfish to earn and keep a lot of money for yourself--what about those struggling to make ends meet?" And it's all true: the pursuit of happiness is selfish. That’s why you need the individual freedom of a capitalist system--to pursue your own interests, to act on your own judgment, to make your own life the best it can be. That’s why you need to crusade for individual rights, not just against the latest Washington power grab. To mount such a crusade requires more than protest slogans and picket signs. You must resolve to morally defend the individual's right to live for his own sake, not as a servant of society. So long as you are willing to concede that self-interest and the profit motive are immoral, and that self-sacrifice for the "common good" is a moral ideal, you will continue to see freedom diminish and prosperity decline. In my judgment the only philosopher to provide such a moral defense of capitalism is Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. So I'll close with her words: "The world crisis of today is a moral crisis--and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American revolution. . . . [You] must fight for capitalism, not as a 'practical' issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it."Make sure to check out the ARC Tea Party Activism site.
Update: (April 18, 2009) For some links to Tea Party Reports see Diana's list at Noodlefood.
Your Nest Egg on the Government Bailout
Censorship and The Slide To Dictatorship
Onkar Ghate, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights on the Glenn Beck Program on Fox News today, Friday, February 20, 2009. Dr. Ghate discuss the erosion of our constitutional republic, and how we can end our slide toward dictatorship.Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee
Here's a great op-ed in the WSJ by Bret Stephens, explaining the hypocrisy of "liberals" on the issue of free-speech:For liberals, the issue is straightforward. If routine mockery of Christianity and abuse of its symbols, both in the U.S. and Europe, is protected speech, why shouldn't the same standard apply to the mockery of Islam? And if the difference in these cases is that mockery of Islam has the tendency to lead to riots, death threats and murder, should committed Christians now seek a kind of parity with Islamists by resorting to violent tactics to express their sense of religious injury? The notion that liberals can have it both ways -- champions of free speech on the one hand; defenders of multiculturalism's assorted sensitivities on the other -- was always intellectually flimsy. If liberals now want to speak for the "right" of this or that group not to be offended, the least they can do is stop calling themselves "liberals."In criticizing religious conservatives (what he calls "cultural conservatives"), he adds:
Western civilization is not simply the "Judeo-Christian tradition." It is also the civilization of Socrates and Aristophanes, Hume and Voltaire, Copernicus and Darwin; of religious schismatics and nonbelievers. This is the civilization that is now required to define itself, oddly enough, by the case of a flamboyant Dutch politician with inconsistent ideas and a bouffant hairdo. If he can't be defended, neither can Mr. Rushdie. Or Mr. Serrano. Liberals and conservatives alike, take note. [Geert Wilders Is a Test for Western Civilization, WSJ, February 17, 2009]
The Financial Crisis: Causes and Possible Cures
The most recent video from the ARC Lecture Series: The Financial Crisis: Causes and Possible Cures by John Allison. Recorded January 29, 2009.
John Allison on the Financial Crisis
Why Israel Attacked the Gaza
The "news" we have heard about the Israeli military action in the Gaza strip has often focused on the deaths of "civilians." This obfuscates the fact that the majority of casualties were Hamas warriors in civilian dress. When the Israelis retaliate, the press reports it as Israeli "aggression." Every dead child then becomes a propaganda weapon for Hamas. The more dead civilians, the better it is for Hamas. Here is a concrete example of how Hamas warriors intentionally position themselves in civilian buildings, incite the Israelis to respond, and then cash in for propaganda purposes. In a slip on Alarabiya-TV, an announcer states that a missile had just been launched from the basement of the press building: "Hamas fires Grad Missiles from foreign Press building in Gaza January 2009—Unintentional News from Alarabiya-TV." The press later reported the Israeli response, "IDF hits the foreign Press building," without reporting the missile that triggered the retaliation by the Israeli Defense Forces. The press building incident is a microcosm of the entire conflict. Hamas has launched thousands of missiles from densely populated areas against civilians in Israel. For Hamas, the entire population of the Gaza is an expendable resource to be used to create the propaganda needed to continue the war. Thanks to Boaz Arad for bringing this to my attention.U.S. Should Help Crush Hamas
Washington, D.C.--In response to the Hamas bombardment of Israel, Washington must encourage and help Israel to annihilate that Islamist group, once and for all. The failure to wipe out Hamas on previous occasions has encouraged Palestinian terror groups. It teaches Islamists that their terrorist war will be rewarded, that their quest to destroy Israel--and ultimately America--is achievable. To put an end to Hamas’s brazen aggression, the jihadist group must be defeated. It is proper and necessary for America to aid and bolster Israel, its one true ally in the Middle East, in the face of a common enemy.Sam Harris: Causal Connection Between Islam and Islamist Violence is Undisputable
Liberal atheist Sam Harris writing in the Huffington Post has penned an important piece on the connection between Islam and Islamist violence called Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks. Here are some quotesWhat about all the civil, freedom-loving, moderate Muslims who are just as appalled by Muslim intolerance as I am? No doubt millions of men and women fit this description, but vocal moderates are very difficult to find. Wherever “moderate Islam” does announce itself, one often discovers frank Islamism lurking just a euphemism or two beneath the surface. The subterfuge is rendered all but invisible to the general public by political correctness, wishful thinking, and “white guilt.” This is where we find sinister people successfully posing as “moderates”—people like Tariq Ramadan who, while lionized by liberal Europeans as the epitome of cosmopolitan Islam, cannot bring himself to actually condemn honor killing in round terms (he recommends that the practice be suspended, pending further study). Moderation is also attributed to groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist public relations firm posing as a civil-rights lobby.Even when one finds a true voice of Muslim moderation, it often seems distinguished by a lack of candor above all things. Take someone like Reza Aslan, author of No God But God: I debated Aslan for Book TV on the general subject of religion and modernity. During the course of our debate, I had a few unkind words to say about the Muslim Brotherhood. While admitting that there is a difference between the Brotherhood and a full-blown jihadist organization like al Qaeda, I said that their ideology was “close enough” to be of concern. Aslan responded with a grandiose, ad hominem attack saying, “that indicates the profound unsophistication that you have about this region. You could not be more wrong.” He then claimed that I’d taken my view of Islam from “Fox News.” Such maneuvers, coming from a polished, Iranian-born scholar of Islam carry the weight of authority, especially in front of an audience of people who are desperate to believe the threat of Islam has been grossly exaggerated. The problem, however, is that the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood actually happens to be “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It’s not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam “really” is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world’s Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.Link: Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks