May 30, 2014 | Politics
Thomas Piketty's latest book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" has had its fair share of criticisms. The political right continues to bludgeon the latest critique of capitalism by challenging the veracity of the book's mathematics, formulas, and quantitative reasoning. But Harry Binswanger understands that the basis for every attack against capitalism is grounded in the idea that capitalism is inherently immoral. Therefore, any defense of capitalism cannot, and should not, be grounded in statistics, but must challenge the existing moral premises that permeate today's society..."Capital in the Twenty-First Century" offers up the same failed, blood-soaked doctrines as its forbearer, "Das Kapital." But in our Twitterized culture, yesterday's disgraced notions, now forgotten, can be re-Tweeted as revelations.[...]Evil cannot be combated by offering counter-statistics, as many conservatives are doing. No one is concerned with the statistics, only with the moral narrative. And the book's opening epigraph gives us that, via a quote from France's 1789 "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen":
"Social distinctions can be based only on common utility."
In quiet, understated language, that statement lays down the formula for total collectivism. It cuts the ground out from under individual rights, substituting "common utility" as the standard for state action. It demands the yoking of the individual to the group.
M. Piketty doesn't mention that four years after that ill-named Declaration of Rights came the Reign of Terror. The sequence is logical: the Declaration appealed to the raw envy of the mob, whose instrument became the guillotine.
The whole thing can be read here.
May 30, 2014 | Business, Politics
Bill Frezza revives the Gibson Guitars case in a piece published in Forbes. The whole affair stands as an appalling example of the law run amok. The owners believe they suffered heavy-handed treatment from the feds due to the "protectionist" interests of labor unions and environmentalists. But when the law can be warped to satisfy the whim of any bureaucrat or power-holder, that's not protectionism, that's tyranny. More specifically, the Gibson Guitars case epitomizes the tyranny of non-objective law.While 30 men in SWAT attire dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a lawyer. The next day Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.Up until that point Gibson had not received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something wrong. Thus began a five-year saga, extensively covered by the press, with reputation-destroying leaks and shady allegations that Gibson was illegally importing wood from endangered tree species. In the end, formal charges were never filed, but the disruption to Gibson’s business and the mounting legal fees and threat of imprisonment induced Juszkiewicz to settle for $250,000—with an additional $50,000 “donation” piled on to pay off an environmental activist group.
You can read the rest here.May 21, 2014 | Politics
Courtesy of Nick Gillespie at Reason.com:
The Daily Beast's Eli Lake reports that Libya, the site of an American-enabled kinetic-action-lead-from-behind-super-duper NATO triumph that somehow led to U.S. Amb. Chris Stevens being croaked by really irate YouTube consumers, is now packed with more domestic terrorists than your neighborhood Tea Party HQ:
In the nearly 20 months since the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks, al Qaeda operatives and allied terrorists have flocked to Libya, making the fragile North African country a hub for those seeking to wage jihad from north Africa, current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials tell The Daily Beast.Not only does al Qaeda host Ansar al-Sharia, one of the militias responsible for the Benghazi attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. But U.S. intelligence now assesses that leaders from at least three regional al Qaeda affiliates—al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and members of the organization of Al-Mulathameen Brigade loyal to Algerian terrorist, Mokhtar BelMokhtar—have all established havens in the lawless regions of Libya outside the control of the central government.One U.S. military contractor working on counter-terrorism in Africa summed up the situation in Libya today as simply, “Scumbag Woodstock.” The country has attracted that star-studded roster of notorious terrorists and fanatics seeking to wage war on the West.
The piece provides additional insight on how the events in Benghazi reveal the abysmal lack of a sound foreign policy. You can read the whole thing here.
May 21, 2014 | Politics
The Wall Street Journal published a piece by Caleb Rossiter titled, "Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change." The author, a self-admitted leftist, concedes that today's environmental movement is no longer concerned with global warming...er...climate change, but rather de-industrialization at any cost. He notes the substantial role electricity and fossil fuels have played in making life on Earth happier, longer, and healthier, but the author also reveals the inherent contempt for humanity within the environmental movement. In this regard, Rossiter could not have picked a better title for the piece...
Every year environmental groups celebrate a night when institutions in developed countries (including my own university) turn off their lights as a protest against fossil fuels. They say their goal is to get America and Europe to look from space like Africa: dark, because of minimal energy use.But that is the opposite of what's desired by Africans I know. They want Africa at night to look like the developed world, with lights in every little village and with healthy people, living longer lives, sitting by those lights. Real years added to real lives should trump the minimal impact that African carbon emissions could have on a theoretical catastrophe.
You can read the whole thing here.
