The New Clarion

Several times during the “President-Elect” period I wrote something like, “We still don’t know how bad Obama will be.” It was impossible to know because he spoke in happy generalities that sent a tingle up Chris Matthews’ leg and bored the rest of us into complacency.

After two weeks we’re beginning to see that Obama will be bad. Very bad. His agenda, both foreign and domestic, is pure liberal-left.

Obama is a smooth con artist in his methods, much more effective than the hapless Carter or Bill Clinton with his compulsive psycho-drama. Obama is bloodless compared to those men: he is a cool, disciplined technician of state power. He understands the fundamental principle of the radical left: to be effective at expanding the state in America, one cannot be honest about one’s intentions. His rhetoric is the ink that squids shoot to hide the work of destruction their tentacles wreak. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say he is the most dangerous president in American history, more so even than FDR. When Obama finishes his work, America will be a different country — one that is poorer and less free.

Look at the “stimulus” bill.

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There hasn’t been much discussion of this, that I have noticed.  The government has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that all Americans, without exception, need to have digital television, if they want television at all.  The poor, benighted citizens of America have no choice in the matter.  

I suppose we’ve grown so used to this sort of government intervention in the economy, that we barely notice it anymore.  The government decides cars need to get 30 miles per gallon, and issues a command to the Big Three: “Make it so.”   Big Brother doesn’t take no for an answer.

Where does this particular avenue of encroachment end?  If they can tell us what kind of car we can drive, and what kind of television we can use, what nook or cranny of the private life of citizens is beyond the reach of government mandates?  Already the government is telling restaurants what kind of food they may serve, employers who they must hire, and how much they must pay them, and the list goes on endlessly.

There is an end to it, of course.  We need only look to North Korea to see that end.  It’s a dead end.

Many blogs do a caption contest every Friday wherein the blogger posts a picture and then visitors leave their take on an appropriate and funny caption for that photo. I really enjoy contributing to those sorts of things, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for TNC so how about a comment contest on Fridays. We select an article—nothing too lengthy—and you supply a comment analyzing it. Our commenters thus far have been exceedingly insightful so I’ll be most interested to read your take. Winner gets a free RSS subscription to TNC!

“Health Care Now”

As a followup to a previous post about the Charter 08 movement in China, I’d like to draw your attention to this Washington Post article.

I wondered in that blog entry whether it would “catch hold as a rallying point.” It has gained thousands more signatures since it came out last year, which is paltry given China’s massive population but incredible when you think of the possible consequences of signing. The crackdown on signatories has continued apace; this could be another Tiananmen Square in the making.

The right to life, liberty, and property is universal. The Chinese government’s failure to live up to its responsibility in safeguarding those inherent rights cannot stand. Their attempts to squelch and suppress this cry for freedom will only serve to embolden and broaden the resolve. I am heartened by the Chinese people’s actions and I wish them the best of luck in their struggle.

This is a guest post by Joseph Kellard, a journalist and commentator living in New York. You can visit his blogs at josephkellard.blogspot.com and theamericanindividualist.blogspot.com.

While in 2008 I took a needed break from reading as many often do, this year I’m ratcheting up my reading once again. I’ve always enjoyed reading a few, if not several, books at a time, alternating back and forth between them. Usually, it takes a few months to complete any one book. I’m presently switching back and forth between four non-fiction books, having just completed a fifth. Here are my assessments so far:

Abraham Lincoln by James M. McPherson

With the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday approaching on February 12, I’ve noticed a slew of new books on our 16th president at my local Barnes & Noble. I counted 15 in all! I’ve never been all that interested in reading about Lincoln, and from what I’ve gathered reading about him in Objectivist circles, he seems to be a rather mixed figure. At my job as an editor-reporter at a newspaper on Long Island, the higher-ups have asked us to do some stories on black history month. I decided to take a look at how Lincoln is taught in schools, as well as try to find a Lincoln or Civil War buff and look into what the local library may be doing to commemorate the bicentennial.

So to prepare for this, I decided to pick up a short, 70-page biography on Lincoln, written by James M. McPherson, whose Battle Cry of Freedom I’ve heard is an excellent book about the Civil War. Well, I just completed it tonight. It’s written chronologically, and somewhat encyclopedically: “Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, about fifty miles south of Louisville.”

McPherson, however, has an agreeable style that doesn’t bore. He presents Lincoln as a respectable figure who, at least in his early politically career, was pragmatic. But when the most important decisions came—from Fort Sumter to emancipation and particularly when a war-weary North pressured him to compromise and bring “peace”—Lincoln stood his ground on the issue of abolition and reconstruction.

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1. “Piloting the Plane of State” is an excellent example of media slobbering over Barack Obama. It’s got it all: leftist tastelessness, check—calling the Hudson River emergency landing “the anti-9/11″ is spectacularly bad form; breathless adoration, check—he is that heroic pilot to the author; and audience castigation, check—we the people that Obama is trying to rescue, need to keep calm or he won’t be able to help us “however heroic.” (There is a weird part where she actually realizes that “people entrusted with public money are overwhelmingly inclined to waste it, steal it, or simply misuse it” but that moment of clarity was an obvious interruption in this stream of consciousness article.)

2. “Book is Rallying Resistance to the Antivaccine Crusade” also appears to be rallying the antivaccine crusade itself, if the Amazon page is any indication. I’m tempted to say that natural selection will take care of this crowd over time, but it is a moral travesty that children are being denied needed immunizations. I have met several mothers who subscribe to this garbage and they are the most fad-conscious, secondhand people I have encountered. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is at work since the likelihood that any child will be autistic is fairly minimal.

3. The Huffington Post is decidedly in the tank for global warming, this bout of sense notwithstanding. From Huffington herself: “It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.” This is yet another salvo in the left’s war on dissent and it is very much akin to religion’s fervent desire to squelch doubt in any form. The introduction of doubt cannot be tolerated by either for it gives the lie to their purported (and coveted) legitimacy. Without that, the coming government repression in the name of “doing something” to stop the irreversible climate change.

4. US Government Spending is a handy little site for data mining federal budgets. For example, federal spending declined every year from 1920 to 1929. Strangely, we think of the decade as the “Roaring Twenties” and a time of unalloyed prosperity. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Or maybe that’s the real way (as opposed to this one) to stimulate the economy—by removing the drain that the federal budget represents.

5. This report from the Pacific Research Institute on the benefits of economic freedom is just the thing that would persuade a politician who wants to do whatever works. Right? Oh, he’s just saying that to disarm his critics.

6. “Health Care Reform: Why So Much Talk and So Little Action?” {via} attempts to outline the roadblocks that traditionally have stood in the way of meaningful health care reform. The real obstacle to reform has been the American people’s shaky hesitation to tamper with something that is literally a matter of life and death. Everyone agrees that there’s something wrong with the system, but no one dares to change things up in a significant way. And they certainly don’t trust the federal government to do it right. For all of Michael Moore’s posturing, the average American can see that the rest of the world flocks here when serious medical problems arise. Sadly, this makes the likelihood of a radical restoration of individual rights in medicine similarly low.

7. James Hansen’s former supervisor has publicly castigated Hansen as an embarrassment to NASA. I think that’s probably as close as we’re going to get to Mike’s dream headline.

From inside the drug industry:

Those of us in the drug industry don’t really know what to expect from the Obama administration (although we’re pretty sure that we’re probably not going to like a lot of what we’re likely to get). But it’s not like things were going wonderfully during the Bush years, either, to be honest. Decisions on Medicare pricing, liability law, reimportation and other issues can all have their effects, but none of them will change the underlying problems that have put the business where it is.

And how bad is it today?

…we’ve learned a lot more about potential problems with drug candidates, but not so much about how to fix them. Aspirin, acetominophen, and penicillin wouldn’t have made it through a modern drug discovery effort. We’d have found their problems early (intestinal bleeding, liver toxicity, and anaphylactic shock, in that order), and either killed them off or spent years trying to get around them. Some of the things our modern safety assays turn up are unfixable show-stoppers, others are just warning lights that put the fear into companies who decide that they’d rather spend the money on something that looks cleaner.

If the FDA had existed in the 19th century, we would not have aspirin, acetominophen or penicillin today. We’ll never know how today’s massive regulatory state has destroyed America’s future because we’ll never see what ideas of genius were strangled in their birth by companies fearing the arbitrary power of regulators. Remember that the next time some politician crows about his compassion for the little guy.

I posted this too on my website and it sparked an uptic in interest. So I thought I would recommend three sites to visit for any TNC readers who may be interested in Objectivist psychology.

First is Dr. Michael J. Hurd Ph.D. who now post his Daily Dose of Reason for all to read.

Second is Dr. Ellen Kenner Ph.D. who has her own radio show titled “The Rational Basis of Happiness”. You can listen to some of her past shows via pod casts or even listen in on a live one. Her show is carried on 44 stations in North America and 2 in Canada.

Third is Fire Fly Sun hosted by Dr. Scott J. Adams Ph.D. This is an interesting and large site to explore. You’ll also see contributions by both the above Dr. Hurd and Dr. Kenner as well as others.
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At his blog Scott Holleran informs us that “Penguin has announced that it will publish a trade paperback for We the Living by Ayn Rand.”

And…

“The powerful We the Living, one of my favorite novels, is the last of Ayn Rand’s four novels to be reprinted in the larger trade paperback format. Publicity materials also make reference to a biography of Ayn Rand (1905-1982) that’s slated for sale next month.”

Now that’s good news.

In response to a question on the private email list HBL, I linked to an August post at my personal blog on the concept of a sustainable curriculum. I received a good number of visits the next two days so it occurred to me that more people might be interested in examining the concept sustainability. So here is that post in its entirety.

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I started reading Man vs. the Welfare State by Henry Hazlitt. This book is a bombshell! Wait till the world sees thi… oh, right. It was published 40 years ago. The world saw and ignored — despite the clarity and power of this remarkable book.

Maybe the world could not buy Hazlitt’s theme  in 1969, which is that the welfare state leads to dictatorship. This book is more relevant today than it was then.

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Bloggers on the right are considering the meaning and importance of Obama’s comment to Republicans last week, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done”.

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Many blogs do a caption contest every Friday wherein the blogger posts a picture and then visitors leave their take on an appropriate and funny caption for that photo. I really enjoy contributing to those sorts of things, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for TNC so how about a comment contest on Fridays. We select an article—nothing too lengthy—and you supply a comment analyzing it. Our commenters thus far have been exceedingly insightful so I’ll be most interested to read your take. Winner gets a free RSS subscription to TNC!

Added bonus: Ashton Kutcher’s treatise on “Creating a Nation of Philanthropists, One Pledge at a Time” {via}

President Obama began his first term with an interesting act of symbolism. He snubbed the “Salute to Heroes Ball,” and is the first President to miss this event in its 56-year history. It’s a little thing, to be sure, but a sign of Obama’s values. He’d rather hang with the Hollywood elite than with Medal of Honor winners.

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From the no-detail-about-The-One-goes-unreported department:

It’s the same Oval Office. The same desk. Even the same curtains. But President Obama has already made one major change: Go through eight years of White House photos, and you won’t find one of former President Bush in the Oval Office without his jacket on.

It wasn’t just a personal preference. In the Bush administration, it was a rule: Jackets in the Oval Office—and now, it seems, one of the first Bush-era regulations to get scrapped in the Obama White House.

And a commenter to the “non-news” left this poignant observation:

That’s because President Obama will actually be rolling up his sleeves and getting to work. You have to take off your jacket to do that. This new approach shows that Obama is down to earth and approachable. Way to go, Obama! Loving your style.

The leftist Katrina Vanden Heuval wants President Obama to reconstruct American society. Let’s look at her agenda point by point.

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Ever notice how Barack and Michelle Obama love telling the American people how much they will have to work?

In a free country a president does not tell people they must work hard. In a free country a president does not lecture people on their responsibilities. That is the kind of talk you get in a dictatorship. In free country, whether people work hard and bear responsibilities is up to the individual, and he bears the consequences of his actions.

In a free country a president does not tell bankers and car manufacturers what to do; those industries, like all industries in a free country, are owned and operated by free individuals. Today in America they are controlled by the state.

America is no longer a free country; it is a mixture of controls and freedom. At noon today we lost a little bit more of our freedom. America is less free today than it was yesterday.

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If you think the Baby Boomers are bad, watch this video of Generation We:

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I was going to whip up an Obama Inauguration bingo card, but wisely decided to see if anyone else had done it. The one below is good enough for me:

Finally, after months of speculation as to just how bad the Obama presidency will be, it begins tomorrow. From tomorrow on we will see the results, the facts of reality as they happen. Or perhaps we will read the MSM and see only the propaganda of the left. Those who pay attention and read the internet will likely be more informed than those who play video games or watch Oprah.

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The Sunday Jan 18th Detroit Free Press has an editorial on what Obama should do after all the shouting is done. It calls for Obama to challenge Americans to make more and more sacrifices. It also demonstrates a hatred of the free market and the rights of individuals to keep the fruits of their own labor. A few quotes:

“The nation’s economic problems are, yes, primarily, a function of irresponsible lenders and market functions run amok. But the problems also reflect a consumer frenzy that trampled the wisdom of financial prudence and the need to save. It was fostered by unrealistic individual expectations that every year would be better than the last and by at least some insistence that government not interfere with free markets.”

Here we see that the market was responsible for the meltdown, private individuals went into a consumer frenzy, the people have an unrealistic benevolent universe premise and at least some silly notion that the government should leave them alone. The theme of that paragraph seems to be ‘people who are allowed to pursue their self-interests will always hurt themselves because they don’t really know what is in their best interests, so the Attilas-government and their Witch Doctors-the press, must step in (interfere) and challenge the people to do what’s right.’ Exactly how a man with a gun, government, challenges citizens without the same guns, is not made clear. But there’s more:

“On health care, there needs to be a national conversation about priorities. If full coverage is the goal, it won’t be accomplished without real sacrifice by those of greater means, and it may mean pursuing affordability in ways that frighten free marketeers. Obama can’t force that. Nor can Congress. Americans have to decide that’s what they want, and demand it — or at least accept it.”

Obviously, “ways that frighten free marketeers” doesn’t frighten the Free Press. But why can’t Obama or Congress force the sacrifices? No answer is given. I can only suppose that the Freep doesn’t want to look like it’s advocating dictatorship. Instead, it wants citizens to be enthusiastic about jumping into the sacrificial ovens or, less the enthusiasm, be willing to jump in anyway, (accept it).

I figure that it won’t be long before the Free Press explicitly calls for Obama and the government to exact forced sacrifices. This is what happens to a mind that accepts the notion that sacrifice is virtuous and self-interest is evil, i.e. altruism.