The New Clarion

Because the two main newspapers in Detroit, the News and the Free Press, have cut home delivery from 7 days to 3 days and raised newsstand prices from 50 cents to 1 dollar to stop losing money, a new paper has sprouted in this city called the Detroit Daily Press. (more…)

Over 90% of the previous experience of Obama’s cabinet has not been in the private sector:

The second and third least were Kennedy and Carter, but Obama is in his own category. Obama and his people live in their own world, in which the state is everything.

UPDATE: Maybe they need some of this:

This is the “public option” that statists and those in government want you to see:

This is the “public option” as it really is:

The increase of interest in Ayn Rand is great, but seeing the same old misconceptions is wearying. Two Reason videos features variants of the same error.

At an event attended by David Kelley two of the panelists called Rand a “hater.” It is true that Ayn Rand vehemently denounced those she opposed. The problem with this word is that it connotes irrationality and emotionalism. Racist idiots are haters. Ayn Rand herself was sensitive to this connotation, and somewhere — I forget where — she says she would use the word “loathe.”

The word “hater” is worse because it isn’t fundamental. Why did Ayn Rand loathe some people? Why was she so quick to denounce those she opposed? Because Ayn Rand was a valuer. In Ayn Rand there was no mind-body dichotomy. When someone said something that was not true, she made an immediate valuation that it was bad, and values are the cause of emotions. Strong values cause strong emotions.

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National Review continues its jihad against Objectivism. Peter Wehner has opined at the Corner that Ayn Rand was a nut.

Yet there are some strands within conservatism that still veer toward Rand and her views of government (“The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force,” she argued. “This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.”), and many conservatives identify with her novelistic hero John Galt, who declared, “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

But this attitude has very little to do with authentic conservatism, at least the kind embodied by Edmund Burke, Adam Smith (chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow), and James Madison, to name just a few. What Rand was peddling is a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy. No society could thrive if its tenets were taken seriously and widely accepted. Ayn Rand may have been an interesting figure and a good (if extremely long-winded) novelist; but her views were pernicious, the antithesis of a humane and proper worldview. And conservatives should say so.

Religious people tend to see Objectivism as “brittle, arid, mean and ultimately hollow.” It is none of these things, but when your emotions and self-esteem are wrapped up in the metaphysical fantasy of religion, it must seem that way.

Wehner is absolutely right about one thing: Objectivism has nothing to do with authentic conservatism. He says conservatives should say so; I’ll second that motion. Authentic conservatism was the first enemy of capitalism, and Marx merely secularized its arguments. Religion’s enemy is not just Ayn Rand, it’s capitalism, human nature and ultimately the facts of reality.

UPDATE: Revised one sentence for clarity.

<This is a significantly updated version of my original post, under the above title, which dealt with the ideas presented in Ghost Town, by Mike N. I also agree with the comments posted thus far, some of which add a great deal of understanding to the issue.>

I was severely alarmed by the idea that Mike N’s post raised.  So much so, in fact, that I chose to  respond in a post, rather than a mere comment.  I post on the impropriety of advocating legislation that would require ‘idle property’ be put to ‘better’ use.

My first concern was, “by whose standards”?

Whilst the principles I advocate have not changed, I misconstrued at least the view of one or two commenters. My weak explanation for doing so, which does not excuse me, is that I had literally skipped certain commenters’ lines —phone calls & children can really mess one up— and I thereby missed what was their ultimate point.

Fortunately, in his comment to my original version of this post, Shea Levy asked why I thought commenters to Mike N’s post were supporting the idea that “idle property” should, by law, not be permitted (my paraphrasing).  Shea was right to ask! (more…)

In Monday’s 11/09/09 Detroit Free Press is a typical but unflattering to Detroit article by writer Mark W. Smith which demonstrates the lack of understanding by Detroit’s leaders of the concept of property rights and particularly what property rights are for.

The article focuses on a WSJ article about an old truck that was pushed off the fourth floor of the long abandoned Packard building by people referred to as “urban explorers.” It even has a video of the event and a link the the WSJ article.

Reading this story is like watching insects crawling through the skeletal remains of what was once a living, thriving organism, the City of Detroit. According to the WSJ article:

“Detroit has 80,000 abandoned lots and buildings, according to the city’s planning department. Old housing projects, homes, strip malls and even high-rise buildings sit empty across much of the city. Motown has more vacant office, retail and industrial space than nearly every other big city in the country.”

But the Packard plant is just the latest example of Detroit’s political leaders not understanding the nature and purpose of property rights.

The purpose of property rights is to transform the ideal of individual rights, the ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ into practical reality. To survive, a man must have the right to use and dispose of the fruits of his labor as he judges best while respecting the same rights of others. The fruits of his labor are his property. Without property rights there can be no other rights.

Where there are no humans there is no property, only nature. Where there are humans, property rights identify, define and protect the fruits of each man’s labor. The basic, fundamental purpose of property rights then is to serve human survival in some objective way. That is why there should be a time limit on how long an owner can let a property sit completely idle not serving any purpose whatsoever.

The details of what kind of limits should be placed on what kind of property are not important here and can be worked out by those schooled in property rights law. What’s important here, and needs to be recognized by our laws, is the principle that property must serve some human purpose and cannot be held idle in perpetuity.

The future of Detroit can be either the nation’s biggest ghost town or a thriving metropolis again. But Detroit’s rebirth will not happen until Detroit and Lansing discover the real nature of property rights and enact policy accordingly. Right now all governments view property as a source of income instead of a source of human survival. That is what really has to change.

I keep thinking about the doctors. What must they be thinking? I spent 10 years of education and interning — so I can work for the government? I’ll be part of a vast bureaucracy, forced to follow a shelf full of regulations meant to substitute for my independent judgment.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann lay out how it happened. Obama bought off special interests. Their piece could serve as an appendix to Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson, a real life example of how money goes to special interests to the detriment of the general good. Their list also reminds me of Bastiat’s aphorism, “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

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I just listened to Debi Ghate’s inspiring lecture on the life of Frederick Douglass. The man lived an extraordinary life as he rose from a slave who taught himself to read to a political leader and advisor to presidents. Through every crisis he was a principled individualist; this was the source of his strength and it also made him a lot of enemies among the pragmatists, moderates and appeasers. There will always be cowards and fools, it seems.

I intend to study Douglass more closely, not just because his story is a remarkable part of our history that every American should know, but because the lessons of his life will become increasingly important as our nation continues its descent into collectivism. Douglass fought the crude collectivism that is racism; today we fight the more refined and insidious collectivism of the welfare state.

One obvious lesson is that there is no substitute for courage. Look at how the left has fought the Tea Party protests with smears, and how it stopped Rush Limbaugh’s attempt to buy an NFL team with outright lies. The left wants to shut up its opponents with a climate of fear. In such a culture, courage will be dearly wanted. Douglass’s example is needed now more than ever.

If a gunman screamed “In the name of Jesus Christ, DIE” before he killed people, do you think any journalist in America would leave that fact out of his reporting?

But Patterico notices about the LA Times’ coverage of the shooting at Fort Hood,

…would you be surprised to learn that as of the time of this post, the L.A. Times story on the shooting has no mention of the shooter’s religion, his alleged rants against U.S. involvement in Iraq, his alleged approval of suicide bombings, or the allegations that he was shouting something in Arabic as he shot?

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Having seen a story about multiple shootings at Fort Hood, and not finding much information about it, I decided to check Little Green Footballs to see if they had any updated information.  I had stopped going to the site months ago, because of its backsliding into leftism, which Charles Johnson calls being a moderate.

So, he did have the breaking news about the Fort Hood incident, but nothing more than I had already seen.  I then looked at the previous few entries, to see what he’s been blogging about.  It’s pretty sad.  He is busy demonizing the opponents of the enslavement of the medical profession.  He has become pathetically leftist in his commentary, and yet he still considers himself a moderate.  It turns my stomach.

Here are two interesting short videos. Combined, they take less than 10 minutes to watch.

Yaron Brook on religion and the rise of capitalism.

Ayn Rand on conservatism.

I like Roger Simon’s take on the election in NY-23 yesterday:

…the 23rd is a safely Republican, even conservative, district. In a year where the GOP racked up a 20% margin in Virginia and coasted easily in Jersey, a state in which Obama romped in ‘08 by 16%, what was the problem?

Well… I might as well say it… social conservatism. America is a fiscally conservative country – now perhaps more than ever, and with much justification – but not a socially conservative one. No, I don’t mean to say it’s socially liberal. It’s not. It’s socially laissez-faire (just as its mostly fiscally laissez-faire). Whether we’re pro-choice, pro-life or whatever we are, most of us want the government out of our bedrooms, just as we want it out of our wallets.

This is the best case scenario for what the GOP might conclude from the Conservative Hoffman’s defeat.

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