The New Clarion

“Great minds talk about ideas; mediocre minds talk about events; small minds talk about people.” — Unknown

Whatever one might think about that well-known quote, it certainly describes the vast majority of Ayn Rand’s critics, ever incapable of dealing with her actual ideas. Instead, they talk about the *person*, jumping on minor aspects of her personality or conduct, or isolated passages of her writing, looking for excuses to justify their scared evasions. Two recent ones are the “speed freak” meme (the comments at that link actually do a good bit of fisking that one), and the “serial-killer fan” meme.

One of the smaller minds at BoingBoing.net, Mark Frauenfelder, brings us another example, sourced from Michael Ford at that paragon of journalism, the CessPit. This one recycles an old argument, often directed at small-government advocates of all kinds, to accuse Ayn Rand of “hypocrisy” for taking Medicare and Social Security assistance while opposing the existence of such programs.

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After reading news articles on Michigan’s new Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s State of the State address I’m disappointed. He ran on a platform of making the state government smaller, more efficient and called for a return to free market principles. But it looks to me like Mr. Snyder is not going to be the solution to Michigan’s woeful economic problems. (more…)

There’s not much to say about Keith Olbermann’s departure from Countdown on MSNBC last Friday, but since I have time on my hands, I might as well say it.

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I’ve been blogging a lot since I became unemployed. If you want to be a prolific blogger, remove all annoying distractions. First get rid of that nuisance people call a “job.”

Ah, the life of leisure! Why don’t I tell you about the movie I saw this afternoon? Warning: some spoilers, but it’s not like I’m revealing plot twists in a murder mystery.

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Message to Love — The Isle of Wight Festival is a documentary of the 1970 rock festival released on DVD in 1997. It is a remarkable, if revolting, portrayal of the “Woodstock Nation.” It shows what the Hippies were all about: drugs, socialism and nihilism.

Apart from the music, the film centers on the Hippies who came to the Isle of Wight without enough money to buy a ticket to the festival, apparently thinking they should be let in for free, and were left outside the fences. These longhairs fought like a barbarian horde against policemen with dogs until finally on Sunday they tore down the fence and got in for free. One promoter says 600,000 people came to the Isle, but only 60,000 paid for tickets. At one point a Hippie screams in rage against capitalist pigs as he kicks a fence.

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Spike Lee said, “the United States of America is the most violent country in the history of civilization.”

Actually, the opposite is true. If the USA is not the least violent country in history, then it’s one of them. This country was founded on the principle of individual rights, which is the means of shielding people from violence from the state. The history of the world before America is the history of unchecked violence from church and state wreaked upon anyone who got in their way.

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The argument from the left that harsh political rhetoric led to the violence in Arizona has been so roundly rebuked that I expect the MSM to drop it and move on to their next campaign. Charles Krauthammer wrote a good piece disposing of this dishonest nonsense.

Michael Medved, with whom I often disagree, made an interesting observation on his show, that these smears are aimed at recapturing women voters to the Democrat side. They have not been appealing to strictly logical thinkers among either sex, but hoping to establish a vague emotional connection linking murderous violence to the right. Those who are swayed by feelings without subjecting them to reason will be fooled — but then, those people will always fall victim to demagoguery.

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The Right has reacted loudly to the Left’s ongoing exploitation of the attack on Gabrielle Giffords. Glenn Reynolds has been supplying a steady stream of links to rebuttals, including this incredible compilation by Michelle Malkin of Leftist violence (not just “rhetoric”, note, but actual violence), as well as egregious examples of Leftist projection, one of the most revolting ones being Paul Krugman.

Some, such as George Will, have spotted the nub of the Left’s real goal: to keep the national discourse away from ideas, which is the pre-eminent danger posed to the Left by the Tea Party.  As I have noted before, that would be a battle they would lose.

Some, however, are worse than wrong; they actively play into the Left’s hands.  One such is Dan Riehl, who not only fails to realize what the Left is afraid of, but posits as their biggest fear what is in fact a key part of their goal: the inflammation of passion.

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Over at Instapundit in November, Glenn Reynolds took to task a reader who deploys the “but they have good intentions” argument against morally equating communists with Nazis.

Glenn is completely right on this count.  What I wish to lay down here is why he’s right; why the “good intentions” argument, no matter which of its forms is used, is never a valid defense against moral responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, in either the physical OR the ideological realm.

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I’m fascinated by this article by Amy Chua, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.”

I’m not a parent, but I suspect that if I were, I would be the typical lenient western parent that Ms. Chua looks down on. If nothing else, I don’t think I’d have the energy to be drill sergeant to my kids and make sure they sit for three hours at a piano. (Lazy parents raise lazy kids?)

As an actor I’m particularly dubious of this mother’s not allowing her daughters to be in plays. What’s the problem with drama? What if a girl has acting talent? Are you going to make her life miserable by forcing her to play violin?

And what if a kid loves Rock’n'Roll, comic books, movies, fast cars, shooting guns, telling jokes or drawing cartoons? Are these pursuits good enough for a Chinese mother?

What do you think?

A 22-year old degenerate opened fire at a shopping center in Tucson, Arizona where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was meeting constituents. At the latest report six people are dead; that number will probably grow. Congresswoman Giffords was shot in the head, but she survived.

From his writings on YouTube it sounds like the shooter is mentally ill. However he is diagnosed, he murdered people, and it would be an injustice if he escapes the death penalty because of insanity. It has never made sense to me that crazy means you are not prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

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Yaron Brook often makes an interesting point in his appearances on Front Page with Allen Barton: people don’t learn from experience. Not when it comes to something big and fundamental like statism. Leftists can see their schemes fail over and over, but their confidence in socialism will not be shaken. The members of the “reality-based community” stick to their whims even when reality slaps them in the face. (See James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged.)

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Back in the ’90s I remember watching some news story on the Oslo Accord and thinking, “My God — the Israeli left is as suicidal as the American left.”

It surprised me. Israel used to be better than that. But then, America used to be better than that. Such is the power of philosophy that it has both nations set on a suicidal course. The key idea is altruism: that the strong must sacrifice to the weak. Without this premise neither country would twist itself into knots appeasing its enemies.

This is why Christopher Hitchens, as brilliant and erudite as he might be, is wrong to criticize Ayn Rand because people don’t need to be taught to be selfish. If self-interest were a metaphysical fact, then how do we explain that the the world is, as Miss Rand put it, “perishing in an orgy of self-sacrifice”? How do we explain that socialism continues to thrive, in Europe and in the White House, despite economic theory and the facts of history for the last century?

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