The New Clarion

We are seeing a lot of people or groups being denounced these days for “extremism” or “extremist rhetoric.”   As Ayn Rand pointed out long ago, in her article “Extremism” or The Art of Smearing, holding an extreme position is not immoral.  It is only the substance of the position one holds that can be good or evil.  To be extreme in one’s position merely means one is being consistent – and it is this consistency that is being denounced, whether the people using the label realize it or not.  The implication is that only “moderates” (another anti-concept) are good, while the “extremists” are evil.  And what does being a “moderate” actually mean?  Pragmatism.  

If “extremism” is by definition immoral, than all laissez-faire capitalists are immoral.  All advocates of inalienable rights are immoral.  We are being equated with the murderers of al Qaeda, and the irrational religionists of the conservative movement – because we are “extreme” in our defense of individual rights, just as they are extreme in their quest to murder all who will not submit, or in their advocacy of creationism.

I don’t know if all of those using the smear label “extremist” realize what it implies.  If not, they should examine the issue more closely, and use language more precisely.

Environmentalists must really be feeling their oats, these days.  The boldest among them are no longer even bothering to conceal or deny their real goal — the elimination of the plague, man, from the face of the earth.  Their initial trial balloon, launched in Great Britain, calls for cutting that nation’s population in half.  It used to be only the Earth Firsters who would say this stuff openly.  Now, British politicians feel safe enough to get away with it.

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.

They do continue to use the tired old lie that they are doing this “for man.”  Orwellian double-speak has never been done better.  In order to make the world a better place for mankind, we must eliminate half of mankind.  And the sooner, the better.

Thirty years ago Petr Beckmann, a professor of electrical engineering, published a pamphlet titled The Non-Problem of Nuclear Wastes.  In it he showed that while no source of energy is entirely free of waste storage dangers, nuclear waste was less of a problem than any other viable energy source, especially coal.  Among the many problems of coal waste disposal is its sheer mass, which dwarfs nuclear waste; coal itself is radioactive (but no one suggests a “nuclear priesthood” needs to watch over it for a thousand years); it emits particulates into the air which get into people’s lungs, causing fatalities; and coal waste contains other toxins, some of which remain toxic forever (such as arsenic), unlike radioactivity, which eventually decays to below the level of radioactivity of the ore that it originally came from.

He showed how bad coal is in comparison to nuclear, not because he was against coal, but simply to show that nuclear is a better, cleaner, and safer source of energy.   Also, he bases his arguments on the sensible idea that American nuclear plants would reprocess spent fuel, which would reduce the amount of nuclear waste – something which is not being done, again, for political reasons.

At any rate, I bring this issue up because President Obama has apparently decided that nuclear waste could never be safe in Yucca Mountain, and he won’t allow it to be stored there.   This simply isn’t a rational conclusion, as Beckmann demonstrates in his pamphlet.  I advise anyone with an interest in the so-called problem of nuclear waste disposal to read Beckmann’s pamphlet. 

On a related note, a promising new nuclear energy technology is written up in Technology Review, something called a Traveling-Wave Reactor.  It would reduce the already minute amount of waste produced by the nuclear industry.

To the surprise of no one who understands capitalism, hybrid cars are not selling.  The powers that be in our government want Americans to buy and drive hybrid vehicles, to save the earth from the putative anthropogenic global warming crisis.  So the government either mandates the production of such vehicles outright, or “encourages” their production in a multitude of ways, e.g., preventing oil exploration, raising taxes on gasoline, mandating specific miles per gallon that vehicles must achieve, spending taxpayers’ money on hybrid research, and everything in between. 

And what is the result of all this government central planning?  Mike Jackson, the CEO of AutoNation, the nation’s largest car dealer, spoke on this subject recently:

There are way too many Toyota Prius hybrids sitting on his car lots across America.

They stretch “as far as the eye can see,” Jackson remarked at The Wall Street’s Journal ECO: nomics conference. He estimated he had some 600,000 hybrid cars “that no one wants.

That’s what happens when businessmen do what the government wants, instead of what the market wants. And what is Mr. Jackson’s solution to this problem?

“I’m looking for a change in consumer behavior,” Jackson said.

One way to motivate consumers to buy more hybrids is a national gasoline tax that would push gas-pump prices to the neighborhood of $4 a gallon, Jackson said. This would help drive down petroleum prices, something that benefits U.S. chemical and airline companies.

This “would keep money in the good ole USA. What’s wrong with that?” Jackson remarked.

President Barack Obama delivered a speech before both houses of Congress last Tuesday and Lousiana governor Bobby Jindal gave the Republican response shortly afterwards.

Given the gravity of the moment, we at TNC decided to collect our thoughts on the speeches as a panel discussion.

(more…)

Evidently there exists a non-binding resolution at the UN that urges member countries to pass laws restricting FREEDOM OF SPEECH.  The particular object of this restriction is the criticism of religion, so-called blasphemy, with the main impetus behind it coming from Islamic countries, who don’t like Islam to be criticized. 

That such a non-binding resolution is on the books at the UN is sufficient reason to kick that organization out of Amerrica and into some Islamic totalitarian country, where it belongs.  But the Islamic countries are now pressing to make this into a Binding Resolution.  If America were to allow that to happen, I submit that we will have lost the war we are fumbling our way through at present.  Imagine, half way through WWII, the Axis Powers proposed a law forbidding criticism of totalitarianism, and the Allies accepted it.  What then would we have been fighting for?

What are we fighting for now, if there is nothing to criticize in the Religion of Peace, Islam?

I don’t see any chance that America will allow this totalitarian edict to pass in the UN.  But the fact that we have anything to do with the countries pushing it is so grotesque a circumstance, that one is forced to be ready for anything to happen, even to the abolishment of the First Amendment.

This story was brought to my attention at Little Green Footballs, where there is a video of Christopher Hitchens defending the First Amendment on the Lou Dobbs show against the Islamic Totalitarians.

(Edited to add the Axis Powers comparison.)

The Epoch Times is a New York based newspaper that specializes in news on China, although it covers US and international news other than China as well. A lot of their stories have to do with the persecution of Falun Gong in China, which leads me to believe that the newspaper is owned or controlled by people friendly to the Falun Gong movement. I don’t know much about Falun Gong, but I think we’ve all seen stories of the Chinese government trying to suppress that movement. The Epoch Times and Falun Gong both appear to be anti-communist. Judging from the newspaper, though, this doesn’t mean they are capitalists. They seem to be on the collectivist side of the coin themselves.

At any rate, there was a story in The Epoch Times the other day claiming that 50 million Chinese have quit the Communist Party in recent years. I don’t know how accurate the figure is, but it sounds encouraging.

Beneath the media censorship and Internet blockades of China, a movement is spreading like wildfire with the potential to put an end to the ruling communist regime.

The Tuidang or “Quit the Party” movement has seen a wave of Chinese withdrawing their memberships from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. This month the number of withdrawals exceeded 50 million.

Is the Chinese Communist government in trouble? Protests are a common occurrance. The Party is losing members. Falun Gong, ostensibly a meditation discipline, seems to me at least to be an organization that people join to express defiance of the communist government. If the Communist government is going to fall one day in the not too distant future, it would seem that Falun Gong will have had a lot to do with its demise.

Perhaps we should give some attention to this movement, to divine what the next Chinese government will be like. Would a non-communist Chinese government still want to annex Taiwan? Would it even be a bad thing, if the government is non-militaristic? Would Taiwan willingly annex itself to such a government?

I’ve always loved listening to Rick Santelli, of CNBC.  He’s the closest thing to a capitalist I’ve ever seen on any business show on television.  Today Drudge linked to a video clip of Rick that shows just why I love listening to him.

He talks about the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves over what’s going on in government today, and suggests he might helm a Chicago Tea Party on Lake Michigan.  What a breath of fresh air.

You may have seen this  story, which I found on the Drudge site.  Bill Gates, who clearly wants to make his audience feel guilty for not being their brothers’ keeper, unleashed a cloud of mosquitoes upon them: 

‘Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,’ Gates said while opening a jar on stage at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference in Monterey, California  — a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars.

‘I brought some. Here I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.’

This is like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater.  Why wasn’t he arrested?  After a minute, he informed the audience that the mosquitoes were not malaria carriers.  What good would that have done, if there had been a stampede to the exits in which people got crushed, before his belated admission?

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.

In this article, Warren Buffett opines:

Buffett’s interview centered on President-elect Barack Obama and the tough task he faces in fixing the U.S. economy.

“You couldn’t have anybody better in charge,” the Omaha resident said of Obama, who’ll be sworn into office on Tuesday.

As one of Obama’s economic advisers, Buffett said the president-elect listens to what his advisers say, but ultimately comes up with better ideas.

He predicted that Obama will be able to convey the severity of the economic situation to the American people and explain their part in alleviating it.

Which proves that a man can be brilliant in one area of existence, such as investing, while being totally ignorant in others, such as politics, government, and philosophy.

According to this article, Hugo Chavez is willing to allow foreign oil companies to begin investing in Venezuelan oil projects again, since Venezuela’s state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, is in dire need of new victims to despoil. 

It is a telling sign of how deeply the global economic crisis has cut: President Hugo Chávez, who initially reveled in describing the crash as proof of capitalism’s flaws, is now quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

Until recently, buoyed by the surging price of oil, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with the tax authorities and imposing a series of royalty increases.

But faced with the plunge in oil prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have quietly begun soliciting some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks, including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and Total, in the hope of getting them to invest in Venezuela again.

It is hard to imagine any company would consider accepting such an invitation to disaster.  Nevertheless, they are considering it.     

But energy executives here speak with restrained optimism. Nineteen companies paid $2 million each last month for data on areas open for exploration, twice what such data costs elsewhere.

Perhaps the oil companies can make some kind of profit from such ventures, even after Chavez nationalizes them, since he is magnanimous enough (sarcasm) to allow them to remain as minority partners after the nationalizations.  But that is no excuse for aiding and abetting the rule of an anti-American socialist, who allies himself with all of America’s enemies.

None of this seems to register with oil company executives, who would rather “go along to get along” than stand on such old fashioned grounds as principles, such as justice, (freely negotiated) contracts, and property rights.  They are dunces, the proverbial type who will sell our enemies the rope with which to hang us.   These are the same executives who support the anthropogenic global warming hysteria that demonizes their own industry, and the catastrophic legislation to slay that mythical dragon.

“If re-engaging with foreign oil companies is necessary to his political survival, then Chávez will do it,” said Roger Tissot, an authority on the Venezuelan oil industry at Gas Energy, a Brazilian consulting firm focusing on Latin America. “He is a military man who understands losing a battle to win the war.”

There is no secret about Chavez’s intentions here.  He is saying: “I need some useful idiots to help me fight America.  Any takers?”  And oil executives are not being wall-flowers in their eagerness to dance to Hugo’s tune.

This post has nothing to do with nuclear energy.  I’m trying to find an explanation for a seemingly random event – a good policy decision emanating from the camp of the President Elect, Barack Obama. 

According to this article Obama may be militarizing NASA:

President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China.

Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.

I call this a good idea since the only justification for a government space program is as a tool of self-defense.  Space exploration for non-military purposes has nothing to do with the government’s only reason for existence, the protection of individual rights.  I do not say this to belittle the undoubted achievements of NASA.  If taxpayers are going to be robbed to support government welfare programs, space exploration is the best that could be chosen.  But it is still welfare – for scientists and space enthusiasts.

But it is only a good idea if it is indeed for purposes of national security, which seems, at least in part, to be the case:

 The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

“The Obama administration will have all those issues on the table,” said Neal Lane, who served as President Bill Clinton’s science adviser and wrote recently that Obama must make early decisions critical to retaining U.S. space dominance. “The foreign affairs and national security implications have to be considered.”

“ . . . . .  China is designing satellites that, once launched, could catch up with and destroy U.S. spy and communication satellites, said a Nov. 20 report to Congress from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. China’s State Council Information Office declined to comment on the nation’s anti- satellite or manned programs.

To boost cooperation between NASA and the Pentagon, Obama has promised to revive the National Aeronautics and Space Council, which oversaw the entire space arena for four presidents, most actively from 1958 to 1973.

But since when have Democrats, at least since the 1970′s, been concerned with national defense?  And what of the massive fossil fuel pollution that Atlases and Deltas spew into the atmosphere?  What trumps that, national security?

The only explanation I can think of is that Democrats in recent years are anti-China, because of labor issues.  The unions are a big part of their election base, and the unions have lost thousands of jobs to China.  So the Democrats like to look tough on China.  Even to the point of militarizing NASA, and polluting the atmosphere. 

I cannot believe they actually care about national security.

It is remarkable, and encouraging, how many books about Objectivist philosophy are being published these days.  Not to mention books by Objectivists, that are not about Objectivism, such as C. Bradley Thompson’s biography of John Adams.  When I first discovered Ayn Rand, in the early 1980′s, the only Objectivist writer other than Ayn Rand herself was Leonard Peikoff, who had written one book, The Ominous Parallels.  Objectivist publications have come a long way, since then. 

In looking over the lectures to be given at the Objectivist Summer Conference 2009, I notice two of the lectures by Tara Smith are based on chapters from Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”  Which does not seem to have been published yet, but looks outstanding.  While looking for that title on Amazon, two of the titles (among others) that popped up as suggestions were Andrew Bernstein’s Objectivism in One Lesson (available now), and his Ayn Rand for Beginners (available in July). 

An odd thing struck me about the “Product Description” of Ayn Rand for Beginners.  It said:

 Ayn Rand For Beginners sheds a new light on Ms. Rand’s otherwise seemingly impenetrable words and philosophy.

If there was ever a philosopher whose writings are crystal clear, it is Ayn Rand.  To call her writing “seemingly impenetrable” is just bizarre.  Her writings might be described as “shocking” to a culture that views selfishness as immoral, but “seemingly impenetrable” just doesn’t make any sense.  That’s a description for philosophers like Immanuel Kant, not Ayn Rand.

In any case, there is a bonanza of Objectivist publications hitting the market these days, and that is all to the good.

In a move typical of this body, the United Nations Security Council on Sunday roused itself to call for a halt to “all violence in the Gaza Strip” after Israel launched air strikes on several Hamas installations.  The preceding week of rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel elicited nothing from the UN.  In their normal role of ally to thugs and aggressors the world over, the UN aids and abets Hamas’s hit and run attacks on Israel by allowing Hamas to attack with impunity, and then rushing in to defend them when Israel finally responds.  The institution is a disgrace to the world, and particularly to the US, which continues to host the evil organization on its own soil.

 http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-12-28-voa3.cfm

Just a quick note on this Madoff scandal.  I keep hearing that people and fund managers were investing with Madoff, in spite of misgivings, because he “showed results.”  I can’t help thinking how similar it is to the characters who invested with the “playboy” version of Francisco D’Anconia, because he “knew how to make money.”  They did no research into the actual projects they were investing in. 

Madoff no doubt made fraudulent claims, which somewhat mitigates the actions of his investors.  Still, when something seems too good to be true, extra care is called for.  Not lemming like behavior.

When people use the word “abolition” by itself, it generally calls to mind the movement to abolish slavery.  In modern America there are so many government institutions worthy of being abolished, that none of them generate the passion that a single goal can achieve.  We spread ourselves too thin.  By focusing on one goal at a time, more can be achieved.  The question then is in what order to attack the many wrongs of modern government?

My view is that public education is the most important factor in the spread of statism in America today.  Public education teaches the virtues of statism, altruism, multiculturalism/egalitarianism, environmentalism and mob-rule democracy, while denigrating Western Civilization, capitalism, individual rights and selfishness.  Those are just some of the practical objections to public education.  Morally, it is simply another form of the redistribution of wealth, i.e., theft on a grand scale. 

Why do so many people support the welfare state?  It’s all they’ve ever heard of, in their public education.  Capitalism is, indeed, an “unknown ideal” to graduates of public schools.  In short, if we are to start a political trend toward a more capitalist society, I think public education is the first institution that has to go.  It should be the focus of a new abolitionist movement. 

While the main focus of the attack should be on the injustice of the redistribution of wealth inherent in public education, the practical aspects also have to be addressed.  In that regard, someone on the ObjectivismOnline Forum linked to an article from a few years ago, which described in practical terms the advantages of private education over public education, specifically for the less well to do, who are normally considered the principal beneficiaries of public education.  This article demonstrates the contrary.

For people today it is hard to imagine what our government used to be like, before FDR changed everything.  We are awash in regulations.  In Garet Garrett’s fascinating collection of essays, called The People’s Pottage, he discusses (among other things) the advent of a slew of government agencies under Franklin Roosevelt, among them the NLRB, FDIC, and the SEC.  These agencies were Roosevelt’s method of adding to his executive powers the power of legislation, a power not given to the President in the Constitution.  Laws are to be enacted by the Legislative Branch of government alone: 

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . . [Article 1, Section 1, US Constitution] 

The President’s role is merely to execute that legislation.  In Garret’s words:

[Congress] did not write the New Deal laws.  It received them from the White House, went through the motions of passing them, engrossed them, and sent them back to the President.  That was called the rubber stamp congress . . .

In that special session the Congress had surrendered to the President its one absolute power, namely, control of the public purse; also in creating for the New Deal those new instruments of power demanded by the President it delegated to him a vast amount of law-making power—so much in fact that from then on the President and the agencies that were responsible to him made more law than the Congress.  The law they made was called administrative law.  Each new agency had the authority to issue rules and regulations having the force of law.  ["The Revolution Was," p. 60-61, in The People's Pottage.]

So Roosevelt arrogated to the Executive Branch powers denied it by the Constitution.  On top of that,  the laws his agencies promulgated were all of the regulatory nature that Mike N. correctly identified as initiating force against American citizens. 

It is often argued that the modern world is too complex for Congress to understand in all its minutia, let alone legislate for.  Therefore, the argument goes, agencies are necessary.  Even if one were to grant this premise – which I do not – it still does not justify any law-making agencies being created by or answerable to the Executive Branch.  If they exist at all, they should be created by and answerable to the Legislative Branch alone.    

But this argument is a red herring, in any case.  The principles of law and government are not one iota more complex today than they were in 1787.  It is only when a government becomes engaged in micromanaging the economy that it runs into this complexity.  The solution is not to create a multitude of regulatory agencies, but to remove the government from the economy altogether.