The New Clarion

The Wednesday July 14th Detroit News carries an op-ed by NYT writer David Brooks who wants us to know there are two kinds of people in the business world. But Mr. Brooks, like so many in the educated class, has a hard time forming concepts in any hierarchy or at least doesn’t want us to. (more…)

It’s time I weighed in on on the Great NY Mosque controversy at this point in time.

I wish to note that there are in fact, two huge issues at play for me in this discussion.

The first is the issue itself, which is the debate over whether we should support the immediate use of certain innately arbitrary legal powers (zoning laws) by government in order to stop the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero.  I will discuss this issue here.

The second issue, is how Objectivists handle disagreements like this.  That’s of greater long-range interest to me, and I will address it at some point; however, that will have to wait until I have gathered all the data and the discussion has more-or-less played out.

The very quick summary, to set the initial direction, is this:  I am in agreement for now with Paul and Diana Hsieh, in their posts here and here, and the reader may wish to also note my comments there.

For the Record:  I remain open to being convinced that the construction of the mosque represents a sufficiently immediate and pronounced danger to our liberty and country, that it should be stopped by *any* available means.

As yet, I have not yet seen the countervailing argument that meets the necessary conditions: to wit, that demonstrates a grasp of the opposing argument.  I have chosen to respond to this post by New Clarion co-blogger Embedded I to illustrate and clarify my position.

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It seems to me that some of our admired Objectivist friends do not sufficiently appreciate how widespread and insidious the Islamic threat actually is.  This is a war, and not simply of ideas.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Muslim Lies: The Muslim, and especially Islamic, ethics fully endorses the use of dishonesty to non-Muslims.   An article at the Middle East Forum site, makes this point very clear, explaining how the same Imam speaking in English says very benign things and then, in purportedly the same context in Arabic, is jihadist.   When the former explanation ends, The Mainstream Media end thinking.  See, The Two Faces of the Ground Zero Mosque.

Particularly notable about this mosque is that

• few Muslims live in reasonable traveling distance of it, yet it is being constructed to hold thousands;
• it is an Islamic tradition to build mosques over the most significant icons of vanquished enemies;
• it is just another building to us, but to them it is proof of Allah’s will, & of Islam’s supremacy;  finally
• its imam lied when denying non-American (Arabic)  funding for this mosque.

Were certain American communists, during the 1940s, given a pass when it became known they being funded and guided by Russia?  (more…)

On this Fourth of July, let us look at what the current president of the United States of America thinks the country is all about. In a recent speech on immigration Obama said,

Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith.

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There has been an argument among Objectivists on the mosque that some would like to build at Ground Zero. Leonard Peikoff opposes the mosque and holds the US government should prevent its existence. Others disagree. Amy Peikoff has two posts supporting her husband.

The argument is complicated and certainly not self-evident. It’s a matter on which good people can disagree. I see in the various comment threads people I respect on both sides.

What would be worse for the rule of law in America, our government violating property rights of those who would build a mosque or giving the enemy in a time of war an enormous morale boost by seeing a mosque built where militant Islam scored its greatest victory?

This strikes me as the kind of argument one finds in a mixed economy. Our government is bad and getting worse. It intervenes now in so many areas that it seldom does anything significant that is limited to the scope envisioned by the writers of the Constitution. Good is packaged with bad, and sorting out what is fundamental or most important can be maddening.

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The New York Times has an article about a school that encourages children not to have best friends, but to have many friends.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

Doesn’t this sound like a leftist attempt to turn children into little collectivists? Selfish individuals, you see, find friends they value. But modern education since Dewey seeks to socialize children. Don’t be “possessive” about friends, just relax and be friends with everyone.

Who know? Maybe American educators will succeed where the Russians failed in creating homo sovieticus.

I just want to draw your attention to a piece by Steven Den Beste called “A Feature, Not A Bug.”

Devastating our economy and making us economically uncompetitive is a feature, not a bug. The whole “global warming” scam has been about throttling the industrialized world, especially the US, by restricting use of energy. It was never really about saving the world climate, it was always about trying to bring about international equality. You could tell that because the Kyoto accord restricted use of energy by rich nations, but permitted poor ones to increase their use of energy.

It important to remember that the left’s goal is egalitarianism. To make us all equal requires destruction, not prosperity. Obama’s presidency is a radical departure from what we knew before. I think many Americans are afraid to see this truth in all its horror.

(I’m sorry that I have not been blogging much of late. I’ve been acting a lot. I just finished doing Bottom in Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Capulet in Romeo and Juliet and the Ghost and Claudius in Hamlet. Awesome roles! At the moment I’m doing another great role, Shylock in Merchant of Venice. How could I resist playing a guy who wants to cut a pound of flesh from a Christian? [Come on, now -- that was a joke.] I’m busy this summer, but I have not given up blogging, and I expect to get back to it later, especially when we get into election season. Oh, yeah — you know we’ll have plenty to say then.)

Directly on the heels of the discussion about the Civil Rights Act and its consequences for freedom of association, comes this gem of incipient fascism built upon the precedent established thereby:

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.” [p. 4]

• “It is within HHS’s authority . . . to institute an intrastate ban [on unpasteurized milk] as well.” [p. 6]

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ under substantive due process to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.” [p.17]
• (more…)

Having recently taken a class on self-defense and the law, I would caution the “purple people eaters” of SEIU to not try this stunt in states like Utah, Arizona or Nevada.

At PajamasMedia, conservative Clayton Cramer (who, resemblances notwithstanding, is not to be confused with the commenter Clayton Jones here) takes up the discussion over Rand Paul’s recent controversial comments about the Civil Rights Act and its overreach into the private sphere.  The following started as a comment on his article, but fits better here as another instance of epistemological primitivism — which I hereby rename as the Cargo Cult Epistemology series.

Italicized Quotes are Cramer’s.

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As the Greek crisis unfolds in Europe, the latest chapter involves a potential bailout from the IMF — about 17% of whose total funds come from this country.  This prompted my recall of the following quote (with one word updated):

What are all those people counting on? If a [Greek] factory goes bankrupt, the equalizers will find another factory to loot. If that other factory starts crumbling, it will get a loan from the bank. If the bank has no money, it will get a loan from the government. If the government has no money, it will get a loan from a foreign government. If no foreign government has any money, all of them will get a loan from the United States.

What they don’t know—and neither does this country—is that the United States is broke.

–Ayn Rand, “Egalitarianism and Inflation”, June 1974

That one led to this one, echoing the same theme:

What were they thinking now, the champions of need and the lechers of pity?—she wondered. What were they counting on? Those who had once simpered: “I don’t want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they’ll never miss it!”—then, later, had snapped: “The tycoons can stand being squeezed, they’ve amassed enough to last them for three generations”—then, later, had yelled: “Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?”—now were screaming: “Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?” What were they counting on?—she wondered.

Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” Part Three/Chapter V

Those who cannot say no to the open mouths of altruism, shall be swallowed thereby.

The Saturday, 5/3/10 Detroit News has an editorial on the new finance regulation bill offered by the congressional Democrats. Evidently the bill restores some of the regulations on businesses that the Supreme Court just struck down while exempting unions from the same disclosure requirements. I have to shake my head at the Orwellian (or should I say Atlas Shruggedian) title of the bill:”Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending on Elections bill” aka DISCLOSE. (more…)

Obama explains his concept of the American way.

We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.

(To make money is to produce wealth. Can one produce too much wealth? Can one be too healthy or too good?)

Obama’s ideal businessman would think something like, “I’ve made enough money, and it’s embarrassing to make more because all the leftist elitists sneer at me, but darn it, I must continue to produce to fulfill my responsibility to grow the economy.”

In Obama’s universe making money is a necessary evil. Americans must submit themselves to this dirty task so that the state will have enough wealth to redistribute. Those who produce wealth are not only used to support the poor, but they are sneered at for producing so much wealth in the first place.

With such a concept of the American way, it’s no wonder Obama is in a hurry to fundamentally transform it.

Says a commenter commenting on this article at LegalInsurrection:

Living here is a privilege, not a right that every human being on earth is born with.

This is the end-of-road for conservative anti-immigrationists:  the selective  degradation of the liberty to live in a particular place from a right to a “privilege”.  As a hostile commenter put it sarcastically (albeit a tad illiterately) at LegalInsurrection:

“Nothing says freedom from government interfernce like “show me your papers.”. Of course, limited government only applies to people who are real americans,not to mexicans.”

Let us examine the conservatives’ trip down the anti-immigration road, and see how it ended there — and what it means for conservatism’s purported fealty to Americanism.

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When moral issues are at stake, it is important to evoke powerful facts of reality showing why a particular moral stand is valid.   This is because most environmentalists believe &/or argue that the facts are with them, however poorly they understand those facts.

It is counter-productive to proselytize for a large carbon footprint, except perhaps as a humorous opening.

No matter how much one insists on his moral right to a large carbon footprint, he will only appear to be an irrationally selfish, moral, curmudgeon, blind to the ‘science’ of Global Warming, & to the long term future of humanity.

I am sure that many readers of The New Clarion understand that mankind has a moral and political Right to exploit the Earth, but those Rights, and the positive values they engender are quite abstract.

Should one seek to convince others, one must begin with compelling concretes before going to the abstract; it is those facts that prepare an audience to be inclined to listen to abstractions. Thus from fact, moral value can be invoked.

Here are four facts that I find serve two terrific purposes.

First, these facts are clearly significant, and contradict environmentalists claims.  Second, because these facts are not well known, they surprise one’s audience, perhaps challenging their belief that they had enough information to support the AGWers :

• “Did you know that plants are so starved for CO2 that two plant groups have evolved new ways of capturing it?  (My favorite)
• “Did you know that CO2 levels were 100x higher when the dinosaurs lived?
• “Did you know that if CO2 levels were just doubled, most plants would double their growth, producing twice as much fruit, vegetables and grains?  Food would be half as expensive.”
• “Did you know that the rocks of the World’s mountain ranges contain billions of tonnes of CO2, all  captured from the atmosphere eons ago?”

Never begin by *saying* you want to produce CO2 to “warm the planet.”  Do that, and you immediately surrender to the environmentalist position that human activity affects global climate.  It doesn’t.

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In a recent fundraising video President Obama says,

It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again.

I think it’s more than just electoral demographics that makes Obama think in terms of pressure groups. The Democrats want people to think of themselves as members of multicultural collectives, not as individuals. The message is: if you’re a minority or a woman, the Democrats will take care of you.

Individual rights are not an issue in welfare state politics. Instead society is a war of pressure groups. If you’re not rich, you’d better vote Democrat to get your fair share of the pie.

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Tomorrow, April 22nd is Exploit the Earth Day. This year I plan to celebrate it, weather permitting, by burning some scrap wood in my burner. This will of course release valuable carbon dioxide into the atmosphere thus warming our planet. You see warming the Earth will make growing seasons longer and this will benefit almost all living organisms including us humans. (more…)

By way of the Detroit Free Press, today’s leap of faith is this gem of logic from Iran: promiscuous women are the cause of earthquakes. Proof that religion places reason in the seat of justifying faith in dogma. A look at reality however does hint at a solution to the quakes:

“Some experts have even suggested Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.”

Nevertheless:

“Minister of Welfare and Social Security Sadeq Mahsooli said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best “formulas to repel earthquakes.”"

On 4/15 I received an email from my Michigan Senator Carl Levin announcing that hearings on the banking crisis had just started. Sen Levin is the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Naturally, the financial industry is presumed guilty and must now prove their innocence or somehow explain away their evil behavior. (more…)