The New Clarion

“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” — Ayn Rand

At Pajamas Media, there is an appalling post declaring that “the American experiment has failed”.  I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that it was authored by a conservative — and one that I have already fisked before, here at The New Clarion.

Once again, Matt Patterson gives us another striking example of ideological causality.  Here, Patterson demonstrates how conservatism plays off the Left in attacking their common enemy: America, and the Enlightenment ideals it concretizes.

Have you ever wondered why conservatives insist on ascribing the term “liberalism” to the Left, despite the clear contradictions between actual American liberalism and Leftism?  Why would they aid and abet the Left’s co-opting of liberalism?  The answer lies in conservatism’s essential anti-Americanism.  The Left seeks to discredit and destroy liberalism — i.e. Americanism –  from within, by passing off illiberal ideas in its name.  When these ideas have their logical, destructive results, the conservatives point to the wreckage and declare “thus fails liberalism.”

Either way, it is genuine liberalism — Americanism — that is discredited, diluted, and floated away as if it never existed.  This underlying, collusive synergy between the soi-disant “opposites” against their common target is itself a function of ideological causality; that is, most of the participants are unaware of the synergy.  (I don’t envy you the unpleasantness should you ever encounter one of the few Leftists or religionists who DO know it).  This is why Objectivists and all defenders of liberty must remember that at a certain, fundamental level, we are dealing with a single enemy.

I’m quite certain that Patterson would genuinely recoil from the accusation of moral treason that I direct against him in the comment I posted on his article, and which I reproduce below.  It doesn’t matter.  His terms of thought, his underlying premises, manifest themselves according to their own internal logic no matter what Patterson tells himself he believes…. and down that road he goes.

Ideological causality is a bear.

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A Portrait, in Links, of Philosophical Panic

(Built from Randex links, OActivists posts and a Google search, with apologies to Tennyson.)

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Today is different
And tomorrow the same
It’s hard to take the world
The way that it came
Too many rapids
Keep us sweeping along
Too many captains
Keep on steering us wrong
It’s hard to take the heat –
It’s hard to lay blame
To fight the fire –
While we’re
Feeding the flames

– Neil Peart “Second Nature”, from the album “Hold your Fire”by Rush

Billy Beck is beating the drum over the murder of Jose Guerena in Arizona, and rightly so.  What I wish to highlight here is the horrible spectacle of mainstream minds raising the alarm over the increasingly violent intrusions of the government into our lives, even as their underlying ideologies move them inexorably towards that end-of-road.  To judge by the reaction around the blogosphere, both Left and Right are aghast and angry over Guerena’s death — but I will show how, in fact, both “sides” are, at root, complicit in it.

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In my previous writings on the topic of ideological causality, I have emphasized the “end of road” of an idea and/or of ideologies, as determined not by one’s intentions, but by the logic and flow of these ideas.  Even a completely passive-minded individual does not sit still; he will still drift slowly, “downhill”, towards its destination.

Today, I will sketch out the flow of ideas with a “triangle”, going both ways along the conservative road.  I start with an article by one conservative and work backwards (or “uphill”) to its root premises — and then logically back “downhill” to another article, by another conservative, which is superficially unrelated, but fundamentally trapped within the same premises.

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1. How to understand Rush Limbaugh.

2. Republicans give up trying to repeal Obamacare.

3.Environmentalist farmers returning to animal power. I wonder if these people are more interested in farming or impressing their fellow environmentalists.

4. George Monbiot despairs because environmentalism seems to be out of touch with reality.

5. Jay Cost argues that Obama will lose in 2012 because we are in the worst economic recovery in 50 years. Karl Rove says the electoral math does not look good for Obama in 2012.

6. Quin Hillyer makes a good argument that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player ever.

UPDATE: Added the Willie Mays link.

Today we celebrate the killing of Osama Bin Laden. There has been little to celebrate in our long, muddled effort against totalitarian Islam, so let’s relish this triumph.

I think of this as a tactical victory in the context of our strategic defeat in this war. We have yet to get serious and fight this war the way it should be fought. Altruism and egalitarianism have us so submissive to world opinion that we can’t even name the enemy. The existence of the Department of Homeland Security shows that our government would rather keep its own citizens in a permanent state of terror than destroy the enemy.

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I saw Atlas Shrugged Part 1. There were 21 of us in the theater at an 8:05pm showing on Friday night. 21 is a lot more than were in the house for Kill The Irishman or The Way Back.

I liked it. It’s not the great work of art the novel deserves, but it has enough of the original in it to be entertaining and interesting.

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1. With Q&A Charles Alan Kors’s speech, Socialism’s Legacy: Lest We Forget, lasts one hour and 33 minutes; it is worth every second. Leftists continue to commit intellectual fraud by evading the extent of socialism’s evil. Dr. Kors reminds us of a most important lesson of the 20th century. His speech is an inspiring act of justice.

2. Economic growth in the first months of 2011 was 1.8%. At the same time inflation is surging:

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20
February 28, 2011: $3.24
March 6, 2011: $3.34
April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there’s the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.
March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

Vodkapundit has charts.

3. Disarming while at war:

From 1940 to 2000, average annual American defense expenditure was 8.5% of GDP; in war and mobilization years, 13.3%; under Democratic administrations, 9.4%; under Republican, 7.3%; and, most significantly, in the years of peace, 5.7%. Now we spend 4.6%, but, less purely operational war costs, 3.8% of GDP. That is, 66% of the traditional peacetime outlays. We have been, and we are, steadily disarming even as we are at war.

4. Andrew Bernstein on “Religion vs. Morality”; Harry Binswanger debates a socialist who equates Ayn Rand with Nietzsche. Both are around two hours long.

5. Keynes vs. Hayek. Is it my imagination or are the production values in this video higher than those seen in the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 trailer?

6. The Democrats released an ad claiming Paul Ryan’s budget would “end Medicare,” hoping to scare seniors. I always fall for these negative ads and think better of the Republicans. Going by Democrat attacks, I’d be ready to put Paul Ryan’s face on Mt. Rushmore. Turns out, alas, the ad is a lie. Ryan’s budget increases spending on Medicare. His budget is an attempt to make the welfare state run on time. The Democrats are so locked into their playbook of demonizing Republicans and fear-mongering pressure groups that their claims have no relation to reality.

UPDATE: Revised the description of the socialist in item #4.

Another blow to the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech was delivered this time by Michigan’s 19th District Court when it recently ruled that there is a no-free-speech zone around a Mosque in Dearborn. In this zone it shall be illegal for pastor Jones to criticize and/or protest Jihad and Sharia Law in any way. Understandably many people are outraged at this obvious violation of the right to free speech. [Read more →]

Now that Obama has released his long form birth certificate — which shows he was born in a manger in Hawaii, surrounded by sheep and three wise men — can we move on to more important things?

Like why does a guy who has been around intellectuals and effete leftists all his life talk like a hick? Obama says ya instead of you and doin’ instead of doing. Is this something a Democrat must do to show he’s a man of the people?

(And boy, does this author look stupid.)

1. Daniel Henninger looks at Obama’s nasty character.

2. Ed Schultz uses a chart to prove we need higher taxes, but the chart looks like an indictment of spending to me. He is right that Republicans in Congress should have spoken up about Bush’s spending — then he rationalizes Obama’s spending because “every economist on both sides of the aisle said you’ve got to spend money to get out of this problem.” I can think of a few economists who didn’t say that.

3. Today’s young leftists.

4. From Gus Van Horn we read that

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans.

From Wikipedia:

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: “reduction to the absurd”) is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.

Reductio ad absurdum is a polemical technique used against an opponent. But what do you call it when a side follows its own premise to absurdity?

5. Part 2 of Rational Public Radio’s intervew with Yaron Brook.

6. Evan Sayet is insightful about the left.

Imagine a train rolling down a track. (No, this has nothing to do with the Atlas Shrugged movie opening on April 15th.)

Now imagine a middle aged man who drives his Cadillac Escalade around the railroad crossing arm with its blinking red lights and parks on the train track. The train’s whistle screams at the man to drive off the track. The laws of physics won’t let the train stop in time. There’s no arguing with F=MA.

The man has time to drive off the track, but he does not. If there were something wrong with his SUV, he could jump out and run away, but he does not.

What do you conclude about the man in the Escalade? He wants to die. In a dramatic, violent and irresponsible manner, the man is committing suicide.

What are we to make of a political party that does nothing to stop the coming fiscal crisis in America?

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It is amusing to see someone get excited about an IRS refund. He dances around and shouts, “I got $2,000! Partyyyyyy!!!”

Hey, you really screwed the government, huh?

Shmuck. The IRS loves to “give” you that money. Every refund represents a happy sheep.

It’s the First Law of Parasites: Don’t kill the host. That refund check is emotional fuel that keeps the producer working while the government bleeds him drop after drop, month after month…

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1. The Objective Standard reviews the week every weekend.

2. “The prose, like the author, belongs in hell.” P.J. O’Rourke has fun with the Chinese Tiger Mother’s book.

3. Andrew McCarthy asks two good questions:

First, why should we give a damn about the Afghan people? And second, why are we sacrificing American blood and American treasure to build an Islamist post-nation that hates America?

Peter Wehner says we should give a damn because we are all made in God’s image. Although the word never comes up, this is a dispute between two conservatives about altruism.

4. I love the look on this bird’s face.

5. Check out Rational Public Radio. These guys are good.

6. Islamic infiltration. When will we get serious?

Downsizinggovernment.org stunned this blogger with how much useless government can be cut — while Congress is haggling over less than 1%. Let’s see how much I can find to cut in less than an hour. This is, of course, an exercise in fantasy; somehow politicians don’t think like you and me.

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1. Ron Pisaturo compares two scenes in the Atlas Shrugged movie to the book. He shows how small changes can turn dialogue from romantic to naturalistic. This is a must-read for fiction writers.

2. Onkar Ghate reveals what is wrong with environmentalism. (Like everything.) This is the stuff you only get from Objectivists.

3. Barry Rubin writes that Hamas is moving toward war with Israel.

Hamas can fire an advanced anti-tank rocket because the Egyptian revolution has ended a regime that acted in its own interest to block most arms shipments to Hamas. The Egypt-Gaza border is now open. Terrorists and superior weapons are flooding into Gaza.

4. Marian Wright Edelman gives us the leftist case against budget cuts, and leaves no liberal cliche behind. You see, the Republicans want to rob from poor children in order to give money to corporations. You knew that, right? Her argument is economically ignorant but full of moral indignation — and that’s all she needs to flummox conservatives.

5. Yaron Brook on Capitalism Without Guilt, with a good Q&A session.

6. Vasko Kohlmayer is not impressed with Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Amy Peikoff wants cuts now, not over a 10-year period.

1. The Professional Left.

2. When Newt Gingrich jumps on the religion bandwagon, does it mean that a longtime power seeker senses the way things are going in America?

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There is one line in Obama’s speech on Monday justifying military action in Libya that stands out, amongst a lot of illogic and contradictions, as the real reason:

…I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

The prospect of emotionally wrenching pictures of suffering was too much for the President. Obama is not worried about logical arguments, but the emotionalist thinkers who look at pictures out of context and ask, “Why didn’t we do something?”

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Some have wondered what the Obama Doctrine is. I believe Bryan Preston at Pajamas Tatler has found it. Obama made this statement in El Salvador:

And that’s why building this international coalition has been so important because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, and it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally. And we will accomplish that in a relatively short period of time.

(Emphasis Preston’s)

The Obama Doctrine restated in plain spoken clarity (which politicians never come near) is: America will not assert its national self-interest, but if other countries want to volunteer us to sacrifice for the rest of the world, we will be glad to serve.

(HT: Contentions)

At Cato Unbound, C. Bradley Thompson is in the middle of an unfair fight.  He is defending the thesis of his book, “Neoconservatism: An Obituary” against multiple opponents, in a series of essays — and encountering no actual intellectual opposition (if “actuality” here is measured by reference to “dealing with ideas”) from the defender of neoconservatism.  I can almost see Thompson wandering the intellectual battlefield wielding his book like Connor McLeod with his sword, asking “Why won’t they fight me?”

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