The Objectivism Online Meta-Blog

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

New York Times columnist David Brooks comments on a trend that hardly surprises me, given today's near-universal intellectual sloppiness and confusion: The embrace of mysticism by scientists. Indeed, although he fails to integrate the progression correctly (or particularly well), he does outline it in the way it unfolded.

Let's follow his outline, but in the vein of understanding how this progression follows from some of the philosophical errors common among today's intellectuals.

In the following, Brooks' comments are in plain text, and mine are in bold.

• To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. So far, so good.

• Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are "hard-wire" [sic] to do this or that. Religion is an accident. Most scientists are determinists and, to my knowledge, regard the idea of free will as inherently mystical. Determinism flies in the face of the evidence that man has volition, but to my knowledge, only Objectivists have entertained the idea of volition as being a form of causation inherent to intelligent beings, and arising from their material nature. On top of that, few understand that it is philosophy that sets the terms of the debate about epistemology, the nature of the mind, and indeed, what constitutes science. So they study the mind philosophically half-cocked and end up attempting to make pronouncements of a philosophic nature based on their evidence, when what they desperately need is a correct understanding of the nature of the mind in order to interpret this evidence properly.

• In this materialist view, people perceive God's existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. That does follow from materialism, if you mistake the widespread existence of religious belief for evidence that it confers an evolutionary advantage.

• If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God. Religion is a tangled knot of horrible philosophical premises and legitimate aspirations -- and the emotions that go with them. Imagine the insights we could have if scientists better understood what religion and emotions were when they were studying them! Instead, we have determinists ignorant about both looking at this. Brooks' hero, Tom Wolfe saw where this would go.

• The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it. The scientists are wasting their time here. Like I said, science does not set the terms of philosophical debates. It can eliminate some of the "gaps" in "god of the gaps" types of arguments, but this just proves my point.

• And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible. This follows from the nature of faith and the beginning of that slippery slope was the original concession: to "debate" the faithful at all.

• Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development. The false reason-emotion dichotomy pays off in spades for the religionists as scientists, disarmed in the face of (1) evidence that emotions might (gasp!) have a survival role for human beings, (2) their own ignorance of the nature of emotions, and (3) their own implicit acceptance of the reason-emotion dichotomy, find "evidence" of the supernatural.

• Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment. If altruism is everywhere, and a material being cannot have free will, widespread philosophical errors and their consequences must be instinctual!

• Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real. What did I say a while ago about having a grasp of the nature of emotions and of religion before attempting to study what goes on in the brain during religious-types of experiences?

• This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism. See Sam Harris.

• If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion. Yeah. The beliefs that already saturate our culture like a sponge left to soak in a sewer.
  

• The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It's going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

• In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. Unexpected -- only to the philosophical victims of Immanuel Kant....
  

Many of these scientists see philosophy as impotent, and themselves as coming to the rescue of humanity by offering hard facts and evidence on the "big questions". And yet it is their own ignorance of philosophy that is causing them to bolster the very enemies of reason who might ultimately undo the scientific revolution.

This scientist disagrees.

-- CAV

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

And no, I'm not talking about John McCain's infamous short fuse.

I'm talking about the danger a McCain Presidency can pose to our system of federal government above and beyond McCain's own bad policies, his opposition to freedom of speech, and the possibility that he will aid America's descent into theocracy by placing Mike Huckabee on his ticket.

The Software Nerd, some time ago, wrote a very interesting post about how a large coalescence of political power near the "middle" can result in an end to the "gridlock" our Founding Fathers engineered into the federal government, but which so many foolish "moderate" voters bemoan:

I have a hypothesis though: even though the center-of-gravity remains unchanged in the middle, the more people there are crowding around the middle, the faster and more likely such policies will get enacted at all. As long as enough people from both sides are far from the middle, they will delay and fight changes, and government is slowed down a bit.

I was reminded this morning of one important check against the irrational passions of the electorate that I haven't heard discussed much so far: The Supreme Court. (I just love how the short primary season has gutted what little deliberation was left from the process of vetting presidential candidates....) By the time our next President -- and we are all but guaranteed a horrible one this time around -- takes the helm, he will probably have the opportunity to appoint more than one new Supreme Court justice since five of the nine will be more than 70 years old. John Paul Stevens is 88 now.

And if we are to believe Jeff Jacoby, McCain thinks "Supreme" means "really big" and "Court" means "legislative rubber stamp":

The senator emphasized the importance of judicial modesty and deference to the elected branches of government, lamenting that "federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically." He criticized Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for not being concerned "when fundamental questions of social policy are preemptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives." [bold added]

Great. McCain already buys into the bipartisan Bad Idea of the Day, massive economic regulation inspired by global warming hysteria. He's too leftist (and eager to curry favor with a leftist media) for us to hope that he will reign in a Democratic Congress. He's too much of a Pragmatist to offer any real opposition to the Religious Right, if he isn't really one of them already.

And now, we might get to see him monkey around with the composition of the Supreme Court. The next four years looks uglier by the minute. (For the record, I do not regard the comments at this link as either reason to vote for McCain or a sufficient argument against voting for a Libertarian. Neither voting for McCain nor voting Libertarian is an acceptable option.)

-- CAV

By Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

First, via GVH, I found this interesting NY Times article on the history behind the Loving v. Virginia case that ultimately legalized interracial marriage. That case was decided just 41 years ago. I'm very grateful -- in a very personal way -- that race is no longer a factor in marriage in America. It's not a legal obstacle whatsoever, and not even much of a social obstacle. That's absolutely wonderful.

Second, the California Supreme Court has ruled that laws restricting marriage to heterosexuals violate the state's constitution. While I might not agree with the reasoning of the court, I do wholeheartedly support gay marriage. The essence of marriage is the total integration of two lives: sexually, legally, socially, financially, geographically, sexually, morally, etc. The fact that most marriages involve two people with contrasting genitalia is not of any grand significance. My marriage, for example, has far more in common with the relationship of a committed, rational lesbian couple than to the now-dissolved insane marriage between Brittney Spears and Kevin Federline.

Significantly, to recognize gay marriage as fundamentally similar to heterosexual marriage -- i.e. as a primary, enduring relationship fundamentally integrating two lives -- is not a lapse into subjectivism. That's because such integration is only possible with certain kinds and numbers of people.

1. Marriage to beasts is impossible, as the marriage relationship requires the capacity for rationality, not to mention a basic equality in rights. The relationship involved in pet or livestock ownership is wholly different even from that of a fleeting and unserious romantic relationship.
   
   
2. Marriage to children is excluded for the same basic reason: children are not yet able to fully exercise even the basic rationality required to live independently. That capacity for independence is required for the integration of lives involved in marriage. In other words, a child has no financial, social, moral, or legal life of his own to integrate with another person. Of course, I need not even mention the abhorrent evil of foisting a sexual relationship on a child.
   
   
3. Polygamous marriage is excluded because whatever relationships would result from multiple unions would be fundamentally different than that of a two-person marriage. Most polygamous marriages, I suspect, would not be a genuine integration at all, but rather a juxtaposed set of individual marriages, each half-starved due to competing demands on time, resources, and attention. Even if the various husbands and wives do live a single, integrated life together, the resulting relationships would be hugely different than an ordinary marriage. Decisions might be made by majority vote. (Sorry Sally, but you were outvoted: we're moving to North Dakota.) Social norms would be completely different. (Do I have to invite all Joe's wives to dinner, or just the mother of our daughter's classmate?) The laws governing divorce, child custody, medical power of attorney, inheritance, testifying against a spouse, and so on would have to be totally re-worked. (If I don't have a medical power of attorney, which husband directs the course of my medical care while I'm in a coma? If I die, how will my property be divided? Also, should each person be able to marry multiple people?) Notably, sex is basically a two-person activity, so that would have to be juxtaposed, rather than integrated. Basically, polygamous relationships -- even if somehow recognized by law (and I don't oppose that) -- would be fundamentally different from marriages between two persons, whether of the same or opposite sex, along multiple dimensions.

Marriage is an extremely important institution in a civilized culture. It's the full-blown, across-the-board public commitment to share one's life with another person. It's a fundamental value in life that my gay friends deserve just as much as my straight ones.

So... as the title of the post says: "Three Cheers for Marrying Whoever You Damn Well Please!"

(Note: I have no idea whether my co-bloggers agree with me on this issue. They can speak for themselves...)

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain recently made a number of alarming statements about his approach to the "global warming" issue. In particular, on May 12, 2008 he stated that, "he would pursue mandatory U.S. curbs on greenhouse gas emissions if he wins the White House in November". This is not the first time that he has expressed such views. During the Republican candidates' debate of May 2007, he defended his policy along lines similar to Pascal's Wager:

Now, suppose that [California Governor Schwarzenneger] and I are wrong, and there's no such thing as climate change. And we adopt these green technologies, of which America and the innovative skills we have and the entrepreneurship and the free market, which is embodied by Senator Lieberman's and my cap-and-trade proposal, is enacted, and there's no such thing as climate change. Then all we've done is give our kids a cleaner world.

But suppose we do nothing. Suppose we do nothing and we don't eliminate this $400 billion dependence we have on foreign oil. Some of that money goes to terrorist organizations and also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Then what kind of a world have we given our children?

Of course, McCain's argument omits the hundreds of billions of dollars of economic harm caused by implementing draconian policies that limit industry and commerce, as well as the countless harms done to individuals by prohibiting then from engaging in productive free enterprise.

McCain's statements put him squarely in the camp of the "global warming authoritarians" as described by Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute. Although he poses as a defender of "entrepreneurship and the free market", he clearly has no objection to an environmentalist agenda that is fundamentally inimical to human life. Those who support McCain over one of the Democrats on the grounds that he is somehow "better" than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama may need to look more closely at what McCain really stands for.

By noreply@blogger.com (Nicholas Provenzo) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The American painter Norman Rockwell ranks among my favorite artists. Often derided as being mawkish and never taken seriously by the art establishment, Rockwell is nevertheless one of the few artists to dedicate his talent to capturing the American spirit in action. This first installment discusses one of four paintings that I consider to be among Rockwell's greatest achievements.

The Scoutmaster (1956)




This panting depicts the central figure of a man standing sentinel over the glowing embers of a nighttime fire as boys peacefully slumber in their tents. The starry blue of the night sky and dry rocky soil suggest a remote and secluded location. The man, muscular and taught, stands uniformed but he is not militaristic, a policeman or a hunter; he carries no weapon upon his person or badge of office. No threats are presented, yet the man stands watch nonetheless, his modestly ringed hand resting upon his hip, his stick racking the coals as a gentle wisp of smoke flutters in the nighttime air. The man's face is directed off-canvas, we know not at what, yet his expression reveals no tension; his gaze seems more inward than outward. By the different color hair of the boys, we see that they are not his, yet he watches over them as if they were his own. A small tripod stands over the fire, lashed together with line whose bitter ends hang out; these are knots seemingly tied by the hands of a novice. An aluminum pot hangs off the tripod, a coffee pot rests nearby and rocks and small stumps ring the faint fire; hunger or want is of no concern in this scene. Instead, Rockwell presents an image of quite calm; of a man standing silently as the entrusted leader of future men.

I admire this painting for its technical mastery; the contrapposto pose of the man feels effortless, the natural drapery of the man's uniform and gentle billowing of his neckerchief reveals an artist who fully understands how body, cloth, and atmosphere interact with one another. I also admire this panting for its thematic presentation; even if we know nothing about the mission and history of the Boy Scouts, we can immediately see that Rockwell is depicting a man dedicated to the boys in his care and that this man is the product of specific values and achievements.

For example, set this scene in the middle ages, and one easily imagines a different scene where the man is a knight and the boys are his youthful attendants, yet here the man is depicted as serving the youth. Rockwell presents an expedition whose purpose is not to forage for food or wage war, but to instruct boys in the arts of self-reliance and personal independence--and that is why I see this painting reflecting a quintessential American theme. America is a land of plenty. The thing to be conquered, the challenge we would prepare our youth to face is not privation or other men; it is the mastery of their own nature as free and independent beings.

In my view, Rockwell captures the essence of those dedicated to such instruction and he captures it in a way that will resonate as long as images of this work continue to exist.

Next installment: a veteran's homecoming.

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I am glad to see that the melting pot is still bubbling, although the latest raid against a kosher meat plant is an example of anti-immigration hysteria. Here is an quote from Robert Tracinski's newsletter, TIA Daily.

And this anti-immigrant push is based on nothing more than hysteria. The only legitimate concern about immigration is a fear that the new immigrants will not assimilate into American society—not merely that they won't adopt our language, or dress like us, or eat our food (American cuisine is largely a combination of various immigrant cuisines, anyway), but that they won't adopt our ideals.

I don't think we have much to worry about on that score. I know too many immigrants who are more American in spirit than the average native-born American, and I have confidence that our culture is still so strong, so appealing, and so rewarding to those who adopt it that it will continue to propagate itself. (TIA Daily, 05/13/08.)

Related: My post, IMMIGRATION POLICY.

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

John McCain's worst enemy is John McCain. Both Obama and Clinton are so inadequate and weak that they don't pose much of a threat to McCain.

Obama, if he ends up the Democrat nominee as most people think probable, will be the least distinguished nominee of a major party in my lifetime, and perhaps in American history. He is the emptiest of suits, a mediocrity who ascended through Chicago politics by networking, going to a church shepherded by a raving leftist anti-American and socializing at the salon of aging radical terrorists. He is an effete liberal who views America as a foreign country and longs to transform it into France. An Obama presidency would look much like Jimmy Carter's, with a naive, appeasing President being bitch-slapped into reality by a mean world that wants to destroy America.

Clinton has high "negatives," the touch of death in a profession that lives on votes. Not only that, she has a way of energizing her enemies, who see her as the Wicked Witch of the West, Mussolini and their mother-in-law rolled into one woman.

All John McCain has to do is smile, kiss babies and stand tough on America's defense and he can waltz into the White House against either of these losers. Unfortunately, he seems determined to prove he is as bad as any Democrat.

McCain wants to take on the highly speculative, dubious problem of "global warming."

McCain's major solution is to implement a cap-and-trade program on carbon-fuel emissions, like a similar program in the Clean Air Act that was used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that triggered acid rain.

Industries would be given emission targets, and those coming in under their limit could sell their surplus polluting capacity to companies unable to meet their target.

Now, for any reader who might think there is something to all this global warming talk, consider this from Walter Williams:

Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

Why is it that environmentalists never put global warming in the context that Dr. Williams provides? Could it be that they're trying to scare us with bad science? Could it be that their real goal is state control of the economy and the destruction of capitalism?

John McCain doesn't give a damn about capitalism and freedom. He loves state power; he holds sacrifice to the collective as the moral ideal. He thrills to the idea of mandating vast regulations on industry in the name of "saving the planet." As a man who has confessed his ignorance of economics, it doesn't matter what the actual, practical effects of his regulations will be; all that matters is his feel good fantasy and massive sacrifice. To altruists the gesture of sacrifice is an end in itself unconnected to any practical benefits. Nay, practical benefits would make sacrifice more of a selfish long-term trade, and where is the morality in that?

But McCain being McCain, he has to take the dishonesty of his proposal a little further by calling his massive regulations a "free market" solution. (In reality his "cap and trade" policies will amount to K Street lobbyists buying off politicians to get favors for their clients.) He does not understand that a market dictated and controlled by the state is not free. Laissez-faire capitalism is the separation of state and economy. The word for McCain's vision of private industry dictated by the state is fascism.

On the heels of this environmentalist nonsense, as if McCain were on a mission to rub the nose of small government Republicans in shit, the word comes out that he is considering Huckabee as his Vice President running mate. Could he make a worse choice than a religious nanny-stater? (Maybe he wants Huckabee at his side because the Arkansan is the only prominent Republican who makes McCain look smart about economics.)

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I've received multiple e-mails in response to my recent letter to the editor in the May 11, 2008 New York Times advocating a free market in health insurance. I appreciate the fact that the correspondents all took the time to read my letter, see my affiliation with Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM), search for the FIRM website, find my e-mail address, and then write me with their comments and questions.

The various correspondents posed a number of good questions about the nature of a free market in health insurance, as well as some more fundamental issues on individual rights and the proper role of government in health care. I've had several stimulating rounds of e-mail discussion with folks from around the country. And even though we didn't always agree on some important issues, all of the e-mails I received were polite and articulate, and I appreciated the many thoughtful remarks from all of the writers.

One correspondent recommended that I post my responses online so that other interested parties would have a place to read a more fully developed and explicit explanation of the ideas related to a free market in health insurance. I thought that was an excellent suggestion. Hence, I've paraphrased and collated an essentialized set of questions (and my subsequent responses) in the form of this brief FAQ.

(This FAQ has also been posted on the FIRM blog here.)

===========

Q1) In a free market for health insurance, should insurers be able to exclude someone based on a pre-existing condition?

Q2) Why should whether I live or die depend on whether an insurance company finds it too costly to pay for my care? Should my fate be determined by whether a corporation finds it profitable?

Q3) How would a free market guarantee that all Americans will have necessary health coverage?

Q4) What if someone has a bad disease through no fault of his own, can't afford the treatment, and no insurance company will cover him? Who will pay for his care?

Q5) Isn't the purpose of a government to promote the common welfare of all citizens?

Q6) Your position is very harsh and Darwinian. If you were dying of cancer and could not afford treatment, would you really say to yourself, "Oh well, this is my random bad luck, no one has an obligation to treat me and so I must die"?

Q7) Isn't it my social obligation to subsidize the health care of those who can't afford it?

Q8) I agree that health care is not a "right", but isn't it moral for the US government to raise taxes to improve the overall welfare of the nation? Universal health care (ideally administered through a free-market mechanism to the greatest extent possible) would be a good use of that power.

= = = = = = = = = =

Q1) In a free market for health insurance, should insurers be able to exclude someone based on a pre-existing condition?

A1) Yes. In a free market, insurers (like any other businesses or individuals) are entitled to set whatever terms they wish for the products they wish to sell. Similarly, customers can choose to accept those terms, decline them, or negotiate with them for some other mutually agreed-upon alternative.

It's also important to note that our current system is far from a free -- at best it's semi-free. Insurance companies are under numerous government constraints about what sorts of services they must/must not offer, who they can/cannot exclude, what sorts of prices they can charge, when they must accept customers, etc. For instance, some states require that a healthy 22-year old man must pay the same premium as a 60-year old man with multiple chronic health problems. Some states require that insurance companies that offer small group policies must accept every group that applies and must accept every member of the group regardless of lifestyle choice or health condition. Constraints such as these make it difficult for customers to purchase insurance in the first place. These constraints are the cause of our current problems and it is those contraints that I wish to see repealed. (For more details, please refer to "Moral Health Care Vs. 'Universal Health Care'" by Lin Zinser and myself.)

Q2) Why should whether I live or die depend on whether an insurance company finds it too costly to pay for my care? Should my fate be determined by whether a corporation finds it profitable?

A2) One should reverse that question. Should an insurance company be obliged to run at a loss? For example, there are many people who wish to force insurers to cover expensive treatments that are of minimal (if any) proven efficacy, such as bone marrow transplant in patients with late-stage breast cancer. If or when such laws are passed, insurance companies don't survive for long or else they pull out of local markets where such laws are in force, thus depriving all the other residents of that locality the possibility of purchasing insurance from that company. If an insurance company cannot be profitable, then they can't provide coverage for anyone.

More fundamentally, should an insurance company be obliged to pay for your care purely because you need it, regardless of the cost to them? The fact that you have a need does not create an automatic obligation on others to fulfil that need.

Q3) How would a free market guarantee that all Americans will have necessary health coverage?

A3) There's a premise in your question that I must disagree with - namely that it's the government's responsibility to guarantee health coverage for all Americans. It is not, any more than it's the proper role of the government to guarantee that every American has a job or a car. Health care is a need, but that's not the same thing as a right.

A right is a freedom of action that an individual possesses, such as the right to free speech. Rights impose no positive obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. Rights are not automatic claims on the goods and services produced by others -- that is just state-sanctioned theft.

To further concretize the difference between a need and a right, consider an innocent child with a rare disease who will die unless he gets a bone marrow transplant from a matching donor. The only potential donor with the proper tissue match is someone who doesn't want to donate, for whatever reason (maybe he's scared of needles, maybe he's a Jehovah's Witness, maybe he's just an ornery old cuss). We'll also stipulate that the potential donor understands exactly what is at stake for the child, and that he correctly understands that donating bone marrow is a very safe procedure that would involve a few minutes of tolerable physical pain and a couple of hours of his time, but otherwise wouldn't impair his life afterwards. The fact that the child will die without that bone marrow does not mean that the child's family (or anyone else) has the right to strap that potential donor down and forcibly take a marrow sample from him against his will. The child's need does not constitute a right to that other man's bone marrow.

Q4) What if someone has a bad disease through no fault of his own, can't afford the treatment, and no insurance company will cover him? Who will pay for his care?

A4) The short answer is, "Anyone who wishes to do so."

If someone incurs an unfortunate random hardship (even though it is no fault of his own), it does not create an automatic obligation for anyone else to pay for it. Depending on the exact circumstances, I might be willing to voluntarily donate my own time/money to help him out. For example, in my capacity as a physician, I have personally waived my own professional fee more times than I can count out of voluntary charity for patients whom I've thought were worthy recipients. The same is true for nearly every other physician I know. And in general, Americans have been extraordinarily benevolent about voluntarily donating their time and money for innocent victims of natural disasters, disease, and man-made harms (such as 9-11 or the Oklahoma City bombings).

So if someone developed a bad disease that would cost him $100k, and either didn't get insurance or couldn't get insurance, then he essentially has to rely on the voluntary charity of others. His need (genuine as it may be), does not create a right to someone else's property or time.

This isn't limited to health care. The same would be true if an unfortunate homeowner didn't or couldn't purchase flood insurance, then his house was completely destroyed by a freak 100-year flood. His hardship does not constitute any sort of automatic claim on others' assets. Again, I (and many others) might be willing to be offer voluntary charity to help him out. But if no one is voluntarily willing to help him out, then he loses his house.

Furthermore, the very fact that such examples tug at the sympathies of normal decent Americans also means that those Americans will be forthcoming with voluntary charity. And I fully support giving to charities that are consistent with my values and priorities.

Q5) Isn't the purpose of a government to promote the common welfare of all citizens?

A5) No, the purpose of government is to protect individual rights - specifically to protect individuals from the predations of others who would use force to deprive men of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This includes protecting honest men from external enemies who would wage war on us as well as internal criminals who would use force to steal, murder, commit rape, etc. Hence the purpose of a government is to create and enforce conditions where men and women can freely and voluntarily exchange ideas, goods, and services to the mutual benefit according to their best rational judgment, without fear that someone else will try to forcibly rob them of those benefits. Man's essential nature requires that he uses his reasoning mind to create the values necessary for sustaining his life. Hence, protecting his right to the free use of his mind (and the right to voluntarily trade with others for the products of their thought and effort free from compulsion) is the basic function of a government.

When a government ceases to be the protector of individual rights and instead becomes one of the chief violators, then it undermines the very reason for its existence. It's akin to a government claiming that "we need to protect the freedoms of Americans from enemies abroad", and then imposing a military draft on young Americans to fight in a war (and violating those draftees' freedom and rights in the process).

Q6) Your position is very harsh and Darwinian. If you were dying of cancer and could not afford treatment, would you really say to yourself, "Oh well, this is my random bad luck, no one has an obligation to treat me and so I must die"?

A6) Yes. My life is my own responsibility. Others may choose to voluntarily help me if am in need, but they should not be legally required to do so (i.e., they should not be forced by the government to help me against their will or punished by the government for failing to help me.)

If I needed $100,000 for a life-saving cancer treatment but couldn't afford it, I would of course do everything legal and moral to try to live. I might borrow money from friends and family, I might ask for charitable contributions, I might sign up for clinical trials of experimental drugs, etc. But I wouldn't hack into my neighbor's bank account and steal that money from his kids' college fund. Or steal $100 each from a thousand of my neighbors. Or ask the government to take it from my neighbors by force.

Similarly, if my next-door neighbor was the only possible matching bone marrow donor to cure my rare disease but he didn't want to donate a sample to save my life, I wouldn't strap him down and take it from him by force. If I had a brain tumor that required a delicate operation in order for me to live, and the only neurosurgeon with the necessary skill was unwilling to do the procedure, I wouldn't force him to perform the surgery at gunpoint (or have the government force him).

That's not being Darwinian -- that's just being moral. Of course, I would prefer to live rather than die of a terrible disease. But I wouldn't want to live if it costs me my integrity and my self-respect.

Q7) Isn't it my social obligation to subsidize the health care of those who can't afford it?

A7) No, you have no positive binding obligation to help others although of course you have the voluntary choice. Nor is this limited to health care -- it's an application of a more general principle. If I saw a child drowning in the ocean, in all likelihood I would try to save him if I thought I had a reasonable chance of success. And nearly everyone I know would feel similarly. But if a different passerby chose not to make the attempt for whatever reason, then that's his choice to make and one which I have to respect. He has the right to decide whether he wishes to try or not. Conversely, the drowning child cannot demand that a random passerby must help him as a matter of right -- only out of voluntary charity. If it turned out that a passerby was a strong swimmer but refused to help because he was a total jerk, then I might hold him up to public moral censure -- maybe he'd lose his friends, his job, and the respect of his peers. But the government should not send him to jail for failing to take a positive action that could have saved the child's life (assuming that he wasn't the cause of the child's drowning in the first place).

Just as a passerby should not (and currently does not) have a legally binding positive obligation to help a drowning child even if he is capable of doing so at no cost to himself, he should not be obligated by law to pay for my cancer treatment. There's a crucially important difference between him having the negative obligations not to steal from me or not to deprive me of freedom of speech (i.e., to respect my rights), and any purported positive obligations to pay for my health care or save me from an accident. Again, my right to free speech implies only a negative obligation on his part not to violate it -- it does not require a positive action on his part. On the other hand, any alleged entitlement rights such as a "right" to health care is essentially a demand by me for some forced positive action from others.

Q8) I agree that health care is not a "right", but isn't it moral for the US government to raise taxes to improve the overall welfare of the nation? Universal health care (ideally administered through a free-market mechanism to the greatest extent possible) would be a good use of that power.

A8) If we agree that there is no "right" to health care, then by what right does a government force one citizen to pay for the care of another citizen? That's what any system of "universal care" essentially amounts to. What you consider a moral use of government power is something I consider deeply immoral. And the experience of other nations shows that any attempted system of universal care ends up destroying the free market that makes quality health care possible.

At a practical level, if I needed major medical care and couldn't afford it, I'd much rather rely on a pure free market plus voluntary charity from my fellow Americans, than a British-style system of government "universal care".

Although critics of the free market regularly claim that it would lead to "people dying in the streets", this would not actually happen unless Americans were far more impoverished and callous than they are today. The free market is our best protection from that scenario. And if Americans ever became that impoverished and callous, then no system of government-run universal care would be sustainable or even possible.

On the other hand, the nationalized health systems routinely deny care to people who have theoretical "universal coverage". Those patients *do* end up dying because of the allegedly "compassionate" government system.

By David Holcberg from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

No Bailouts for Borrowers or Lenders
By David Holcberg (U.S.News & World Report, May 7, 2008; Orange County Register, August 27, 2007)

Government should not intervene in the housing market with bailouts.

Any government bailout of either homeowners or lenders would have to be financed with money taxed from other people--and that would be utterly unjust.

Lenders knew--or should have known--the risks of making loans to individuals who had shaky finances and deserved little, if any, credit. And borrowers knew--or should have known--the risks of taking loans that they might not be able to repay.

In either case, lenders and borrowers are responsible for their decisions and should bear the consequences of their mistakes (or misfortunes) on their own.

Why should responsible, hard-working individuals who pay their mortgages and rents on time, or who already paid for their homes, be forced to pay also for the mortgage of others who defaulted on their obligations?

 

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

"The game will continue, and the bandwagon-riders will destroy James Bond, as they have destroyed Mike Hammer, as they have destroyed Eliot Ness, then look for another victim to 'parody'..." 1

Next fall the twenty-second "official" James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace," will be released, first in Britain, then around the world, starring Daniel Craig as Bond in his second appearance in the role. This number does not include two "unofficial" Bond movies, "Casino Royale" (1967), which was a spoof of the novel, and "Never Say Never Again" (1983), which starred Sean Connery.

And on May 28, the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth, the twenty-second bogus James Bond novel, Devil May Care, will be published, written by British novelist Sebastian Faulks.

Fleming wrote only twelve full-length Bond novels, aside from a collection of short stories, For Your Eyes Only, from which the title of the new Bond movie was taken. In addition, he wrote what are actually two very short novelettes, Octopussy and his posthumously-published The Living Daylights; the latter two have been published under one cover, Octopussy, and include another short story, "The Property of a Lady."

So the output of bogus Bond novels exceeds what Fleming himself wrote. I call the non-Fleming Bond novels "bogus" because, in fact, in terms of quality, plot, character, and intent, they have as little to do with James Bond as Fleming conceived him, which is as a hero, as a Disney movie has to do with Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris or with any other classic. Beginning with the movie version of From Russia with Love, the destruction by second-handers of Bond as a hero has continued without let-up since Fleming's death in 1964.

Fleming died about a year after Dr. No, the first Bond movie, was released. The shot script is more or less faithful to the novel, although some pointless gratuities were taken with the original story. For example, in the novel, the villain is buried in a mountain of guano; in the movie, he is broiled alive in a vat of radioactive water. One can only speculate whether or not Fleming would have approved or sanctioned the subsequent gutting of his novels for the big screen.

After all the novels had been filmed (each of them used a Fleming title but little or nothing of the story), Hollywood began inventing Bond stories. Sean Connery, the original and most credible Bond, even appeared in one, "Never Say Never Again." Then Hollywood, ever the congenital literary and esthetic shoplifter, shot one short story from the collection, "From a View to a Kill," and now has turned to another, "Quantum of Solace." Neither has anything to do with the Fleming stories, which, if they were actually and competently produced, would make interesting hour-long television specials.

In addition, there is even a series of "young" James Bond novels. The hacks have left no stone unturned in their quest to cash in on the Bond-Fleming name.

It has been a long, tedious, macabre parade of bandwagons. Their riders, as Rand put it in "Bootleg Romanticism," are "a group of previously undistinguished persons" getting "their chance at distinction and at piles of money." Like price, when it comes to exploiting Fleming's creation and reaping unearned distinction and piles of money, esthetics, story integrity and honesty are no object.

Research for this commentary uncovered a bewildering number of websites and "fanzines" devoted to James Bond, which either pant or drool over the prospect of new Bond novels or movies. Like CommanderBond.net, they are all markedly oblivious to any wider issues concerning Fleming's creation. Several non-Fleming "graphic" (or illustrated) Bond novels have also been published and list not only their authors' and illustrators' names, but Fleming's, as well. That is likely at the insistence of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd., which controls and owns the rights to the Bond character for the trustees and heirs of the Fleming estate, in addition to all the novels and movies, Fleming and non-Fleming. There are many forms of prostitution. Apparently, one of them is leasing out literary rights to a fictional character to any chance, indiscriminate hack, and calling it a "franchise."

But, why the fascination? One can almost excuse the fans' almost ghoulish obsession with Bond and their hankering for more of him. What other recent fictional hero in popular literature has represented manly efficacy, glamour, and excitement all rolled into one? But that unfastidious obsession simply encourages the literary parasites to exploit the character, and the novelists who undertake to "recreate" James Bond in the manner of Fleming, in the looting, nihilistic spirit of our age, will not allow him to remain efficacious, glamorous and exciting. Like the architect Gus Webb in Rand's The Fountainhead, who is assigned to "redo" one of Howard Roark's creations, they want to express their "individuality," too. But their "individuality" and "creativity," providing they even exist, are not worth contemplating.

When the second bogus Bond novel, License Renewed, by John Gardner (the first, Colonel Sun, by Kingsley Amis, appeared in 1968), was published, I wrote a Wall Street Journal review of it (June 4 1981), "A New James Bond Novel by Fleming's Successor," and said that Bond

"...is so appealing a hero, so amply endowed with those values and virtues we ought to want to see in any character, real or imaginary, that he has become the special target of those whose 'creativity' is limited to smears, parodies and innumerable pasticcios. James Bond was killed long ago - by movie producers, directors, ham actors, scriptwriters, stuntmen, gadget masters, tongues in many cheeks and, last but not least, by the artistic 'license' to kill."

Ironically, The Wall Street Journal twenty-seven years later ran this story on May 8, "Doubleday, Penguin Try to Revive Bond Series with New Author." It recounts the trials and tribulations of the bogus Bond novels and the overall diminished interest in Bond as a hero. There have been five "new authors" of Fleming's character, not including Samantha Weinberg, who published three "diaries" by M's secretary, Miss Moneypenney, and not including the "graphic" novels. Faulks is the fifth to try his hand.

Why has interest in Bond fallen? One thing the marketers of the bogus Bond novels have not thought of is how Bond, in the hands of his hacks, has undergone changes for the worse, usually to update him to bring him in line with politically correct "virtues" and the panacea of the moment. In both the novels and the movies, he gave up smoking, drove more environmentally acceptable cars, felt anxiety about killing his enemies, and grew glib, facetious, and unserious. (In the movies, he was merely a two-dimensional puppet in the hands of special effects crews in the action scenes.) In short, he became a boorish, fatuous stereotype that became more and more unbelievable. In Daniel Craig's movie version of the character, Bond is just a well-dressed brute.

The May 8 WSJ article reports that the publisher has taken a stab at trying to rectify the problem of Bond's unpopularity.

"Partners, a unit of WPP Group PLC that specializes in corporate branding, took two months to come up with a cover [for Devil May Care] that satisfied Penguin....One challenge: portraying sex and violence without being too graphic for teenagers, a target audience. 'We're trying to appeal to older Bond readers and bring along a new audience,' Mr. Renwick says."

A Daily Telegraph (London) article of May 11, "It's hell being a superhero," comes closer to an explanation. Many recent "superhero" movies are based on comic books. In remarking about the "Golden Age" of comics, the article says,

"This was the period between 1938, when Superman was invented, and the post-War late-Forties, when the public had an understandably voracious appetite for the exploits of strong, decent, super-endowed men and women triumphing over evil.

"But then came a backlash, in which superheroes fell out of favor, accused of everything from fostering juvenile delinquency to promoting deviant sex....The adoption in response by the comics industry of a stringent new Comics Code resulted in story lines so blandly inoffensive that no one wanted to read them.

"What the disillusioned Seventies crowd wanted were more socially conscious types like the Green Arrow...and antiheroes like the savage Wolverine and dark and tormented The Punisher....Today, audiences are far too sophisticated to take at face value the plain, honest, good-versus-evil simplicity of the Golden Age superheroes."

The DT article elaborates on that "sophisticated" taste. Commenting on a 1986 graphic novel, Watchmen, that helped to pioneer the "humanized" superhero, the article goes on to say

"This portrayed superheroes not as magnificent, selfless, crime-fighting role models, but as warped, sexually confused sociopaths whose powers had brought them little but misery and psychological damage."

One might think: Isn't this the reverse of cultural "trickle down"? Shouldn't comic books simplify and pictorialize standard, full-length literature, which came first and has existed for decades, even centuries? One would be right. The comics merely emulated the literature of the times, chiefly Naturalism, but souped up their stories with superheroes burdened with personal problems.

"Today's audiences," reports the DT article, "like their superheroes to be flawed: the more messed up the better."

"Hence the popularity of the increasingly dark Batman movies, based not on the original caped crusader but on the much edgier, more angst-ridden and morally compromised figure in Frank Miller's 1980s Dark Knight graphic novels."

The assumption in the WSJ and DT articles that contemporary readers have grown as corrupted and malevolent as the culture is properly the subject of separate commentary. But the CommanderBond.net site, in its coverage of "Quantum of Solace," features an interview with Daniel Craig, and what he says is in sync with the effort to "humanize" Bond.

"The way we finished up in 'Casino Royale' [Craig's first Bond film] was with a man who'd lost something that was taken away from him. The woman that he loved killed herself because he thought she was guilty because she was double-crossing him. And he never had the chance to go: 'Why?' said Daniel Craig during a roundtable interview. 'That's where we start the story and he's looking for that quantum of solace. He's looking for that little bit, but he can't be open about it because it's a sign of weakness.'"

The actor who plays the chief villain in "Quantum of Solace" dwelt on the "intricate mix of reality and fantasy that make up the film."

"If it was realistic the evil would win because that's what would happen today. That's why I think it's called Quantum of Solace. It's quite ironic. It's as if Bond was saying, 'Please, can I stop running? Maybe if the evil wins I can have some peace and go home and just sleep.'"

Obviously, this actor has never read the original story; I doubt if a single member of the cast has read any of the original novels or stories. Rand, in "Bootleg Romanticism," discusses the epistemological disintegration of intellectuals who approve of the reverse-bowdlerization of good literature. This actor had no epistemology that could disintegrate.

It is doubtful that Sebastian Faulks will do a better job in Devil May Care than his predecessors in writing an "official" bogus Bond novel and revive the corpse they helped to bury. Known better in Britain than in the U.S., he is the successful author of eight other novels. I have not read any of them and, based on his acceptance of the task of producing a bogus Bond novel, I do not plan to read any of them. Whether or not they are any good, however, is irrelevant. What I wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 1981 applies as well in 1881 as in 2008:

"'License Renewed' points up the futility of faithful imitation. No matter how well a writer - or any artist, for that matter - manages to capture the style or content of an original idea or work of art, something will always be missing: originality."

Writers should not be so hungry for distinction, fame and fortune that they would treat resorting to robbing the graves of their betters as a "realistic," pragmatic option, and to hell with originality and the chance to create something of which they could say: This is mine. (Consequently, the authors of bogus Bond novels are paragons of selflessness, as are the authors of bogus Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe novels.) And readers should not be so hungry for any kind of "hero" that they reward them. Their lack of discrimination in what they seek and accept earns them what they deserve: literary cadavers.

1. Ayn Rand, "Bootleg Romanticism" (1965), in The Romantic Manifesto (1971, revised 1975) (New York: Signet), p. 140

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Well! Looking forward to a (relatively) light weekend, I was feeling frivolous going into this post. I figured on a joke I got in the mail yesterday, maybe a meme, and something interesting.

But then, before I could really get going on the meme hunt, I realized that I was seeing too much good stuff to go with the original plan.

I'll get the joke out of my system first....

I didn't know what I was getting into!

This comes from my father-in-law:

The first man married a woman from Georgia and told her that she was going to do dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple days, but on the third day he came home to a clean house and dishes washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from South Carolina. He gave his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn't see any results but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from Louisiana. He told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, enough to fix himself a bite to eat and load the dishwasher.

I am in fact much more "domestic" than my wife.

But that's a coincidence.

It is!

Take Care of Yourself, First

Flibbert makes an excellent point about taking care of oneself in one's relationships when commenting on a scene from House:

Many, if not most, people would have said, "Do what you want" and mean "Do what I want," but she didn't. She told him precisely and plainly without hint of manipulation that she wanted him to do what he wanted.

Yes. "He" is oncologist James Wilson, but you don't need to be a House fan to get Flibbert's point.

And there's lots of other good stuff up where that came from, so stop by and start scrolling.

Quote of the Day

Paul Hsieh brings up a quote from Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine that perfectly sums up the correct approach to cultural/political activism:

Don't worry about changing the politicians. The politicians will wear their fingers to the bone sticking them in the air to test which way the wind is blowing. Instead, work on changing the wind. If you change the wind, the politicians will follow.

And stop by there, if you haven't already, to see what "changing the wind" looks like.

Obama's Ideas

Myrhaf offers an interesting insight on how Obamamania might cost the Democrats yet another presidential election:

The attacks [on Obama] are just name calling? This is the kind of self-serving delusion that keeps the left from realistically assessing the American electorate. Voters are smarter than the Democrats think they are; they understand that there are ideas behind the names and the labels.

And on top of his terrible ideas, there is either a remarkable lack of sophistication or an incredible degree of cynicism going on in his head:

CNN showed a clip of Barack Obama this morning in which he said that the Gas Tax holiday is a sham because -- and I'm paraphrasing -- "every time we've tried to do that, the oil companies just raise the price to where it was with the tax." [minor edit]

Hmmm. Before I read the whole post, I would have leaned towards the former, but now it's at least equally the latter.

Iron Man

Jennifer Snow has a good, short review of Iron Man that I am glad I saw.

Objectivist Carnival

This week's Objectivist Roundup has been posted by Rational Jenn.

Caption Contest

This is too good! (And I get to end my roundup on a frivolous note, after all!)

-- CAV

PS: A couple of the Boston bloggers have posted reviews of last night's Ford Hall Forum lecture by Yaron Brook.

Updates

Today: Added a PS.

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dick Morris pens a very interesting column about why Hillary Clinton doggedly remains in the race for the Democratic nomination despite -- and I feel like I'm being generous here -- the near-inevitability of her defeat at the hands of Barack Obama.

Morris ticks off a variety of reasons the Clintons are staying in: They see themselves as above "the rules", Hillary feels a nearly-metaphysical sense of entitlement to the nomination, and they (she and Bill) have learned over time that persistence can pay off. Morris then goes on to slam Hillary for "an uncharacteristic absence of a reality base" in her thinking, but on this, I see him as half-redundant and half-missing a broader point.

In so far as Morris is being redundant, the fact that he slams the Clintons for waiting for yet another lucky break is a little silly. Their whole political career shows that patience can pay off. Like he just said....

And in so far as Morris is missing a broader point, he is dead wrong to say that Clinton has no "reality base" in her thinking. Part of this, again, we could put as "fortune favors the persistent" and part lies in the Clintons' uncanny political acumen. They understand on a gut level that America has been intellectually gutted by generations of pragmatism and altruism.

When they left the White House in utter disgrace over their ethical lapses and greed [sic], they were under attack from even the friendliest of liberal media. But years of keeping their heads low, working hard at getting along with people in the Senate, turning to charitable works (with a little help from George W. Bush) and helping the party regulars erased the sordid images. Memories of pardons sold for campaign and library contributions, their scoundrel lobbyist brothers, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of 'gifts' that were solicited from people who wanted favors from the White House disappeared. Once again, time healed all. [bold added]

This aspect of the Clintons' thought process seems irrelevant to the current situation, but I see it as highly relevant. Without pragmatism to make Americans dismiss principles enough to regard the Clintons' criminal behavior as not that important after a time, and without the insurance of their altruistic "good deeds", Hillary wouldn't even be around at this point.

And yet, the American sense of life is strong enough -- as they learned on their own hides -- that in the immediate aftermath of something sufficiently contemptible, there will be loud cries of indignation and calls for heads to roll.

In the short span of a political campaign, should something sufficiently bad come to light about Barack Obama, he will have no time for the public to forget, and Hillary will be waiting in the wings, and made to look relatively more worthy than she deserves. (And without firm moral principles to guide one's judgement, appearances are effectively everything. She will have effectively been "cleansed" in the eyes of many by Obama.)

And the Clintons, having the requisite moral turpitude to make it as politicians in today's culture have a firm basis in reality to hope that Obama has another yet-to-be revealed skeleton in his closet. He is, after all, one of them under his skin.

-- CAV

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Life And Taxes
By Yaron Brook (Forbes.com, April 17, 2008)

Your taxes are overdue, if you're just reading this now. But the fact is that every day is April 15 for Jane and John Smith, America's most tax-savvy couple.

continue reading >>

By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

Fish vs. Men in the Supreme Court
May 12, 2008

Irvine, CA--Forty percent of America's energy comes from 550 electric power plants whose massive turbines and reactor cores are cooled with billions of gallons of water from nearby rivers, lakes, bays, and oceans.

The Clean Water Act requires these plants to use "the best technology available" to safeguard fish and other aquatic organisms swept up in the water flow. The Supreme Court recently agreed to decide, in the case of Entergy v. EPA, whether the Environmental Protection Agency can lawfully allow power companies to avoid hugely expensive "closed-cycle" cooling systems in favor of cheaper "once-through" systems that save fewer fish.

"This case requires the Supreme Court to pretend that the welfare of wildlife can be incorporated into a legal system designed to protect the rights of man," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "The 'best technology'--for whom? Fish or men? There is no rational way for a court to 'balance' a fish's interest in living against man's interest in producing electricity.

"The Founding Fathers gave us a constitutional structure of checks and balances, including judicial review by the Supreme Court. But for such review to be rational, the court must apply an objective standard in each case. The highest such standard--the individual human being's right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness--is implicit in the Founders' recognition that 'to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men.'

"By the standard of individual rights, any law purporting to protect wildlife from men would be struck down immediately, as a violation of man's right to sustain his life by exploiting nature. But America's lawmakers have sunk to a level unthinkable to the Founders. Through such statutes as the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and a variety of other environmental protection laws, Congress has conferred upon wildlife a legal status equal to men.

"This creates an impossible dilemma for judges. If fish and men are equal before the law, whose welfare should prevail when their interests conflict? There can be no rational answer.

"With standards out the window, it's impossible to predict which irrational or subjective factors will end up controlling the outcome--the judges' sentiments, their personal political views, or random outside pressures. All we can know for sure is that the result will be neither rational nor consistent with America's founding ideals."

###  ### ###

Mr. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor, who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Thomas Bowden is available for interviews.

Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In my 4/26/2008 blog post, "Are Mathematical Truths Discovered or Invented?", I referred to Dr. Pat Corvini's superb course at the 2007 OCON as an excellent example of applying the Objectivist epistemology to the concept of number. At the time, the course was not yet available for sale.

As an update - the course is now available for purchase from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. Here's a slightly modified description of the course, per Dr. Corvini:

Two, Three, Four and All That

Number, though ubiquitous, is widely misunderstood. Drawing on Objectivist epistemology, this course sheds new light on the subject by sketching a reduction of the key ideas behind the modern number system and by showing their connection to cognition in general. Recognizing the objectivity of number provides a new framework for resolving historical and modern debates, and yields a heightened appreciation for the science of mathematics as a whole.

This course uses a detailed examination of the ideas behind counting, negative numbers, and area-measurement as concretes on which to illustrate wider conclusions about the nature of number. While not strictly a prerequisite, this material provides context for Dr. Corvini's course on modern ideas of number and infinity ("The Sequel," to be delivered at Objectivist Summer Conference 2008), and is highly recommended for those planning to attend.

According to the Ayn Rand Bookstore, the course is a 6-CD set, selling for $61.95. Total run time is 4 hrs., 29 min., including Q & A.

By Greg from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Objectivism Seminar will begin going through Leonard Peikoff's book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand this coming Sunday. If you are new to Ayn Rand's ideas, I encourage you to join us!

From the original announcement:

Whether you are new to Rand or a veteran student of Objectivism, our sessions will be valuable to you: we'll go through the entire system, with the experienced folks refining their understanding and ability to articulate and apply the ideas, while the newer folks grapple with the ideas and ask all the right questions. So please don't be shy about jumping in -- the reading and meeting load is light, and you'll be working with a great group of people!

We'll begin the weekly sessions for OPAR on Sunday May 18, 7:30pm Mountain time, reviewing and discussing two or three sections per meeting. I'll almost always be moderating to keep us on track. And as we go, each section will have two volunteers at the helm of the discussion (maybe you!): one reviewing the material, and one playing Devil's Advocate to stimulate productive engagement. Everyone else can join in as desired to flesh out our picture of important elements and connections, explanations and applications, and to bring questions and concerns for us all to grapple with.

For more information, please visit the www.ObjectivismSeminar.com site!

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

By Eric Daniels from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
May 8, 2008

The Morality of Capitalism

Who: Eric Daniels, research assistant professor at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute

What: A talk explaining why capitalism is the only moral social system. A Q&A will follow.

Where: Hilton Costa Mesa, 3050 Bristol Street, Costa Mesa, CA  92626

When: Thursday, May 22, 2008, at 7:30 PM

Admission is FREE.

Description: Despite capitalism's enormous success in producing material abundance and political freedom, it faces a crisis--one that may lead to its demise. Capitalism is perishing because its supposed defenders lack a real defense.

In this lecture, Eric Daniels explores the most common arguments in favor of capitalism. He finds that they all break down in the face of the popular argument that capitalism is immoral and destructive--because it is selfish. Dr. Daniels explains that only Ayn Rand's crucial insight--that capitalism is the only moral social system because it is based on "the virtue of selfishness"--can truly defend capitalism. He illustrates the need for a moral, and not just an economic, defense of capitalism.

Bio: Eric Daniels is a research assistant professor at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has lectured internationally on American ethics, on American business and legal history, and on the American Enlightenment. Dr. Daniels's publications include a chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust and five entries in the Oxford Companion to United States History.

For more information on this talk, please e-mail events@aynrand.org.

###  ### ###

Eric Daniels is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at www.aynrand.org. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Stories,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Looking for Allies

By Elan Journo (Commentary magazine, May 2008)

Joshua Muravchik and Charles P. Szrom would have us court "moderate" Islamists. But is their notion of moderate coherent? Consider the two sub-groups offered as our most promising "assets" within the larger category of moderate Muslims--secular liberals and moderate Islamists.

The secular liberals, we are told, stand for a "belief in the separation of mosque and state analogous to the practice in most of the West." This presumably means some form of society in which government upholds individual rights to liberty. The moderate Islamists, by contrast, are Muslims who "hope and pray for the eventual recognition by all mankind of the truth of Muhammad's message" but who wish (so they say) to achieve this by non-violent means.

What, however, can the latter ideal mean politically, if not a society shaped by the tenets of Islam and a government informed by Islamic law? Whatever the authors' two groups of "moderates" have in common, they seek entirely different political ends, and are fundamentally dissimilar. To include the second group among the moderates is to blur a crucial distinction between advocates of a basically free society and those sharing the jihadist aim of wielding power in the name of Islam.

By noreply@blogger.com (Dan Edge) from The Edge of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

According to CNN, the Lebanese government has effectively surrendered to Hezbollah militants. I do not exaggerate. Over the past few days, Hezbollah has initiated a military coup, moving to take over airports and pro-government television stations. The Lebanese army is not fighting back, their leaders say, because so many soldiers are pro-Hezbollah, and ordering them to attack would throw the army into disarray. Instead, political and military leaders have negotiated the surrender of western Beirut. Pro-government gunmen are being persuaded to lay down arms without a fight.

With Hezbollah in control of Lebanon, and with the backing of Iran and it's puppet, Syria, we can be sure that Lebanon will again become the primary staging point for attacks on Israel. If any positive slant can be taken on recent events, it is that Israel now clearly has the right to wage a full scale war against Lebanon and Syria. I seriously doubt that will happen, but as soon as attacks against Israeli civilians begin to mount, they will demand military action. Of course, militants will continue to use the Lebanese civilian population as cover, and Israel will be condemned the first time it destroys a Hezbollah rocket position that happens to be on top of a hospital.

If you want my opinion of what Israel needs to do to defend itself, read my article Israel Must Respond to Militant Islam With Overwhelming Force. This article was a response to Israel's military actions against Hezbollah following the kidnapping of IDF soldiers in 2006, but the same principle still applies: that a nation has the moral right to do anything it must to defend its citizens against an enemy aggressor. If only Israel (or better yet, America) heeded this advice, we would live in a much safer world.

--Dan Edge

By Scott Powell from Powell History Recommends,cross-posted by MetaBlog

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

At FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine), we may or may not necessarily win the battle over any specific piece of legislation. But as Lin Zinser has pointed out, that's a secondary goal. Our main goal is the promote the idea of free market health care and to make it part of the mainstream discussion, so that policy makers and the general public regard it as a serious alternative to the status quo.

Or to borrow a point from Richard Ralston of AFCM (Americans for Free Choice in Medicine), "Don't worry about changing the politicians. The politicians will wear their fingers to the bone sticking them in the air to test which way the wind is blowing. Instead, work on changing the wind. If you change the wind, the politicians will follow."

One indication that we are having the desired effect comes from our ideological opposition. A few months ago, Michele Swenson, an advocate of Canadian-style "single payer" health care for Colorado posted the following on the weblog for ProgressNow.org, which is one of the "progressive" leftist advocacy organizations in Colorado. She was complaining about the horrible media bias towards free market health care, and the appalling lack of coverage for her beloved single-payer "solution". Here's an excerpt:

Open Letter to Denver Media: The information blackout by the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News regarding Single Payer health care reform - their bias toward 'free-market' solutions

Throughout the process of the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform, the two large Denver newspapers have consistently failed to present factual information about the Colorado Health Services Single Payer Proposal -- the one that was most favorably evaluated by the Lewin Group.

Since March of 2007 both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News have each printed a number of commentaries by 'free-market' health care advocates Brian T. Schwartz and Paul Hsieh, as well as commentaries by Sen. Andy McElhany and ex-Senator Mark Hillman. Only Rep. Claire Levy was granted a commentary in the Post that dissented from the predominant 'free market' view.

At least five commentaries since the Spring of 2007 have been submitted by myself and others about the advantages of the Single Payer proposal, as well as the broken system of third-party multi-payer commercial health insurances. The information has been ignored by the Post and the News. Only out-state papers like the Pueblo Chieftain and some northern Colorado papers, including the Fort Collins Coloradoan and the Northern Colorado Business Report, have consistently printed different perspectives of health care reform, including the Single Payer perspective...

Our opposition definitely knows that we are out there. And they are clearly feeling a bit on the defensive.

So we must be doing something right if the statists are demoralized over what they believe to be a media bias towards the "predominant 'free market' view"!

Of course we still have a long ways to go. And there will be inevitable ups and downs throughout the process. But I believe that we can take heart from our opponents' statements and recognize that we are changing the direction of the wind.

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The May 11, 2008 New York Times printed my LTE in response to their earlier article from May 4, 2008, "Even the Insured Feel the Strain of Health Costs". My letter is the fourth one down on this page, and they included a mention of FIRM:

To the Editor:

The skyrocketing costs of health insurance are the result of onerous government regulations, such as mandatory benefits.

Many states require insurance plans to include benefits like chiropractor care or in vitro fertilization. Such mandatory benefits raise insurance costs by about 20 percent to 50 percent, according to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance.

More fundamentally, mandated benefits violate an individual’s right to contract freely with insurers and providers according to his rational judgment for his best interest. Instead, a bureaucrat decides how the individual must spend his own money.

Eliminating these mandates would make health insurance available to millions of Americans who desperately want it but cannot now afford it.

The proper solution to the health insurance crisis is not more government, but a free market.

Paul Hsieh
Sedalia, Colo., May 4, 2008

The writer, a doctor, is co-founder, Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I am struck by how blind the left is to Obama's weakness as a candidate. They have their usual rationalizations for every criticism from the right.

Obama's father was a communist? McCarthyism!

Obama is not electable? Electability is a code word used by racists!

Obama has terrorist friends? Ayers is a distinguished academic. So what if he had a radical youth -- who didn't?

Obama's preacher is an anti-American conspiracy theorist? White America cannot understand black rage!

It seems that Obama himself does not understand the criticism against him.

Obama denounced what he called the Republican campaign plan: "Yes, we know what's coming. ... We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas."

The attacks are just name calling? This is the kind of self-serving delusion that keeps the left from realistically assessing the American electorate. Voters are smarter than the Democrats think they are; they understand that there are ideas behind the names and the labels.

If Obama is surrounded by far-left anti-Americans, is it not logical to wonder if maybe Obama agrees with them? Is he trying to BS his way to the presidency without revealing what he really thinks?

His wife raises even more suspicions in the minds of voters who are of the far left. She has some sense of humor:

"Asked how she feels about Bill Clinton's use of the phrase "fairytale" to describe her husband's characterization of his position on the Iraq war, (Michelle Obama) first responded: "No."

But, after a few seconds of contemplation, and gesturing with her fingernails, she told the reporter: "I want to rip his eyes out!"

Noticing an aide giving her a nervous look, she added: "Kidding! See, this is what gets me into trouble."

This unpleasantness comes on top of her anti-American statements and her altruist-statist-collectivist vision of widespread sacrifice:

...Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.

There are profound ideas involved here, and questioning them is not name-calling or McCarthyism. People are justified in wondering just how Barack Obama intends to make them work.

It looks to me like we are in for a dreary autumn season of the left demonizing anyone who criticizes Obama as they strive to shift the focus from his ideas -- anything but an honest examination of what he really believes -- to the evil character of those who would oppose him. The left is projecting its own postmodern contempt of reason onto its enemies. This is the road to defeat for Obama, as I must not believe the American people are yet so dumbed down and corrupted that they cannot see beyond names and labels to the abstract ideas that words denote.