Anti-Rand Backlash: Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much

With the publication of two new biographies and amid unprecedented world wide interest in Ayn Rand, a predictable backlash has begun emanating from both the left and the right.

Blundering out of the ad hominem gate with title: "...Rand was a Nut", The National Review comes perilously close to offering a logical argument when it claims that "her philosophy is deeply problematic and morally indefensible." However, the author proceeds to resurrect the notoriously dishonest 1950's Whittaker Chambers hit piece then quotes William F. Buckley who wrote about her

desiccated philosophy’s conclusive incompatibility with the conservative’s emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral; but also there is the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyielding dogmatism that is in itself intrinsically objectionable.

Is it me or is it ironic, perhaps "intrinsically objectionable", that a hardened devotee of faith, particularly Catholicism, accuses an epic defender of reason of "unyielding dogmatism"? If reason and logic are "dogma", then what exactly is dogma?

It is not an aside that Mr. Buckley professed to idealize the concept of "transcendence". It was in his (or the Pope's) role as a Platonic-Christian Philosopher King that he channel God's revelations to the filthy masses. By rejecting Rand's secular approach , Buckley and his conservative followers tethered the religious right to capitalism by firmly entrenching the implication that no scientific, logical argument can be made in favor of rights and capitalism - a position that has all but destroyed freedom in America. Perhaps the only truth in his statement is that conservatism is indeed incompatible with Rand's philosophy - as it is incompatible with reality and freedom.

Meanwhile, the left, as represented by this article and this one, reminds us why, well, they are the left. As usual, we are inundated by vicious ad hominem and snarky ad populum feverishly penned by those who can not be bothered to study her work. As always, we are treated to the anti-Randian uber strawman who evidently yearns to step on the "lice" infested "parasites" who "barely deserve to live." Like a non-fiction Rorschach test, these anti-Rand diatribes reveal more about the writer than the writee. After all, what are we to make of intellectuals who refuse to actually study their subject's work and formulate logical arguments?

And this is really the point. Her detractors rarely take on her ideas. At different times and for different reasons, without offering an actual argument, they variously object to her method (reason), her ethics (egoism), her politics (capitalism), or to her (she was a human being). The "arguments" often take the following concrete forms:

"Wait, you mean she thinks she's objectively right?" She's nuts - not serious - real life is grey.

"Wait, you mean she upholds selfishness?" She thinks the strong should wantonly crush the weak.

"Wait, she upholds capitalism?" She is a fascist shill for corporate cronyism

"Wait, she is an atheist?" To hell with this cold, implacable devil.

"Wait, she made mistakes in her life?" Her projection of a moral ideal is invalid and/or she is not worthy of my cultish devotion like Jesus, David Koresh, or Obama.

All of these fill different philosophic and psychological buckets that I have blogged about extensively. The most obvious and most fundamental is the epistemological false alternative between the subjectivist left and the dogmatist right which holds out for man the wonderful choice of becoming an acid-tripping hippie or a bible thumping zombie. The post modern rejection of absolutes leads these critics to dismiss any principled stand as dogmatic posturing while the conservatives charge Rand with "unyielding dogmatism" because as an advocate of reason and reality she will not yield to their brand of dogmatism, namely, religious mysticism.

Running a close second is the utter misapprehension of her view of selfishness which equates her conception of rational self-interest to the free wheeling hedonist whimsically asserting his Nietzschean ubermensch within.

And, of course, for the politically minded, there is always the false equation of America's mixed economy with her vision of laissez-faire capitalism such that she can be castigated as an apologist for any bizarre, market distorting catastrophe hatched by Washington's finest in collusion with Orren Boyle businessmen.

But, I have to say, the most grating to me is the hysterical emphasis on her personal life. After all, if Newton cheated on his girlfriend would it change the truth of his theory of gravity? If Aristotle shoplifted a toga, would it change the truth of the laws of logic? Certainly, the biographies of great people should and do hold interest for valid reasons, but obsessing over the details of another's life and disregarding the essential import of their ideas is the foundation of the cult mentality, is it not? (Ironically, "cult worship" and "fetishism" is the charge leveled by these people at her admirers!)

The deeper reason underlying the focus on Rand's personal life is epistemological. As I argued earlier, the left does not even entertain the possibility of objective truth and therefore regards any principled argument as equivalent to a form of religious dogma while casting principled adherents as naive bumpkins. I believe this philosophical skepticism has several primary consequences.

First, it leads them to dismiss Rand's popularity as a fad on par with a pop cult like Scientology and to smear her work as unserious within academia. Second, in their mind, debunking this "religion" consists not in objectively refuting its claims (the truly educated know truth is impossible), but rather involves outing the Revealer of the purported dogma as flawed or hypocritical. Consider the more recent academic obsession with airing the dirty laundry of revered figures such as Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. Emphasizing the Revealer's fallibility serves to reinforce their own their own flawed view of rationality and morality, i.e., it appears to further the notion that man's fallibility and lack of omniscience renders rationality and objective morality to be unattainable. In this view, man is destined to hopelessly stumble through the grey fog of life's eternal caprice.

Of course, such a view itself represents a flawed view of rationality. In a previous post, I quoted Professor Eric Daniels:

But rationality does not mean infallibility; it means that one is capable of choosing to observe the available facts and go by logic and that one does so. Nor does it preclude the possibility of mistakes; rather, it is the means of detecting and correcting mistakes.

To all of the critics, I ask only this - just make an argument. Show me. I am reasonable.

Reisman Quote on Keynes

I have been attempting to study the Austrian explanation for the Japanese economy as compared to the conventional Keynesian explanation which also bears relation to America's current economic problems. One of the basic features of Keynesianism is the so-called IS-LM analysis which, among other things, involves Keynes' convoluted and fallacious view of the relationship of investment to savings. I came across this great Reisman quote which serves to emphasize the very real devastation wrought by Keynes and his modern followers:

The Keynesians' preoccupation with the utterly fictitious problem of saving as a cause of poverty bears major responsibility for the very real problem of growing poverty as the result of a lack of saving. Based on their hostile economic analysis of saving, the Keynesians have brought about the enactment of correspondingly hostile government economic policies towards saving. The result has been economic stagnation and decline, whose nature and significance are captured in the words: the rust belt. Over a span of approximately two generations, the intellectual rot of Keynesianism has helped to bring about the physical rot of the industrial heartland of the United States.

Prof. George Reisman
Capitalism: A Treatise On Economics, p. 885

Why the Pelosi Plan Will Kill People... for Dummies

I did a "physician slavery" bill roundup last week, but so many good articles have appeared, I figured I had to do another along with offering my simple synopsis of the economic issue underlying the Pelosi Bill.

This post at Voice of Reason caught my attention as it shows how the current bill will impose a massive new tax on medical device makers thus strangling productivity and innovation in this crucial, life saving industry.

Beth Haynes has been blogging tirelessly on the slavery bill. She offers four more excellent posts including a lecture by Dr. Jane Orient on how to reduce costs through freedom in the marketplace, the political push towards single payer, the bill's draconian penalties including fines and imprisonment, and the expansion of immoral medicine.

Many have pointed out that when health care costs are socialized, each person's health becomes everyone else's business. This provides justification for the nanny state to begin regulating people's personal activities and health habits. (Recall the mandatory daily exercise required in Orwell's 1984.) This is not just a theory in the U.K.. The Times reports:

Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.

The synopsis below follows Dr. Paul Hsieh's excellent op-ed recently published in the Washington Examiner in which he likens the Pelosi plan (which is a national version of the Massachusetts's system of mandatory insurance) to a Mafia shake down. (Also, see his excellent website at FIRM.)

Socialized Medicine for Dummies:

1. Special interests line up to include their "pet benefits" on the "government menu" of required coverages.

2. Rather than economizing, by say, buying a low cost catastrophic plan (in the same way one buys auto insurance), everyone must buy the government plan that covers everything and everyone.

3. This insurance is expensive so the state must increase taxes to pay for subsidies to low income individuals, and begins cutting payments to doctors and hospitals.

4. Doctors and hospitals lose money on every patient so they begin cutting back on taking new patients

5. Less supply and more demand creates a cost death spiral as services are cut, prices continually rise, and waiting times increase.

6. Everyone is "covered" but no one gets actual care in the same way that everyone in a communist society is technically "employed" by the state but there is nothing to buy.

7. Repeat ad infinitum

The above steps are essentially what is happening under the present system as the tax code provides incentives for employers to provide health benefits and each state mandates certain coverages leading to the cascading effects described above. Rather than reforming this flawed approach by removing market distorting incentives and mandates, the new plan will exacerbate the existing problem on a massive scale by mandating even more coverages, capping prices, forcing participation under penalty of imprisonment, etc. etc.

We still have time to stop it.

Oy...Again with the Desert Island

Imagine you were on a desert island with 100 other people.

In scenario 1, every person works extremely hard. Some people cut wood for fire and to make shelter. Others hunt and fish. Some build tools with which to cut wood, make clothes, wagons, weapons, etc.. Work that provides subsistence allows some of the brightest people to focus on more advanced projects like building a battery powered radio or a boat. The group gets together and authorizes several individuals to act as police, judges, all under the executive power of an island leader which is elected by the others. Property rights are recognized and a simple barter system emerges where each person's production serves as demand for products or services offered by others. There is no shortage of desire as each person wishes to make their life as fulfilling as possible. Each does as much as he can given his ability and the few that struggle through no fault of their own are eagerly helped by everyone else voluntarily. On the rare occasion when someone steals or commits a crime, he is quickly ostracized and/or punished. Since everyone is so productive, the least able person is still able to afford shelter, clothing, plentiful food, and some minor conveniences. As each person becomes more productive, it affords each person more time to devote to other more advanced projects or hobbies. The wealth and quality of life on the island grows exponentially as does the population.

In scenario 2, no one really does much of anything. Everyone sits around and complains about hunger and chastises their neighbors for not giving them some of their stuff. Some walk around with IOU's written on parchment that promise others payment in the future if they give up their valuables now. Very few value the paper IOU's. Frustrated with the lack of product, eventually, a few of the biggest and meanest form a gang and shakedown anyone who gets up enough energy to produce anything. Pretty soon, even the relatively productive give up on producing anything since they know it will soon be expropriated from them. They are able merely to subsist while the weakest die of starvation. The gang is able to enslave some of the people for a while and threaten them with beatings or death if they don't work for them. The "richest" person is the leader of the gang. He enjoys complete and unquestioned dominion over those still alive. He beats an occasional fish dinner out of them which he is able to cook with fire if his servants were motivated enough by his whip that day. He has the biggest hut of anyone. A few of his trusted associates in the gang eat with him and enjoy their relative bounty while the slaves beg for rations. Most, including the gang leaders, live a short, brutish existence. The island is mired in a primitive state for as long as the population survives their miserable subsistence.

The lesson of scenario 1 and 2, among others, is that life requires production. Production is demand. When people produce goods they create wealth. The more goods they produce the more wealth they create. Reality allows no shortcut to this process. Economists call this principle Say's Law. Furthermore, individuals can and will only create wealth if their rights are respected and if they regard their own lives as a value.

Keep this parable in mind while you read articles by economists such as Roubini and Krugman that continually call for more government stimulus, i.e., more smoke and mirrors to obfuscate reality and delude people into believing that there exists some central planning alchemy that can turn wishes into wealth.

The New Deal 2.0: An Old Contradiction

Wow! Someone sent this article to me, and as I read it, I thought it was a joke article from The Onion. Unfortunately, it is not a joke.

The web site, called The New Deal 2.0, appears to put out policy papers that harken back to the halcyon days of the disastrous FDR administration, i.e., they call for government intervention based on flawed and easily debunked economic logic that, if implemented, would exacerbate the very problems they seek to cure.

In this particular paper, Dean Baker argues for a New Deal-like program to reduce unemployment. What is this self-described "Braintruster's" solution?

Simple - pay people to work less hours.

And why, pray tell, would you pay people to work less hours?

According to Mr. Baker, the plan, dubbed "work-share", involves paying people the same amount of money while working less hours. Then, and here is the magic, since people are staying home one day a week (or whatever amount of time the Brain Trust decrees), businesses will have to hire more people to get the same amount of work done! Voila! Bravo!

Uh, wait. Dumb question: if employers have to pay more to get the same amount of work done, won't that just increase their costs, reduce their profit, and destroy the business? Don't worry, The Brain Trust thought of that. Quoting Mr. Baker:

The government can give them [the business] a tax credit of up to $3,000 to shorten their workers’ hours while leaving their pay unchanged. The reduction in hours can take the form of paid sick days, paid family leave, shorter workweeks or longer vacations. The employer can choose the method that is best for her workers and the workplace.

In fact, he regards this plan as "cheap":

If take-home pay is left unchanged as a result of the credit, then demand should be left unchanged. If workers are putting in fewer hours and demand is unchanged, then employers will need to hire more workers.

This logic is as simple as it gets. The process is also quick and cheap. In principle, the government can go this route to save jobs at a cost of a bit more than $20,000 per job - far less than the cost per job saved through the stimulus package.

So, in principle, if he is right, why not just pay everyone to stay home virtually all the time - maybe each person works 10 minutes per week. That would create massive employment, right?

There is only one problem. Mr. Baker seems to forget that the government robs money from individuals to pay for such programs! In fact, this proposal is the poster child for The Broken Window Fallacy which we have debunked so many times [1, 2] it practically hurts me to type the words.

In other words, the government takes money from A (taxpayer) and gives it to B (business). B now has the money, but A does not. B can spend it, but A can not. Ergo, in aggregate, nothing has happened except a redistribution of wealth - a redistribution that is at best a zero-sum game and, in fact, profoundly destructive as it distorts the flow of capital from more productive uses.

In fact, such a program is simply a form of welfare. It would enable people to receive money they have not earned and grant to some the pseudo-title of "employed". It would be simpler for the government to just send these people cash than engage in this absurd ruse.

If this self-described Brain Trust truly wants to reduce unemployment, they should stop searching for free lunches and instead, read the works of Ludwig Von Mises and Ayn Rand and advocate for individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism.

Cuffy Meigs, Meet Bernie Madoff

One of the biggest myth's perpetuated by populist politicians and their mouthpieces in the media, is that Wall Street, or the financial profession, is not regulated. It is in this wild jungle, we are told, that vampire financiers hatch their Machiavellian schemes to suck the blood of the common man.

What they forget is that the financial profession is among the most heavily regulated industries in the economy. The banking system has been essentially nationalized since the inception of the Federal Reserve and money itself, which used to be a commodity freely chosen by market participants, is literally created by the government. Besides the Federal Reserve, federal and state government agencies employ legions of regulators to oversee mountains of byzantine regulations and conduct field investigations.

In reality, it is this cozy relationship between major financial institutions and the Federal Reserve, born from the legal and regulatory framework enacted by the government, that has led to the notoriously politicized bail outs of recent history. On a free market, any business would stand or fall by virtue of its ability to earn profits or not. In the current system, a system that has been unjustly and absurdly characterized as a system of "laissez-faire", it is pull peddling and backdoor corporate "cronyism" that determines who gets bailed out and who does not. It is the Federal Reserve board, itself subject to political pressure, that determines the level of credit expansion through its manipulation of the currency and thus the relative intensity of the boom-bust cycle.

One small and tragically comical example is the recent Madoff case in which it was revealed that Bernie Madoff had run a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme for decades.

A recent investigation conducted by the SEC Inspector General, H. David Kotz, shows that the government watchdog, the SEC, had been warned for years about Madoff and had botched the investigation every time. The New York Times reports:

The new exhibits consist of 6,157 pages of interviews, letters, e-mail messages, telephone records and other background material gathered during Mr. Kotz's 10-month investigation of how the commission handled, and mishandled, numerous tips and warnings it received about Mr. Madoff over the years. His full report,released last month, found the agency had received six substantive complaints since 1992 -- and botched the investigation of every one of them. He found no evidence of any bribery, collusion or deliberate sabotage of those investigations.

The SEC had investigated Madoff so much, he was sure he was going to be caught.

In the interview, Mr. Madoff said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street's central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades.

''If you're looking at a Ponzi scheme, it's the first thing you do,'' he said.

The most comical instance of the SEC's bungling was revealed by the Wall Street Journal when a belligerent Cuffy Meigs like character, William Ostrow, showed up:

One of those failures occurred during a 2006 examination when senior compliance examiner William Ostrow and another examiner visited the Madoff office over a period of two months...

"Madoff indicated that Ostrow was an 'obnoxious guy' and noted that Mr. Ostrow wore an SEC jacket with the word 'enforcement' emblazoned across the back," the account of the interview says. "Madoff … stated that this jacket 'caused an uproar' " in the office.

Madoff was able to use his reputation in the business as politically connected to intimidate the SEC inspectors, especially with claims that he was "dear friends" or had "recently lunched" with agency heads like Arthur Levitt and Mary Schapiro.

The paperwork gathered from the agency's files also tell a tale of unseasoned, poorly managed people who were uncertain about what to do and unwilling to ask for help. In numerous instances, employees would share their doubts about Mr. Madoff in notes or e-mail messages, but then never take steps to press for more information.

Sadly, such regulatory agencies usurp the function of proper due diligence or of industry self-regulatory agencies as investors rely on the tacit imprimatur given by this vast regulatory apparatus. In other words, a rational investor could reasonably say: "if Madoff has been in business for 30 years under the supervision of the SEC et al., how could he possibly be a fraud?". Now we know the answer.

Ask yourself: does the Madoff fiasco represents an instance of a lack of regulation?

Gold: The Avenger

Justice does exist in the world, whether people choose to practice it or not. The men of ability are being avenged. The avenger is reality. Its weapon is slow, silent, invisible, and men perceive it only by its consequences—by the gutted ruins and the moans of agony it leaves in its wake. The name of the weapon is: inflation.

Ayn Rand, Egalitarianism and Inflation

Bloomberg reports:

Gold surged to a record $1,119.10 an ounce in New York on speculation a decline in the dollar will spark demand for the precious metal as an alternative asset.

The metal climbed for the eighth straight session, the longest rally since January 2006. Before rebounding today, the dollar extended a slump to a 15-month low against a basket of currencies. India’s central bank bought gold last month to diversify reserves.

“The interest that central banks have shown for gold has really lit a fire under the market,” said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at LaSalle Futures Group Inc. in Chicago. “People are questioning the value of not only the U.S. currency, but all paper currencies. Investors are more comfortable holding gold.”

You know, sometimes I just love reality.

A Democrat Goes Free Market...kind of

The Atlantic published a very interesting article written by an honest democrat, David Goldhill, who began a thorough examination of the health care system after his father's tragic death in an American hospital. The article summary reads:

After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.

In the essay, Goldhill provides this excellent survey of the problem:

Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis. All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.

Near the end, Goldhill concludes:

Would our health-care system be so outrageously expensive if each American family directly spent even half of that $1.77 million that it will contribute to health insurance and Medicare over a lifetime, instead of entrusting care to massive government and private intermediaries? Like its predecessors, the Obama administration treats additional government funding as a solution to unaffordable health care, rather than its cause. The current reform will likely expand our government’s already massive role in health-care decision-making—all just to continue the illusion that someone else is paying for our care.

Although long, this is a very comprehensive and detailed exposition of the problems and causes underlying the health care crisis. Since I advocate a fully free, unregulated market, I do not entirely agree with some of his recommendations which still involve government subsidies, but his approach is sensible and at least would move us in the right direction towards what he calls a "consumer-driven" model (which appears to be a liberal euphemism for free-market).

Interestingly, this article was sent to me by a liberal friend. Apparently, liberals only consider free market solutions if offered by another liberal in a liberal magazine. Nonetheless, it demonstrated that this article might have broad appeal.

Physician Slavery Bill Roundup from the "Teabag People"

Here are a few links related to the 2,000 page Health Care bill nightmare that has been rammed down our throats.

Beth Haynes asks:

To those who think such laws are not only legitimate, but good, I ask, on what grounds do you justify this blatant intrusion into my peaceful and private life? On what basis can you deprive me of the property I have peacefully and honestly obtained? What crime have I committed to be stopped from directing my own life and the use of my own resources in a manner furthers my life, and the lives of those I value, and perpetrates no harm to others?

In The Negation of Freedom, C. August quotes Judge Andrew Napolitano on America's one party system -The Big Government Party.

Gus Van Horn discusses the "reptillian Pelosi's" hatred of America in Pelosi's Betrayal.

Betsy McCaughey of The Wall Street Journal reports on the frightening details buried in this legislation in What The Pelosi Health-Care Bill Really Says. (HT: Jason Crawford, OActivists)

Cancer survivor and OActivist member Hannah Krening had this excellent op-ed published in The Denver Post. She writes:

Ask yourself: who do you think should be in charge of these kinds of decisions and work? Our smooth-talking president and his minions? Or medical personnel thinking and working for the benefit of their paying patients? Is it really in your best interest as a patient to have your doctor's mind forced by government?

Illustrating how government controls beget more government controls, Dick Morris analyzes the bribes/threats made to the AARP and AMA to get them on board. (HT: John Lewis, OActivists).

The New Clarion is Watching the Water Circle.

The NYT reports on Obama's last minute pitch to Democrats which included discussion of the "teabag, anti-government people."

Let's Worry About the Lash More Than The Backlash

In the wake of an unspeakable murder spree on a U.S. military base, new evidence has emerged that the killer had contact with Al Qaeda, a fact known to the CIA. Also, "investigators want to know if Hasan maintained contact with a radical mosque leader from Virginia, Anwar al Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen and runs a web site that promotes jihad around the world against the U.S.."

What is our government's response?

Our Homeland Security secretary is "working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment..." and "the Army has also partnered with the National Institute for Health on a $50 million study of suicide, and has a $125 million program aimed at giving soldiers and their family members the 'resilient skills they need to make it through these tough times'." Meanwhile, the President's own adviser on "Muslim Affairs", Dalia Mogahed, recently went on British television and advocated the imposition of Sharia law in Muslim majority communities.

I am sure the families of those murdered would agree that we should be worried about lash, not backlash. More generally, the behavior of the Obama regime demonstrates how much the left is disconnected from reality. The self-induced fog of ethical relativism renders them intellectually incapable of connecting actions and ideas. The inability to define and name our enemy ideologically is what is causing the failure of our military effort in the Middle East and now, the inability to protect our soldiers even on domestic military bases.

While radical Islamists overtly call for our annihilation, the relativist says, in effect, we can not pass judgement. They lecture we naive simpletons that no ideology is better than any other, except, of course, any ideology that favors freedom and capitalism, which is surely evil. As our enemies build nuclear bombs, send arms to destroy our allies, and call for jihad, our leftist government admonishes us to tolerate anything while encouraging psychological counseling on how to be "resilient" and "make it through these tough times."

Rather than spending $125 million on "resilient skills" and submitting to the "tough times" caused by the enemies of reason and individual rights, I suggest we spend that money on courses in logic, history, and Objectivism with some extra thrown in for some bullets and bombs.

It's Alive! But not really...

Here's the reality. Despite the fact that the House passed perhaps the most insane bill in its sordid history, the Senate still must approve it. Currently, the probability of it passing before the end of this year, as measured by the trading price on intrade, is only 8%. The battle in the House is lost, but the war is not over. Keep the pressure on your Senators and make sure your congressman, if applicable, suffers the consequences of his betrayal of individual rights in the 2010 elections.

General Pulaski Gets His Due

I grew up next to a town named Pulaski, but I never bothered to research the name. I'm sad to report that as someone who takes pride in knowing a lot about the American Revolution, it took two enemies of the American Revolution, Obama and Dennis Kucinich, to teach me something new. The AP reports that "Obama signed a joint resolution of the Senate and the House that made [Gen. Casimir] Pulaski an honorary citizen...230 years after the Polish nobleman died fighting for the as yet-unborn United States."

Pulaski's contribution to the American colonies' effort to leave the British Empire began with a flourish. He wrote a letter to Gen. George Washington, the Revolution's leader, with the declaration: "I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it."

Like Lafayette and others, Pulaski was a European nobleman that came to the United States and risked his life to fight for liberty. In fact, he did pay the ultimate price. According to the article:

In October 1779, he led a cavalry assault to save the important Southern port of Savannah, Ga., was wounded and taken aboard the American ship USS Wasp. He died at sea two days later.

If anyone wishes to understand what it is going to take to return this country to its founding principles, they should start by understanding what would motivate someone like this to give his life fighting for freedom. Only the passion emanating from a profound moral commitment to the ideal of liberty could explain it. Ironically, it is this same passion, embodied by the Tea Party movement, that Obama and his ilk have dismissed as nothing more than the animal spirits of an uninformed mob. I am sure that General Pulaski would have appreciated the irony.

All we can do is thank him and battle on.

The Thyratron

First, if you thought this post was about a new Transformers character, you are going to be disappointed...

I recently had a chance to visit the physics department of my Alma mater where I obtained an undergraduate degree in physics. Although my conscious reverence for the physical sciences has continued, because I did not continue in the field, I never developed the intimate connection that follows from day to day immersion and a career's worth of scar tissue. Sadly, what I realized from my visit was that I have too long been distanced from the wonderfully profound emotional reactions that follow from exposure to technology and to scientific genius.

While browsing some of the displays in the halls of the department, I came across this interesting looking device pictured above, a.k.a., the hydrogen thyratron (I apologize for the crappy picture). Here is the description in the case:

This large electronic tube was originally used in WWII (note JAN, Joint Army-Navy on the base) to activate radar transmitters. The transmitters generated short pulses of electromagnetic waves that when reflected determined the location of enemy airplanes.

No semi-conductor device today has the performance capability of the hydrogen thyratron. This particular tube was replaced by tube type CX1140L and is used in electron linear accelerators, a major tool in the treatment of cancer.

Seriously, look at this thing. Would you ever think you could use it to detect enemy airplanes much less to treat cancer? Such a device contains the fruits of thousands of years of human effort not only to comprehend and harness nature but also to literally battle the forces of philosophical and political ignorance.

All around us today, in the midst of the latest economic crisis, we are offered the smoke and mirrors of government created fiat money - the tortured machinations of the political alchemists who seek to turn lead into gold or equivalently, consumption into production. Lost in this noise is the near truism that to progress, we must think and produce actual things which make are lives longer and better. There is no shortcut.

It reminds me of a quote (unattributed) that I recently heard: "People will do anything to save the world ... except take a course in science."

Update: "Stimulus" Can Not Work and Reality is Still What It Is

In previous posts [1, 2], I explained why it is logically impossible for government "stimulus" programs to generate real economic growth. In short, a dollar spent by the government is a dollar that will not be spent by someone else. The government is not a productive enterprise. It obtains funds through taxation, borrowing, or indirectly through the inflation of the money supply and simply redistributes these funds to others. "Stimulus" spending is at best a zero sum game and, in fact, profoundly destructive as it distorts capital markets and replaces productive spending, such as saving and investment, with consumption.

To help illustrate this point, here is an interesting chart from Clusterstock that shows the effect of the federal government's "cash for clunkers" program. The chart shows that a significant portion of the currently reported GDP is a result of this program:

according to the BEA the spike you see [in the chart] added 1.66% to the U.S. GDP growth figure reported. Thus without it, GDP growth would have been only 1.89% (3.5% - 1.66%) in Q3.

However, they correctly point out that all the program did was rob from future demand. In other words, individuals that would have purchased cars next quarter, purchased them now. Therefore, although current GDP is up, future GDP will be correspondingly down.

Next quarter, we won't just be returning to business as usual for auto output. Don't forget that Cash for Clunkers pulled future auto demand, ie. some of Q4 demand, into Q3. Thus Q4 is likely to be very weak since many people who planned to buy a car in Q4 probably took advantage of Clunkers and bought in Q3.

Next quarter, not only are we unlikely to get Q3's boost, but motor vehicle output data could subtract from GDP as well.

Another interesting CNN article reports that auto sales analysts at Edmunds.com performed a study which shows that the government actually spent $24,000 per car - not the $4,500 per car that was the headline per car subsidy. Why? Because many of these people would have bought new cars anyway at some point in 2009. They calculate that only 125,000 of the cars sold under the program were cars that would not have ultimately been purchased with the subsidy. Therefore, the government's expenditure of $3.0 Billion divided by 125,000 cars works out to $24,000 per car.

Thanks government. Good work!

Update on Deflation Confusion

John Browne makes the same point I made in my last post but in more detail. Here is a quote:

In the popular mentality, however, inflation is simply defined as prices rising. After decades of steadily rising prices, people seem to have forgotten that prices sometimes fall. In light of the bursting of a number of record-breaking, government-fueled asset bubbles, prices should be declining across the board (as they did in the Great Depression). The fact that prices are stable, or have even rallied in some sectors, indicates that inflation is already spreading across the economy.

The Fed's Wish Part III: Exit Strategy and Deflation Confusion

In two previous posts, The Fed's Wish, and The Fed's Wish Part II: Coup D'Etat?, I explained the recent activity of the Federal Reserve including the explosion of its balance sheet and its unprecedented creation of excess reserves. I also noted that In the process of this expansion, it has taken on unprecedented power and is "now threatening even greater usurpations of our liberty in the name of promoting financial 'stability'".

What has happened since?

In essence, the Fed has continued to purchase government securities and mortgage backed securities in the open market using money it creates out of thin air. As of October 21, 2009, the Fed's balance sheet reveals that reserve balances total $1.056 Trillion. Since "currency in circulation" has not changed as dramatically this year, these reserve balances represent the money created by the Fed in the past year. Analysts expect this number to go to $1.4 Trillion if the Fed stays committed to its treasury and agency purchase programs which are supposed to end in March 2010.

Typically, these excess reserves would be used by financial institutions to make loans to the public. Due to fractional reserve banking, this trillion dollars could be multiplied to perhaps as much as 10 trillion dollars by the banking system. Such an increase in the quantity of money would lead to hyperinflation and perhaps the total collapse of the monetary system. However, the Fed has induced these banks to leave these excess reserves at the Fed by paying them interest for the first time in history.

The problem now concerns what the Fed will do with these excess reserves? They could remove reserves by selling securities from their portfolio. However, this would put upward pressure on interest rates. They could raise the rate they pay banks to hold the excess reserves but this would only delay the inevitable and would require ever more credit expansion. They could allow the money into the banking system and cause a hyperinflation.

In addition to my first two posts, I recommend two more articles that nicely detail this problem. The Fed's Dilemma by Professor Philipp Bagus discusses the origin of the problem and possible solutions. Does the Fed Need an Exit Strategy by Robert P. Murphy provides good overview and, in particular, rebuts Paul McCulley's recent argument that the Fed can simply increase the rate they are paying banks to hold reserves.

Ultimately, there is no way to cheat reality. No matter how many PhD.'s and Nobel prize winning economists try, reality will win.

There is another interesting aspect to this problem which is rarely discussed. The bust portion of the boom-bust cycle caused by the government's credit expansion must result in a natural deleveraging process. In other words, recession or depression is the recovery process. As malinvestments (investments thought to have been sound on the basis of an expectation of continual credit expansion now revealed to be unsound) are liquidated and as firms and individuals rebuild their cash holdings, businesses go bankrupt, unemployment rises, and consumer prices tend to fall. This is the unfortunate price that must be paid to restore economic prosperity on a sound foundation.

Many economic pundits falsely characterize the path before us as one of either inflation or deflation. In other words, they mistakenly define these concepts as "increasing prices" or "decreasing prices", respectively. Consequently, they mistake the symptoms of economic fundamentals with the cause. Since they mistakenly believe that deflation is "falling prices", this natural deleveraging process described above is characterized as an evil to be avoided at any cost. Rather than understanding that falling prices are the "antidote to deflation" as Dr. Reisman explained, they advocate that the government print money on a massive scale in order to halt the so-called "deflation."

Inflation, properly defined, is an increase in the quantity of money above the increase in precious metals. If the government prints a massive amount of money as they are doing now, even though prices are not rising presently, inflation still has the same deleterious effects. Prices do not have to go up under inflation. They simply have to go down less than otherwise. In other words, in the absence of inflation, prices would naturally tend to go down due to increasing productivity. In the present circumstance, prices should drop precipitously. Due to the Fed's creation of money, prices are not falling as fast as they would otherwise. The Fed is propping up zombie banks that should go bankrupt or restructure. If interest rates were not being held artificially low, house prices would likely drop even further and even faster ultimately restoring growth to the housing market. In effect, the Fed's inflation is causing malinvestment and inducing less savings than would otherwise be the case in the absence of this money creation.

(Note, for example, that many economists currently regard increasing prices in the housing market as signs of recovery. Don't we like it when computer prices go down or when car dealers have sales? Why would rising prices ever be "good" for the economy?)

Furthermore, the Fed's purchase of government securities is enabling the federal goverment to temporarily spend with impunity. Such government spending encourages wasteful consumer spending and crowds out productive private capital investment. Currently, banks are borrowing money at 0 percent and lending to the government at 3 percent. Is this "good" for the economy?

The entire experience of Japan over the last 20 years is analogous. Rather than allowing the system to heal itself by facing reality, the Japanese government has propped up insolvent banks, rewarded politically powerful special interests, and therefore, never restored economic growth. Japan has been mired in stagnation for over twenty years.

The best thing the government could do is to recognize that it caused the problem, stop interfering, let the market heal itself naturally, and commit to a program of sound money, private property, and limited government. Yeah, right.

Stupid Design

The complexity of human physiology is hardly a reason to think humans were intelligently designed. In fact, I believe it is the exact opposite. Machines designed by humans, i.e., by intelligence, are simple. Consider the wheel, the catapult, rope, chariot, spear, gun, all the way to more "complex" machines like the internal combustion engine, the hot air balloon, refrigeration, electricity, or even the semi-conductor which utilizes a system of electric 1's and 0's. Are these "complex"?

If you were God, why in the hell would you have created humans this way? Why would He have created a liquid like blood to convey oxygen to different cells and organs pumped by a heart all governed by an intricate web of electric nerves? Why don't we have 20 arms, eyes in the back of our heads, or wheels for feet? Instead, we are an upright, slow, plodding hunk of fragile flesh and bones that must be constantly nourished by air, water, and food.

If simple, beautiful machines are evidence of intelligence then why would "complexity" also be a sign of intelligence? What would constitute evidence of natural evolution over billions of years?

Tales from the History of Money and Banking, Part II

In Part I, I stated the following:

There are many books on the history of money and banking, philosophy and economics but very few if any that integrate these concepts together to show how essential the concept of money is to civilization. The lack of integration directly follows from the disastrous state of the economics profession and of modern philosophy. The result is that most people are left without any understanding of the fundamental economic or philosophical ideas needed to combat the government's assault on money.

Consequently, I said that the purpose of these posts is to "to integrate the history, economics and philosophy of money and banking but in a way that makes the basic concepts intelligible to the non-economist and non-philosopher."

With that in mind, recall that in another post, The Barometer of the End, I discussed the relationship of hyperinflation to the collapse of civilization, and I referred to a book titled Fiat Money Inflation in France: How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended, by Andrew Dickson White (the full paper is available at the previous link or in book form). White wrote this paper in 1912 to chronicle the hyperinflationary chaos of the French Revolution. What is fascinating about this history is that the process by which France went from dabbling with irredeemable paper money to all out hyperinflation, economic collapse, and the imprisonment and guillotining of businessmen all took place in only a five year span. Not surprisingly, this period mirrors the exact process by which virtually every hyperinflation manifests and is completely applicable to what is occurring in the United States today. In the foreword at the above link, Michael Kosares writes:

In 2012, the famous Andrew Dickson White essay you are about to read will celebrate its 100th anniversary. How can something written over 90 years ago describing monetary events occurring almost 215 years ago in France carry relevance for investors in the United States (and the rest of the industrialized world) today? The short answer is that the United States increasingly appears to be travelling a path similar to that of France in 1789 when the debasement of the currency, as Dickson White so matter of factly tells us, left the bulk of the population penniless.

Of course, the United States has actually been on this path for almost 100 years, albeit, at a slower pace. The Federal Reserve established in 1913 still maintained dollar convertibility to gold. In 1933, Roosevelt legally prohibited the private ownership of gold but maintained gold convertibility for foreign transactions. The last vestige of any tie to gold was ended in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window by refusing to redeem dollars from foreign central banks. What this means is that as of 1971, the United States has been able to print as many dollars as it likes, whereas, on a precious metals standard, an increase would have been limited by the practical difficulty of actually producing the metal.

Without any tie to precious metals, the United States government, via the Federal Reserve system, has been constrained only by the willingness of those in power at any given time to limit the increase. Of course, just as in France during the revolution, politicians today find the power to create money out of thin air, rather than tax or borrow, to be virtually irresistible. Today, the Fed has created over 1 trillion in reserves in just the last year alone! What is fascinating is that, just as now, the politicians of revolutionary France knew full well the dangers of fiat currency. France had been the victim of the boom and bust fraud perpetrated by the notorious John Law in the 1720's. As White states:

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the statesmen of France, or the French people, were ignorant of the dangers in issuing irredeemable paper money. No matter how skillfully the bright side of such a currency was exhibited, all thoughtful men in France remembered its dark side. They knew too well, from that ruinous experience, seventy years before, in John Law's time, the difficulties and dangers of a currency not well based and controlled. They had then learned how easy it is to issue it; how difficult it is to check its overissue; how seductively it leads to the absorption of the means of the workingmen and men of small fortunes; how heavily it falls on all those living on fixed incomes, salaries or wages; how securely it creates on the ruins of the prosperity of all men of meagre means a class of debauched speculators, the most injurious class that a nation can harbor,--more injurious, indeed, than professional criminals whom the law recognizes and can throttle; how it stimulates overproduction at first and leaves every industry flaccid afterward; how it breaks down thrift and develops political and social immorality.

Even Mirabeau, the French statesmen and "great orator of the Assembly", famously characterized fiat money as "A nursery of tyranny, corruption and delusion; a veritable debauch of authority in delirium."

Notice that here we have White's paper, written 100 years ago about an event, the French Revolution, which had taken place 120 years before its publication, discussing intellectuals who knew better from experience endured 70 years before the revolution! Yet, the French rationalized the issuance of fiat money in the same way Ben Bernanke and his ilk do today.

To give you a brief overview of the story, the French government of 1789, under heavy debt, issued notes called assignats that bore interest and that were secured by confiscated clergy land. This issue was meant to relieve some of the French government's debt and thought to be valid as it was secured by real property, originally worth more than the issue. Essentially, the issue of assignats was really just a convoluted way to sell or redistribute land confiscated by the government.

Originally, 400 million assignats were issued. Despite initial concerns, the new currency was a success. It temporarily relieved some of the government's debt and acted to stimulate the economy as the new notes found their way into circulation. But, the government was still broke. So, violating its initial promise, it issued 400 million more, this time setting a legal limit of 1200 million.

As prices began to rise and the assignats began to devalue, everything and everyone was blamed except the arbitrary creation of this currency. Ultimately, a law called the Maximum was passed which set strict price controls. Anyone caught violating the price controls was subject to fines, imprisonment, or death. Naturally, shortages developed, just as they would if the government forced a BMW dealer to sell his cars for $20, leading to rationing and bread lines. Yet, the government kept printing more assignats. Quoting White:

First, the Assembly had inflated the currency and raised prices enormously. Next, it had been forced to establish an arbitrary maximum price for produce. But this price, large as it seemed, soon fell below the real value of produce; many of the farmers, therefore, raised less produce or refrained from bringing what they had to market. But, as is usual in such cases, the trouble was ascribed to everything rather than the real cause, and the most severe measures were established in all parts of the country to force farmers to bring produce to market, millers to grind and shopkeepers to sell it. The issues of paper money continued. Toward the end of 1794 seven thousand millions in assignats were in circulation. By the end of May, 1795, the circulation was increased to ten thousand millions, at the end of July, to fourteen thousand millions.

You would think at this point they would have stopped, recognized their folly, and reversed course. But, you would be wrong. In 1794, a new government was formed - the Directory - and they drew precisely the wrong conclusion.

[The Directory] found the country utterly impoverished and its only resource at first was to print more paper and to issue even while wet from the press...Complaints were made that the array of engravers and printers at the mint could not meet the demand for assignats--that they could produce only from sixty to seventy millions per day and that the government was spending daily from eighty to ninety millions.

According to a later report "the entire amount of paper money issued in less than six years by the Revolutionary Government of France had been over forty-five thousand millions of francs--that over six thousand millions had been annulled and burned and that at the final catastrophe there were in circulation close upon forty thousand millions."

White aptly concludes:

Such were the results of allowing dreamers, schemers, phrase-mongers, declaimers and strong men subservient to these to control a government.

Unfortunately, it wasn't over.

The new government discontinued the assignat and "decreed" that a new paper money "fully secured and as good as gold" be issued under a new name - "mandats." If you think decreeing a paper money to be "as good as gold" to be the height of absurdity consider what they did next. Not only was it made illegal to refuse this currency as legal tender, it became illegal to even think that the "mandat" was not legitimate.

The old plan of penal measures was again pressed. Monot led off by proposing penalties against those who shall speak publicly against the mandats; Talot thought the penalties ought to be made especially severe; and finally it was enacted that any persons "who by their discourse or writing shall decry the mandats shall be condemned to a fine of not less than one thousand francs or more than ten thousand; and in case of a repetition of the offence, to four years in irons."

In addition to all of the usual effects of inflation, there is another interesting subplot. Inflation induces illiquidity as individuals tend to save very little as they anticipate the continued devaluation of the currency and cash is readily available. The wild fluctuations provide incentives for speculation and investment schemes designed to profit from continual nominal price appreciation. For example, those who obtain the new money early in the cycle can purchase physical goods which retain their value or participate early in booms in particular types of investments. Rather than thrift, hard work, and productivity leading to wealth, inflation rewards those simply clever enough to profit from the price inflation. Consequently, while "the vast majority of the wealthy classes suffered from impoverishment, the laboring classes, salaried employees of all sorts, and people of fixed income and of small means, especially in the cities, underwent yet greater distress" subsisting "mainly on daily government rations of bread", a certain class had accumulated extraordinary wealth by profiting from the inflation which led to wide disparities in wealth.

A few years before this the leading women in French society showed a nobility of character and a simplicity in dress worthy of Roman matrons. Of these were Madame Boland and Madame Desmoulins; but now all was changed. At the head of society stood Madame Tallien and others like her, wild in extravagance, daily seeking new refinements in luxury, and demanding of their husbands and lovers vast sums to array them and to feed their whims. If such sums could not be obtained honestly they must be had dishonestly.

This aspect interested me, because I recall a post by Dr. George Reisman detailing how credit expansion is actually responsible for increasing income disparity. Quoting Reisman:

The truth is that credit expansion is responsible not only for the boom-bust cycle but also for another major negative phenomenon for which public opinion mistakenly blames capitalism. Namely, sharply increased economic inequality, in which the wealthier strata of the population appear to increase their wealth dramatically relative to the rest of the population and for no good reason.

White provides a great summary of the entire process of inflation:

New issues of paper were then clamored for as more drams are demanded by a drunkard. New issues only increased the evil; capitalists were all the more reluctant to embark their money on such a sea of doubt. Workmen of all sorts were more and more thrown out of employment. Issue after issue of currency came; but no relief resulted save a momentary stimulus, which aggravated the disease. The most ingenious evasions of natural laws in finance which the most subtle theorists could contrive were tried--all in vain; the most brilliant substitutes for those laws were tried; "self-regulating" schemes, "interconverting" schemes--all equally vain. All thoughtful men had lost confidence. All men were waiting; stagnation became worse and worse. At last came the collapse and then a return, by a fearful shock, to a state of things which presented something like certainty of remuneration to capital and labor. Then, and not till then, came the beginning of a new era of prosperity.

And how did this end? Partially, through a phenomena discussed in Reisman's Capitalism - the "spontaneous remonetization of the precious metals." Quoting White:

but when all was over with paper money, specie began to reappear--first in sufficient sums to do the small amount of business which remained after the collapse. Then as the business demand increased, the amount of specie flowed in from the world at large to meet it and the nation gradually recovered from that long paper-money debauch.

And how long did it take?

But though there soon came a degree of prosperity--as compared with the distress during the paper-money orgy, convalescence was slow. The acute suffering from the wreck and rain brought by assignats, mandats and other paper currency in process of repudiation lasted nearly ten years, but the period of recovery lasted longer than the generation which followed. It required fully forty years to bring capital, industry, commerce and credit up to their condition when the Revolution began, and demanded a "man on horseback," who established monarchy on the ruins of the Republic and thew away millions of lives for the Empire, to be added to the millions which had been sacrificed by the Revolution.

Of course, the "man on horseback" was Napoleon Bonaparte. This period ended in dictatorship and world war just as the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany ended with Adolph Hitler and world war. Today, as we hear every reason given for the financial crisis except the correct one, as Nobel Prize winning economists and panels of the most educated statesmen clamor for more currency debasement, I point to White's 1912 paper about the 1789 French Revolution in which French intellectuals evaded the lessons of the 1720's. Will the intellectuals ever learn the lesson?

What this episode shows is that if politicians have the power to print money - they will. All that can constrain them is a legal prohibition of this power, i.e., a fully free and private banking system as would occur under a system of full laissez-faire capitalism. And the only thing that can bring about laissez-faire and a government dedicated to protecting individual rights is a philosophy of reason, egoism, and capitalism.

The Essence of Socialized Medicine Exposed

Rarely do we hear a blatant exposition of the essence of egalitarianism from the left. Their ideology is usually cloaked in banal platitudes and ad hominem smears of any who dares to oppose them. That is why this video of a recent Robert Reich speech, linked over at Wealth is Not the Problem, is so startling. Beth Haynes subtitled her post "No Additional Comments Needed". Indeed, no comments to her comment about no comments needed either.

Obama to Negotiate with Raging Wildfire

This is hilarious

Blogs Under Attack By Our Choice Architect

In a previous post, I discussed Obama's horrifying nomination of Cass Sunstein to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs concluding:

As a Platonist, Sunstein views himself as a Philosopher King able to divine the ideal forms of morality and politics which he and the chosen few must convey to the masses otherwise distracted by celebrities and sports news. As a pragmatist (or regulator), he must execute concrete actions to bring about the ideal world as revealed to the Left. As a behaviorist, his plans are predicated on the idea that humans must be herded like cattle to partake in "shared experiences" and "unchosen exposures" which will transform them into "ideal" citizens.

Recently, Sunstein, the self described "choice architect", was successfully nominated, and it is therefore not surprising to me that internet freedom is now under attack. Beth Haynes has a great roundup of various articles on this topic.

Freedom of speech, perhaps the last pillar holding up the remnants of Western Civilization, is under assault. I documented this in a different context in my previous post Trial Balloon of the Century saying:

...if freedom of speech were to be abrogated in the United States, it would be the final straw for advocates of freedom and should lead to an all out revolution. This is because without the freedom to think, all other rights are meaningless.

Anyone who values their freedom should understand the precedents being set by these regulations and act to stop them before it is too late.

UPDATE:
* See this re the Obama's administrations co-sponsoring of a UN resolution (with Egypt!) to limit freedom of expression (HT: Beth Haynes) (will have more to say on this later, it is right out of Cass Sunstein's playbook)

* See this excellent op-ed re the FTC's attack on bloggers (HT: Ari Armstrong, OActivists)

Government Debt Explosion

http://link.businessinsider.com/view/898.1vx/a2c8c25c

Sacred Scriptures of the Human Race

Robert G. Ingersoll was part of the Freethought movement of the 19th century and an outspoken opponent of religion. In 1894, he wrote a brilliant piece titled About the Holy Bible that not only provides a thorough expose of biblical contradiction but more importantly recognizes the fundamental conflict between religion and liberty, or, more specifically, between religion and man's happiness on earth. As the left, in addition to the right, turns towards religion, it is important to understand this conflict. The below excerpts represent a partial reprint of a previous post, but I believe his writing is so outstanding I am posting this part again. I enjoy his writing more for its style than any technical philosophy (he was a famous orator) and his ability to articulate the essence of this conflict in such a passionate and eloquent way:

There are many millions of people who believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God -- millions who think that this book is staff and guide, counselor and consoler; that it fills the present with peace and the future with hope -- millions who believe that it is the fountain of law, Justice and mercy, and that to its wise and benign teachings the world is indebted for its liberty, wealth and civilization -- millions who imagine that this book is a revelation from the wisdom and love of God to the brain and heart of man -- millions who regard this book as a torch that conquers the darkness of death, and pours its radiance on another world -- a world without a tear.

They forget its ignorance and savagery, its hatred of liberty, its religious persecution; they remember heaven, but they forget the dungeon of eternal pain. They forget that it imprisons the brain and corrupts the heart. They forget that it is the enemy of intellectual freedom. Liberty is my religion. Liberty of hand and brain -- of thought and labor, liberty is a word hated by kings -- loathed by popes. It is a word that shatters thrones and altars -- that leaves the crowned without subjects, and the outstretched hand of superstition without alms. Liberty is the blossom and fruit of justice -- the perfume of mercy. Liberty is the seed and soil, the air and light, the dew and rain of progress, love and joy.

In a section titled Is Christ Our Example?, Ingersoll writes:

He never said a word in favor of education. He never even hinted at the existence of any science. He never uttered a word in favor of industry, economy or of any effort to better our condition in this world. He was the enemy of the successful, of the wealthy. Dives was sent to hell, not because he was bad, but because he was rich. Lazarus went to heaven, not because he was good, but because he was poor.

Christ cared nothing for painting, for sculpture, for music -- nothing for any art. He said nothing about the duties of nation to nation, of king to subject; nothing about the rights of man; nothing about intellectual liberty or the freedom of speech. He said nothing about the sacredness of home; not one word for the fireside; not a word in favor of marriage, in honor of maternity.

He never married. He wandered homeless from place to place with a few disciples. None of them seem to have been engaged in any useful business, and they seem to have lived on alms.

All human ties were held in contempt; this world was sacrificed for the next; all human effort was discouraged. God would support and protect.

At last, in the dusk of death, Christ, finding that he was mistaken, cried out: "My God My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?"

We have found that man must depend on himself. He must clear the land; he must build the home; he must plow and plant; he must invent; he must work with hand and brain; he must overcome the difficulties and obstructions; he must conquer and enslave the forces of nature to the end that they may do the work of the world.

Here is my favorite excerpt:

For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible, and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be finished while man has life. All the facts that we know, all the truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the wonderful machines whose wheels and levers seem to think, all the poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the songs of love and joy, of smiles and tears, the great dramas of Imagination's world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles that seem to live and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower, by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream and desert sand, by mountain range and billowed sea.

All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life, all that avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain -- all just and perfect laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that feed the flames of love the music that transfigures, enraptures and enthralls the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother-love, of conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought and done through all the years.

These treasures of the heart and brain -- these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race.

Give the Nobel Peace Prize to Nuclear Weapons or to an Actual African Genius

Yep

Or, to William Kamkwamba as Beth Haynes suggests.

Iran Builds Bomb, America Bombs Moon, Obama Gets Prize

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama is entirely consistent with the underlying ideology of modern intellectuals.

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

To understand this ideology and how it applies in this context, consider the meaning of the term "unilateralism". This term is defined as follows:

the doctrine that nations should conduct their foreign affairs individualistically without the advice or involvement of other nations

Notice that this term is used pejoratively as if any country who acts "without the advice" of other nations is necessarily wrong. Obama's willingness to "stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism" is why he was awarded the prize. Recall that the charge of "unilateralism" was exactly the accusation leveled at Bush when he decided to act without the consent of the United Nations. Whether Bush's polices were valid is another question. I certainly do not endorse everything he did. However, my point is that these intellectuals did not necessarily disagree with Bush's policies as much as they disagreed with his methodology, i.e., that he acted unilaterally or asserted American interests without their consent and endorsement.

The doctrine that a nation must subjugate itself to the will of other nations follows directly from modern pragmatism - a point I also addressed in my post, Obama Takes The Tiger Out of Paper Tiger. Since these intellectuals replace objectivity with moral relativism, which in this context means multiculturalism, they do not regard any country as being morally superior to any other. In their view, a free country is not necessarily better than a dictatorship. This is why a nation like Cuba holds a membership on the U.N.'s Human Rights Council. When one abandons reason, he must to turn to a group and seek consensus and compromise. To prostrate yourself before a motley council of amoral bureaucrats is the hallmark of virtue to the modern intellectual.

And what exactly would a pragmatist seek to achieve in foreign policy, i.e., what would be the standard by which he would determine what "works"? Since "peace" is their ostensible goal, this means that any action in the short run that seems to be a step towards non-fighting would be regarded as good. Therefore, "easing tensions with the Muslim world" or appeasement of our enemies is regarded as worthy of praise and even a Nobel Prize. In the long run, will appeasement of those who overtly seek our destruction result in "peace"? To them, who knows? They must be pragmatic which means making everyone feel good right now.

In a prior post related to Obama's position on Israel, I wrote

...as a pragmatist, Obama must act. What should he do? Should he recognize the objective distinction between Israel and her enemies and relate the interests of Israel to the objective interests of the United States which you think might include freedom and individual rights? Of course not. There is no objective truth. No "culture" is better than any other. He is "not concerned with ideology but with facts." He seeks "peace" - without ever understanding what peace actually means.

Objectively, "peace" is a state or condition that exists in the absence of war but it can not mean simply the momentary cessation of hostilities. If this were the case, every time soldiers stopped shooting it would be considered a state of "peace". "Peace" also implies "harmonious relations" or "freedom from dispute" which implies a long term political resolution based on two governments recognizing the right of the other to exist and respecting each others territorial boundaries. This does not mean you necessarily agree with everything the other country does, but it does imply a certain fundamental relationship between the two parties.

Based on this fact, how can there be "peace" between Israel and Hamas if Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the Israeli state and the imposition of Islamic law? The pragmatist can not think in such terms. "Peace" to the pragmatist means absence of fighting right now. Therefore, the goal must be to get the parties to stop fighting - at any cost. Logically, since Israel is stronger militarily, Obama must ask Israel to sacrifice itself to its enemies in order to achieve "peace". After all, if Israel were to continue to destroy its enemies it will result in death and that must stop right now. Won't stopping the fight now allow Hamas to regain its strength and lead to further attacks on Israel in the future leading to even more death in the long run not only of Palestinians but of our Israeli allies? Of course, but Obama must be pragmatic.

The same principle underlying this argument could be applied to Obama's call for nuclear disarmament and for his decision to abandon a European missile defense program.

As Iran continues to build a nuclear bomb, as Chavez seeks Russian help to realize his own nuclear ambitions, as troop morale hits an all time low, what is clear is that Obama's weakness and pragmatic appeasement is making the world more dangerous not less. Obama has given a tacit green light to every enemy of the United States by implying that we will not defend our values either morally or practically. Moral agnosticism is why he was given this prize. Although, he is willing to bomb the moon.