I spend a lot of time talking philosophy

(and no doubt, too little time listening), but my son is out there doing a number of things that I care about and I'm planning to join him. Check out his website.

I'm as annoyed by the statist solutions to environmental problems that the environmentalists propose, but I understand the seriousness of the problems. My boy ran across a solution to the problem of fertilizer and lawn chemical runoff, and he's taking to the streets as an entrepreneur.

I couldn't be more proud.

Though, let me make this perfectly clear, he never listened to me much. But he calls us up and tells us all these wonderful things...that I could have told him, but he learned the hard way on his own...and from talking to people who did them, rather than just listening to a guy in a dead-end, boring job who did nothing but read (near as he could tell).

Whoa! The old mid-life crisis reared its ugly head, there.

Anyway, this is all his own idea and I'm following his lead.

I'm feelin' the need to post this.

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 9, 2008
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist

Who: Dr. Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute.
What: A talk and Q & A examining Ayn Rand's view of egoism and how it can enable each of us to live more successful, happy lives.
Where: University of Chicago, Harper Memorial Library, Room 140, Chicago, Illinois
When: Wednesday, April 16, 2008, at 7 PM
Admission is FREE.

Summary: Ayn Rand is well known for advocating selfishness, yet the substance of that selfishness is rarely understood. This lecture presents Rand's ideal: a virtuous egoist. Dr. Smith explains why a person should be an egoist, the kind of egoism that Rand does and doesn't commend, and the kinds of virtues that a person must exercise in order to actually advance his self-interest. Along the way, Dr. Smith differentiates Rand's rational egoism from hedonism, materialism, and predation, and sketches Rand's egoistic account of two vital but widely misunderstood virtues: honesty and justice.

Bio: Tara Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, where she currently holds the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism. She is the author of the books "Moral Rights & Political Freedom," "Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root & Reward of Morality," and "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist," as well as numerous articles.

### ### ###

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

For more information on this event and on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=Hyea3IFJOL52Gvw0p36CHg... Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

And this:

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE
April 9, 2008

Why Unregulated Capitalism is the Only Moral Social System
Who: Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A lecture and Q&A explaining the philosophical and moral basis of capitalism.
Where: UCI, Crystal Cove Auditorium, Irvine, CA
When: Monday, April 14, 2008, at 7 PM

Admission is FREE.

Description: Capitalism is blamed for exploitation, environmental destruction, cut-throat competition, sweatshops, child labor, and the rising cost of education. But are these claims true? What is capitalism's essential nature? How can it be considered good? Find out the answers

Bio: Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and is a contributing editor to The Objective Standard. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications. He is frequently interviewed in the media and appears weekly on the new Fox Business Network to debate and discuss current economic and business news. His columns and opinion-editorials are published on forbes.com and in major newspapers. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.
For more information on this talk, please e-mail events@aynrand.org.

### ### ###

Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews now and after his talk. Contact: Larry BensonE-mail: media@aynrand.orgPhone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

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

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI.

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Op-eds, press releases and letters to the editor produced by the Ayn Rand Institute are submitted to hundreds of newspapers, radio stations and Web sites across the United States and abroad, and are made possible thanks to voluntary contributions.

If you would like to help support ARI's efforts, please make an online contribution at http://www.aynrand.org/support.

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I'm trying to decide between these epithets

for my epitaph: "Get your own!" or "Nobody cares about your problems!"

Something I noticed about my father, growing up,

was that, having made up his mind about something, and having publicly expressed his opinion on the matter, he didn't rest there. He checked his opinions against experience, and checked them again.

You know I think Dad was the greatest country singer ever, but Dad watched Austin City Limits, listened to Cole Porter and played the rock stations when he was driving me somewhere.

And Dad was an engineer and a teacher of engineers.

He never intentionally taught me any of it, except when I was four or five and I crawled up on his lap and asked him to read me a story while he was studying one of his books and he read it aloud to me. That was when I asked him what something meant and he spent a half hour drawing me pictures and explaining how refrigeration works.

I know how refrigeration works. Dad could teach.

Two of the most formative experiences of my life happened when we went to pick up Dad from work and Mom told me to go in and get him. The ... btw, the one I just related is probably the first, other than the repeated experience of diving in front of the amp whenever Dad set it up to sing, but those experiences screw up the numbering system I just created.

Anyway, the first was going in to the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA, that's the union) school in Duluth to get Dad, who was teaching marine engineers what they needed to know to move up a grade - Dad was at the top, a Chief Engineer. I stood outside the open classroom door and watched Dad writing incomprehensible thing on a chalkboard and explain them to grown men - and not effiminate men either. Union men. Rough-hewn men. Tough guys. And they were listening and writing down what he said. That was an image that recurred to me throughout my education. The message I got was that learning was about real things. That real people used in real life.

OK, now that I've started thinking about formative experiences, my mind is going nuts about all these other memories, but one especially important one of the others that involves Dad is watching him make, from raw steel stock, a part for a generator that was broken when I took my trip with him on "the boat" as a fourteen-year-old. He let me mind the lathe for a while, as it was cutting the threads, but he and the Second Assistant Engineer did all the heating and bending. I wish I could remember the Second Assistant's name; Dad obviously considered him the brightest light on the boat. That was the SS McGonigal, 1977, Kinsman Marine Transit, owned by Henry Steinbrenner, father of George. Just in case the guy wants to tell me who he is.

The other time Ma sent me to get Dad was at the 'stone (limestone) dock in Superior. We'd driven in to pick him up and he wasn't waiting for us. Growing up, that had always been her job to go and get him. I guess, now that I was a seventeen-year-old superjock, it was logical for the job to devolve to me. I mean, the first thing to do was climb a 20-foot, rickety ladder, after all.

So I did the natural, superjock, monkey impersonation up the ladder and set about impersonating Sherlock Holmes to find Dad. I didn't look in the Chief's quarters, because whatever he would have needed to do there wouldn't have interfered with him communicating with us in some way. So I headed down to the engine room. It took a little searching, but finally I found him wrestling mightily with a water pump.

And when I say wrestling mightily, I'm not exaggerating one whit. I asked if there was something I could do to help, and he told me to hold this 90 pound chunk of steel steady - at arms length in front of me - for an operation that took about 25 minutes.

Thank God I really was a superjock at the time.

When I got to him, he was pouring sweat. By the time we were done, we were both pouring sweat. My front delts had died the death of a thousand cuts.

But it was really done, and it was really a good job.

I watched Dad care for those parts like ailing loved ones...

And we could both face Mom with pride.

David Broza

shares his gifts with the world.

Didn't I used to link to

John Hawkins' blog?

Hey check out

ABC-of-Fitness.com! It's pretty cool! If you go through the "fitness exercises" they have little Flash movies of how to do the exercises.

Just in case something happens over here:

Rand Did Not Solve the Is-Ought Problem by Brian Holtz, I want to make sure my comment survives somewhere.

Al said...
I don't know, man. What am I missing? Your refutation is that Rand's morality for humans on earth doesn't apply to gods and bugs? Or creatures in some imaginary place?

Thu Apr 03, 02:14:00 PM 2008

I'm sure he'll get back to me soon and I'll let you know what comes of it.

Update: Mr. Holtz engaged my comment thoughtfully, and I rejoined:

Humility is an important concept to me. I understand it as meaning: listening carefully to understand what someone is really saying and then comparing it to what The Universe is saying (as I understand it). What The Universe is saying is Natural Law - it tells you what you can get away with. A careful examination of history and economics will tell you that you can get away with dumping the consequences of your actions on your friends and neighbors for a while, but eventually being an A-hole will come back and bite you in the ass.

There are few humans who want to leave a legacy of ass bites to the ones they love.

Morality is a matter of persuasion more than biology (though loving your family, friends and physical and intellectual offspring seems to be a biological imperitive for humans), and the importance of what I've brought up is the core of what we need to be convincing our neighbors of.

Ooh! Need to work on that grammar.

I have to say here, that I assume that Conversation will not end with my, or anyone else's, last word. I do not assume that every point and ramification can be addressed by a pithy rejoinder. Nor am I so arrogant as to believe that I "nailed it perfectly" with the last thing I said.

For instance, I'm still ruminating, from time to time, on Probligo's hypothetical point about his neighbor building a skyscraper between his home and "his" view of the bay - and whether he has the right to mobilize the community to forcibly stop his neighbor from doing such a thing.

Preliminary notes

F-Secure [?] Whoops! That's something I need to look up.

Here:

The supposed link between trade and recessions is superficially appealing. During any recession, critics can point to imports that displace domestic production, putting some U.S. workers out of their jobs and supposedly reducing domestic demand for goods and services. They can more easily blame U.S. multinational corporations for "shipping our jobs overseas" by locating production facilities in countries where labor and other costs are lower. But like so much of the conventional wisdom about trade and the economy, the alleged link between rising levels of trade and recessions simply does not exist.

Well, I may have figured out

what my computer problems have been lately. I don't think it's a virus, trojan or worm, I just think that the automatic updates I get for a couple of my programs are just too much for the old beater.

There's just too much crap in here.

My computer time lately has been burned up by trying to figure out what the hell's wrong with this thing. So tonight I knocked out one program that I hadn't figured on being the problem and Bingo! Everything's working right.

Sad, man. I paid a pile for that thing.

I've actually written a few posts that were just killed by the conflicts. I found that discouraging and shut down for the rest of the night.

Got a couple books read. Hazlitt's Thinking as a Science is a great one. I was feeling the need for some pointers.

He says, write things down and talk to yourself. I found that very comforting. No guilt for doing what I do anyway. Read the book, it'll make you feel better too.

LibertyBob's last two posts

are about the Spring Holiday Season. Of course, he chose different ones than I usually emphasize (link one, link two).

I like to draw attention to The Ides of March on the 15th, and St. Urho's Day on the 16th.

invadesoda has a link to a brilliant list of

Libertarian quotes, but I'm gonna make you go through him to find them.

Here are a few:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O'Rourke

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein

The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – H.L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H.L. Mencken

Makes me want to watch "V for Vendetta" again.

Tim Pawlenty just did an hour on Northern Alliance Radio

That's our Governor, btw. He's also chairing John McCain's presidential campaign.

Now, I'm one of those people who's irritated as hell about all the compromisers, but I gotta tell ya, Tim Pawlenty is the most knowledgable, friendly leader the world has ever seen. People asked him tough questions and he answered them honestly and completely.

I gotta find that for ya.

Hmm. How's that damn website work? Am I in the right place? It looks just like Townhall.com, but it's all screwed up.

Agh! I give up!

What?!

The Republican Party of Minnesota informs me that I've been elected a Precinct Leader. Funny, I don't remember raising my hand for that one. The precinct chair is that young gal I was sitting next to when I had the twitches.

Oh, yeah, I am a vice chair. I guess that qualifies me as a leader. I was afraid they'd ousted my gal H___ (I don't know if she qualifies as a public figure yet), or otherwise made some awful mistake.

Their going to have training sessions in a couple weeks. Guess I have to go find out what I got myself into.

I read a story back in junior high about a kid who suddenly had to go on the lam; while his mother was packing him some food for his trek into the mountains, one of the other kids asked, "When does a boy become a man, Mama?"

She answered, "When a man is needed."

Think a man's needed here?

Sorry, I had a bunch of things going on for the past week.

Family, work, computer issues.

The family's fine, and nothing exciting was going on, just a lot of it. Work stuff, I don't talk about here. Kills a lot of possible posts, but it saves my job, probably.

Looks like the old Compaq's on her last legs. We're looking into getting a new one, and the wife saw a way to get one better than this one for a quarter the price. Something else I can't talk about is getting in the way of that, though.

Not all of life sucks, but some parts of it definitely do sometimes.

That's my apology, now check out what Alex Epstein has to say about the mortgage crisis:

Too Big to Bail
By Alex Epstein

Every few days we hear that another leading financial institution has written down billions more on subprime investments gone bad. Nearly every major financial institution, it turns out, had a hand in loans to low-credit borrowers--borrowers whose ability to pay often hinged on endlessly low interest rates or a strong housing market. How could this happen? How could nearly all the leading lights of the financial industry--the experts in assessing and managing risk--expose themselves to such massive losses? Or, as a Fortune cover crudely put it: "What were they smoking?"

A major part of the answer is: government bailout crack.

Just another variation of the old ABCT, seems to me. [You'll have to assume that Crusoe has some big berries to accept Mahoney's illustration.]

Update: Oh, I guess that's what this guy is saying. When you're done with that, check out Setting the Stage for American History: Liberty vs Power in Europe and England, by Murray N. Rothbard.

BTW, if you want to check out other Business Cycle theories, you can't do better than start at Wikipedia. I'd start with this one and follow their links to other articles.

Toward a good conspiracy theory

Murray Rothbard said:

The bad conspiracy analyst tends to make two kinds of mistakes, which indeed leave him open to the Establishment charge of "paranoia." First, he stops with the cui bono; if measure A benefits X and Y, he simply concludes that therefore X and Y were responsible. He fails to realize that this is just a hypothesis, and must be verified by finding out whether or not X and Y really did so. (Perhaps the wackiest example of this was the British journalist Douglas Reed who, seeing that the result of Hitler's policies was the destruction of Germany, concluded, without further evidence, that therefore Hitler was a conscious agent of external forces who deliberately set out to ruin Germany.) Secondly, the bad conspiracy analyst seems to have a compulsion to wrap up all the conspiracies, all the bad guy power blocs, into one giant conspiracy. Instead of seeing that there are several power blocs trying to gain control of government, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in alliance, he has to assume — again without evidence — that a small group of men controls them all, and only seems to send them into conflict.

On the other hand:

Were all the Trilateralists and Rockefeller Foundation and Coca-Cola people chosen by [President] Carter simply because he felt that they were the ablest possible people for the job? If so, it's a coincidence that boggles the mind. Or are there more sinister political-economic interests involved? I submit that the naïfs who stubbornly refuse to examine the interplay of political and economic interest in government are tossing away an essential tool for analyzing the world in which we live.

Hmm, says I.

I don't suppose any of those people are active today?

BTW, this post is largely the result of perusing the Mises.org daily articles archive in pursuit of the source of my previous post. I had to check out this article, because I didn't think my boy Murray Rothbard could be led astray by anything as crude as the crap I've heard from the John Birchers or the LaRouchies. Amusingly enough, he lends some support to both groups. That does not mean that he, nor I, desired to support the goals of either group.

Original Sin! Now there's scientific proof of it!

I learned first about the University of Nottingham (isn't that appropriate) research from the Mises Institute, and now Kevin Hogan has beaten me to the punch on a follow up article. I should have know he'd be on it like a chicken on a june bug.

Kevin does a pretty good job expressing himself, but I've got to warn you, he hasn't read Eats, Shoots and Leaves. But I'll by-pass that issue and quote what he quotes:

"Anti-social punishment was rare in the most democratic societies and very common otherwise.

"Using the World Democracy Audit evaluation of countries' performance in political rights, civil liberties, press freedom and corruption, the top six performers among the countries studied were also in the lowest seven for anti-social punishment. These were the USA, UK, Germany, Denmark, Australia and Switzerland."

He adds: "Their results suggest that the success of democratic market societies may depend critically upon moral virtues as well as material interests, so the depiction of civil society as the sphere of 'naked self-interest' is radically incorrect."

Adapted from materials provided by University of Nottingham, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

University of Nottingham (2008, March 6). Cooperation, Punishment And Revenge In Economics And Society. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 7, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/03/080306183134.htm

The latter items in italics are Kevin's sources.

To see what I mean by "original sin," read how Kevin introduces the study. But, actually, I was keyed to my own analysis by the Mises Institute article Does Neuroscience Support Austrian Theory?

Oh! Crap! That's not the one that mentions the Nottingham Study. It is, however, very much the one that stimulated my thoughts as a matter important to my project of synthesizing the theories of Lutheranism, Objectivism and Libertarianism. I mentally filed (but, unfortunately, didn't physically file) the Nottingham study as evidence for my contention that Original Sin is, basically, the tendency to blame someone else for our own failings.

What did Eve do after she ate the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? She blame the serpent. What did Adam do when he was caught? He blamed Eve. Did Cain shoulder the responibility for murdering Abel? He certainly shouldered the consequences, but I never read that he apologized.

Blaming somebody else and then stealing what they had a right to; that's the whole story of the Old Testament. The New Testament is saying, "Stop that crap! Right here! Right now!"

That's why I'm unwilling to let go of Christianity. It may be that we're carrying the "forgive and forget" message too far - or we think we should, and our history proves that we haven't carried it far enough - but it's a message that the world is literally dying to hear! And it's done wonders for Western Civilization.

I suppose I should say something about Brett Favre retiring.

The People have been clamoring so for a proclamation.

I heard Laura Ingraham asking the question, did Favre embarass himself by crying at his farewell press conference? I'm not a "real men don't cry" guy at all, there are damn good reasons to cry, most of 'em involving death, and retiring from a storied football career is one of those.

But, I'm not sure why the guy's retiring. Nobody in the history of the world was more in a position to say, "Just kidding!" and have everyone respond, "Well! You really had me going there for a minute!" And then go on as if the word 'retire' had never been mentioned.

I hear Favre's got a massive ego. Let me stroke it a bit: he's the greatest thing that ever happened to the Packers in my lifetime. Well, okay, I was alive for half of the Lombardi Era, but I don't remember any of it.

Except for brief glimmerings, the Packers have sucked most of my life.

What's next season going to look like?

The Old Whig Marketing Award

goes the LDS "talk to your kids" ads. I love listening to those when they come on. They haven't convinced me to become a Mormon, but they definitely make points that parents need to learn about listening to their kids, and they do convince me that the Mormons know how to raise happy, successful children.

And to root for them to raise more of them.

Keep it up, Mormons! You're doing good things for humanity.

Update: Darn it! If you saw this before now, you had to notice that I that I said LSD, rather than LDS. I was thinking, don't say LSD as I was typing.

I've been listening to that country station,

my daughter keeps tuning it in, and - I forget what and whose the songs are, but there've been more than a couple about guys' Dads. And I was playing my Best of Bread CD earlier today which has the song "Everything I Own," about David Gates' Dad.

My Dad used to sing the song "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine," which he probably took from Jim Reeves, though I see it was originally a Gene Autry song. I'd like to hear that (latter) version. I haven't heard either, really, I've only heard Dad sing it. I've mentioned that I think Dad was the best country singer I've ever heard, he had an extraordinary vocal range. I don't suppose I'll ever be able to make that case definitively. I'm obviously biased, and, as far as I know, there are no extant recordings to prove it.

Well, Dad sang this song here:

That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine Lyrics
Artist:Jim Reeves

In a vine-covered shack in the mountains
Bravely fighting the battle of Time
There's a dear one who's weathered life's sorrow
It's that silver haired Daddy of mine

If I could recall all the heartaches
Dear old Daddy, I've caused you to bear
If I could erase those lines from your face
And bring back the gold to your hair

If God would but grant me the power
Just to turn back the pages of Time
I'd give all I own if I could but atone
To that silver haired Daddy of mine.

I know it's too late, dear old Daddy
To repay for the heartaches and care
But dear Mother is waiting in Heaven
Just to comfort and solace you there

If I could recall all the heartaches
Dear old Daddy, I've caused you to bear
If I could erase those lines from your face
And bring back the gold to your hair

If God would but grant me the power
Just to turn back the pages of Time
I'd give all I own if I could but atone
To that silver haired Daddy of mine

Now, Dad didn't go gray, really, much before he got lung cancer and ended up bald, so when he was singing it, I always imagined Grandpa as the subject of the song.

Grandpa outlived Dad by several years. Dad was the oldest of his seven children, and the third to pass. Is there a song that tells how Grandpa felt?

God wants me to be politically active tomorrow

Now I know where the expression "Oh, God!" comes from. It's not just profanity.

Anybody got some passion I can borrow?

My Fair Lady

My wife bought tickets, from the local PBS affiliate (so they were more expensive than they otherwise would have been, but they were well worth the price--we brought a spotting scope and a pair of binoculars, not knowing where we were going to end up, but they were absolutely unnecessary--we were in the eighth row), to that play.

I'm having a hard time writing right now without using the passive voice excessively. You see that I did manage to write a topical title without using "I," so I overcame that bugaboo.

The play was...how can I say this without sounding gay (another bugaboo)... Ah, screw it! The play was marvelous! I've loved "My Fair Lady" since I saw it on TV when I was about six. Henry Higgins is the man I want to be. But only if he gets Eliza Doolittle in the end.

Now long time readers (and there actually are a few) know where my passion for Audrey Hepburn comes from. Although, if you don't have a passion for Audrey Hepburn, I'll never understand what's wrong with you.

My wife and I are now contriving ways to get the kids to the play. We all watched the PBS special on the new production (twice) and the older girl really wanted to see it.

I'm going to write more on this on the other blog, but I have to go to the BPOU convention tomorrow. Hopefully I'll feel like it Sunday. I can't imagine losing enthusiasm for the subject, but I know how memories of dreams work.

In that light, I should say right now that although we had the understudy(?) playing Eliza, she was magnificent. What a marvelous voice that girl has! I'll have the playbill in front of me when I write my Bourgeois Philistine review so I can name names, but I had to put something out quickly about how much joy this has brought to my life. I felt terribly guilty about not putting something out about this before now. But my wife needed some attention.

William F. Buckley just died

He was a character, no doubt about that. Not being a "Crown and Altar" guy, I'm not feeling the loss. As a Rand and Rothbard libertarian it's tough to get worked up. The guy was the enemy.

Jason Lewis spent the hour I can't listen to on the subject. You're welcome to check out what he had to say. He's on to other things now.

See if you can guess who said this

before you check the answer:

It was long ago observed that the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something. The fact explains in large measure, the tendency of democratic states to pass over statesmen of genuine imagination and sound ability in favour of colorless mediocrities. The former are shining marks, and so it is easy for demagogues to bring them down; the latter are preferred because it is impossible to fear them.

It's a little more subtle than what you usually hear from the guy... I'll give you a hint: he means every word, and he's one of the greatest experts on the English language ever.

To play the game, open the comments, make your guess, and then post your reaction to the answer. You don't have to publish your comment between, just make a clear division.

Words to live by

My daughter got herself grounded from anything with a screen - TV, computer or anything else anyone can think of - for a month for leaving school and coming home during the day... Actually, it's a complicated situation due to arrangements with the local school district and the daycare lady that are all way off topic - complicated but not interesting.

Anyway, my daughter usually listens to Christian Rock and I enjoy that, but apparently she got bored with that tonight and she cranked up the local country station.

So I just heard the song "I'm Still a Guy" for the first time. Let me see if I can find that for ya.

Yup, right here:

When you see a deer you see Bambi
And I see antlers up on the wall
When you see a lake you think picnics
And I see a large mouth up under that log
You're probably thinking that you're gonna change me
In some ways well maybe you might
Scrub me down, dress me up aww but no matter what
Remember, I'm still a guy

When you see a priceless French painting
I see a drunk, naked girl
You think that ridin' a wild bull sounds crazy
And I'd like to give it a whirl
Well love makes a man do some things he ain't proud of
And in a weak moment I might walk your sissy dog, hold your purse at the mall
But remember, I'm still a guy

And I'll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
'Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

I can hear you now talkin' to your friends
Saying, "Yeah girls he's come a long way"
From draggin' his knuckles and carryin' a club
[I'm Still A Guy lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

And buildin' a fire in a cave
But when you say a backrub means only a backrub
Then you swat my hand when I try
Well now, what can I say at the end of the day
Honey, I'm still a guy

And I'll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
'Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

These days there's dudes gettin' facials
Manicured, waxed and botoxed
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can't grip a tacklebox

Yeah ith all of these men linin' up to get neutered
It's hip now to be feminized
I don't highlight my hair
I've still got a pair
Yeah honey, I'm still a guy

Oh my eyebrows ain't plucked
There's a gun in my truck
Oh thank God, I'm still a guy

Amen, bro!

I've never felt so close to another man.

I finally met somebody who's heard of Polo Hofer!

Of course it was a woman from Switzerland who's about my age. She told me she'd translate the Schwaitzer Deutsch for me. It's a different accent, or rather, dialect.

Most of the dude's German is incomprehensible to me, so I want to take her up on that. Actually, I suppose it's just one or two word per sentence, but their, like, the nouns and the verbs. The adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions are all obvious.

What?! Did I forget Valentine's Day?

No wonder the wife's been grumpy.

I've failed to mention thus far that David Strom has moved from the Taxpayers' League of Minnesota to the Minnesota Free Market Institute. He's the founder of both.

Other than that, I only have time [before the rolling-pin finds me] to mention these other two things I want to check out: Climate Change Forecasters on the Hot Seat and You Are What You Spend, by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm.

I got both of those from NPCA, btw.

I got as far as this on the last article:

Income statistics, however, don’t tell the whole story of Americans’ living standards. Looking at a far more direct measure of American families’ economic status — household consumption — indicates that the gap between rich and poor is far less than most assume, and that the abstract, income-based way in which we measure the so-called poverty rate no longer applies to our society.

Oop! Hssst!

Gotta go!

I finally sat down and finished reading

The Betrayal of the American Right, by Murray Rothbard. That guy can sure write! This book should be made into a movie!

Let me give you the punch line, so to speak; though this excerpt is part of the summary (Ch. 13: The Early 1960s: From Right to Left, pp. 182-183 of the hard cover) and doesn't show the drama to be found in the rest of the book - the battles and final split of the paleocons and libertarians and the Buckleyite neocons:

Leonard Liggio then came up with the following profound analysis of the historical process, which I adopted.

First, and dominant in history, was the Old Order, the ancien regime, the regime of caste and frozen status, of exploitation by a war-making, feudal or despotic ruling class, using the church and the priesthood to dupe the masses into accepting its rule. This was pure statism; and this was the "right wing." Then, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western Europe, a liberal and radical opposition movement arose, our old heroes, who championed a popular revolutionary movement on behalf of rationalism, individual liberty, minimal government, free markets and free trade, international peace, and separation of Church and State--and in opposition to Throne and Altar, to monarchy, the ruling class, theocracy, and war. These--"our people"--were the Left, and the purer their libertarian vision the more "extreme" a Left they were.

...[B]ut what of socialism, that movement born in the ninetheenth century which we had always reviled as the "extreme left"? ...Liggio analyzed socialism as a confused middle-of-the-road movement, influenced historically by both the libertarian and individualist Left and by the conservative-statist Right. From the individualist Left the socialists took the goals of freedom: the withering away of the State, the replacement of the governing of men by the administration of things..., opposition to the ruling class and the search for its overthrow, the desire to establish international peace, an advanced industrial economy and a high standard of living for the mass of the people. From the conservative Right the socialists adopted the means to attempt to achieve these goals: collectivism, state planning, community control of the individual. But this put socialism in the middle of the ideological spectrum. It also meant that socialism was an unstable, self-contradictory doctine bound to fly apart rapidly in the inner contradiction between its means and its ends. And in this belief we were bolstered by the old demonstration of my mentor Ludwig von Mises that socialist central planning simply cannot operate an advanced industrial economy.

The rest of the book shows the consequences of adopting that analysis. The practical consequences. Rothbard was always trying to find a way to promulgate the message, which led to some bizarre alliances and associations.

This book disentangles the Gordian Knot of Twentieth Century American political history. It places all the movements where you can view them in the proper perspective.

Tom DeSabla is one of those guys

who "rages against the machine."

I just said I believe in politeness, but let's be more clear: politeness is not a metaphysical primary. It's a high value for civilization, but the fact is, sometimes you meet people who don't deserve it. I could probably do a dissertation on who deserves it and who doesn't. Basically, it's those who's ideas would destroy civilization who don't deserve it. What destroys civilization is the fundamental disagreement in politics, of course. That's what we're debating.

DeSabla, kind of a libertarian Michael Savage (both of whom I've managed to listen to this morning), weaves in some pretty strong points among the strong words of his anti-statist-media rant, some of which, to be sure, are about the incentives the media respond to, not all of which are about statism, a lot of their incentives are about their and their audience's short attention span. He's got an outline of the Feb. 6 show on his web page.

Too bad he blows out polite company right off the bat.

He rips this op-ed for not mentioning Ron Paul, but it's generally a pretty good article. Mickey Edwards should have mentioned Paul as the one guy who's saying more of what he's saying than the rest of the guys left in the campaign.

Speaking of who's left, Romney proved he's not a real conservative when he dropped out of the race the other day. If he had any real convictions, he would have campaigned through this weekend and tried to convince people that he really is the guy who stands for what we thought he stood for.

And here's what Dr. Paul says:

With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties -- just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

In the presidential race and the congressional race, I need your support, as always. And I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.

What's that sound like to you?

An open letter to Ron Paul supporters

I just sent this to Jason Lewis, after a long on-air argument...well, I think you'll get it:

I'd like to say something about my fellow Ron Paul supporters, perhaps this
should be an open letter to them:

Conservatives are not impressed by the Victim Card. Don't call conservative
talk host and expect to be respected when you play it. There are two great
organisations who will teach you how to campaign well for our candidate (and
every call, letter or hand signal to someone with a wide audience is
campaigning): one can be found at http://www.RonPaul2008.com. The other is
The Advocates for Self-Government.

I'm hearing way too much discourtesy from libertarians and paleocons on my
side.

Ron Paul is NOT a victim! He's ahead of his time. His ideas are so old,
they're new. And they're not taught in our schools.

It's OUR job to spread them. It's not Jason's or any other media figure's
job to spread them.

It's MY job.

And the Victim Card ain't gonna get it done.

Thank you,

Al (the Old Whig) from Brooklyn Center

When's the last time I mentioned

Promethea.org? Do I still have them in my blogroll?
http://www.promethea.org/bannersmall2.jpg

Oh, what have I done?

I went and nominated myself (I Freudian typoed "myserf", there) to be Vice Chair of my Republican District. Three of us did and we were all voted in. What a deal!

And all five precinct officers are also delegates to the next level convention.

Now I'm going to have to be an upstanding citizen for two years. What was I thinking?!

The gal sitting next to me was voted Chair. Unfortunately I was feeling a bit euphoric, so I was voicing every silly thought that popped into my head - sort of quietly heckling the proceedings. I think I just made an enemy of my boss. Oh, and also, I have a pulled muscle in my back that hurts whenever I try to move my head, in such a way that I reflexively reach for it - so I was fidgeting like Termagaunt the whole night.

I suspect she's a McCain supporter - the diametric opposite of my guy Ron Paul. She did say that "we have a responsibility to support the candidate who has a possibility of winning."

I respectfully disagree.

BTW, the presidential pole in our precinct went: Romney 18, Huckabee 8, Ron Paul 4, McCain 3.

And we passed along a party plank resolution, authored by a fellow RP supporter saying that we wish to deny recipients of matricula consular ID cards the right to use them for anything valuable in the US. I couldn't argue.

I see the argument for open-borders, but I also see the argument for shutting them down when you've been attacked. And reopening them in a very gingerly fashion.

My guy Dave Thompson just said that he [speaking of Freudian slips, I just capitalized "He"] just said that he had no problem with Ron Paul, he has a problem with some of his supporters. I get that.

Looks like Romney and Obama won Minnesota, but these are caucuses, not a primary, so, essentially, this is a straw poll. And, remember, somehow my neighbors made me a vice chair and a delegate. We just got us a force multiplier.

I think Teflonman has cursed me.

I haven't been able to think of much to write.

Actually, I talked about the Superbowl over on the other blog yesterday. I wasn't thrilled by any of the commercials.

I suppose it's more important that today is Super Tuesday. Go Ron Paul!!

I support Ron Paul because he's the only politician who's right about economics, and is willing to go down in flames for those principles.

Actually, he's a bit of a Buchananite on foreign trade, though he explains that.

I think he's the only one who can and will fix this to my satisfaction.

Ha ha! I got to listen to Jason Lewis twice today

and you didn't! Once on Rush Limbaugh and they ran the replay on his own show. What was so great was that he was on one of his marvelous Freedom rants the whole time. He absolutely kicked ass!

Of course, since he's a libertarian Conservative, and he was covering for Rush, he didn't suggest that everyone go to their primaries or caucuses and vote for Ron Paul in protest - like he did on the local show just last night - that would have gotten him permanently disinvited from EIB.

But, God (I say that prayerfully and in gratitude), it was fantastic listening, knowing that a huge chunk of America was getting an inspirational lesson in the thoughts of the founders.

My brain fries

when I read this kind of stuff, The Case for Free Banking: Then and Now, by George A. Selgin
but it looks like some pretty good thinking.

Don Boudreaux recommended it. Here's Dr. Boudreaux's most recent article, The foolishness of economic 'stimulus': Do we really want to risk prolonging a bad economy? As far as I know.

The latter article has some advice for the President:

First, Mr. Bush should call for a substantial and permanent cut in both capital-gains and personal-income tax rates.

Next, he should insist on a large reduction in federal spending, including elimination of all agricultural subsidies. While he's showing such courage, he might as well unconditionally endorse free trade.

Cutting taxes is, of course, a good thing, but it's important to know why. The goal would not be to increase consumer spending. Instead, it would be to raise the returns on investment and work.

By letting investors and workers keep more of the fruits of their risk-taking, creativity, and efforts, the economy will enjoy more risk-taking, creativity, and effort. Businesses that would otherwise not be started would be created. Likewise with machinery and training that increases worker productivity. Investors worldwide would flock to take advantage of these lower tax rates, further increasing productive investments.

Cutting government spending would result in more of the economy's resources being used by wealth-creating businesses rather than being siphoned away to special-interest groups and boondoggles such as bridges-to-nowhere and Woodstock museums.

Committing to free trade would assure global investors that Americans refuse to turn inward – that producers in America will not be stymied in their efforts to buy inputs from low-cost foreign suppliers and that investments and entrepreneurial ideas from abroad will continue to be welcomed.

Finally, Bush should assure the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve that he neither expects nor wants them to use monetary policy politically. Reminding them of the wisdom of Milton Friedman, he should strongly urge them to keep a tight rein on the money supply.

Sound money, low taxes, and free trade might not "stimulate" the economy today, but this combination will surely increase its vigor over the long-run.

These reforms are about as radical as what Jefferson did when he took over from Adams and the Federalists. Of course, Jefferson should have done more.

Invadesoda sent me the direct link to Mises.org's online library and I've been reading Denson's Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom [828 page pdf].

Let's see the Democrats in this country

do this!

The Republicans certainly aren't.

I just replaced the quote from the Anti-Federalist

with this one from Tibor Machan's article, The Bill of Rights and Moral Philosophy:

The people, so long as their right to free thought is still respected by law, are still in charge. And they can make the difference between a future guided by the principles that gave birth to our nation or one directed by alien philosophies that will take us back to the dark ages of feudalism and despotic rule.

I thought I'd mention it here, so you all can comment.

I was clued to

this by Oldsmoblogger, and I recommend you read their posts for context, but I wanted to highlight this comment:

Fred


How long until Miami starts seeing a flood of Venezuelan refugees? How about now. See yesterday’s New York Times.

“Rise of Chávez Sends Venezuelans to Florida”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/us/23florida.html?ref=todayspaper

It doesn’t matter how much oil you are standing over. If you force producers to sell goods below cost you get shortages. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out but it still comes as a surprise to your average dictator.

God will bless those who follow those link-trails.

I need to write a review of Doherty's

Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of the First English Colony in the New World.

Mind if I submit a rough draft for your criticism? Amazon reviews don't need to rate publication in the New York Times, but I do want to write something that encourages people to get ahold of the book and read it.

[Before I get down to business and use that window to google the title and get you the link, I was just reading this guy. He's pretty good.]

The wreck of the Sea Venture has not been denied its fair share of attention in history and the arts - as Doherty shows, Shakespeare appears to have used William Strachey's description of the hurricane that drove Sea Venture onto the Bermudan reef as the inspiration for The Tempest.

Doherty's focus is the contributions the survivors of the shipwreck made to the survival and growth of the Virginia colony, as well as the founding of Bermuda and New England.

John Rolfe, one of the survivors, looms very large in the book, partly because he founded the American tobacco industry, but mostly because he married Pocahontas. Marrying Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhatan, gave Jamestown "the Peace of Pocahontas" which allowed the colonists to recover from "The Starving Time" and the war with the indians and put down roots - literally. And, apparently Pocahontas herself was instrumental in Rolfe's mastery of tobacco growing, which finally made the colony profitable.

I don't think a review is the place to do more than hint at the surprises in store for readers of the book, but there are many. Doherty uses sources, John Smith, Strachey (who wrote voluminously of their experiences) and Rolfe, as well as any other writings of the time, that help you get inside the heads of the participants. Smith and Rolfe seemed to have had a deep understanding of Powhatan. Unfortunately, they weren't in position to moderate every dispute between the colonists and the indians.

I've never said anything here about A Shropshire Lad?!

Well, I'm not going to do it now, either. It's a book of poetry, so the Bourgeois Philistine needs to handle it.

Paul Campaign gets Don Luskin!

Hey! Look at that! He's brought Don Luskin aboard as his economic advisor!

Not that he needed one. We used to have four economists in Congress: Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich and... the other guy's name will have to come to me later...and Ron Paul. Now we have one. Let's get him to the top, shall we?

Helicopter Ben is going to dump cash on us!

He said he would, after all.

All right, it'll be Congress and the President who are going to pay us off to encourage short-term savings wasting. Yeah, that's what we're doing wrong, the economy is f'ed up because we're not blowing enough money on stupid s***. Whiskey and hotrods for everyone!

Hayek! Hayek! Hayek!

OK, so here's what the government is doing: we're about to go into a recession because the last wad of empty calories - excuse me, cash - the government handed out (by holding interest rates below their natural rate) has run its course. People are done buying junk and are about to settle down to attending to their real needs, is how I interpret it. So people stop buying the useless crap that firms have been sinking their subsidized capital expenditures into producing. We can't have that! Crap producers will go out of business!

We need more Truck Nuts, Hoola Hoops and Pet Rocks!

Give a wad of cash to the poor. Hey, liberals! The poor spend their money on chinese junk at Walmart! Eat that, morons!

Oh! And McCain's happy that Congress and Bush are moving fast on this thing. Populist "solutions" always require a big bandaids. And they accused Reagan of going for simple solutions!

This will fuel the shortest recovery in history. And fill my house up with more junk. [Yeah, I'm takin' the money. Better that than leavin' it in their hands. And I pay taxes.]

Here's Ron Paul's reform agenda.

This seems rather important.

I wonder why I've never heard it before. Of course, this is just the beginning of the examination of peaceful conflict resolution:

Glasl shows how parties in conflict loose the ability to co-operate in a constructive manner as their successive and mutual experiences are break down. He identifies several "points of no return" which contribute decisively to the escalation.[36] In stage 1[37], there is a hardening of the positions. It is the content of the conflict that is the centre of attention, and the parties trust that it will be possible to solve the problem. In the second stage, polarisation and debate take place. The conflicted parties unite within themselves (cohesion), and stereotypes develop. When they reach the point where they feel that talking to one another is not productive, they "create facts" (stage 3: "deeds instead of words"). From there the relationship to the opposing party becomes a central part of the content of the conflict itself. "There's no use in talking to them," is the experience, "now we have to act!" From now on behaviour towards one another becomes more clearly negative, as do the notions the opponents have of each other. As the conflict constellation deteriorates, the parties slide into a situation where each feels threatened and endangered by the actions of the other (stages 4-6). In stage 4 the relationship becomes the problem. Stereotypes, and "win-lose" situations arise. In stage 5 direct attacks on the position of the opponent begin, and each party seeks to "expose" the "true character" of its opponent causing him to loose face. In stage 6 the threatening begins, and isolated violent acts might happen.

The next decisive threshold is crossed when threats and ultimatums are superseded by (still limited) actions directed against the power base of the organisation or group concerned (stage 7). From this moment on the parties no longer see each other in human terms but see only objects that they want to be rid of (stages 7-9). From now on the violence directed toward each other becomes the predominant issue of the conflict. In stage 8 the basis of power and existence of the opponent are targets, and mutual destruction takes place. In the 9th and final stage there is total confrontation even at the price of one's own destruction. The only goal is to eliminate the opponent.

Ronald J. Fisher[38] has transferred Glasl's model from its original context of social conflicts, mostly in or between organisations, to the context of political conflicts. He simplifies Glasl's nine stages to four: stage 1: communication, stage 2: polarisation, stage 3: segregation, stage 4: destruction.[39]

I'm not a pacifist (yet, anyway), but I'm all for maximising the use of peaceful methods whenever and wherever possible. And, of course, I'm against initiating physical force.

Steve Forbes is making a good case for Giuliani

in today's WSJ: The Giuliani Tax Cut.

It looks like "trimming," but you can't argue that it's unrealistic, and I think it would improve our lives.

Nobody's ever given me a real poem before!

I deeply appreciate it.

Is that where the whale thing came from?

I'm not at all an e.e. cummings expert. I've read a few of his poems...not enough to make me seek him out. And after buying an edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass which includes the 1855 edition and the "Deathbed Edition", I feel "once bit and twice shy."

I may be a philistine, but I don't care to feel like one.

Oh! Man! The Cosmo-Libertarians

at Reason Magazine picked on the wrong dude when they pissed-off the gay, Anti-War [.com] activist and biographer of Murray Rothbard, Justin Raimondo!

Check this out:

Reason, of course, in it’s new incarnation as the official organ of the libertarian movement’s aging hipsters and would-be “cool kids,” vehemently opposes reaching out to middle and working class Americans: that is far too “square” for the black-leather-jacket-wearing Nick Gillespie, formerly associated with something called Suck magazine, and Matt Welch, who was an unknown quantity before getting the job at Reason. Right-wing populism? As far as the Suck-y crowd is concerned, one might as well tout the appeal of “right-wing botulism.” Libertarianism, as understood by the editors of Reason, is all about legalizing methamphetamine, having endless “hook-ups,” and giving mega-corporations tax breaks (so Reason can keep scarfing up those big corporate contributors). The decidedly “square” Dr. Paul—a ten-term Republican congressman from Texas, no less, and a pro-life country doctor of decidedly conservative social views—was and is anathema to Team Suck.

Now, if I were like the MSM and only cared about horse-races and cat-fights, I'd leave it at that, but let's hear a little further explanation:

What would the “Smearbund” do without David Duke? No smear campaign is complete without dragging him into it. No matter what the subject—the Iraq war, the Mearsheimer and Walt book, affirmative action—if you take the politically incorrect position, according to the neocons, then you’re marching shoulder-to shoulder with the former Klansman and professional nut-job.

And sure enough, the Kirchick piece takes the Paul newsletter to task for supposedly having “kind words” for Duke. Yet, if you go and read what the newsletter says about Duke, it is clear the author was merely saying Duke’s success is due to his opposition to affirmative action and the welfare state: indeed, Kirchick cites a passage (without citing it in full) in which Duke is taken to task for his lack of a “consistent package of freedom.” Yet the willfully ignorant Radley Balko, another Cato type, avers: “I simply can’t imagine seeing any piece of paper go out under my name that included sympathetic words for David Duke. That a newsletter with Paul’s name did just that demands an explanation from Paul.”

Well, my three paragraph rule just isn't going to work for me here, let's look at a couple more:

The explanation, which would be apparent if Balko had actually cited what is written, is that these weren’t sympathetic words for Duke, per se, or his political ambitions, but for the issues—legitimate issues—that he raised (and exploited) in his Louisiana campaign. After all, libertarians such as Paul reject affirmative action, racial set-asides, and all other forms of state-enforced special treatment for “minorities” precisely because they oppose racism, or any form of collectivism.

By the way, libertarians also oppose so-called civil rights legislation that outlaws discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability, because it violates the rights of property-owners. William F. Buckley Jr. famously derided libertarian (and “right-wing populist”) opposition to such legislation as valorizing Lester Maddox’s refusal to “serve a Negro a plate of pork chops.” Buckley’s quip surely underscored the venality and small-mindedness of Maddox and his ilk—and yet, lost in all this, is the reality of the libertarian position, which is that people have the right to be venal, small-minded, and, yes, viciously, stupidly, horribly wrong, provided they don’t initiate the use of force.

I want you to remember, this is written by a homosexual, who lives in the Bible Belt. Or, wait a minute... Am I assuming he lives in or near Auburn, Alabama because of his close ties with The Mises Institute? My intuition is telling me he actually live in San Francisco, where the discrimination against gays isn't quite as acute (nor chronic, for that matter) as Alabama.

Haha.

I'm gonna post this now. I'll get the links in later. I'm gonna just steal 'em directly from Raimondo, so if you don't see 'em yet, go to the original article. I recommend that you do so anyway. He has so much more to say. BTW, everything I know about blogging, I learned from him. Getting away from reading him has harmed me. Remember, I always balanced my reading of my hero E.G. Ross with Raimondo.

Those were the best of times.

In other, but related news, I need to put links that I got from LewRockwell.com here where I can get back to them: 1. Mr. Jefferson Comes Home, 2. McCain and the Militarist Mentality: His electoral comeback is an ill omen and 3. Locking a Nation Into Permanent Childhood

Root, hog, or die!

Well, since this guy (or these guys, and/or gal(s) or whatever), cover the meaning of the expression so well, I guess I don't have to.

It's a phrase that pops into my head once a decade or so. I don't remember it being actually used in conversation, accept when one of us kids asked Mom why they put rings in pigs noses. It's a saying with obvious meaning to hog farmers. It implies that times are tough now, I can't feed ya, you're on your own.

I guess I went ahead and explained it anyway.

The only thing left for me to point out is that "hog" is the subject of the two command-form verbs. In case that's not obvious. It's not a choice of three commands.

It's an expression with many applications in politics.

I think God's saying something to me

Ever since I did my little study of William Penn and the Quakers* the other day, I'm running across Quakers all over the place. Here's one, for instance, and he has links to a number of others.

I've had an interest in them since I read what Thomas Paine said about them in The Age of Reason.

Actually, I've liked the sound of them since I saw the ad for a TV movie about The Underground Railroad (I never did see the movie), back in the '70's, in which a character in a Quaker meeting said, "Quakers have never been backward about breakin' laws they know was wrong!" [Apparently they were Down-Mainers: read it with that accent. If they were supposed to be Pennsylvanians, the TV guys got that wrong.]

*Because their links appear to be kind of a mess (not that reading everything there wouldn't be good for you), here's their "brochure".

[Boy! I wouldn't want to see somebody take a red marker and put arrows connecting all the directly related points in this post. Call me Mr. Parenthetical Aside.]

Well, it won't be 0° -

neither air temp nor wind chill - in Arizona for the Superbowl. You had to remind yourself, while watching the Divisional Championship games, that the weather was bad, or you'd have wondered why the teams weren't playing very well.

The Packers are out, as the Minnesotans have been making a point of reminding me. [Is it time for me to renounce my Cheeseheadship, since I've been living mostly in Minnesota since I turned 18? ...No. I became a Packer fan between the Starr/Lombardi era and the Majkowski era, so I think I've earned my seat at that table. The fact that I can spell Majkowski without looking it up...well, that's the shibboleth.]

And I'm not done being a Packer fan. That was a great, great season! And I'm not ready yet for the Favre era to be over yet. This is a very young team, overall, and I want to see what they do next year.

As for this last game, without a doubt the Giants played better. The Packers needed a Desmond Howard to win that game. Driver stepped up to the plate, but in '97, they had two great receivers and Desmond Howard. If Green Bay doesn't have a street named after that guy, they need to get one.

Back to the weather, when the announcers said that the Giants have been practicing outdoors while the Packers were practicing indoors, that gave me a bad feeling. As it was, the difference was one interception. And it looked to me like both QBs were suffering from cold hands in OT. Favre took the greater risk, and paid the greater price.

Look, as well as things were clicking (comparatively) for the Giants' offense, it's a wonder the Pack held them to three field goal attempts, there in the fourth quarter. For those who don't know, only one of them succeeded - the longest one. Any one of them would have won it for the Giants, and the final one did. Score: 20-23 Giants.

Terribly disappointing to me, and, no doubt, my swiss brethren across the border...and it don't look to me like the NFC is going to take the Lombardi trophy this year...

Ah, I'm just going to take the elder Manning brother's advice and be bummed out.

I've been going down the old blog-roll

over the past few weeks, and fixing up the old, out of date links. I notice today that Ogre's is one of them. He's got some good stuff, check him out.

Ron Paul took second in Nevada. Rumor has it that the South Carolinians are voting today. I'll be interested to see how that comes out.

Some knucklehead commenter at that last link was telling people to vote for Hillary or Obama, since Ron Paul's not going to win. I'll probably just vote for the LP guy if the Repubs continue on their hyper-statist track. If we end up with one of those commies in the White House as a result, well, it'll just hasten the revolution.

Parting thought: there is no Department of Love. Not that I want to give them any ideas.

The Republican Candidates

I agree with Tom Sowell that there is no Democrat worth considering, but let me tell you what I think of those running for President on the Republican side.

Mike Huckabee: Sincere Evangelical Christian - social democrat. Not a combination I care for. I want Freedom of Choice in Religion, social relations and commerce.

Rudy Giuliani: Strong leader, saved New York City from going the way of Detroit - authoritarian. He's sure he knows what's best for you.

John McCain: A real hero, a real Christian - a real [chicken-in-every-pot] economic populist - Welfare/Warfare statist extraordinaire.

Ron Paul: near perfect Constitutionalist in his voting record - has taken some odd fliers in his career, and listened to some bad advice on how to advance his libertarian message. And he's raked in a hefty pile appealing to fringies.

Mitt Romney: Professional (and successful) business restructurer, sincere Mormon (not a bad thing at all, in my opinion) - statist. Too willing to leave Constitutional interpretation to the judges, and where he's willing to try to lead them isn't anywhere The Founder's wanted America to go.

Fred Thompson: the truest Reagan conservative in this campaign - I heard tonight that he was endorsing Bush's "stimulus package." That makes him an economic moron.

That ain't what Reagan did. Reagan didn't dodge the recession, he faced it like a man: he gave the whiners a steely glare and rode the Keynesian dragon of stagflation of the Nixon, Ford and Carter years into the ground.

The work of the Reagan Revolution wasn't done when his time was up. I wish I could say - because it would be so much more poetic - when the Constitution mustered him out, but the fact is that I don't think he could have handled another year of the presidency, let alone a full term.

I acknowledge my personal debt to Ronald Reagan, and the debt the world owes him -whether humanity acknowledges it or not - and I'd like to see this current crop of candidates aim for that level of leadership. Giuliani and Romney can lead, but they have no principles - or, rather, that have insufficient principles of the sort I want to follow. If McCain or Huckabee were placed at the head of my column, I think I'd head for the hills.

I like Thompson. I wish he'd lead.

Ron Paul... I think he's trying to decentralize leadership. And I absolutely agree with that.

You want leadership? Get your ass in gear!

ARI asked me to announce this

The Morality of Capitalism

Who: Dr. Eric Daniels, speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute and visiting scholar at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism

What: A talk making the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. A Q&A will follow.

Where: Kimmel Center, Room 914, New York University, 60 Washington Square South, NY, NY 10012
Maps and directions: http://www.nyu.edu/about/virtual.html

When: Wednesday, January 23, 2008, at 7 pm

Registration: Attendees must RSVP to nyu@objectivistclubs.org

Description: Despite the enormous success of American capitalism at producing material abundance and political freedom, critics continue their assault on the system, calling it immoral. In this lecture, Dr. Eric Daniels makes the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. He also examines the conventional defense of capitalism, which relies on the practical, economic argument, and illustrates why only a defense of pure laissez-faire capitalism can succeed.

Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a visiting scholar at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He taught for five years at Duke University, in the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, and at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate in American history. He has lectured internationally on the history of American ethics, American business and legal history, and the American Enlightenment. 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 media@aynrand.org

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Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

If you would like to know more about Dr. Daniels, he published two articles on Capitalism Magazine: Jamestown: Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal (a must-read for me), and The Real Threat to our Energy Supplies.

I should say, I read an article today by Bob Bidinotto, I find my head spinning on my decision to support Ron Paul. On the other hand, I still find the other candidates less palatable. If the choice is to vote for the lesser of the many evils, at this point I still see Ron Paul as the least evil.

I should also say, that Bidinotto is persona non grata with ARI, but I believe his opinion on this matter would be in line with theirs...were ARI to condescend to recognize Ron Paul at all.

I have an idea for a book.

I'm not going to give the whole thing away, but it ties together at least three things I've managed to sustain an interest in for at least a few years. The only hint I'll give you is that reading Sea Venture qualifies as doing background research. Or perhaps I should say that Sea Venture's a popular history that gets me in the mood to dig a little deeper into the area and era that will serve as the setting.

I've already discovered that my main character isn't even unlikely. I've never run across anyone with the guy's exact history, but similar people were there.

I have another reason for not telling you too much about it: as soon as I promise to do something, I lose all interest in doing it. Particularly if it means going out of my way at all. But that's why this idea might be one I can handle, it's built up out of things that I do/study/think about all the time.

I'll need help with the dialog, though. Nobody talks like me...when I do talk. I don't think I've met many people who talk less.

Three Men in the State of Nature

I'm reading Kieran Doherty's latest and, sadly, probably last, book, Sea Venture, he tells a tale of three men who, one way or another, were left on the uninhabited islands of Bermuda awaiting the arrival of other Englishmen. Their names were Christopher Carter, Edward Waters and Edward Chard. This is from Chapter 13, which is called "Our Hoped and Desired Ilands":

When they were not busy tending their crops, hunting hogs or birds, fishing in the shallows of the harbor, or keeping watch, they often went exploring, rowing a small boat...to nearby islands, where they walked the shore, looking for pearls or Spanish coins or other valuables that might have washed ashore from some stricken and long-lost vessel. On one such trip, as the three men wandered along the beach just above the high-water mark, they spied a man-sized grayish white chunk of material wedged in the rocks that fronted the beach. As soon as the three men--all mariners--spotted the mass, they immediately recognized it as ambergris, a naturally occurring substance that is created in the intestines of sperm whales and found floating on the sea or cast ashore on beaches. They would have known, too, that the roughly 180-pound chunk of ambergris, along with a few other smaller chunks, were worth a not-so-small fortune in England, where the substance was used in the manufacture of perfume.

While Chard would later claim he was the first to spot the ambergris, all three immediately laid claim to it and, no doubt, set to dancing and shouting gleefully on the beach, imagining themselves living the good life in London town or perhaps sailing the seas as the owners of their own ships. Of course, reality soon set in. They must have wondered how on earth could they possible [sic] get a chunk of ambergris--a chunk described in a letter as "a piece...as big as the body of giant [with] the head and arms...wanting"--off the Bermudas and to England, where they could sell it and pocket the proceeds. How could they keep it out of the hands of the adventurers of the Virginia Company who would, if they knew of its existence, claim it as their own?

The first thing the three men did was hide it, perhaps in one of the many caves that mark the Bermudas. Then they began to argue. Chard claimed the bulk of the ambergris belonged to him since he had discovered it. Waters and Carter, not surprisingly, disagreed. The Three argued, then fought, for the better part of two years. At one point, while fishing together in their little boat, they started bickering and the bickering escalated into open combat. They had at each other with fists and teeth and oars and anything else they could use as weapons. Snarling and bloody, they fell overboard, where they kept fighting until, exhausted, they dragged themselves ashore. Things were so bad that a dog that had remained on the island with the three sailors...waded into the middle of a particularly noisy fracas, biting Waters in a apparent attempt to make them stop. Eventually, Chard and Waters were prepared to fight to the death with swords or pistols rather than share the ambergris. Carter, though, was determined to avoid bloodshed and not happy at all at the thought of spending years--perhaps the rest of his life--along in the Bermudas with no company other than the dog. He hid the weapons so that an uneasy peace settled over the little camp on Smith's Island.

There's your sample of Doherty's lively writing style. Now we have to revert to my lesser skills.

Later, despairing the non-appearance any English ships, the men got together to build their own boat, in which to ride the Gulf Stream to Newfoundland, but the effort turned out to be unnecessary, as the Virginia Company finally got around to relieving them.

I think its a real life illustration of the development of morality under Natural Law, and why we really don't need to fear the messiness of life to the degree that we do. And it adds some credence to Crusoe Economics, though with no whitewashing of the dangers.

No anarchist doubts that the State of Nature has its dangers, they just doubt that The State is better. Actually, I doubt it. They flat out deny it.

Amen, Steyn!

You're a genius!

Oh, yeah: "change." Innovation drives change, the market drives change. Government "change" just drives things away: you could ask many of the New Hampshire primary voters formerly resident in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, between Iowa and New Hampshire, almost every presidential contender found himself lapsing into boilerplate assertions that he was the "candidate of change" – or even, as both McCain and Hillary put it, an "agent of change", which sounds far more exotic, as if they're James Bond and Pussy Galore covertly driving the Aston Martin across some international frontier, pressing the ejector button and dropping a ton of government regulation on some hapless foreigners.

But it's capitalism that's the real "agent of change." Politicians, on the whole, prefer stasis, at least on everything for which they already have responsibility. That's the lesson King Canute was trying to teach his courtiers when he took them down to the beach and let the tide roll in: Government has its limits. In most of the western world, the tide is rolling in on demographically and economically unsustainable entitlements, but that doesn't stop politicians getting out their beach chairs and promising to create even more. That's government "change."

I live-blogged the Packers' game

next door.

Congratulations Patriots, for tying the greatest single-season record of all time: 17-0.

All right, I'll try to cool it with the Ron Paul posts

but I've gotta tell ya, I really like the campaign's new blog.

I think we can trust Daniel McCarthy not to "do THAT again," though I strongly encourage you to head over there and keep them honest.

[Oops! I made a rather important typo last time around. I said "can't trust McCarthy." That's a big oops! 1/13/08]

BTW, McCarthy (and I) encourage(s) anyone who has problems with Paul's foreign policy ideas to check out the transcript of the Russert interview. I know for a fact that the transcriber had some problems, but you'll still come away with a better understanding of how Paul, as president, would try to run...I don't want to say "the country," let me just say "his administration."

Let me help him/her out:

All right...now I can't find where he said something [inaudible] about the Department of Education. The word was either "cut" or "eliminate." Or, possibly "abolish."

REP. PAUL: Yeah, no. The point is, Randolph Bourne says war is a helpless state. ...

Bourne's most famous work is War Is the Health of the State.

I think that paragraph deserves quoting in full:

REP. PAUL: Yeah, no. The point is, Randolph Bourne says war is a helpless state. I believe that statement. When you have war, whether it's a war against drugs, war against terrorism, war, war overseas, war--the mentality of the people change and they're more willing to sacrifice their liberties in order to be safe and secure. So, yes, right after 9/11 my reaction was, you know, it's going to be a lot tougher selling liberty. But I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm still in the business of selling liberty and the Constitution and there's still a lot of enthusiasm for it. So all the American people don't agree that we have to have the nanny state and have the government taking care of us. So I have been encouraged. I might have been too pessimistic immediately after 9/11 because, in a way, it has caused this reaction and this uprising in this country to say, "Enough is enough. We don't need more Patriot Acts, we don't need more surveillance of our people. We don't need national ID cards. We don't need the suspension of habeas corpus. What we need is more freedom." So in one way I was pessimistic, but in another way, now, I'm more encouraged with the reception I'm getting with this message.

I think you can fill in the rest of the blanks. The Randolph Bourne thing probably wasn't generally known, so that needed to be done. The issues raised in the quoted paragraph I want to be seriously debated. With Paul's position seriously considered.

And, I want to say this: I want Paul's hand on the Veto pen. If he gives us four years of Gridlock, I think that's just great. There'll be screaming and yelling and gnashing of teeth. There'll be overridden vetoes...probably by the score. But the Founders' vision for our Government was that Congress would control this country, and the President would obey their laws (and, I'm pretty sure President Paul would obey their Declarations as well, to the best of his ability).

And I'm not fond of pure democracy: I don't like 51% overruling the wishes of 49% - 60/40 comes considerably closer to my ideal.

Yeah, I'd like a Paul Presidency.

Oh, crap! I've gotta go and listen to that again...

Dr. Paul is going to be on CNN "5 p.m. ET"

I guess I've missed it already.

Here's the story.

Will we hear what he has to say?

Update: All right. I'm inspired. I believe.

Ron Paul needs to explain better

I'm afraid the Reason guys [Crap! They've got more than one important post or article on this: one, two, three, four. And that's not all, but the first one is the one I'm talking about.] are right about his response to the New Republic story.

It's terse.

I'm inclined to believe what he says, but I'm not the injured party. I'm afraid it looks like Paul isn't concerned about the injured parties. He needs to do a better job of explaining how the principles and policies he espouses preclude effective racism and homophobia. (Though, we don't pretend to be able to preclude the emotions. We would, however, allow racists and homophobes to find places where they wouldn't be bothered by people of the "wrong" color or sexual preference. What we don't--or wouldn't--allow is for the racists and homophobes to force anyone else into a ghetto.)

I trust Paul. His votes have matched his stated principles, and, for the most part, I agree with those principles. The couple that I don't are indeed matters of dispute among libertarians.

It's old news to me, btw. It's come up before during this campaign. I was a bit surprised to see it drop as quickly as it did. Apparently Paul's enemies either didn't really care at the time, or they had their flunkies stuff the info in their pockets for use later. Like during the New Hampshire Primary.

That shouldn't surprise me any - it's SOP for all political campaigns. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's just something I assume all campaigns do. And all campaigns should be prepared for.

Let's hear the great, inspiring speech, Ron.

Update: Virginia Postrel suggests that Lew Rockwell, president and founder of the Mises Institute, may have written these things. Murray Rothbard was around back then, was he okay with all this?

This is probably as much of an answer as you're going to get from Lew.

On the other hand, there was a lot of that kind of talk on the local talk-radio shows back then, too. I don't think Limbaugh did any of it--I was a passionate fan of his then--but there were plenty of others. In fact, let me admit it right now, libertarianism doesn't prevent anyone from hating anyone, it would just prevent them from harming anyone based on that hatred. I'm pretty sure Paul and Rockwell are all for the libertarian non-aggression principle: you may not initiate aggression against the person or property of another individual, nor may you delegate such aggression to any individual, group, organization or government.

They also fully support the First Amendment. All of it.

But those excerpts sure don't look like pure individualism to me--they look like that crudist form of collectivism: racism.

Update: Sheldon Richman weighs in. Thoughtfully, as usual.

I guess I'd take one of these,

if you wanted to give me one:

Bugatti Veyron

I should tell ya, I got that pic here where you can also find out what an awesome vehicle it is.

I shrunk the pic for my use here; his is bigger.

Holmgren's coming back to Green Bay!

Unfortunately, he's not coming back to coach my team. The Seahawks just whupped the Redskins to knock that politically incorrect team out of the playoffs.

So now we know who the Packers will be playing next week.

Hopefully playing against Holmgren won't rattle Favre. I've seen games where it looked like that was going on. Favre needs to just remember what Holmgren taught him.

And an observation I made last Sunday is, the Packers' offense has a lot more weapons than just Favre and Driver. They, for instance, seem to finally have an O-line that can give Favre time to figure out who the best receiver is.

Huckabee, schmuckabee!

The guy's a "pro-life" socialist. But, then, what do you expect from Iowegians.

I used the quotes for my non-American readers. I wouldn't have used them if half my regulars weren't from overseas.

I'm afraid that most Baptist ministers that I've listened to wouldn't have made good Legislators (note the capitalization). Social conservatism and fiscal "liberalism" don't mix well.

Remind me to write a whole post on that last sentence.

The title of a Sinclair Lewis book was flashing like a warning beacon in my mind all day, since I heard Huckabee'd won the Iowa Republican Caucuses.

The book? Hey! It's a free e-book on Gutenberg! It Can't Happen Here!

Should I tell you why ever I'd vote for this guy? Oh, all right: the irony of having a former Governor of Arkansas defeat the wife of his predecessor is just too... I'm sorry, the standard word to use in this context is "delicious." I rhetoricly painted myself into a corner there.

What really needs explaining is:

Why do things usually turn out all right (more or less), no matter what the effin' bleep-ups [who think they're runnin' the place] do?

That's the anomalous reading I keep getting from my gauges. Everybody's crying wolf all across the political spectrum all the time: Liberals, environmentalists, union leaders, conservatives, fundamentalists, libertarians and populists - name a group: they're crying wolf.

Lobbyists.

They're all howling louder than the damn wolves! We should hunt 'em all down and... Well, I've given up advocating violence. What I was going to say was, essentially, do to 'em what shepards used to do to the wolves.

This guy talks about some of what I'm saying.

What?! Where'd he go?

Ah, it was probably an email I deleted.

Or maybe this post was inspired by the first paragraph of this article, which then takes off in a completely different direction (and revives your worries after I've tried to salve them).