Richard Carrier's responses upon rereading the Bible as an adult

From his autobiographical essay, From Taoist to Infidel,

I could go on at length about the many horrible passages that praise the immoral, the cruel, as the height of righteous goodness. It does no good to try in desperation to make excuses for it. A good and wise man's message would not need excuses. It follows that the Bible was written neither by the wise nor the good. And the New Testament was only marginally better, though it too had its inexcusable features, from commands to hate (Luke 14:26) to arrogantly sexist teachings about women (1 Timothy 2:12), from Jesus saying he "came not to bring peace, but the sword," setting even families against each other (Matthew 10:34-36), to making blasphemy the worst possible crime, even worse than murder or child molesting (Matthew 12:31-32). It, too, supported slavery rather than condemning it (Luke 12:47, 1 Timothy 6:1-2). Worse, its entire message is not "be good and go to heaven," itself a naive and childish concern (the good are good because they care, not because they want a reward), but "believe or be damned" (Mark 16:16, Matthew 10:33), a fundamentally wicked doctrine. The good judge others by their character, not their beliefs, and punish deeds, not thoughts, and punish only to teach, not to torture. But none of this moral truth is in the Bible, and the New Testament had none of the humanistic wisdom of the Tao Te Ching which spoke to all ages, but instead drones on about subjection to kings and acceptance of slavery, while having no knowledge of the needs of a democratic society, of the benefits of science, or the proper uses of technology. It even promotes superstition instead of science, with all its talk about demonic possession and faith healing and speaking in tongues, and assertions that believers will be immune to poison (Mark 16:17-18). It is plagued with a general obscurity and ambiguity, and illogicality, which I had already noted as a child, and though I did understand more and saw it as less confused than I once had, the improvement was minimal and not encouraging. It still taught a morality that is unlivable, and above all contained not a hint of humor or a mature acceptance of sexuality or anything distinctly and naturally human at all.

Cool, the links transferred over.

Where've you been all my life?

I've never heard of Dave Hitt before.  I'm impressed.

r · b>c: Nature Says: Keep Your Family Close.

The Altruism Equation, by Lee Alan Dugatkin

r = genetic related-ness
b = benefit
c = cost

That's the rule William Hamilton figured out in 1964 to explain altruistic behavior.  It's been tested and upheld in many experiments and studies since.

Humans, of course, have Reason and can overcome genetic heritage, but I think we're generally foolish to try.  That is, we should not try to overcome our tendency to love our family (unless they prove themselves unlovable), nor should we expect altruistic acts of others outside of their families.

Quicky thoughts.  I can't imagine I'll stop thinking about this, so you can expect more on it when I have time.

One thought right now: families are natural - institutions aren't.  I see a use for this knowledge in the Homeschooling movement.

Note to self: check out Alan Watts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5M8743a1s

An Objectivist take on Dawkins

Richard Dawkins trapped in Ill-Information of Economic and Political Memes

The author needs to reread her writings before she posts them.  The thoughts are brilliant - the execution leaves something to be desired (though I've seen much worse).

In 2001, Richard Dawkins was invited to express his ideas for Foundation for the Future. In his speech, Dawkins acknowledged that one effective way to abort any global crisis and tragedy of commons is to respect property rights of individuals and individuals should not only get all benefits of their property, they should also be responsible for the costs and losses; he suggested that recognition of property right as a natural right can be said as one of the reason for success of human species. Obviously, he was supporting the libertarian idea of individual rights and free market⁴ . At that point, it seemed that Richard Dawkins has clearly overcome the economic meme of socialism and cultural meme of altruism as a supreme good. However, he was still confused with the illogical information he attained through irrational memes as in 2008, he suddenly changed his view and in the documentary, “The genius of Charles Darwin,” he mentioned that “paying taxes” is an example of human altruism and it is good⁵

It was pretty clear at that instance that Richard Dawkins not only failed to refine the illogical economic information he had attained through irrational memes, he also failed to refine the illogical and ill-philosophical information he attained through those irrational memes.

And

In his documentary, Nice Guys Finish First, Richard Dawkins successfully explained that co-operation offers better chance than selfishness with the help of the computer program ‘Tit for Tat’ whose basic four conditions were mentioned by Richard Dawkins as¹³

1)Unless provoked, the agent will always cooperate.
2)If provoked, the agent will retaliate.
3)The agent is quick to forgive.
4)The agent must have a good chance of competing against the opponent more than once.

A close analysis will establish that the program Tit for Tat exactly establishes the libertarian theory and principle of Non-Aggression Principle. Non-Aggression Principle¹⁴ is the base of Libertarianism which suggests that kindness, charity, co-operation, compassion, and forgiveness are essential characteristics of a libertarian. However, Non-aggression principle also asserts that if provoked or attacked, or aggressed, the individual will retaliate and may counter-attack. The idea of free market libertarianism is essentially based on the condition that unless provoked, a free market producer, supplier, consumer, will cooperate with each other and the whole society. This is the reason why Anarcho-capitalists suggest that there is no need of monopoly over initiation of force because initiation of force is strictly immoral and unacceptable.

Honesty.

It almost literally kills me when I feel the need to keep secrets.  Or find out that I have been feeling that need and acting on it.

On that, here's a quote from the great co-discoverer of Marginal Utility, William Stanley Jevons,

It would not be easy to say offhand whether every action which is not honest is dishonest, or whether there may not be actions of an intermediate character. The rule is that wherever the question is one of degree or quantity a medium is possible, and the subject belongs rather to the science of quantity than to simple logic; where the question is one of the presence or absence of a quality, there cannot be more than two alternatives…

That's from Elementary Lessons in Logic.  The best way to get it is google it.  The Mises Institute has it as a free PDF.  The quote is from page 24.

So here's where I'm at:

Brutal honesty requires me not to accept belief in things for which there is no, or insufficient, evidence.  So, I don't accept fallacious arguments for anything supernatural, nor have I ever seen non-fallacious arguments for them.  What I'd like to be the case has no bearing on what is real.

So they call me an atheist.

I don't respect claims to authority by those who haven't demonstrated their expertise, whether they be teachers, presidents, kings, UN Secretary Generals, any member of any hierarchy (bureaucrats, middle-managers, etc), police, soldiers, prophets, priests or parents.  Or siblings.

Respect at a job requires competence at that job.  Competence (or even brilliance or genius) at one job, does not imply competence at anything else.  Newbs who won't train must be fired.

Most of those jobs above are too broad in their attempted scope to allow for any training whatsoever.  The jobs for which training is actually possible are the ones that are actually useful and their current organization in hierarchies must be reorganized so as to remove control from power and glory grubbers who lie about the value of their contributions.

The basic principle of that reorganization is the Non-Aggression Principle.

So they call me and anarchist and anti-family.  I'll wear the first two labels, atheist and anarchist, with some degree of pride, though they're not perfectly accurate.  I don't like agnostic, because it gives the illusion of respect to theists.  Faith is not respectable whether it's in God, government, ghosts, ufos or Dialectical Materialism.

Gotta go.

Your child is not yours

He (or she) is a rental. 

Her permanent owner is her future self.

There will be stiff penalties to pay if you don't return your child to his future self in good order.

Actually, it's more like a stock holder. 

Remember the Parable of the Talents.

H/T Stefan Molyneux on the question of whether (note spelling - not weather) your children are your property.

Ides of March, People!

Have you stabbed your local dictator yet?  Time's a-wastin'!

(Seriously, though, don't stab anyone I wouldn't stab.  WWAtOWD?)

Update: Time is celebrating with me!

I have to apologize.

Stef just reminded me that a couple of my favorite authors are also self-published.  Stef himself and Larkin Rose both are but they write so well you couldn't tell that no huge organizations were backing them.

Sorry, I put a political post on the other blog.

In my defense, there is a work of art there.

I need a link to it, don't I?

Peter Gerlach

I'm going to be spending a lot of time on this guy's materials.  He's an Internal Family Systems therapist (with an Engineering and Business background before he decided to take therapy and then become a therapist).  He has about 170 videos on YouTube.

I've been looking at a lot of self-published works lately

And I've got to tell you: you're English sucks, you people!  Take a friggin' remedial class.  Or get someone who actually understands the language to do a serious rewrite.

I have defended the occasional ending of a sentence with a preposition, but please don't do it in every sentence!  Have you ever heard of "unnecessary use of the passive voice?"  It's effin' obnoxious!

And some of you need to get out a G*** D*** dictionary and look up the words you use.  Make sure it's a big one, with multiple definitions and examples of the proper usage of each.  You need to do it because you suck and I love you and want you to stop sucking.

Look.  For a reasable fee, I can fix your s*** - those of you who have a good story to tell.  All the stories I'm talking about were great stories, but I just hit the last frickin' straw with this junk here.

Could you possibly try to make it look like a professional was involved?

Alan Caruba

Link

Jews are closely identified with Hollywood, but some ugly things have been occurring there of late. There was the latest anti-Semitic outburst attributed to actor Mel Gibson whose previous 2005 arrest for DUI revealed a deeply felt hatred of Jews.

This was followed by a July 25 report on NewsBusters.org concerning an interview by director, Oliver Stone, with the London Sunday Times in which he railed against the “powerful lobby” of Jews in America. Stone’s upcoming Showtime documentary series, the “Secret History of America”, reportedly puts Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.”

How one concludes that either of these two monsters can be justified or excused of their crimes against humanity in any fashion defies the imagination and is deeply offensive. Stone, like so many Hollywood liberals is particularly fond of dictators of every description. Nothing good can come of his re-writing history to suggest that the mastermind of the Nazi Holocaust was simply a tool of German, British, and American “industrialists.”

Stone who has associated himself with Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s dictator, Hugo Chavez, has apparently never met a despot with whom he could not break bread.

I have an idea for a book.  This article looks promising for my research.  This point is off my topic, but interesting.

John Taylor Gatto

Link

"You aren’t compelled to loan your car to anyone who wants it, but you are compelled to surrender your school-age child to strangers who process children for a livelihood, even though one in every nine schoolchildren is terrified of physical harm happening to them in school, terrified with good cause; about thirty-three are murdered there every year. From 1992 through 1999, 262 children were murdered in school in the United States. Your great-great-grandmother didn’t have to surrender her children. What happened?"

Maybe that's too generic for you.  This section starts with this anecdote:

Our problem in understanding forced schooling stems from an inconvenient fact: that the wrong it does from a human perspective is right from a systems perspective. You can see this in the case of six-year-old Bianca, who came to my attention because an assistant principal screamed at her in front of an assembly, "BIANCA, YOU ANIMAL, SHUT UP!" Like the wail of a banshee, this sang the school doom of Bianca. Even though her body continued to shuffle around, the voodoo had poisoned her.

William Lloyd Garrison igniting the Abolitionist fire:

Were the American Colonization Society bending its energies directly to the immediate abolition of slavery ; seeking to enlighten and consolidate public opinion, on this momentous subject ; faithfully exposing the awful guilt of the owners of slaves ; manfully contending for the bestowal of equal rights upon our free colored population in this their native land ; assiduously endeavoring to uproot the prejudices of society ; and holding no fellowship with oppressors ; my opposition to it would cease. It might continue, without censure, to bestow its charities upon such as spontaneously desire to remove to Africa, whether animated by religious considerations, or the hope of bettering their temporal condition. But, alas ! its governing spirit and purpose are of an opposite character.

The popularity of the Society is not attributable to its merits, but exclusively to its congeniality with those unchristian prejudices which have so long been cherished against a sable complexion. It is agreeable to slaveholders, because it is striving to remove a class of persons who they fear may stir up their slaves to rebellion. All who avow undying hostility to the people of color are in favor of it ; all who shrink from acknowledging them as brethren and friends, or who make them a distinct and inferior caste, or who deny the possibility of elevating them in the scale of improvement here, most heartily embrace it.

The first several sentences sound like Stefan Molyneux talking about anyone who averts their eyes to breaches of the Non-Aggression Principle.

Here's another good point:

The argument, that the difference of complexion between our forefathers and the aborigines (which is not a distinctive feature between the settlers at Liberia and the natives) was the real cause of this deadly enmity, is more specious than solid. Conduct, not color, secures friendship or excites antipathy, as it happens to be just or unjust. The venerated William Penn and his pacific followers furnish a case in point.

17,200 Miles? That's cutting it pretty close.

http://www.space.com/19637-asteroid-s-alarmingly-close-flight-path-depicted-in-animation.html

Murder

You know, it's a funny thing...  I've never had a problem that could be solved by a government hit team.  Or any other hit team or even a DIY murder.

For about 45 years of my life I was happy to see the Troops go into action, but I never really understood how that could be the correct response to any given event.

Military action doesn't have a better success rate than any other government program.  It was the right answer to the Barbary Pirates, but...  Well, I can't think of another action that couldn't have been resolved better another way.

Christians are still, apparently, waiting for the Holy Spirit to hand out His Fruit.

Whoa!

Supertree Grove

Alan Gottlieb, Second Amendment Foundation

"These anti-gun politicians were not elected to positions of royalty," Gottlieb said. "They are citizens, with no more rights than any other citizen. They were elected to serve the public, not treat the public like serfs. If they want us to put our safety at risk, they should drop the pretense and give up their guns and guards before daring to suggest that anyone else do the same."

Don't go to war.

Article: Moral Injury:

...[N]ew ideas are vying for legitimacy, a whole new theory of war’s worst ravages. It’s called “moral injury,” and it comes from clinicians who spend their days speaking with soldiers who have been in battle. These veterans rarely mention fear. Instead they talk about loss or shame, guilt or regret. They had tried to be heroes, to protect the weak, save their buddies, take the hill. But then they mistakenly killed civilians, forced themselves to drive past wounded children, sometimes missed their moment of truth. Even after the Battle of Fallujah, in 2004, where William Nash served as a combat psychiatrist, fear wasn’t a factor. “Survivor’s guilt, moral injury, feeling betrayed by leaders,” says Nash, the lead author of the current Navy and Marine doctrine on stress control, “That’s what I saw every day.”

Here's a Wonder of the World

The new Genghis Khan Statue in Mongolia.  I don't know how I never heard of it.  It was completed in 2008.

Definitely on the list of things I want to see.  Put it on my bucket list (whoever's doing that for me).

No, I don't honor the murdering scumbag as such, and don't think anyone should obey a leader to the point of being a murderer for him - or a thief or a rapist, which his soldiers were all of - but...  It's a cool statue.

Mark Thornton on "Scandalous Regulators"

Scandalous Regulators

Regulation simply does not work. It is designed with hopes of success, but with no mechanism to achieve this success. We hope for efficiency, but what we get is bureaucracy. We hope for effectiveness, but what we get is rules and red tape that serves neither producer nor consumer. We hope for safety, but what we eventually get is chaos. Let us take a look at the prominent cases where regulation was supposedly lacking and examine the real cause of chaos.

The Bernie Madoff scandal involved Madoff’s tightly controlled firm taking client money and supposedly generating spectacular and consistent investment returns. However, Madoff was not really a great investor; he was running a Ponzi scheme where he used investors’ money to pay for redemptions by his clients. Most of the money apparently went into his own pockets.

First, how did he get away with this scheme for so long? It was not because he was unregulated. He was officially under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and probably other government regulatory agencies. Despite ever-increasing budgets and staff, and even warnings from outsiders, the SEC failed to act.

Second, how did he finally get caught? He was only caught after the stock market crashed and investors sought to redeem large amounts of their funds. He confessed to his sons that he was operating a Ponzi scheme and his sons turned him into authorities.[1]

I think those links will work.

I just finished Paul Johnson's Socrates

Full title: Socrates:A Man for Our Time. 

Great book.  Johnson is a conservative, but I don't think that afflicts his writing here much.  He accepts more of the standard understanding (conventional wisdom) of the early Christian era than I do, but I like summary at the end:

Happy among people, Socrates did not seek to turn them into pupils, let alone students.  He was not a teacher, a don, an academic.  There was nothing professorial about him.  He had no oeuvre.  As Cicero said, "He did not write so much as a single letter."  There was no body of Socratic doctrine.  He spurned a classroom.  The streets and marketplace of Athens were his habitat.  Unlike Plato and Aristotle, he founded no Academy or Lyceum.  The University, with its masters and students, its lectures and tutorials, its degrees and libraries and publishing houses, was nothing to do with him.  He was part of the life of the city--a thinking part, to be sure, a talking and debating part, but no more separated from its throbbing, bustling activity than the fishmonger or the money changer or the cobbler, its ranting politician, its indigent poet, or its wily lawyer.  He was at home in the city, a stranger on campus.  He knew that as soon as philosophy separated itself from the life of the people, it began to lose its vitality and was heading in the wrong direction.  An academic philosophy was not an activity to which he had anything of value to contribute or in which he wished to participate.  The notion of philosophy existing only in academic isolation from the rest of the world would have horrified him and probably would have produced ribald laughter, too.  "That," one can hear him saying, "is the death of any philosophy I can recognize."

I could quote some of the last paragraph of the book - it gets better - but I'll leave some pleasures for you to discover on your own.  Read it.  Paul Johnson's a great writer, it's not a long book and the story of the man who brought philosophy down from the stars, and how he did it, is too important to our future to let go.

Libertarian Redistribution?!

I need to come back to this article: http://c4ss.org/content/12961.  I like this bit:

Transactional redistribution is just a description of what happens in a genuinely freed market. Markets undermine privilege. Without the protection afforded by monopoly privileges (including patents and copyrights), subsidies, tariffs, restrictions on union organizing, protections for long-term ownership of uncultivated property, and so forth, members of the power elite, forced to participate along with everyone else in the process of voluntary cooperation that is the freed market, will tend to lose ill-gotten gains. They will retain wealth only if they actually serve the needs of other market participants. And they will be unable to use the legal system to protect their wealth from squatters (by enabling them to maintain uncultivated land indefinitely) or to limit vigorous bargaining by workers (both because workers will be freer to organize without statist restrictions and because the absence of such restrictions will give workers options other than paid employment that will improve their negotiating positions).

While unfettered competition obviously will not create mathematical equality, it will make it much harder for vast disparities of wealth to persist than at present. The state props up the power elite, using the threat of aggression to shift wealth to the politically favored. Removing the privileges of the power elite will lead, through the operation of the market, to the widespread dispersion of wealth members of the power elite are able to retain at present in virtue of the protection they receive from the political order.

The means of transactional redistribution is the market. The direct agents are ordinary market actors, while those responsible for the elimination of statist privileges that distort the market and prop up the wealth of the power elite are the indirect agents. The rationales for transactional redistribution include thevalue of freedom and the injustice of the privileges transactional redistribution corrects.

600# York Olympic Barbell set for $300 in Brooklyn Center, MN

I selling it.  If you live in the Northwest section of the Twin Cities area, I'll even deliver it.  Say, within 10 miles of Brooklyn Center.  Otherwise, you'll have to make the arrangements to get it.  I'm not going to pack it for shipping.

In fact, if you live in the area, I'd be willing to hire out myself and my pick-up to haul things, as long as they'll fit under my topper or on my trailer.  $50 for the first hour - $20 per half hour after that.  I'll adjust my prices later if that doesn't work out.  I should make a separate entry for that.

I also have a live trap for raccoons.  I've trapped and removed a couple from my place.

Four More Years of the Same Old S***

F*^&in' great.

Of course, I could have said the same thing if Romney had been elected.  At least we've got the "cool black guy" rather than the white-bread Ken Doll - who claims to be all about free trade - in while the economy goes down the s*&%$$# and the Military Industrial Complex marches on.

Ha! Cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sharona

RIP Russell Means

We've lost another hero. 

At least I got to meet and speak with Mr. Means at the LPMN Convention in 2000.  I think I bought his book, Where White Men Fear to Tread, directly from him, but I may have got it at Barnes and Noble after meeting him.

A quote from page 486:

 We believe that the U.S. Constitution can and should evolve to keep pace with the times, but what it says at any given time is inviolate.  We believe in self-defense, but we're the most peace-loving people in America.  Our country doesn't need an enormous, costly military establishment, because most of our "foes" would be friends if we stopped treating them like enemies.  The National Guard should return to its original mission-militias assembled in time of need to protect states against incursions by the federal government.  If we honored the Second Amendment, which guarantees us the right to bear arms, we the citizens would be better armed than our government.  It could never force us to do anything.

"Judge not..." is true in another way.

This thought rousted me out of bed.

Ayn Rand pointed out that a corollary of Jesus' saying, "Judge not that ye be not judged," is "Judge and prepare to be judged."  I think of this often and it occurred to me tonight that it's true psychologically as well.  Your criticism of others reveals your own weaknesses to the psychologically astute.

I offer this infinitely copiable arrow to the intellectual quivers of the masses in this election season.  It behooves us all to become psychologically astute - it's our best defense against manipulators...as well as it defends us from falling into the trap of being manipulators (which burns up our stock of good will, if you need to have the selfish, utilitarian argument spelled out).

MTCM 2012

Well, I finished the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon today. No PR, and no real idea why not: http://www.mtecresults.com/runner/show?rid=4882&race=1146.   I was completely wasted at the end - I almost passed out - so I couldn't have done any better.  Maybe it was the layers.

I wasted some time in a port-a-potty once.  Just in case that discomfort was something serious.  Stopping out of the wind did kind of even out my hot and cold spots, so it wasn't all bad.  That stop does account for the 14+/mile  section, though.

2:12:29 for the half isn't bad.  I'll have to run a half to see how that would go when it's my goal.

I was reminded, today, why I don't wear boxer briefs for running. It was cold out - 29 degrees (F) at the start - so I thought, "Oh, these will be warm." They work like mechanical tweezers. 

That is, however, my worst discomfort.  I've got "water" on both knees, but not a major case.  The duct tape and Body Glide worked like champs.

Excellent article by Arnold Kling

In Libertarians and Group Norms,  Kling pulls out many of the biggest guns of libertarianism  to debate what we should do with/about our inherited social tendencies and institutions.  Adam Smith and F.A. Hayek take the side of dealing gently with them, while J.S. Mill and Ayn Rand argue for overthrowing them if they interfere with personal freedom.

Gaol Time

I just want to know why somebody thought this was a natural way to spell 'jail.'  It completely flies in the face of all the spelling rules.

It's an outrage.

More Spencer

See the link in previous post. This is from p. 53 (Sorry, I've been reading other things for a bit):

...[T]he objection which I have to the current utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of morality–does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of moral science.

Doubtless if utilitarians are asked whether it can be by mere chance that this kind of action works evil and that works good, they will answer no; they will admit that such sequences are parts of a necessary order among phenomena. But though this truth is beyond question; and though if there are causal relations between acts and their results, rules of conduct can become scientific only when they are deduced from these causal relations; there continues to be entire satisfaction with that form of utilitarianism in which these causal relations are practically ignored. It is supposed that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results; and that there is no possibility of knowing by deduction from fundamental principles, what conduct must be detrimental and what conduct must be beneficial.

Spencer says that morality can be a science if acts and their consequences are studied with regard to their benefit or harm - short-term, long-term, short-range and long-range.  People are studying these things, even now, but they do so haphazardly in narrow fields (e.g. all of the social sciences, business management, finance, environmental sciences), never bringing their findings together in any systematic way.  Particularly with regard to promulgating their findings to the masses.

From Herbert Spencer's Ethics

Similarly of the education given to them, or provided for them. Goodness or badness is affirmed of it (often with little consistency however) according as its methods are so adapted to physical and psychical requirements, as to further the children’s lives for the time being, while preparing them for carrying on complete and prolonged adult life.

These ethical judgments we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong, and often overridden, do need moral enforcement. Hence results a contrast. On turning to that second class of adjustments of acts to ends which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or inefficient. The expressions good nursing and bad nursing, whether they refer to the supply of food, the quality and amount of clothing, or the due ministration to infantine wants from hour to hour, tacitly recognize as special ends which ought to be fulfilled, the furthering of the vital functions, with a view to the general end of continued life and growth. A mother is called good who, ministering to all the physical needs of her children, also adjusts her behavior in ways conducive to their mental health; and a bad father is one who either does not provide the necessaries of life for his family or otherwise acts in a manner injurious to their bodies or minds.

Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics (1887), Vol. I, p. 33.

The Heights Theater

In Columbia Heights, MN.

This here is how you treat an old theater.

An idea does not become an action unless the individual actor believes that the idea is worth acting on.

That's a sentence from this article.  Here's the end of that paragraph:

To subjugate another human being, or to condone or allow the subjugation of one by another, one must first have the idea of subjugation and must believe that acting on it is preferable to ignoring or condemning it. Scarcity and natural death need no such human consent. The old saying about death and taxes turns out to be only half true.

Here's another good quote:

The Chinese army fired on their fellow citizens in Tiananmen Square. This massacre was not caused by political leaders and generals saying, “Shoot”; but by men in the Chinese army deciding to shoot. It was not caused ultimately by bad leadership, but by a belief in the necessity of obeying orders. There will always be people with a will to power; a desire to control. Only when the rest don’t believe that power to be necessary and therefore do not obey does freedom reign.

If Unilateral Disarmament is good for me

then it's good for government.

Oops!  They're coming for me.

Two good books to read in juxtaposition

H.G. Well's A Short History of the World.  A book to which I have misattributed the quote, "Grown men do not need leaders."  I'm pretty sure he's the one who said that, but it wasn't in that book.  Maybe it was the Outline of History.

The other book is The Wizards of Ozymandias, by Butler Shaffer.

And Mayam Bialik is better

than 99.999% of the rest of us. 

Admit it. 

She and her husband are doing it right; the rest of us did it wrong.  Follow her example.

Link.

Parents need to read this

Ask Dr. Sears.  Here's the blurb on the Discipline and Behavior page.

Discipline is more about building the right relationship with your child than using the right techniques. You want to put into place a guidance system that keeps the child in check at age four and keeps his behavior on track at age forty, and you want this system to be integrated into the child's whole personality, a part of him or her.

Here you can find what he thinks of spanking.  There are two other articles in that section that I think are pretty good, too.

George H. Smith on "Social Darwinism"

 Summarizing the thought of Spencer and Sumner:

In a free society people are able to pursue their own interests as they see fit, provided they respect the equal rights of others. As cooperation in a regime of contract replaces exploitation in a regime of status, the fittest prosper not by coercing others but by assisting them through voluntary exchanges. (Adam Smith had previously dubbed this process the “invisible hand.”) Here as elsewhere survival of the fittest is an iron law of social existence, but this standard of fitness is far removed from that invoked by the specter of social Darwinism. Voluntary cooperation, not coercive exploitation, is the standard of fitness in a free society.

Spencer and Sumner emphasized that market competition differs dramatically from biological competition. Market competition, unlike biological competition, produces immense wealth, thereby making it possible for many people to survive and prosper who otherwise could not. Moreover, the sophisticated division of labor that develops in a market economy generates specialization, and this specialization generates social interdependence — a condition in which every person must rely on the cooperation and assistance of others for necessary goods and services. The solitary individual cannot produce everything he needs or wants in a market economy, so he must persuade many others to assist him. This condition of survival cultivates the character traits (or virtues) necessary for peaceful interaction – those civilizingmores, as Sumner called them, that make social interaction not only productive and mutually beneficial but pleasant as well.

Smith doesn't defend Darwin against the charge of promoting bloody conflict between the classes (we know who really does that - typical case of psychological projection).  This guy does, at the same time showing how idiotic it is to call someone a "social Darwinist" in the sense its coiner intended.

Word of the Day: Casuistry

I was having a bi*** of a time trying to remember this word.  The desire to have it at hand has been recurring at least once a week for many months.  Google has been no help until today when I finally found it via Thesaurus.com.

They define it as "overgeneral reasoning," by the way.  I swear I looked for it there before under every synonym on that list.  Today I found it under 'equivocation'.  I probably looked for it under 'equivocate'; there may not be a verb form.  I know I looked for it under 'sophistry' and 'sophism'.

I don't like what The Free Dictionary and Thesaurus.com have become.

Russ Roberts

One of the points I make in The Invisible Heart is that those of us who want smaller government because we think it will make the world a better place are the allies, whether we like it or not, of purely selfish people who want smaller government in order to avoid taxes and who have no intention of giving to charity. That should give us pause. At the same time, those who care so much about others that they would run their lives for them are allied with those who would run the lives of others because of less attractive motives–for power and profit.


Link

St. Urho's Day isn't quite over yet!

Watch Jade Warrior to celebrate. It'll tell you everything you need to know about St. Urho.

[My wife's Grandfather would have said, in response to my foolishness, "Just watch the movie! Never mind the St. Urho!" That's good advice.]

Ides of March, People!

Got your daggers sharpened?

Bill Buckley never read this:

Liberty is not, as the German precursors of Nazism asserted, a negative ideal. Whether a concept is presented in an affirmative or in a negative form is merely a question of idiom. Freedom from want is tantamount to the expression striving after a state of affairs under which people are better supplied with necessities. Freedom of speech is tantamount to a state of affairs under which everybody can say what he wants to say.

At the bottom of all totalitarian doctrines lies the belief that the rulers are wiser and loftier than their subjects and that they therefore know better what benefits those ruled than they themselves. Werner Sombart, for many years a fanatical champion of Marxism and later a no less fanatical advocate of Nazism, was bold enough to assert frankly that the Führer gets his orders from God, the supreme Führer of the universe, and that Führertum is a permanent revelation.1 Whoever admits this, must, of course, stop questioning the expediency of government omnipotence.

Those disagreeing with this theocratical justification of dictatorship claim for themselves the right to discuss freely the problems involved. They do not write state with a capital S. They do not shrink from analyzing the metaphysical notions of Hegelianism and Marxism. They reduce all this high-sounding oratory to the simple question: are the means suggested suitable to attain the ends sought? In answering this question, they hope to render a service to the great majority of their fellow men.

--Ludwig von Mises, preface to Omnipotent Government, 1944

Actually, that's not the part that made me think of Bill Buckley (see the last third of this article). This is:

The distinctive mark of Nazism is not socialism or totalitarianism or nationalism. In all nations today the “progressives” are eager
to substitute socialism for capitalism. While fighting the German
aggressors Great Britain and the United States are, step by step,
adopting the German paern of socialism. Public opinion in both
countries is fully convinced that government all-round control of
business is inevitable in time of war, and many eminent politicians
and millions of voters are firmly resolved to keep socialism aer the
war as a permanent new social order. Neither are dictatorship and
violent oppression of dissenters peculiar features of Nazism. ey
are the Soviet mode of government, and as such advocated all over
the world by the numerous friends of present-day Russia. Nationalism—
an outcome of government interference with business, as will
be shown in this book—determines in our age the foreign policy of
every nation. What characterizes the Nazis as such is their special
kind of nationalism, the striving for Lebensraum.

Another quote from Brother Neil

L. Neil Smith, that is (I've linked the online beta version - this is from the Kindle version):

Anyone-including those who may fraudulently call themselves libertarians-who is aware of the Zero Aggression Principle and refuses to live by it, or promise to, is giving himself away. He is the badguy (sic, though I don't disagree with his usage), at least potentially, reserving to himself a right that he mistakenly believes he has, to beat you up or even kill you, should he deem it necessary or simply convenient sometime in the future. What he's saying is that he cannot be trusted, not as a friend, not as a neighbor, not as a colleague, not as a comrade.

...Unlike other ethical systems...the Zero Aggression Principle does not require us to turn the other cheek pacifically. Once an aggressor has revealed himself-by the initiation of force-he has crossed a morally qualitative boundary.

There can be no argument here about the specious, if ancient, doctrine of "degrees of force." You can be killed or maimed for life just as easily with a fist or a screwdriver as with a knife or a gun. The question isn't how much or what kind of force did your assailant initiate, but simply did your assailant initiate force. If the answer is yes, the degree of force you employ to stop him is up to your discretion.

An Independent, you say...

Let me count myself into his brand of independence. There've been but few more eloquent defenses of libertarians than this: What Type of Housepet Are You?

By the way, with regard to the cartoon that inspired the article, righties could say that they Left feels the same way about their corporate masters. The author's critique remains as incisive either way.

What my peers have been up to

Peers agewise, anyway:

Whitney Houston and Kathy Ireland.

Accept Good People; Reject Bad People

and be careful about using shibboleths to make your distinctions. We're all ajumble with good and bad ideas.

"Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito"

If you know what I mean.

Fun stuff from the Mises Institute FAQ:

Are you conservative, libertarian, anarchist, socialist, or what?

We are Misesians! The media will typically describe all non-socialists as conservatives, so we are usually lumped in among them, though the actual orientation of the Institute is libertarian. This designation can encompass a wide range of thought from Jeffersonian classical liberalism to the modern anarcho-capitalism of Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), Mises's American student and the founding vice president of the Mises Institute. (Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is the founding president.) Nor do we insist on the term libertarian, because it can often create more confusions than it clarifies. The core conviction is what matters: peaceful exchange makes everyone better off; private property is the first principle of liberty; intervention destroys wealth; society and economy need no central management to achieve orderliness. Given these views, it would make sense that some of our biggest critics, apart from the predictable ones on the left, are often from varieties of right-wing thought (protectionist, imperialist, Luddite, moralist, etc.) that have their own agenda for what they want the state to do. Though the editorial policy of the Institute is rooted in strict attachment to principle, there is a great deal of diversity among our 200+ adjunct scholars. This diversity is on display at such venues as our Austrian Scholars Conference. It is also correct to distinguish between Austrian economics as a value-free science and libertarian political economy, which is rooted in many different philosophical points of view. [ back to faq]

Are you associated with the Libertarian Party?

No, though we have nothing but good wishes for any voluntary association serving the cause of liberty. Murray N. Rothbard was involved with the Libertarian Party at one point, in the hopes that it would be a useful educational venture, though he was against its founding in 1972. The Mises Institute is satisfied to pursue its educational mission outside political machinery of any sort. [ back to faq]

Is the Mises Institute up to no good?

We've been accused of being (short list) the Queen's agent in the conspiracy to legalize dope, and/or a mouthpiece for the Money Power behind world finance capitalism that exploits the world's poor, and/or a shill for monopolistic big businesses such as Microsoft, and/or an apologist for and lover of the Confederate States of America and thereby slavery, and/or a front for the remnant of Jewish intellectual and financial interests driven out of Austria between the wars, a partner of the Vatican in its plan for a new inquisition, and/or in the pay of the fast-food industry to cover its ongoing animal massacre, and/or a sleek front for a hoary agenda of free love, prostitution, baby selling, and pornography. The kernel of truth in each is that Misesians generally favor drug legalization, capitalism, free trade, the right of secession as part of the freedom of association, property rights, religious freedom, and oppose antitrust regulation and prohibitionism of all sorts. And, yes, Mises and Rothbard were Jewish by heritage. The accusations stem from a failure to understand that the cause of liberalism is not about special interests but about the general interest. Yes, in our day of hyper politicization when everyone seems to be in the service of something or someone, just as in Mises's time, this is very difficult for people to believe. It is nonetheless true.

Listening to political talk on the radio today

I had a thought: if everybody listened to the anarcho-capitalist message, nobody would volunteer to die for powermongers' BS arguments.

That pretty much is the message: don't cooperate in your own (or anyone else's) murder.

WOD Time: Shibboleth.

I've talked about it before, actually. I'll track that down later.

Here's a definition of shibboleth. I have to say that I don't like definitions 2 and 3; they seem more like ignorant misuses than I care to see. Notice that the examples are all of those 2. There must be better words for what they're trying to say.

Amusingly, I'm using the word in a fashion similar to the Gileadites. (Well...no actual bloodshed... Yet.) For more on that, check this article.

I seem to be fascinated by [or hung-up on] this story and this word. I guess I can see how shibboleths can be useful, when used with care... but they, 'like fire, are dangerous servants and fearful masters.'

I gotta go back here (when it's not bedtime)

The Friendly Polymath.

All Hail the Invisible Hand!

The Great Metaphor for the collective actions of humanity in the absence of aggression.

That's the though I had when I read this passage of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell (p. 241, hardcover):

In mythology, whenever the Unmoved Mover, the Mighty Living One, holds the center of attention, there is a miraculous spontaneity about the shaping of the universe. The elements condense and move into play of their own accord, or at the Creator's slightest word: the portions of the self-shattering cosmic egg go to their stations without aid.

I like my words better, this is quite a ways into the book - the preceding 240 pages make sense of the weird sounding stuff. The rest of the paragraph is certainly true of people's understandings of each other's thoughts and actions throughout history, but I'm completely down with these first couple sentences.

...And, since I started this during family time, naturally I can't finish it. It's time to attend to the needs of my loved ones.

Hey! Solstice! 11:30 PM tonight (CST)

Very nice article here.

Are your robes clean?

I said this on FaceBook

Libertarianism is the philosophy that all bullying is wrong. A thought I had while listening to Porc Therapy.

It works better on Facebook. I wanted the link in there, though.

A wonderful tribute to Lysander Spooner

It's called "A Toast to Lysander Spooner". There's other good stuff on that page that explain 'our' perspective as well.

Well, crud. I tried to post the audio directly, but it doesn't seem to work.

Havel outlives Kim

in years anyway. Havel beat him in value produced for humanity as well.

I was thinking about why they ousted Havel. I think I'll have something to say, later.

Lynx schminx.

The trouble with

football analogies is that there's no clock in this game. And no boundaries to the field - the stands, the locker room, the parking lot and the road from your house to the field are all in bounds.

But it would certainly be unwise to completely ignore your point, Mr. Callahan - you've earned your bona fides [link to a pdf of his book there]. The theory has to explain the anomalies.

Hey! It's Bill of Rights Day!

Highest Law of the Land, ya'll!

[No, not rap. Actually the radio's playing the sappiest collection of holiday songs (not Christmas Carols) you ever heard. Probably why my inner Gangsta Rappa has taken over my keyboard.]

Everybody should be thinking about this

Standing Up for Children

A Philosophy everyone should know: True Epicureanism

Diogenes of Aonoanda (say that five times fast):

Having already reached the sunset of my life (being almost on the verge of departure from the world on account of old age), I wanted, before being overtaken by death, to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure and so to help now those who are well-constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number you choose, sir, provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I should address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But, as I have said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing (for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep) moreover, it is right to help also generations to come (for they too belong to us, though they are still unborn) and, besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here. Now, since the remedies of the inscription reach a larger number of people, I wished to use this stoa to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation. These medicines we have put fully to the test; for we have dispelled the fears that grip us without justification, and, as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute.

A stoa is a grand porch. I don't think this one produced any Stoics.

I got a couple issues with this guy

This guy.

Though I agree with the core of his argument that the compromise between the right and left ain't gonna get you anything you want and(/or) that half the centrists just aren't paying attention and shouldn't even vote. He didn't say that, I did.

Do.

The anti-partisan story is a seductive myth, and a dangerous one. Those who represent themselves as standing in the center have their own partialities. Many people who call themselves nonpartisan or independent actually lean left or right but for one reason or another resist coming out of the closet as Democrats or Republicans. Some people who tell pollsters that they’re independents don’t follow politics closely or care about it enough to risk taking sides. They’re hardly model citizens.

Besides this muddled middle, there are centrists by conviction, who can be just as ideological as people to their right and left. Moderation has its zealots, so convinced of their righteousness that they ignore the probable consequences of their actions. And these days, some fanatics of moderation seem to be afflicted by a strange combination of blindness and amnesia that has made them likely to do harm even to the values they profess.
...
The fanatics of the center wave away ... concerns. They believe so deeply in the spirit of compromise that their commitment to it is uncompromising. Every time Republicans move to the right, Democrats are supposed to be willing to find common ground by moving further to the right, too. Civic virtue positively requires it.

I appreciate him making that point.

What I disagree with is Starr's assumption that a few more government programs will solve all our problems. As long as they're lefty programs, not righty ones.

The trouble with left, right and center is that they all accept the legitimacy of cops sticking guns in people's faces to make them obey, whether they agree or not. The extremists on either end are more aware that that's what they're doing when they vote for a welfare or warfare program - it's just that they've got to get those dumb-ass/evil bastards on the other side to pony-up for what's right!

The centrists don't see that. Their way grows all ways.

A whole bunch of stuff has gotten in the way of me posting

(if that's proper English). The kids are getting bigger and taking longer turns on the computer is probably the biggest thing. So I get on at 10:00 after dealing with more mundane matters for several hours (or watching TV or reading a book), and by the time I've worked up an opinion on something I'm too tired to think of anything worth saying.

I bought all the Heroes DVDs and watched three seasons' worth. I stopped because I'm ahead of the rest of the family.

Read a bunch of Jung. My dreams are running scared. Working on Joseph Campbell, and I felt the need to take a detour into Elaine Pagels. I'm also enjoying a book about Pythagoras.

I see all of the latter as follow-ups to Jung. Jung doesn't say everything that's important in psychology (nor do I feel that he was always right), but I'm definitely finding him worthy of my time.

This is what the Knife River looks like

in my memory. I thought I was looking downstream, but what did I know? I wasn't even three. That would have been the Winter of '65. We lived right near the mouth of the river in a small cabin. There was a rotting rope bridge across the river. Unbelievably (perhaps), I crossed that thing once. My tiny feet were enough to break some of the boards. I tried several times. Once, I walked out on the ice and fell in. Mom had to come get me.

This'll have you jumpin' around the room!

Gracefully, or (as in my case) otherwise.


These guys love what they're doing.

Rothbard

From Syndical Syndrome in Mises Daily: Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Of the three major proposals for running an advanced industrial society — socialism, syndicalism, and free-market capitalism — syndicalism is the most blatantly unworkable and most rapidly disastrous. For in such a society, there must be some rational mechanism for allocating resources efficiently, for seeing to it that the proper amounts of labor, land, and capital equipment are employed in those areas and in those ways most efficient for satisfying the wants and desires of the mass of consumers. Free-market capitalism not only provides the most smoothly efficient way; it is also the only method that relies solely on voluntary inducements.

Thus, suppose that a great number of new workers are needed in a new and expanding industry, say, plastics or electronics. How are these workers to be supplied? The market way is to offer new jobs at higher wages in these new areas and fields, while firing people or cutting wages in those industries that are in decline (say the horse-and-buggy industry). The pure socialist way is to direct the labor out of one industry and into another purely by coercive violence — i.e., by forced labor direction. The socialist method is both despotic and highly inefficient, and so even the socialist countries have been turning more and more to free-market methods in the allocation of labor. But at least socialism is an attempt at a rational allocation of labor in a modern, industrial society.

Syndicalism, on the other hand — i.e., full worker "ownership" of "their" industries — does not even attempt to achieve a rational allocation of resources. Both the free method of market allocation and the coercive method of central dictation are eliminated. And what is to take their place? In effect, nothing but chaos. Instead of a coordinating mechanism there is now only the chaotic will of groups of brawling monopoloid syndics, each demanding parity and control regardless of economic law.

I like this line, too, "...a libertarian society does not mean the total absence of coercion but only the absence of coercion against noncriminals."

Criminals, of course, defined as 'those who initiate force or fraud against others.'

Edit: Dr. Rothbard quotes from The Anarchists later in the piece. It promises to be a good read.

I'm sorry I dumped Jacob Hornberger and the FFF

about 8 minutes after I started this blog. I wasn't ready to accept their anti-war, pro-immigrant positions - at least, not to the extremes they take them. I repent of my pusillanimity.

Here's some Hornberger:

Additional message to statists: Even if you succeeded in building a solid wall along the Southern border — one that was better fortified than the Berlin Wall ever was — and even if it was manned by East German (legal) immigrant sharpshooters — and even if the entire border was monitored by tens of thousands of CIA assassination drones — even if millions of military boots were lined up side-by-side along the border — even if not one single illegal immigrant was able to enter the United States — your economic problems would still not go away.

That’s because, again, illegal immigrants are not the cause of America’s economic problems. They’re just your convenient scapegoat. The cause of America’s economic woes is the welfarism, militarism, imperialism, socialism, and interventionism that have pervaded our land for decades. Attacking illegal immigrants is not going to prevent the chickens from coming home to roost after decades of statism.

In fact, illegal immigrants actually provide a guide to Americans as to how to extricate our nation from its statist morass. Illegal immigrants are among the hardest-working people you’d ever find in life. They have a tremendous work ethic. That’s why Mitt Romney’s lawn service — and countless other American employers — love to hire illegal immigrants — because they work hard.

Have you ever noticed that in the midst of high unemployment, illegal immigrants find their way into the United States and find jobs that don’t exist?

Yes, I’ve heard the old canard: “Oh, Jacob, they’re just coming here to get on welfare, and welfare should be limited to Americans.” That’s just projection. It is American statists who love welfare. Both conservatives and liberals embrace the welfare state, adore it, and are firmly committed to saving and reforming it. It’s only libertarians who wish to dismantle it.

Ya know? I may have to set aside some time Sunday

to watch the Packers. I caught 10 minutes of the game two weeks ago (when I got home from the marathon), but otherwise I haven't been thinking about football.

Now that it actually feels and looks like Fall outside - not to mention the fact that they've got a 5-0 record and the best quarterback I've had the pleasure of watching in my life (sorry Brett) - I'm starting to feel like it's time for football.

Cato lives!

As Obama Goes Abroad Searching for Monsters to Destroy, Ron Paul Rightly Rejects Assassinating Americans

“I don’t think that’s a good way to deal with our problems,” Paul said in New Hampshire. “Al-Awlaki was born here; he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. Nobody knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually—that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys—I think it’s sad."

It was a lovely day for a race

My results are here. And in case you don't feel like clicking over there, here:

My feet were killing me after the race, but they're fine now. Now I just have tire legs - nothing unusual.

Analysing the splits, I see that I was speeding up through the Half, then I slowed down quite a bit. The second half took me 2:43:14. The splits are goofy after that, though the last 10K (20M to the end) can be compared to the first - 1:19:29 vs 59:11.

I ran a few more numbers, but I know when I hit the wall. It was about Mile 16. For almost an hour after that I just couldn't must any gumption. After Mile 24 I just decided I was going to keep moving at a pace that could be called a run until I finished.

Doug Casey attacks a common fallacy

The Gold Report, Sept. 27:

TGR: If panic erupts on the U.S. dollar, would products manufactured in the U.S. become super-cheap or super-expensive?

DC: They would become super-cheap. Everybody says that devaluing the dollar will stimulate U.S. industry because the products will become cheaper and foreigners will buy them. This is a huge canard everybody repeats and nobody thinks about. Yes, it is true for a while, but if devaluation were the key to prosperity, Zimbabwe should be the most prosperous country in the world as it has already collapsed its currency.

A strong currency is essential for a strong economy. Sure, a strong currency can hurt exporters for a while. But, a strong currency encourages manufacturers to invest in technology, and become more efficient. It rewards savings and results in the growth of capital that's critical for prosperity. A strong currency allows businessmen to buy foreign companies and technologies at bargain prices. It results in a high standard of living for the country, and yields social stability as a bonus. The idea that decreasing the value of currency to stimulate exports is a short-lived, stupid and counterproductive solution to the problem. People seem to forget that while the German currency was rising about sixfold from its level of 1971, and the Japanese yen about fourfold, those countries became the world's greatest export economies. It didn't happen despite a strong currency, but in large measure because of it.

I wonder if anyone's done a study like Friedman's and Schwartz' A Monetary History of the United States for Germany and Japan. I know about the hyperinflation and that Hitler ended it and I was watching Germany pretty closely from the mid-'70s on.

Constitution Day was last Saturday.

I wasn't feeling much like celebrating. I was kinda feeling like H.L. Mencken must have been feeling when he wrote this.

Cantillon's Essay

A new translation, by the Mises Institute. You might enjoy seeing page one:

I took a screenshot of the pdf. It looks like I chopped off the bottom, but that's all the info on the page, except for the page number.

Ooh, I like this guy! Dr. Ross Greene

I'll just print his front page blurb:

Be a part of the solution.
Lives in the Balance is the non-profit organization founded by child psychologist Dr. Ross Greene, author of The Explosive Child and Lost at School, and originator of the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach. This website contains a ton of information – streaming video, an extensive Listening Library, and a boatload of additional resources -- to help you learn about and implement the research-based CPS model and provide you with the support you need. Just CLICK HERE to get started.

And if you’re ready to help Lives in the Balance educate others about the true factors contributing to kids’ behavioral challenges...about why time-outs, detentions, suspensions, expulsions, restraints, and locked-door seclusion often make things worse (and about what to do instead)...this website has lots for you, too. Want to get involved? CLICK HERE to find out how.

Understanding and helping a behaviorally challenging child is a tough journey. No need to go it alone...we're all in this together.

I put in the Amazon links to his books. By the way, here's what I think is the most hard hitting video on his introductory page: Check Your Lenses.

And I should run you over to see his Hot Topics section.

This quote is from a different section, but, anyway:

When does the child exhibit challenging behavior? The CPS [Collaborative Problem Solving] model has an answer to that, too: He exhibits challenging behavior when the demands being placed upon him exceed the skills he has to respond adaptively. Would the child prefer to respond adaptively? Of course! Is the child choosing to respond maladaptively? Now why would he choose to do that? If he had the skills to respond adaptively, he would.

Hey! Look! The Tibetan Book of the Dead!

Right here!

Or, maybe it'd behoove me [you've never seen me in hooves] to do this:

Nicely put.

Sanford Ikeda explains the proper uses of micro- and macroeconomics. The first commenters said something that roused a thought:

But in the overall “Macro” economic world, the drag of the Welfare State and the Warfare State has led to the economic problems we have today. There are just too many non-producers. Too many wars,too many Welfare Recipients,too many Social Security recipients,too many people on Food Stamps,Unemployment Compensation etc.,etc. plus much,much too many government employees and retired government employees,who may be deemed necessary for a “civilized society,” but in the end produce no real wealth.

My thought is that somebody ought to mention that a huge part of the American economy pays for government employees whose job it is to actively destroy wealth. The only way that could work for us is if we followed the WWII model and destroyed all other industrialized nations. I think that's what our Keynesians and Neocons actually have in mind (though, perhaps, hiding in the back). Our commenter, Libertarian Jerry, goes on to say:

Its a classic example of the imbalance between the Economic Class that creates the wealth and the Political Class that lives off of that created wealth. Add to this “Macro” economic problem the “Too big to fail” mentality of the plutocracy that use government connections to try and thwart the rules of economics,then you have the sorry mess of the American Economy.

I'm going to have to buy a WSJ today. I see the Swiss are buying Euros to keep their Francs cheap. Hey! Speaking of 'nicely put', here's Larkin Rose doing what he does best:

On an individual basis, most people understand and accept that threatening people and using violence is justified only when used defensively. It's not okay to use force to steal someone's stuff. It is okay to use force to stop someone from stealing your stuff. It's not okay to violently assault someone. It is okay to use violence to stop someone from assaulting you. Yes, there can be occasional gray areas, but the general idea of the non-aggression principle is pretty simple. So no, killing innocent people, because the regime they live under does bad things, is not okay. It's not okay if you're a middle eastern terrorist, or if you're a U.S. soldier. On the other hand, using violence to try to stop aggressors is justified, whether the aggressors are private or "government." (In most cases, trying to forcibly resist thugs who imagine themselves to be representing "authority" tends to be very hazardous and counter-productive, but that doesn't mean it isn't morally justified.)

The parenthetical point is important to mention. I don't know any anarcho-capitalists who advise starting a war with the police, nor looting any non-violent business. We preach education and negotiation, not aggression. The problem of violence will never be solved by warmongering. I'm sorry if I haven't made it clear that I've made about a 170° turnaround since I started spewing my guts all over this page back in '03. I sincerely doubted then that the government would go about seeking justice for 9-11 efficaciously, but I agreed that they should try. Now I think that Clarence Darrow (of Scopes Trial fame) had the right of it, when he published his book Resist Not Evil a hundred years before.

Elise M. Boulding

Sounds like somebody worth studying.

Good

Woman who recorded cops acquitted of felony eavesdropping charges

Study links bad parenting to binge drinking

http://www.demos.co.uk/press_releases/parentingbingedrinking I got that from Stef who got it from the Daily Mail who got it from Demos. The Demos article is the best. It actually defines the parenting styles discussed. Stef just gave the link and the Daily Mail's summary of the summary isn't informative enough. It might even be a little misleading. I think it is, without this:

Tough love or authoritative parents: Parents falling into this category tend to expect that their children will conform to household rules and boundaries but that these will be set and negotiated within a context that encourages autonomy in the children’s decision-making. Such parents have high standards but support their children warmly in adhering to them; in their enforcement of rules such parents are assertive without being aggressive.

Nicely said, Mr. Greg

August 2, 2011
Mises Daily

Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending
by Anthony Gregory on August 2, 2011

[LewRockwell.com, July 29, 2011]

As Obama demonizes the wealthy and pitches a dozen plans to restructure the economy, opponents of this program need a reminder of what exactly we're fighting for. We are resisting bureaucracy, central planning, and encroachments on our freedom and communities. But this does not get to the heart of the matter. We are not only an opposition movement, countering the president and his partisans' agenda. More fundamentally, we stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: capitalism.

Many regard "capitalism" as a dirty word, and it is tarnished most of all by its supposed guardians. Wall Street giants fancy themselves capitalists even as they live off the taxpayer and thrive on the state's gifts of privilege, inflation, and barriers to entry. In the military-industrial complex, they champion capitalism by name as they produce devices of murder for the state. In the Republican Party and every conservative institution, they talk it up while making such vast exceptions to the principle as to swallow it whole. When many think of capitalism, they think of the corporatist status quo, leading even some who favor economic freedom to abandon the term.

But we should not abandon it. For one thing, most opponents of capitalism do not merely oppose Goldman Sachs or Halliburton or even McDonald's. Rather, they oppose free enterprise as a matter of principle. They object to employers' liberty to hire and fire whom they want, at whatever wage is mutually arranged. They protest the right of entrepreneurs to enter the market without restriction. They disapprove businesses designing infrastructure; providing energy, food, water and other necessary commodities; and running transportation without government meddling. They lament the rich getting richer, even through purely peaceful means. They oppose the freedom to engage in short selling, insider trading, hostile takeovers, and corporate mergers without the central state's blessing. They begrudge the worker who dissents from the labor establishment. It is exactly the anarchy of the free market they despise, not the consolidated state–big business nexus they most want to smash. For every liberal who hates monopoly capitalism for anything approaching the right reasons, there are ten who deplore the capitalism part of it more than the monopoly.

I only stopped quoting out of copyright concerns. The next paragraph is harder hitting. Ah, hell...:

It is simply a fact that capitalism, even hampered by the state, has dragged most of the world out of the pitiful poverty that characterized all of human existence for millennia. It was industrialization that saved the common worker from the constant tedium of primitive agriculture. It was the commodification of labor that doomed slavery, serfdom, and feudalism. Capitalism is the liberator of women and the benefactor of all children who enjoy time for study and play rather than endure uninterrupted toil on the farm. Capitalism is the great mediator between tribes and nations, which first put aside their weapons and hatreds in the prospect of benefiting from mutual exchange.

Perhaps you're not getting his point:

The socialists of all stripes argue that real socialism has never been tried, and some say we market radicals are stuck with no better a response than to say that real capitalism has never been tried, either. However, unlike "real socialism," which Mises demonstrated was impossible on a large scale, capitalism simply exists wherever it is left unmolested. It is the part of the market that is free.

Regardless of how we define it, in terms of feeding the masses and sustaining society, I will take flawed capitalism over flawed socialism any day. I will take state capitalism, crony capitalism, or corporate capitalism over state socialism, democratic socialism, or national socialism.

Hm. Meant to put this on the other blog.

Had another interesting dream - probably about a month and a half ago, actually.

I walked up to this big house - kind of my "dream house" (as opposed to merely a house in this dream): fachwerk, stucco - and went in the door. My father and elder relatives were in the basement, gutting it, presumably in preparation for renovation. I could see most of the basement from the landing inside the door. I was above them. Then I went down the rather treacherous stairway, which went straight ahead from the landing. It was very solid concrete, but the steps were rounded off as if they were very old and worn. They'd had risers and runners over the top of them, but the men had removed them. There was a landing about six or eight feet down where the steps turned left, but there was a ladder there which I took the rest of the way down. The wall, floor and stairs were a dingy grayish-bluish-green.

I walked over to my dad and grandpa (his dad) to find out what was going on. Grandpa seemed to be directing everyone and he seemed pretty cheerful. (Not his normal demeanor.) Uncles and cousins and others I didn't know were moving objects around and carrying tools, but I really couldn't tell what everybody was doing. There were a bunch of guys doing something in an alcove to the right. Grandpa didn't give any directions to me, but he seemed pretty pleased that I was there.

I went over to see if I could help Dad, who was all business, when suddenly he took off for the stairs. He ran up the stairs as fast as it was possible to go, pulling off and throwing his clothes willy nilly. I followed as quickly as I felt was safe, collecting his clothes as I went. Dad got to the top of the steps and sat on a toilet in a bathroom there that I hadn't noticed before. I tried to hand him his clothes, but he didn't take them.

There's more, but I'm out of time for now.

Hey, it's August! All right?

The Europeans are all on vacation... I'm thinkin', "Hey! Me too!"

No, not really. I kinda wanted to leave that post about Dan on top for a while. I was on vacation last week, but I used the time catching up on my reading - two Jung books and a fantasy novel - and yard work. Started to clean the house, but then we went up to the Lake.

I towed the girls across the bay and back. They were on inner tubes. I was swimming. Took me an hour. Sunburned the crap out of my head. (Go ahead - take the opening.)

I am poorer now, by one friend

Dan Leroy died this morning.

I don't have all the facts yet. I'll find out more after work.

He was the best story-teller I've known.

Gotta check out this film and this guy's links later

I do.

Link.

Running stuff.

Edit (much later - time for bed, in fact): I watched it, favorited it on Youtube and posted the link on Facebook. [Wait. Will that embed it here? Oh, no it won't. Good. You know, on the old preview page, you could click the links to see if they worked.]

For two and a half minutes of this video, you get to watch all these young, good-lookin' people. Then there's big, fat, old Al. I dragged that lard-a** for 31 miles over some of the gawd-awfulest [two l's? ...Naw.] hills known to man. It won't surprise you that each circuit took me a half-hour longer to complete than it's predecessor. The first took 1:52. [Error Alert!! That was what the gal linked in the post below did. I was there at 1:58.] You're welcome to do the addition after that. It comes out pretty close.

I only face-planted once (landed in sand, so no big), tripped on a few roots (but caught myself) and had my feet slip out from under me in the big ditch-y thing coming down the final slope before finishing. That fall didn't hurt... but getting up again did.

Going down hills like that? Every bit as tough as going up them. I mean, unless you're actually suicidal.

Ran the Afton 50K Trail Run today.

OMG, that was a b****! Road running is inadequate preparation for trail running. I may say more later about it, but I'm still effin' shot from it.

They've got the preliminary results here. I'm at the bottom of the second page.

I prefer to think that I was 98th out of the 169 who entered, rather than the 99 who finished.

Oh, actually I was 96th out of 97 finishers.

Awesome description of the race here.