The Browne/Bush package deal

Harry Browne has died. Some idiot on the von Mises blog gets this part of his legacy right:

As we look back on the history of the libertarian movement, and we think of those who have contributed mightily to making the idea of radical liberty more mainstream and popular, Harry Browne emerges as a giant. He was talented, dignified, sincere, and dedicated, and he showed genuine courage in the face of fantastic pressure to get him to cave in. All lovers of liberty should be grateful for him, his life, his writings, and his legacy.

But completely blows it here:

In the early 1980s, he went in the opposite direction, sympathizing far too much with the Republican agenda and even temporarily showing sympathies for Reaganite foreign policy. In this he foreshadowed the sad descent of many current-day libertarians into the miasma of DC policy wonkery and political gamesmanship.

I don't even know what that last sentence means. At least Browne never left you in doubt about his stance on an issue. So I had to drop a comment/hammer on the deluded libertarians:

Harry Browne was a great writer. His only flaw was his blind spot about the threats to individual freedom. His naive thinking about the Islamic menace would have abandoned fifty million people to Saddamism and the Taliban and put all our freedoms in mortal danger. Thank God we have George W. Bush. A combination of Bush for foreign policy and Browne for domestic policy would be perfect.

The other problem Browne had was that he just loved the spotlight. I remember in How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World that he confessed that he wouldn't be able to enjoy some of the freedoms he urged on others because his outspokenness made him too easy a target. But I'm glad he did speak out.

Last time

OK, this is the last time I'm going to post a comment like this anywhere:

Perhaps the essential fact that makes some religions more dangerous than others is how much tolerance they have for amendment of their doctrines to accept new realities. Rodney Stark has convinced me that Europe developed only because Christianity allowed, even encouraged reasoned analysis of man's relationship to the world. Real practical science arose in "Medieval" Europe long before the Renaissance, before Aquinas even. Since Christianity was dominant then, it must get some of the credit. Comparing the state of cultures that have suffered under Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto to the progress in Europe under some forms of Christianity it's impossible not to see that Christianity is somehow more amenable to life and prosperity. It's not perfect. And certainly not every Christian country has developed. We have improved tremendously by putting some safeguards between the power of the Christian church and the culture of science and industry. But I can't get away from the necessity of crediting some characteristic of Christianity - I'm still unclear as to exactly what - for the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy today.

I feel like I've done it a hundred times. This one's on Noodlefood's post about the differential ferocity of various religions, so I thought it was appropriate. But that's it. I'd like to get some real fightback about it, but no one seems so inclined.

AIDS again

This comment

Speaking of AIDS, this month's Harper's, usually a stupid collectivist piece of nonsense, has a Celia Farber article shooting down the AIDS=HIV hypothesis. Mainstream ahead!

on an otherwise unremarkable post on Diana Hsieh's Noodlefood blog led to some questions about the HIV=AIDS hypothesis:

Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 22:54:31 mst
Comment ID: #7 (link)
Name: Spoudaios
E-mail: spoudaios(at)spoudaios.com

How does the "HIV leads to AIDS hypothesis" result from collectivism?

So I sighed, thinking of the many comments Dean Esmay collected before I decided to abandon his blog (or did he ban me? I still don't know) but I replied thusly:

The collectivist link is in the way that big medicine, like big government, imposes its views on doctors, and possibly endangers patients by giving them highly toxic drugs. Duesberg and Nobel Prizewinner Kary Mullis have done a lot of work on this. The African AIDS "epidemic" is another factor. Many, if not most of the so-called AIDS cases in Africa never had a PCR test to detect HIV. It was just assumed because they were sick, they had AIDS. It was perhaps not a coincidence that billions of foreign aid dollars were available if the collectivists ranted long enough about the West's obligation to fight AIDS in Africa. The debate rages on, but I was surprised that Harper's, normally a liberal rag that attacks anything America does, printed some of the questions that continue to be raised. And I don't trust a word put out by the NIH. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong. But what if the skeptics are right? It's worth checking out. Dean Esmay's blog has much, much more:

I'm not sure whether Harper's realizes how many wacky right-wing (as they would say) objectivists and libertarians have profound skepticism about AIDS. But something tells me they're about to find out.

By George, I think they've done it

The Israelis have solved the key/lock problem:

The Israeli company E-lock has developed the first lock technology based on a Knock Code. This innovation is based on patented technology which uses a series of quick knocking sounds. The discrete mechanical knocks open the lock and are produced by a small device that can be carried by any authorized person.

They appear to have ruled out a number of possible evasive techniques. There's got to be a joke to go with this.
"Knock, knock, who's there?
Allah.
Allah who?
Allah blow myself up if you don't let me in."


A few of the KnocKey devices on the Israeli wall and Palestinian terrorism is a thing of the past.

Choice in schools is not absolute

A Pejman-post on Redstate explores aspects of the school voucher issue:

Arguing against school vouchers by claiming that they could be used to send children to schools run by jihadists and or white supremacists is a bit over the top. One should not, of course, be surprised--after all, the arguments against school vouchers are in such a parlous state that overreactions and rhetorical excesses such as the one linked to in this post become de rigeur for those desperate for something--anything--to stop school vouchers.

So I thought, why should schools be any different from anywhere else? Is this or is this not the land of the free? But that principle can be taken too far:

Is it not obvious that the constraints on freedom of speech in a school should not be any different than those anywhere else? It may be a good idea to have a discussion about what should be tolerated in public discourse. And about the apparently difficult-to-understand principle that toleration does not mean agreement. A KKK school has a constitutional right to preach idiotic racial hatred. It doesn't have a right to public funding, but that's another issue. To my mind no schools should be publicly funded. But isn't it clear to just about everyone that a school that teaches its students to blow themselves up in crowded shopping malls in order to get into Paradise has stepped over a line that no sane society can allow to be crossed?

How far is too far, short of actual incitement to murderous violence? That's up to the parents, who would think more carefully about the question if they were paying for the schooling.

Spengler in the Asia Times again. This time I really don't know what he's talking about:

In fact, the worst outcome from the vantage point of Washington's interest would be a stable constitutional government in Iraq.
***
Instability favors the side with the greatest strategic flexibility, and that is the United States. The Russian Federation, not an enemy but at least a competitor of the United States, wants to reduce US flexibility.
***

Now wait a minute, that's sounding a little better, a bit more like me a few years ago, when people were saying, "We can't invade Iraq! We'd destabilize the Middle East!" And I thought, but isn't that what we want? If the Middle East, the Arabs in particular and Islam in general is the enemy, is in fact responsible for 9/11 and threatens our civilization, what could be better than to have them fighting each other, inside and outside their borders? When was the Middle East most peaceful in recent decades? Right! During the Iran-Iraq war, when a million Muslims died with absolutely no effect on Western security. When the war ended, the mujihadeen were free to go throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. So that explains why:

One reads dire predictions everywhere that civil conflict in Iraq might lead to regional war. That is true, but no one fears this more than the government of Iran.
***
Iran's regime cannot be subverted, unless, of course, it becomes embroiled in a foreign military adventure in which President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's supporters come to dislike their role as cannon fodder.

Could the mullahs withstand another million-casualty war with the Sunni military, reconstituted this time with American weapons? One thinks not. Read the whole thing. You'll feel so much better!

Auto-da-feh?

The inimitable and always interesting Social Affairs Unit blog has a post about autodidacticism and its more famous participants:

Autodidactism also had its dark side, since an intellectual universe created from one's own variegated readings and preferred opinion often lacked a moral component, and often went with ethical solipsism. Two of the greatest autodidacts of this type were Hitler and Stalin.

The post didn't get into the effect of the Internet, so I thought I'd bring it up:

Sometimes I think that the effect of the Internet will be to make autodidacts the norm and that will be a good thing. It could go wrong, though, if easy access to all knowledge means that malevolent thinkers can easily find reinforcement for their evil thoughts and openminded rationalists are so overwhelmed with conflicting theses and opinions that they "lose all conviction".

I'm having a hard time getting my comment to register, but I'll link to the article anyway. Perhaps it's being moderated.

JJLuna's next book will, I have heard, deal with the great benefits of the school of hard knocks.

Rove-a-dope?

The Dubai port story (via Lucianne) appears about to blow up in W's face:

The administration's approval of the acquisition of London- based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. by a firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates has ignited a storm of protests from Democrats and Republicans in Congress and from governors of the states where the ports are located.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist joined Democrats such as Senator Hillary Clinton of New York in calling on the administration to delay or block the $6.8 billion sale.

New York Governor George Pataki and Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich, both Republicans, also have announced their opposition.

But wait a minute. Is the intent here to get Dems screaming about how awful Arabs are and what a threat the Islamic world is in the War on Terror? And isn't that just the opposite of what they were saying just a bit ago, that W was overhyping the threat because of Islamophobia? And won't that make them look a bit - oh - Islamophobic? And wouldn't W be putting a little hygienic distance between himself and the true Islamophobics on the fringe of his own party? Maybe I'm dreaming, but is that a smile I see on Karl Rove's face?

Are Smileys "haram"?

Found a blog called "Croziervision" with a post about freedom of speech:

How essential is freedom of speech?

Oh , it’s essential to me, of course, but then I am a libertarian. But what about Western civilisation in general? I ask because it occurs to me that freedom of speech has had a hard time of it over the years.

It got me thinking about when and how people get offended about things:

Perhaps it's the nature of offense that needs to be considered. Blasphemy, obscenity, profanity, have been considered bannable because they offend, they irritate. No one seriously contends that they cause physical harm. Any civil disorder that results is because of the irritation, the offense. They're not that different, then, from cigarette smoke, other recreational drugs, loud music, dirt (non-poisonous), neon signs and mismatched clothing.

The genius of Western society is that it has recognized that offense is not always to be taken seriously and catered to. Limits have been put on causes for complaint. Now the Muslims and the PC crowd have ganged up on freedom in the name of some absurd non-offensive utopia. I bet Mohammed never wore perfume. But he sure had a lot of offensive ideas. Oh and I forgot "Smileys". Boy do those things offend me! I bet they're haram!

Scots build Ferris Wheel for boats

Now that's not a sentence you'll see too often in the life of the universe. But it's true.

Praise the Lord. How many marvelous things there are in his creation.

Comment on Gene Expression:

So why not polygamy? The entire nation of Pakistan - heck, the entire Islamic world - can join one large civil partnership and move lock stock and barrel to Slough. Wait a minute, they already have!
Robert Speirs | Email | Homepage | 02.21.06 - 11:06 am | #

Weekly Standard profile of Nicholas Sarkozy

...the perfect holiday retreat...

Here's a good one:

Directions: 40 km from Ruse, 220 km from Varna
Area: 80 sq. meters
Land: 1700 sq. meters
Price: 5600 EUR or 3919 GBP or 7361 USD
Basic location: Near town. In mountain. In vacation place. Near highway. In fishing area. In hunting area. Near a golf course.

Only needs a little "cosmetical refreshment", but I can handle that for $7361.

Cartoon Pushback

Protein Wisdom has a comment relaying a statement by one of the famous cartoonists summarizing the evidence for the existence of the Moderate Muslim:

Muslim outrage huh. OK ... let’s do a little historical review.
Just some lowlights:
[1] Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.

[2] Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage. *******************************************

[3] Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.

[4] Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.

[5] Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.

[6] A Muslim attacks a missionary children’s school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.****************************************

[7] Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
******************************************

[8] Let’s go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.

[9] Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.


[10] Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.

[11] Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.

[12] Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.

[13] Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage

[14] Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.

[15] Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.

[16] Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslims are outraged.

[17]
Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. no Muslim outrage ...

Is this really about cartoons?

The comment doesn't really fit with the post, which is about WMDs, but it sure comes on powerful and true.

Darn!

So does this:

TALLAHASSEE - It's happy hour in Florida's capital city, but you wouldn't know it. The outdoor bar near the Capitol that used to be crowded with lobbyists and legislators is virtually empty on a Tuesday evening.

"Boy, this crowd is awfully thin," says House Speaker Allan Bense, R-Panama City, walking past the watering hole known as Clyde's & Costello's. "Where is everybody?"

Those deserted tables are a consequence of a new state law that bans lobbyists from buying drinks, meals and gifts for legislators and staff members. Lawmakers passed the sweeping ban at the end of a four-day special session in December, in the wake of a controversial trip to Canada by four legislators at a gambling firm's expense and an unfolding lobbying scandal in Washington.

mean that I won't be able to walk past the Capitol at lunchtime and watch all the legislative staffers lining up for free meals at outdoor barbeque tents any time a county or association or other pressure group wants to get another piece of restrictive legislation passed? Guess so:

As chamber director, Gardiner helps organize the annual Lake County Days, promoting the area and highlighting its annual legislative agenda.

Because the sponsors of Lake County Days include Sprint, Progress Energy and others who employ lobbyists, lawmakers and legislative staffers cannot eat free.

Hey, wait a minute. Legislators have to pay for their own meals and fewer restrictions on individual freedom get passed. It's all good!

Original man

I had to reply to this post on Protein Wisdom about the constitutional prohibition against women Presidents:

According to a Baptist Minister, the U.S. Constitution prevents Hillary Rodham Clinton - or any woman - from serving as President. He says that contrary to what feminists think, the 19th Amendment did not de-gender the nation’s highest office. Article II, Section 1 declares 16 times the President will be a man.

That’s right, men only. Women need not apply.
***
But the gender exclusion argument seems to me a bit, well, dubious—even from a technical legal standpoint—particularly when the phrase “all men are created equal” has been taken by the court to mean all “persons,” a fact of precedence that would seem to take a bit of the starch out of the good Rev’s case.

I opined thusly:

Hey, if "man" means "male or female person" in the constitution, how come the language Nazis force us to say "chairperson" and "crewed space missions" instead of "chairman" and "manned missions"? Help, they're being illogical! They're undermining their insistence that the usage of "man" before the splendid liberation that occurred around 1970, when strong women finally came of age, women who, unlike their weak and stupid sisters of the past, could actually throw off the yoke of male oppression, was evidence of the historical oppression of women.
Clearly, all good feminists must insist that "man" in the Constitution means "male" and an amendment is necessary before Laura can take over from W.

"CAN'T TURN BACK A RIVER"

The press censorship situation in China may be more hopeful than some think:

"I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do," he (Li Xinde) said with a chuckle.
***
"Our party always said revolution depended on the gun and the pen -- the military and propaganda," said Li, echoing a slogan of Mao's. "The gun is still firmly in the party's hands, but the pen has loosened."

All hail the power of blogs! The government would have to put half their budget into keeping control of the internet to stop all the heroes like Li. And that would take so much staff that some freethinkers would inevitably slip through. The dinosaurs will never stamp out all the little furry mammals. Sooner or later they'll give up trying. I am encouraged.

The non-Wisdom of (some) Crowds

Wretchard has a beautiful post called "The Wisdom of Crowds" on The Belmont Club:

The struggle against the unremitting stupidity of Political Correctness or the remorseless hatred of Osama Bin Laden are both at heart an effort to reclaim ordinary life -- with its laughter, pity and guiless admiration -- from the faded wraiths who envy our mortal humors.

In response to some comments, especially this one of Wretchard's:

mika.

I think the better comparison to Muslims is Germans, or if you prefer, Japanese. They'll always be that yet not always be your enemy. It would be fair to assert there is no such thing as an innocent in al-Qaeda. But as to Muslims in general there are thousands risking their lives in American service right now. You are born into Islam and can't help it; but you choose to be in al-Qaeda.

As a practical matter there are certain Muslims I know who I could trust implicitly. Why? Because I've trusted them with my life in situations where it would cost them nothing and gain them much to put me over the side. And there are certain Americans, some of the leftist persuasion, who I wouldn't trust at all.

Just my way of thinking, that's all.

I had to pontificate a bit:

Many of the "Muslims" in US service are actually Christian Arabs. One isn't automatically Muslim because one is Arab. And if it weren't for the absolute violent intolerance of apostasy in Islam, more Arabs would forsake Islam. Islam does not want agreement, it wants submission. When an individual submits to an intolerant, violent creed, he puts not just his soul but his life at risk from those of his creed's enemies who won't go quietly to the grave. The Islamic crowd is not wise at all, but ignorant and fearful.

Posts like Wretchard's, though, give one hope that the dialogue is turning in a direction that emphasizes imagination, clarity of thought and full appreciation of the dangers and opportunities this complex conflict with an outworn creed presents. Faster, please.

Workaround

I had a thought and just had to share it with Steve Sailer:

Mr. Sailer,

Call me crazy, but if race and IQ are really related, isn't hiring by race "inversely equivalent" to hiring by IQ? In other words, you could get the same results affirmative action supposedly gets - more (lower-IQ) minorities working - by giving all applicants a (suitably disguised) IQ test and hiring those with lower IQs in preference to those with higher IQs. You might want to give some thought to potential job performance on other measures (height? weight? strength?), until that's outlawed, too.

I suppose the only fly in the ointment might be that, if higher-IQ applicants got wind of the strategy, they might purposely score lower on the tests in order to get jobs. Ego being the force it is, though, I predict this would be rare. And you could mix it up. You could hire by low-IQ until you got enough identifiable minorities, then turn around and hire by ability to get the workers to actually do the jobs you need done.

A virtue of this tactic would be that you wouldn't even have to ask applicants to identify themselves by race. Perfect for the Internet. And you would avoid any accusations of quota-seeking. Also, you would know what you were getting and wouldn't have any false expectations. And liberals thought IQ was invariably racist!

I plan to put this email on my blog (http://conundrum.blogspot.com), but I won't post any response you may make unless you give me permission.

Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida

Let them eat lies
Theodore Dalrymple's column in the Times on the accelerating drive toward total social control in Britain is disturbing:

Increasingly the citizen is asked to denounce his neighbour, for example if his neighbour is cheating social security. (Cheating it is the only rational response to so preposterous, impersonal and inhumane a system.) This official invitation to atomise society further by sowing mistrust among the population has not yet been entirely successful; but posters such as the one I saw last weekend in a bookshop — “Racism is a crime. Report it!” — engender a vague but nevertheless all-pervasive anxiety.
****
We also live in a propaganda state...One is reminded of the Stalinist images of flaxen-haired peasant maidens serving at banquet tables groaning with food of every description that were disseminated to the world in the midst of one of the most severe famines in history.

Let them eat lies!

Very disturbing. The double whammy of no freedom for the law-abiding and almost total incompetence in dealing with real, violent criminals is calculated to deter the most rabid Anglophile, a group in which I used to find myself, from even thinking of living in Britain. Now I even have serious qualms about visiting. This, too, shall pass, one hopes.